Juan Carlos I of Spain became acting Head of State after dictator Francisco Franco conceded that he is too ill to govern. Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon, the designated successor to Generalissimo Francisco Franco, assumed the powers of Spain’s Chief of State. The transfer of power from General Franco, who is near death, to the Prince virtually marked the end of the 36-year-old Franco regime. The decision was believed to have been made final this morning at a conference between Premier Carlos Navarro and the Prince, who is expected to preside over a cabinet meeting today. Theoretically, the Prince is assuming power for the time of the general’s illness, but nobody in Spain expects any other outcome than the 82‐year‐old leader’s death soon. When he dies, a three‐man Council of the Regency, headed by the ultraconservative Speaker of Parliament, Alejandro Rodriguez de Valcarcel, will take over power for the time necessary to assemble the Council Of the Realm and Parliament for the swearing in of Juan Carlos as King.
Seventy-five of the 120 people aboard Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 450 were killed when the DC-9 jetliner crashed while attempting to land in Prague, at the end of a flight that had originated in Yugoslavia in the city of Tivat (now in Montenegro). Most of the passengers were Czechoslovakian citizens returning from a vacation at the Adriatic Sea. Visibility at Ruzyně Airport was less than 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) and the control tower advised the pilot of Flight 450 that the instrument landing system and precision approach radar on Runway 25 were inoperative. Given the option to attempt a landing anyway, the pilot was cleared for the approach but the crew found that the aircraft was descending into a gorge at the Vltava River near the Czech suburb of Suchdol and was unable to climb out to avoid impact.
‘Yorkshire Ripper’ Peter Sutcliffe kills his first victim, Wilma McCann. McCann, aged 28, was attacked by Peter Sutcliffe in the early morning hours of October 30 1975. The night of October 29th saw McCann in a familiar pattern. At around 7:30 pm, she said goodnight to her four children, leaving the oldest, at aged 9, in charge, and headed out of her council house on Scott Hall Avenue, in the Chapeltown area of Leeds, walked past the nearby Prince Phillip Playing Fields, and headed for the pubs and clubs. Drinking whiskies and beer, she was seen in the Regent, the Scotman, the White Swan, and the Royal Oak. With a weekday closing time of 10:30 pm, she ended up at the Room At The Top, a drinking club. She left the nightclub shortly before 1:00 am October 30th, carrying a container of curry and chips, and worse for drink (blood samples taken from her body by Professor David Gee revealed that she had consumed 12-14 measures of spirits in the few hours prior to death). Even though it was a short walk back home, Wilma McCann staggered around recklessly and in front of traffic in hopes of getting a lift home. She had flagged down a lorry heading towards the M62, but when greeted by an incoherent mixture of instructions and abuse, the driver declined to pick her up, and drove on.
Peter Sutcliffe was driving through Leeds in his lime-green Ford Capri GT after having a few pints, when he saw Wilma McCann thumbing for a lift. He pulled over and she jumped in. Just before setting off, she asked him if he “wanted business?” When he asked what she meant, she said in a scornful voice, “Bloody hell, do I have to spell it out?” Soon they were parked near the Prince Phillip Playing Fields, approximately 100 yards from her home. She said, “Well, what are we waiting for! Let’s get on with it”, and said it would cost a fiver. Sutcliffe was surprised, expecting it to be a bit romantic, as he needed to be aroused and couldn’t have intercourse at a split second. Wilma McCann then became abusive and threatened to leave. Sutcliffe suggested that they do it on the grass, and she stormed off up the hill. He put his coat on the grass, while he concealed his hammer in his right hand. She then sat down on the coat, unfastened her trousers, and sneered, “Come on, get it over with.” Sutcliffe replied, “Don’t worry, I will.” and promptly struck her several times with his hammer.
Sutcliffe would be arrested on January 2, 1981 and would later be convicted of 13 murders.
Scotland Yard told Londoners they were in the front line against guerrilla bombers and appealed for extra vigilance to help trap the terrorists. The warning came after a bomb devastated a small Italian restaurant, the ninth blast in southern England in two months. Eighteen persons were injured in the restaurant blast, including four Americans. Alan and Ruth Ward, both 68, of Riverside, Conn., were hospitalized overnight. It was reported earlier that they were from Riverside, Calif.
