The Elfin Diary Archives

1951

“3-D” movies are shown to audiences wearing coloured paper spectacles. Chrysler introduce power steering and Mauchly and Eckert build UNIVAC, the first commercial electronic computer, sold by Remington Rand. Sir John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton win the Nobel Prize for Physics with their discovery of the transmutation of atomic nuclei in accelerated particles. Films: The Lavender Hill Mob and The African Queen. Zebra crossings, at which cars must stop for pedestrians, are introduced in the UK. Planetary orbits were first calculated using a computer by Dutch-American astronomer Dirk Brouwer, predicting orbits to 2063 by using data from as far back as 1653. In the UK: the Conservative Party is returned to power under Winston Churchill; the Witchcraft Act of 1735 is repealed; the Festival of Britain is held, to cheer up the postwar population. Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny appears; Isaac Asimov publishes the first volume of his classic Foundation series. Alan Turing, mathematician, (see 1954) is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; his article Computing Machinery and Intelligence suggested that machines can learn and could “…eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields.” (See Deep Blue, 1997).

1952

Archaeologists use the first radiocarbon dating tests; Dutch astronomer Adriaan Blaauw (that’s the correct spelling) shows that the expansion of the zeta-Persei cluster started 1.3 million years ago, proving that stars are continuously created in the Milky Way. Films: High Noon and Singin’ In The Rain. Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican) is elected 34th President of the United States and the TV network CBS used a UNIVAC computer to predict the landslide victory; but they could not accept their own results and reprogrammed it to incorrectly forecast a close contest! The first commercial product (a hearing aid) using transistors is introduced and Sony develops the pocket-sized transistor radio. The Cosmotron at Brookhaven, NY, a new synchrotron particle accelerator, accelerates protons beyond one billion electron volts, while a group led by Hungarian-American Edward Teller develops the H-bomb which is tested at the Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific. The world’s first male-to-female sex-change (so-called) operation is performed on ex-soldier George Jorgenson, who became Christine; “rock-and-roll” music starts being played on US radio stations; the first contraceptive pill is developed in the US.

1953

British architect and philogist Michael Ventris deciphers Linear B, an ancient language of Minoan Crete; tests on the jawbone of the “Piltdown man” – the supposed missing link between ape and homo sapiens – reveal it as a hoax. “Uncle” Joseph Stalin (ruthless leader of the USSR for 30 years and unfortunately not a hoax) dies. Radial-ply tyres are introduced by Pirelli of Italy and Michelin of France. Playboy publishes its first issue (it went online-only in 2020). A heart-lung machine is used for the first time to keep a patient alive during an operation; the first bubble chamber pictures of subatomic interactions are published. Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing are the first men known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest (staged, it is said for Elizabeth II’s coronation). Films: Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, Hobson’s Choice and Genevieve. A galaxy with a recession speed of a fifth the speed of light is discovered by Milton La Salle Humason, further confirmation of Hubble’s Law. The Korean War comes to an end; the link between smoking and cancer is proven; J D Watson (USA) and Francis Crick (UK) develop the double helix model for DNA.

1954

In the UK the abolition of food rationing marked the end of postwar austerity, while the US Supreme Court’s ruling against racial segregation in schools marked the beginning of the US civil rights struggle. Nautilus, the first atomic powered submarine, is commissioned as the first recorded death from nuclear fallout is registered. TV dinners are introduced in the USA and the solar powered cell is developed by Bell Telephone scientists. Alan Turing, the mathematical genius largely responsible for cracking the German naval Enigma code commits suicide in Cheshire, England, as a result of being persecuted for his homosexuality. The remains of a 43 metre cedar boat (intended to carry the dead pharaoh) are discovered in a chamber at the base of the Great Pyramid of Khufu; remains of a Roman Mithras temple are uncovered in London. Films: On the Waterfront and Seven Samurai; Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock is played on jukeboxes everywhere; the first 2 volumes of JRR Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings is published. Linus Pauling received the first of his two Nobel Prizes for chemistry; the first polio vaccine is developed.

