The Mayaguez Incident begins. The U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez, with 39 seamen aboard, is seized in the Gulf of Siam by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge government, who claim the ship is part of a spy operation. Diplomatic appeals fail.
At 2:10 pm local time (3:10 am in Washington DC), the United States merchant ship SS Mayaguez was stopped in international waters by the P-128, a Cambodian gunboat manned by Khmer Rouge forces. Ten minutes later, P-128 fired machine guns across the bow as a warning, and at 2:35, a group of seven Khmer soldiers boarded the Mayaguez, commandeering the ship and taking its 39 crew captive.
The White House announced that a Cambodian naval ship seized a United States merchant ship in what were said to be international waters 60 miles off the coast of Cambodia and forced it to the nearest. Cambodian port. Ron Nessen, the White House press secretary, said that President Ford “considers this seizure an act of piracy.” He said the American ship was fired on by the Cambodian ship and immediately afterward was boarded by Cambodian naval forces.
The Mayaguez incident took place between Kampuchea (now Cambodia) and the United States from 12 to 15 May 1975, less than a month after the Khmer Rouge took control of the capital Phnom Penh ousting the U.S.-backed Khmer Republic. After the Khmer Rouge seized the U.S. merchant vessel SS Mayaguez in a disputed maritime area, the U.S. mounted a hastily-prepared rescue operation three days later, on 15 May. U.S. Marines recaptured the ship and attacked the island of Koh Tang where it was believed that the crew were being held as hostages. Encountering stronger-than-expected defences on Koh Tang, three United States Air Force helicopters were destroyed during the initial assault and the Marines fought a desperate day-long battle with the Khmer Rouge before being evacuated. The Mayaguez’s crew were released unharmed by the Khmer Rouge shortly after the attack on Koh Tang began. The names of the Americans killed, including three Marines left behind on Koh Tang after the battle and subsequently executed by the Khmer Rouge, are the last names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Two Soviet destroyer ships, the Boykiy and the Zhguchiy, sailed into Boston Harbor, becoming the first Soviet ships to dock at a U.S. port since the beginning of the Cold War. The occasion was the 30th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany. The next day, the U.S. Navy ships USS Leahy and the USS Tattnall sailed into Leningrad.
The Soviet Union peeled away one more layer of secrecy from its space program today and for the first time permitted foreign newsmen to inspect its main flight control center. The visit to the facility, which will direct the Soviet end of the Apollo‐Soyuz space line‐up in July, came on the eve of a joint simulated ground rehearsal of the flight plan tomorrow. A team of American technicians is already installed at the center and will be operating there during the rehearsal and the actual flight. The six‐story brick and sandstone building is tucked inside a walled compound entered through an electrically controlled gate. It lies not quite 15 miles northeast of Moscow in this suburban town, which is normally closed to foreigners. The town bears the same name as the larger Soviet city on the Baltic. Until now, Soviet officials would not confirm the flight control center’s location. Today, its technical director, Albert V. Militsin, acknowledged that there were “several” other space facilities around Moscow but declined to say any more about them.
Deputy Premier Deng Xiao-ping of China arrived today for a six-day state visit, which the French Government has taken as a signal honor and a mark of preferential relations. France and China have agreed to hold regular political consultations at the foreign minister level, French Premier Jacques Chirac said. His announcement came after his first round of talks in Paris with Chinese Vice Premier Deng, who is in France on a six-day official visit.
Helmut Kohl was selected ahead of Franz Joseph Strauss as the Christian Socialist Union candidate for Chancellor in the 1976 West German elections. A West German opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union, nominated its chairman. Helmut Kohl, to run against Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in next year’s federal election. Kohl is minister-president (governor) of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. He has led the opposition party since 1972.
The world should stop using the United States as a scapegoat, says Spanish politician Nicolas Franco — nephew of General Francisco Franco, the chief of state, and leader of an emerging liberal faction in Spain. Franco, visiting Minnesota to learn about state and municipal government in this country, said the United States was “past the stage of acting as the world policeman… but at the same time cannot avoid its responsibilities. I would not want to go along with those who blame the United States for every little thing that goes wrong,” he added. The image of Americans in Spain is a good one, he said, because the United States has acted “like a friend.” Franco, 37, who serves in the Cortes, or legislature, is a boyhood friend of Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon, appointed successor of General Franco.
Fifty-three steel bottles of mustard gas have been stolen from an ammunition bunker in a West German military training area on the Luneburg Heath near Hamburg and there are fears that they may be in the hands of terrorists, according to the Manchester Guardian. The gas reportedly was of British origin and was handed over to the West German army to be destroyed.
Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, published the names of 71 journalists from 17 countries who it said were in prison or missing and called on the International Press Institute to take action. The list was published to coincide with the opening in Zurich of the institute’s general assembly.
Volkswagen, the leading symbol of West Germany’s “economic miracle,” announced a loss of $336 million in its worldwide operations for 1974. The company, which had never before reported a loss, will probably lose an equal amount in 1975, its managing director said. The oil crisis and the recession cut the company’s car sales last year, idling 40 percent of its German plant capacity and work force.
The Israeli Government has moved vigorously to block publication of a book that reportedly contains secret minutes of conversations between Secretary of State Kissinger and Israeli ministers in which the Secretary allegedly made disparaging remarks about the leaders of Egypt, Syria, the Soviet Union and other countries.
Israeli forces thrust across the Lebanese border last night and searched three villages for Arab guerrillas, according to an official announcement here. Five suspected terrorist collaborators were reported brought back. The raid was the first reported since January 16, when the Israelis brought back one prisoner. Last night’s raid was said to be bloodless. A military source said there had been no shooting, or explosions. There have been no recent terrorist raids from Lebanon to provoke the Israelis. The action last night seemed designed to disrupt plots guerrillas may have developed for May 14, the anniversary of Israel’s inde. Israeli state radio said tonight that lookouts on the‐northern border had reported spotting armed groups moving in Lebanese villages.
President Anwar el‐Sadat of Egypt arrived in the muggy oil port of Kuwait on the Persian Gulf today on the first leg of a 10‐day tour that will take him also to Iraq, Jordan and Syria. The primary purpose of the trip, according to Egyptian officials, is to “create a consensus among Arab leaders on what they want from the Unite States during the coming stage of the Arab‐Israeli conflict.” Mr. Sadat is due to meet President Ford on June 1 and 2 in Salzburg, Austria. He intends to speak to the America President in the name and with the support of most if not all Arab governments. Put in its bluntest form, Mr. Sadat expects to receive from the other Arabs a mandate to request the Ford Administration to state publicly that Israel must give up all the Arab territories it conquered during the war of June, 1967.
A pro-Communist general, Khamouan Boupha, announced that he had become the new Defense Minister of Laos. He issued orders grounding the air force and forbidding all movement of troops or military equipment. He had been Deputy Defense Minister under Sisouk na Champassak, a right-wing cabinet officer who resigned Friday and is now understood to have fled the country.
With unusual speed, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved legislation providing financial aid for Indochina refugees. It limited the total cost to $405 million, the same amount approved last Thursday by a House appropriations subcommittee, but lower than the $507 million requested by President Ford. The Senate committee approved the bill by a vote of 13 to 0, indicating that both houses would approve similar refugee legislation perhaps by the end of this week.
More than 16,000 South Vietnamese refugees arrived at Guam on four merchant ships. Another ship with about 4.000 additional refugees was due later. They will bring to almost 100,000 the number of refugees who have landed on Guam on their way to the continental United States since the fall of Saigon.
More than 1,000 workers occupied the giant Bougainville copper mine in Papua-New Guinea after going on a spree through the town of Panguna, according to telephoned reports from the Pacific island. Sources said the workers, all Papua-New Guineans, commandeered two bulldozers to rip up access roads to the town. The workers reportedly were protesting low pay and bad work conditions and the dismissal of a union official.
Montreal’s longshoremen decided to abide by a court ruling and end their six-week strike for higher wages and better working conditions, a union official announced. He said they would return to work today. But a strike was continued by about 5,000 construction workers at major building sites in the city, including 1976 Olympics projects. The workers walked out May 8 to protest proposed legislation to put four union locals under trusteeship.
The United States plans to vote for a proposal that will in effect lift the sanctions imposed by the Organization of American States in 1964 against Cuba, U.S. officials said. America’s approval of the move, which will authorize members of OAS to take whatever action they think appropriate about the sanctions, virtually guarantees its success. The decision is expected to be taken at a special conference in June or July in Costa Rica.
President Joaquin Balaguer of the Dominican Republic named General Juan Rene Bouchan Javier armed forces chief of staff and Brigadier General Braulio Alvarez Sanchez commander of the army, completing an overhaul of the top military structure. The chief of staff and commanders of the army, navy and air force resigned Saturday, saying they disagreed with some recent decisions, but they gave no details.
Agostinho Neto, leader of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Angola, charged that a large unidentified army was preparing to invade the oil-rich Portuguese enclave of Cabinda from neighboring Zaire. He also warned that a general conflict hung over nearby Angola itself. He made the charge in an interview with the Lisbon newspaper Diario de Noticias.