One man was killed and 15 other persons were wounded in shootings in Belfast as gunmen of the Irish Republican Army’s Provisional wing attacked members of the rival Official branch. The Provos, some hooded and others without disguise, singled out members of the Republican clubs, the political centers of the IRA Officials. Victims were shot in their homes, in bars and in the clubs.
Mutinous Portuguese soldiers sealed off the main arsenal in Lisbon to protest army demobilization plans. The soldiers vowed to issue no ammunition or weapons until military authorities end their purge of radical enlisted men through early discharges and compulsory furloughs. The takeover coincided with plans by the leftist-controlled navy to hold antiaircraft firing exercises in response to a similar step-up in flight training by the pro-government air force.
The Conference of National Armament Directors, meeting in Brussels, has agreed to recommend to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization a $1.5 billion fleet of radar-equipped planes to warn and defend Western Europe against air attack in the 1980s, a conference source said. The fleet, called AWACS for airborne warning and control system, initially would include about 25 planes at $60 million each. The Boeing 707, converted for military use as the E-3A, is a prime contender.
President Tito attacked neo-Stalinist groups, who favor a return to Soviet-style highly centralized communism, of undermining the unity of the Yogoslav Communist Party. Tito, speaking on a tour of Serbian Zlatibor, said such groups existed inside and outside the country but stopped short of directly accusing the Soviet Union of interference in Yugoslav affairs.
A ship carrying nonstrategic cargo for Israel will pass through the Suez Canal at dawn today, the first Israelbound cargo to move along the waterway in more than 23 years, Egyptian and Israeli officials said. An Egyptian official said the Greek ship Olympos, carrying about 8,000 tons of cement, would join a southbound convoy passing through the canal. The recent Israeli-Egyptian peace accord permits ships carrying nonstrategic Israeli goods to use the canal.
President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt ended his 28-hour visit to the New York area with Vice President Rockefeller toasting him for “courage, vision, faith and determination in working for peace and greater opportunity for people.”
The State Department said today that the United States was giving “absolutely no consideration” to military intervention in Lebanon and was continuing to urge other countries to stay out of the conflict. Robert Anderson, the department spokesman, said that the United States had not detected signs of any foreign intervention. The chief concern in Washington for weeks has been that Syria, which shares a common border with Lebanon, might send armed forces into the country to aid the Muslims. This would in turn be & post certain to lead to some kind of Israeli military response, since Israel also borders on Lebanon and Syria, officials said. In a closed‐door briefing this afternoon for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Alfred L. Atherton, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, reportedly affirmed the nonintervention policy. According to a participant in the session, Mr. Atherson said the United States had long ago given up the idea of repeating the 1958 incursion when President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the marines into Lebanon at the request of the government there.
Fighting continued in Beirut despite a new cease-fire arranged by Premier Rashid Karami. The shooting was at a reduced scale, however, especially in the heart of town and in the seaside district where the major hotels are situated. Several Americans, including Jonathan C. Randel, the Middld East correspondent of The Washington Post, were evacuated from the St. Georges Hotel in the bulletproof limousine of the United States Ambassador, G. McMurtrie Godley. About 200 guests, mostly foreigners, were evacuated earlier from the nearby Holiday Inn and Phoenicia Hotel, where they were stranded since fierce gun battles broke out in the area on Saturday. Armed men of the Christian Phalangist party were still in the three hotels, while their Muslim foes kept positions on top of an unfinished multistory building on a hill opposite in the residential Kantari Street.
Nine Americans captured in South Vietnam in the spring arrived in Bangkok today, ending more than seven months in Communist detention camps. Two Canadians, two Filipinos and an Australian were also freed. After the 14 debarked from a Laotian plane chartered by the United Nations that brought them from Hanoi, they told of forced marches through the jungles of South Vietnam and imprisonment in the North Vietnamese camp at Sơn Tây. They said that it was their understanding that they were the last foreign prisoners held anywhere in Vietnam and reported that they had had no glimpse of any other Americans, including any previously listed as missing in action.