1955

The Warsaw Pact, the Communist answer to NATO, is formed and in the UK Winston Churchill finally resigns as Prime Minister in April; his successor Anthony Eden calls an immediate election, winning a majority of 70. The 250 ft. radio “dish” at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in NW England is completed, pioneering the development of radio astronomy. James Dean becomes a legend by killing himself in a car crash soon after he finishes filming Rebel Without A Cause; Vladimir Nabakov publishes Lolita. Commercial television began in the UK and Christopher Cockerell filed the patent for the first practical hovercraft. In the USA, deep-freezers go on sale; Velcro is patented. Sir Alexander Fleming (b. 1881), British bacteriologist and discoverer of penicillin, dies; Albert Einstein (b.1897) dies; his General Theory of Relativity (1916) had caused a “paradigm shift” in modern physics. Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi (b.1901) dies; he had been in charge of the uranium chain reactor at the University of Chicago when it achieved a self-sustaining fission reaction (December 1942) – at that moment humanity entered the Nuclear Age.

1956

The Suez Canal (owned by British and French shareholders) is nationalised by Egypt’s President Nasser to finance the Aswan High Dam. This leads to a successful British/French/Israeli invasion, thwarted by US President Eisenhower (re-elected for a second term) who ordered the US Treasury to stop all financial aid to Britain unless she withdrew her troops from Egypt. Neutrinos (predicted by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930) are observed for the first time (by US physicists Cowan and Reines). Around the World in Eighty Days is the film that cinema-goers flock to. Everyone rocks to Elvis Presley; a US white-power leader declares: “Rock and roll is a means of pulling the white man down to the level of the Negro.”. The Hungarian people revolt against Soviet oppression, but the rebellion is crushed by Soviet tanks while the USA explodes its largest hydrogen bomb in a test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. A team at IBM develop FORTRAN (short for FORrmula TRANslation and used mainly for scientific and mathematical programs), the first computer programming language. The first commercial battery-powered watches are produced in France.

1957

Harold Macmillan takes over as Prime Minister of Great Britain following the resignation of Anthony Eden over the Suez crisis. The USSR launches the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. This was followed by Sputnik II, which carried a dog called Laika; animal lovers around the world protested because, disgracefully, no provision had been made for bringing her back to Earth; Russia claimed that she had been painlessly euthanised after six days in orbit, but documents released in 2002 revealed that she had died within hours from overheating – RIP Laika. The European Economic Community (Common Market) is created. The high speed (painless?) dental drill is developed in the USA. Gordon Gould and Charles Townes separately hit on the idea of developing light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (LASER) applying ideas developed in the amplification of microwaves (MASERS) to optical frequencies. Jack Keruac publishes On The Road. Films: The Bridge on the River Kwai, Sweet Smell of Success and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

1958

American physicist Eugene Parker demonstrates that there is a “solar wind” of particles thrown out by the sun and which makes comets’ tails point away from the sun. Werner von Braun’s team launch the first US satellite to reach a successful orbit around the Earth. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) begins its “Ban The Bomb” protest in Britain; one of its founders, Phillip Noel-Baker, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work for world disarmament. Eight Manchester United footballers die when their plane crashes in Munich. Harris, Michael and Scott demonstrate the direct effect of hormones on the central nervous system via the posterior hypothalamus. Ultrasound is first used to examine unborn children by the Scottish physician Ian Donald; James van Allen discovers high levels of radiation in the belt named after him which surrounds the Earth. Wolfgang Pauli (b.1900) dies; one of the most remarkable of the remarkable body of scientists who founded quantum theory, his Exclusion Principle (1925) explained the structure of atoms and the atomic nucleus itself. People watch Vertigo, read TH White’s The Sword In The Stone, listen to The Purple People Eater and dance the Cha Cha Cha.

1959

The Batista government in Cuba is overthrown by Fidel Castro, who becomes Prime Minister; in the UK the Conservative Party is returned to power for the third successive time, led by Harold Macmillan. The USSR’s Lunik II becomes the first human-produced object to reach the moon’s surface by crash-landing, (Lunik I, launched the year before, missed altogether and went into orbit around the sun). Lunik III sends back pictures of the far side of the moon. The first commercial Xerox copier is introduced while De Beers of South Africa manufacture the first artificial diamond. COBOL (COmmon Business-Orientated Language), a computer language for business use, is invented by Grace Hopper (1906-1992). The Antarctic Treaty, guaranteeing the continent’s use for scientific research and freedom from military exploitation, is signed by all major powers. William Burroughs publishes his Naked Lunch; Motown Records is founded in Detroit. Films: Journey to the Centre of the Earth, North By Northwest and Some Like it Hot.