The House voted 379 to 1 to approve only about $18 million in spending authority cutbacks out of a total of more than $238 million requested by President Ford. The $220.45 million the House insisted should remain available is for various nurse and paramedical training programs and facilities administered by the Health, Education and Welfare Department. If the Senate goes along, the spending authority will be released as of June 2. The bulk of it would be translated into actual spending during the fiscal year beginning July 1 and in subsequent years. House Republican Whip Robert H. Michel of Illinois said that out of a total of more than $3 billion in recissions sought by Mr. Ford, Congress had approved only $285 million.
The House Ways and Means Committee, deeply divided on the best way to deal with the nation’s energy problems, approved legislation that would raise the federal tax on gasoline and take other steps to save fuel. The measure was adopted by a vote of 19 to 16.
C. Douglas Dillon, vice chairman of the Rockefeller Commission, said that after 18 weeks of investigation it was his opinion that the Central Intelligence Agency had never engaged in massive domestic spying. However, he indicated that there had been “one or two rather major exceptions” regarding illegal activity. He declined to elaborate.
The Veterans Administration told Congress it was narrowing its choices of sites for new cemeteries for veterans in California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and the Washington, D.C., area. John Mahan told the House Veterans Affairs Committee of plans to get four new cemeteries opened because many old ones are filling up so fast they soon will be closed. He said the California sites selection had been narrowed to Los Banos, White Wolf Valley in Kern County and March Air Force Base near Riverside. He added that the latter site was “the most promising.”
Attorney General Edward H. Levi has refused to let a study team from the General Accounting Office view the FBI’s investigative files, apparently setting the stage for his response to similar requests expected later this year from the House and Senate select committees examining intelligence agencies.
The Supreme Court declined today to review a decision finding the Boston public school system unconstitutionally segregated and ordering officials to prepare a plan to eliminate racial imbalance. The Issue has produced heated controversy, protests and violence in Boston. Federal District Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. made the original finding of racial discrimination in a suit filed by black parents in 1972. Last year, to implement this finding, Judge Garrity ordered a temporary integration plan requiring the busing of 18,000 pupils. It was put into effect last September and led to racial violence in the city.
The Supreme Court agreed today to decide whether suburban counties with some record of public housing discrimination can be ordered combined with a clearly discriminatory central city in a metropolitan public housing plan to reduce racial segregation.
The military, forced by Congress to reduce its number of enlisted servants, is proposing to set up what Senator William Proxmire describes as a $1-million “pamper fund” to provide housecleaning and catering services for servantless generals and admirals.
AFL-CIO President George Meany told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress to forget about the size of the budget deficit and spend more on jobs. He testified that the Ford Administration’s proposed limit on federal spending for the financial year starting July 1 would leave about 7.6 million Americans unemployed by the end of next year. “If the leadership of this country had considered only the budget deficit in the early 1940s, Hitler would have won the war.” Meany declared. The 80-year-old head of the nation’s largest labor organization called for a $5 billion public works program, more aid for housing, extended unemployment benefits and other programs to help the 8.2 million people currently out of work.
Senator Roman L. Hruska (R-Nebraska) said he would not run for reelection when his term expired next year. Hruska, 71, has served 21 years in the Senate and is the senior Republican of the Judiciary Committee. He plans to return to private life in Nebraska. An aide said the senator decided against running again because “he felt he has served in public life for a long time and wants to spend some time with his family.”
Fifty shares of race track stock later valued at $1.2 million were sold for an undisclosed amount to Barbara and Robert Crancer, the daughter and son-in-law of former Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa, 11 months before the track obtained a $4 million loan from the union’s pension fund, the Baltimore Sun reported. It said the transaction involved stock in the Charles Town Race Track in West Virginia. The track was purchased in August, 1965, by Irving Kovens, a political associate of Governor Marvin Mandel, and two other Maryland men. The newspaper said the request to transfer the stock was approved by the state racing commission on September 12, 1967, and on August 28, 1968, the Central States Teamsters Union pension fund loaned the track the $4 million.
Judge David L. Bazelon, chief judge of the federal court of appeals for the District of Columbia, predicted a long hot summer of disturbance, violence and tragedy in the nation’s inner cities. Speaking at the annual dinner of the Northwestern University Law Alumni Association in Chicago, Bazelon said his prediction was based on the desperate social and economic conditions existing in urban areas. “As the unemployment rate has skyrocketed in the past year,” he said, “affecting most of all those who are already neglected and deprived, so too has the crime rate taken a quantum jump — a 17% rise last year.”
A dangerous level of gas accumulation prevented searchers from reaching four men trapped in a sewage tunnel explosion in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Parts of at least two bodies have been found in the 100-foot deep tunnel being constructed under the Fox River and four other men were injured. Officials said there was little hope that any of the four missing men had survived the blast of undetermined origin. Fire officials said, however, that gas, probably methane, might have been triggered by a spark from an electric train. A search team made its way to within 140 feet of the end of the tunnel but was driven back by the heavy concentration of gas and special drilling rigs were set to work to bore holes to air the tunnel.