Chile will abstain from voting in the United Nations General Assembly on a resolution condemning Zionism as a form of racism, Foreign Minister Particio Carvajal Prado said today. Chile’s support of the resolution in a committee last week was sharply criticized by the United States. Yesterday, President Augusto Pinochet said Chile’s vote in the committee “did not have his approval” and he promised it would be “rectified.” Mr. Carvajal said that Chile’s decision to abstain in the Assembly was “the result of a more careful study after hearing other opinions from the permanent delegation members in the United Nations, our ambassador in Washington and from officials in the Santiago Foreign Ministry.” Last week Chile, Brazil and Mexico joined the Arab and Soviet blocs to approve an Arab-backed resolution in the United Nations Committee for Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs, condemning Zionism “as a form of racism and racial discrimination.”
An influential member of the Rhodesian cabinet quit in the first sign of open conflict within the white government over dealings with the country’s African majority. Wickus de Kock, minister of information, immigration and tourism, announced *his resignation after an apparent disagreement within the ruling Rhodesian front over constitutional negotiations. De Kock, 46, last month proposed that Rhodesia be turned into a confederation of black and white states. But Prime Minister Ian Smith blocked the suggestion.
President Ford and his advisers have found what they consider a central and potentially highly productive theme for his 1976 campaign: New York City must pay for its sins, and the rest of the country must learn from New York’s errors or be doomed to repeat them. Officials at the Ford campaign committee in Washington privately acknowledged that one element in the President’s position on New York was the conviction that “what he’s saying now will play well on Election Day.” They also believe that it will help to convince the public that Mr. Ford is a “real” conservative whom no one on the political right need desert to support Ronald Reagan.
The Senate Banking Committee, voting 8 to 5, approved legislation that would provide a $4 billion federal loan guarantee against a New York City default. It also rejected the argument that the proposed guarantee was futile because of a threatened filibuster and presidential veto. In the House, Speaker Carl Albert said the Democratic leadership “is 100 percent committed to get a guarantee type of bill.” The leadership agreed to make President Ford’s bankruptcy proposal part of the loan-guarantee legislation, with which it would be inextricably linked.
Angry and combative following President Ford’s refusal to provide financial aid for New York City, Governor Carey announced that he would schedule a citywide demonstration called “Operation Alive and Kicking” to boost the city’s image. At a meeting of the city’s business leaders, the Governor said that the President’s refusal of financial aid was “a kick in the groin.”
President Ford made New York City’s fiscal dilemma the focus of his political rhetoric at a meeting of Republican party contributors in San Francisco and derided New York officials for seeking federal aid. In a Los Angeles television interview earlier in the day, Mr. Ford sought to absolve Vice President Rockefeller, who was Governor of New York from 1959 to 1973, of any responsibility for the dozen years of “mismanagement by public officials” that the President said was the source of New York City’s financial crisis.
President Ford asked Congress to approve foreign aid of nearly $5 billion for the current fiscal year, an unusually large amount that includes $3.4 billion for Israel and the Arab countries. This long-awaited $4.7 billion military and support assistance request would supplement about $1.3 billion in economic and humanitarian aid that is already close to approval in Congress. In addition, the administration is asking for aid to international organizations and would allocate about $1.5 billion in food assistance, bringing the current overall foreign aid program to $8 billion. The total appropriation is expected to be closely examined by Congress, particularly in light of Mr. Ford’s refusal to help New York City.
A bill to prohibit the private ownership of handguns was rejected by the House judiciary subcommittee on crime. The action all but killed any chance for the House to pass handgun legislation this year. The panel postponed deliberation on other handgun control until Wednesday, two days after a deadline set by the House Rules Committee for scheduling legislation for the floor.
Donald C. Alexander asked a joint congressional committee to investigate charges that he had misused his power as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service to aid wealthy friends. Alexander said in letters to members of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation that the charges were false. He did not specify which allegations he wanted investigated.
The House voted to hold a planned increase in postage to mail a letter to 2 cents instead of 3 cents and to bring the finances of the independent U.S. Postal Service back under congressional control. The legislation now goes to the Senate.