1960

John F. Kennedy (Democrat) is elected 35th President of the United States, defeating the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, President Eisenhower’s former Vice-President. The first effective laser is built by Theodore Maiman, despite work done by Gordon Gould. (see 1957). The first heart pacemaker is developed, in Birmingham, UK. Project Ozma, run from a W. Virginia observatory, spends 400 hours intensively scanning radio waves from the region of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani; the hope is that signs of intelligent life will be detected, but none is found. The International Bureau of Weights and measures defines the metre as a multiple of the wave length of light emitted when krypton gas is heated. The USA launches TIROS 1, the first weather satellite. Psycho and Tunes of Glory are the big films. Norris and Prescott establish that the dolphin (like the bat) uses echolocation; Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descend 5,967 fathoms (35,802 ft.) in the bathyscape Trieste to the bottom of the Challenger Deep. The Civil Rights Bill is passed in America; Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) wins an Olympic Gold medal for boxing; the Beatles make their debut in Hamburg; Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini is top of the pops (they don’t write ’em like that any more!)

1961

US meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz coins the term “the butterfly effect”, when he discovers the first mathematical system with chaos properties; testing a computer model of atmospheric behaviour, he found that tiny butterfly-scale changes in initial conditions lead to unpredictable large-scale events such as heatwaves and hurricanes, and this chaos effect applies to many systems, not just meteorology (somebody should do something about that blimmin’ butterfly!). The space race continues: the USSR attempts a Venus probe but loses contact – they have more success with their cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who becomes the first human to orbit the Earth in Vostok I; Alan Shepard becomes the first US astronaut in space; Soviet cosmonaut G. Titov orbits earth 17 times in 25.6 hours to become the youngest person (25) in space, the first to sleep in space and the first to suffer spacesickness. Lasers are used in eye surgery for the first time and in the US the world’s first industrial robot appears. C.G. Jung, Swiss psychiatrist dies (June 6). The IUD (IntraUterine Device, also known as the coil) is developed for contraception. Frank L. Horsfall, Jr., announces that all forms of cancer result from changes in the DNA of cells. South Africa withdraws from the British Commonwealth, East Germany starts building the Berlin Wall. Bob Dylan makes his debut at the Gaslight Cafe in New York, the Rolling Stones form in Britain. Films: West Side Story and One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

1962

The Cuban missile crisis occurs as the US blockades Cuba to stop Soviet ships bringing guided missiles; the USSR backs down and missiles already in Cuba are dismantled; in return, the US promises not to invade the island. Big films of the year are Doctor No, Lawrence of Arabia and The Manchurian Candidate. The Sugar Grove radio-telescope fiasco: the US’s attempt to build a 183-m (600-ft) fully steerable dish radio-telescope, begun in 1959, is discontinued after expenditures of $595 million. The first radar contact with Mercury is made by the radio-telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, while the Soviet Union launches three seperate Mars probes, intended to make a flyby of the planet and send back scientific date; they all fail. The US space probe Mariner 2 makes a fly-by of Venus. Ariel 1, launched from Cape Canaveral, is the first British-built satellite. John Glenn is the first American to orbit Earth. Niels Bohr, Danish physicist, dies (b. 1885). Telstar, the first active communications satellite, is launched on July 10; it relays the first trans-Atlantic television pictures. The nuclear-powered ship Savannah begins sea trials in March. Thalidomide, given to pregnant women as a ‘safe’ sedative, is discovered to cause severe deformities in their babies.

1963

The Dutch firm Philips introduce the cassette tape for recording and playing back sound. Gordon Cooper (USA) completes 22 orbits of Earth in a 34 hour flight; two manned spacecraft (USSR’s Nikolayev and Popovich) are in orbit simultaneously for the first time; Valentina Tereshkova (USSR) becomes the first woman in space; V. Bykovsky (USSR) establishes the record for a solo space flight (4 days, 23 hrs.). Back on Earth, Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring is published; it describes the destruction of wild life by pesticides and kick-starts the ecology movement. Films: Dr. Strangelove, The Birds and From Russia with Love. In the UK, pop singer Cliff Richard is Batchelor Boy and the Great Train Robbers get away with over £2m in cash (around £53m in 2025!) The Lascaux caves, home of the famous 17,000 year old Palaeolithic paintings, are closed to the public to prevent damage caused by humidity from visitors. 28th August: 200,00 black Americans peacefully march on Washington; they hear Martin Luther King proclaim the ideals of peace and equality with his historic “I have a dream” speech. 22nd November: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