New York City notes and bonds dropped sharply in price as the market reacted to the announcement by Secretary of the Treasury William Simon that the federal government would not help solve the city’s severe money shortage. As a result, yields on the city’s bonds rose above 10 percent, exceeding the levels reached early last month just before the state advanced $400 million to pay off city debts.
The prosecution’s chief witness at the trial of former Senator Edward J. Gurney of Florida testified today that in June, 1972. Mr. Gurney told him to stop raising funds from builders dealing with Federal housing agencies. The witness, Larry E. Williams of Orlando, also testified, however, that the next day, June 12, 1972, he was once again promising favors to Florida builders from whom he expected financial contributions to a Gurney campaign fund.
Machinists and aerospace workers have voted to return to work at the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, ending a 12-week strike that put 11,500 employes out of work.
A total of $6.5 billion was spent last year by American business and industry on equipment to combat air and water pollution, the Commerce Department reported in Washington. The department said a survey made in 1973 had indicated that far more would be spent for pollution equipment in 1974.
New earth sciences may help find more major oil and gas deposits, American scientists told delegates to the World Petroleum Conference in Tokyo. Dr. Dennis Holmgren of the Mobil Oil Co. told a panel discussion that 428 giant oil and gas fields account for more than 75% of the world’s known oil reserves but that they represent only 1% of all such fields. The current oil shortage makes it increasingly important to concentrate exploration on the most promising spots and ignore comparatively small fields, Holmgren declared in a paper.
With two goals from 47-year-old ice hockey legend Gordie Howe, the Houston Aeros won their second straight World Hockey Association championship, defeating the Quebec Nordiques, 7-2, to sweep the best of four series.
Major League Baseball:
The Royals leave a record tying 15 men on base without scoring in a 5–0 loss to the Tigers. Tiger rookie Vern Ruhle allows 12 baserunners in his 7 1/3 innings, in picking up the win. The 15 runners in a shutout has been done 3 times before, the last on August 1, 1941. The mark will finally be eclipsed by the Cards in 1994.
Jim Holt, Oakland pinch‐hitter, slashed a two‐run single to left field in the seventh inning capping a four‐run A’s rally that beat the Red Sox, 5–3. The Boston starter, Reggie Cleveland, who had limited the A’s to three hits through six innings, took a 3–1 lead into the seventh.
The Dodgers downed the Cardinals, 6–4 in ten. With two out in the 10th, Tom Paciorek singled in a run and Rick Auerbach knocked in two more runs, providing the margin of victory after the Cards had tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, 3–3.
Joe Torre lashed a two‐out, three‐run double in the seventh inning that gave the Mets a 3‐2 victory over San Francisco. Trailing 1–0, the Mets loaded the bases on consecutive singles off Jim Barr and after Gary Lavelle relieved Barr and struck out Rusty Staub, Torre lashed a line drive to right‐center field and all three runners scurried home. Torre, even though he has slimmed down to 200 pounds, was called out trying for a triple, but that didn’t diminish his game‐winning feat.
The Montreal Expos routed the Atlanta Braves, 11–1. Pat Scanlon was the hitting hero, driving in four runs, including three with his first major league homer, as the Expos battled to escape the Eastern Division cellar. Scanlon’s homer over the right‐field fence came in a five‐run third inning against a former Expo, Carl Morton (5‐3).
Kansas City Royals 0, Detroit Tigers 5
Atlanta Braves 1, Montreal Expos 11
San Francisco Giants 2, New York Mets 3
Boston Red Sox 3, Oakland Athletics 5
Los Angeles Dodgers 6, St. Louis Cardinals 4
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 847.47 (-2.66, -0.31%)
Born:
Jared Polis, American businessman and Democratic politician, Governor of Colorado (2019-), in Boulder, Colorado.
David Kostelecký, Czech Olympic sports shooter (Olympics, Men’s Trap, gold medal, 2008, silver, 2020), in Brno, Czechoslovakia.
Lawrence Phillips, CFL and NFL running back (Grey Cup-Alouettes, 2002; CFL All-Star 2002; CFL: Montreal Alouettes, Calgary Roughriders; NFL: St. Louis Rams, Miami Dolphins, San Francisco 49ers) and convict (assault, murder), in Little Rock, Arkansas (d. 2016, suicide).
Jonah Lomu, New Zealand rugby union player, in Auckland (d. 2015).
Died:
Joe Mooney, 64, American jazz and pop accordionist, organist, and vocalist.
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