Americans are so glum over the economy that 8 out of 10 think the recession is still thriving. 7 think their leaders are lying and 6 think neither political party cares about the people, a panel of pollsters reported. “What it adds up to is not even a wait-and-see, skeptical public,” pollster Lou Harris told the Joint Economic Committee. “It is a people who are close to voting no-confidence in this Administration on the economic measures it has taken.”
Martha Moxley, 15, vanished after going to a Halloween party at the home of her neighbor, 15-year-old Michael Skakel, in an affluent neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her body was found the next day bludgeoned and stabbed with a golf club. Skakel, a wealthy nephew of Ethel Kennedy, would be indicted for Moxley’s murder 24 years later. Tried as an adult, Skakel would be convicted in 2002 and given a sentence of 20 years to life.
An ex-convict who says he has a heart problem was being held in a Cleveland hospital prison ward pending filing of charges against him. The man, Edward O. Watkins, 56, surrendered after holding hostages in a bank for more than 20 hours. FBI agents said they surprised Watkins in the midst of a holdup at a Society National Bank branch when a silent alarm was set off. He was armed with a gun and what he said was a dynamite bomb. Police said the bomb was a fake.
I. H. Hammerman, the admitted bagman in the political corruption investigation that forced Spiro T. Agnew to resign as Vice President was misled by prosecutors into pleading guilty to obstructing justice, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Richmond, Virginia. The court accepted Hammerman’s argument that he had pleaded guilty only because prosecutors had assured him he would not be sent to prison. But he was sentenced to 18 months and fined $5,000. The case was remanded to the U.S. district court in Baltimore.
The battle against air pollution is being won, according to Dr. William Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. At the conclusion of a four-day international conference at Durham, North Carolina, Kellogg said air pollution in large cities is decreasing somewhat despite an increase in the number of automobiles. He said the United States will decide in the next two years whether to ban fluorocarbon sprays, which some scientists believe are depleting the earth’s protective ozone layer.
The Interior Department barred nine big oil companies from entering joint bids for offshore oil and gas leases. The nine firms-identified as Amoco Production Co.; B. P. Alaska Exploration, Inc.; Chevron Oil Co.; Exxon Corp.; Gulf Oil Corp.; Mobil Oil Corp.; Shell Oil Co.; Standard Oil of California and Texaco-each produce more than 1.6 million barrels of crude oil per day, thus falling within a new regulation that prohibits their entering joint bids. The Interior Department said the regulations, which do not prohibit the firms from bidding jointly with smaller companies, were designed to increase competition and improve development of resources on the outer continental shelf.
Fossil evidence has been found in Tanzania by Dr. Mary Leakey that true man had evolved and lived in East Africa almost 3.75 million years ago, nearly a million years earlier than had been previously established. Dr. Leakey, widow of Louis Leakey, the archeologist, told a news conference in Washington that she had found the jaws and teeth of at least 11 creatures that appear to belong to the genus homo, the scientific classification that includes modern man, homo sapiens.
Major League Baseball:
Giants pitcher John “the Count of” Montefusco outpoints Expos catcher Gary Carter to win National League Rookie of the Year honors.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 839.42 (+0.79, +0.09%)
Born:
Marco Scutaro, Venezuelan MLB shortstop, second baseman, and third baseman (World Series Champions-Giants, 2012; All-Star, 2013; New York Mets, Oakland A’s, Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox, Colorado Rockies, San Francisco Giants), in San Felipe, Venezuela.
Andy Dominique, MLB first baseman, pinch hitter, and catcher (Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays), in Tarzana, California.
Keith Brooking, NFL linebacker (Pro Bowl, 2001–2005; Atlanta Falcons, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos), in Senoia, Georgia.
Derrick Lewis, NFL wide receiver (New Orleans Saints, Houson Texans), in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Joanne Malar, Canadian swimmer (Olympics, 1992, 1996), in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Maria Thayer, American actress (“Accepted”; “Strangers With Candy”), in Portland, Oregon.
Died:
Gustav Ludwig Hertz, 88, German physicist, 1925 Nobel Prize laureate.
History Diaries 