1964

Lyndon Baines Johnson (Democrat), President Kennedy’s former Vice-President and President since Kennedy’s assassination, is elected 36th President of the United States. The Aswan Dam on the Nile is completed, starting profound ecological changes which will include increased schistosomiasis, decreased fish in the eastern Mediterranean and increased erosion of the Nile delta. The US Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson the power to “take all necessary measures to prevent further aggression”; this is generally viewed as the start of the Vietnam War between the United States and North Vietnam. US space probe Ranger 7 takes the first good close-range photographs of the moon; 4316 pictures in all are taken by the six television cameras on board and relayed to Earth. Robert H. Dicke (US) revives Gamow’s ‘Big Bang’ theory of the Universe’s creation (see 1948); Britain’s Fed Hoyle & JV Narlikar propose a new gravitational theory that explains inertia. The International Rice Research Institute start the “green revolution” with new strains of rice that produce twice the yield of previous strains; because these new strains required more water, more pesticides and more fetiliser, the unintended consequences were that the land was degraded, wildlife suffered and poorer farmers went broke trying to grow them. Container ships are introduced, simplifying international trade and reducing the opportunities for pilfering. Popular films include A Fistful of Dollars and A Hard Day’s Night. China tests its first atomic bomb; Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Cassius Clay converts to Islam and changes his name to Muhammad Ali.

1965

A vaccine against measles becomes available and soft contact lenses are introduced. Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s team of aquanauts surfaces after 23 days at 100 metres. A faulty relay in a Canadian hydroelectric plant knocks out power for 14 hours in much of the NE United States and southern Canada. In Stonehenge Decoded Gerald Stanley Hawkins (b.1928) argues that the monument once served as a cross between an observatory and a computer, enabling the builders to compute eclipses. The first cosmic maser is found – a region in a cloud of interstellar gas that is stimulated to produce radiation by starlight. Astronomers discover that Venus rotates retrograde; that is, in the opposite direction from the other planets. A.A. Penzias and Robert Wilson (both US) accidentally find the radio-wave remnants of the Big Bang while trying to refine radio equipment; their discovery convinces most astronomers that the Big Bang theory is correct. The US’s Reines and Cowan detect neutrinos. A. Leonov (USSR) conducts the first spacewalk, taking a 20-minute excursion; Virgil Grissom and John Young are America’s first two-man space crew, orbiting Earth three times in their Gemini spacecraft. The Early Bird communications satellite goes into geo-synchronous orbit (an orbit that maintains the satellite above the same region of Earth’s surface at all times); Mariner IV reaches the neighbourhood of Mars, passing within 12,000 km. (7500 miles) of the planet. The Russian space-probe Zond III photographs areas on the opposite of the moon that had not been photographed by the probe Lunik III in 1959. US poet Allan Ginsberg coins the term “flower power”; women start wearing ‘miniskirts’; the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones are the top ‘pop’ groups; Films: Doctor Zhivago competes with The Sound of Music.

1966

Doell, Dalrymple and Cox demonstrate that Earth’s magnetic field has undergone periodic reversals in which the north and south magnetic poles have interchanged. The Soviet space probe Luna IX makes the first soft landing on the moon, followed by the US’s Surveyor I; the USSR’s Venera III probe becomes the first object made by humans to land on another planet when it reaches Venus. D. C. Gajdusek (US) transfers kuru, a disease a disease similar to CJD and spread by cannibalism, to chimpanzees – the first time a virus of the central nervous system is transferred from humans to another species. The US launches BSSA 1, the first weather satellite capable of viewing the entire Earth. The Vatican abolishes its Office of Inquisitor and Index of Banned Books. The first episode of Star Trek is broadcast in the US – Britain replies with the first episode of Thunderbirds. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Man for All Seasons and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly are amongst the popular films.

1967

Mammography for detecting breast cancer is introduced, as are keyboards for computer data input. J Robert Oppenheimer, American theoretical physicist, dies (b. 1904); he had predicted neutron stars and directed the Manhattan Project that produced the atom bomb. Overseas direct dialling from New York to London and Paris begins. The US Department of Agriculture starts a test project in irradiating wheat and other foods to kill insects. A team led by Arthur Kornberg synthesise biologically active DNA. A. E. Porsild and Charles Arington announce that they have grown arctic lupins from seeds that had been frozen since the last ice age, setting a new record of about 10,000 years for the length of time that plant seeds can remain viable. Manabe and Wetherald warn that human activities that increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the air are causing a ‘greenhouse effect’ (predicted in 1827 by French mathematician J. Fourier). US spaceprobe Surveyor V soft lands on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquillity; the Soviet space-probe Venera 4 parachutes a capsule into the atmosphere of Venus – high pressures and temperatures soon destroy it, but it sends enough telemetry to show that the Venusian atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. South African surgeon Christian Barnard performs the first partially successful human heart transplant; the recipient, Louis Washkansky, survives for 18 days. The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde both win Oscars; the Beatles bring out Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Britain’s Radio 1 begins (with The Move’s Flowers in the Rain). 60 nations sign a treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.

1968

Paul Ehlrich publishes The Population Bomb which warns that by the end of the century world population will double and 20 million will be added to the UK population. (1968 UK population was 55.2m; 2000 UK population was 59 million; it’s projected to be 69.5 million in 2025) Richard M. Nixon (Republican) is elected 37th President of the United States. Soviet troops invade Czechoslovakia, crush the reformist government and impose a hard-line regime. Students riot in Paris and nearly bring down the French government. Riots begin in Northern Ireland. A draft treaty to stop the spread of nuclear weapons is approved in June by the UN General Assembly. The Soviet spacecraft Zond 5 becomes the first man-made object to travel around the moon and return to Earth. Elso Barghoorn and his team find remains of amino acids in rocks 3 billion years old, showing that life existed that far back in time. Christiaan Barnard performs his second human heart transplant; this time his patient, Philip Blaiberg survives for 74 days with his new heart. A regular hovercraft service starts across the English Channel; it ended in October 2000, with the blame put on competition from the Eurotunnel. The first supertankers for carrying petroleum go into service. The luxury ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched (she was retired in 2008, bought up by a Dubai company and ever since has been a floating luxury hotel permanently moored in Dubai). Britain outlaws racial discrimination. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are assassinated in the US. Films: Night Of The Living Dead, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes.

1969

In the first space linkup of two manned vehicles, the Soviet spacecrafts Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 dock and transfer crew. American astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first human being to stand on the moon; crewmate Buzz Aldrin is right behind him while the other member of the Apollo 11 crew, Michael Collins, orbits the moon. In Texas, Denton Cooley and Domingo Liotta replace the diseased heart of Haskell Karp with the first artificial heart to be used in a human being; Karp lives for nearly three days. Harvard researchers isolate a single gene for the first time; British doctor R. Edwards performed the first “in vitro” fertilisation; the first home yoghurt maker is marketed; the first version of the Internet is created – by the US Defence Department, for use in a nuclear war. Rioting worsens in Northern Ireland; British troops are brought in. Britain liberalises the divorce laws, abolishes the death penalty, reduces the voting age to 18 and broadcasts the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Midnight Cowboy wins the Best Film Oscar; Easy Rider and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid don’t win anything. The Woodstock Festival happens.

1970

There is civil war in Jordan and fighting between Israel and Syria. The large reflecting telescope at Kitt Peak, in Arizona, is completed, and the first large telescope is erected on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a 224-cm (88-in.) reflector. The first Chinese and Japanese artificial satellites are launched. The third US lunar mission is begun with James Lovell, Fred Haise, and John Swigert as crew; a landing attempt on the moon is aborted because of equipment failure, while the US celebrates the first Earth Day. The first of the “jumbo jets,’ the Boeing 747, goes into service across the Atlantic. The floppy disk, for storing data outside a computer, is introduced. A team of scientists at the university of Wisconsin led by Har Gobind Khorana announce the first complete synthesis of a gene, aniline-transfer RNA; the gene was assembled directly from its component chemicals. Feminism strikes – Germain Greer publishes The Female Eunuch and Kate Millett publishes Sexual Politics. The Beatles split up. The big films are: M*A*S*H, The Railway Children and Patton.

1971

An earthquake of magnitude 6.5 strikes California while Alan Shepard, and Edgar Mitchell collect 98 lb. (44 kg) of moon rocks during the US Apollo 14 lunar mission. Direct telephone dialling begins between parts of the United States and Europe on a regular basis. The first microprocessor, now known as the chip, is introduced by Intel in the United States; it is shown that electric currents can speed the healing of fractures. The first pocket calculator: it can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, it weighs 2.5 pounds and costs $150. In Canada, the first nuclear-power station that is cooled by ordinary water goes into service. Dennis Gabor (UK) wins the Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of holography; also in the United Kingdom the first completely sterile hospital units are introduced to protect patients at special risk from infection. Three crew members of Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 10 dock with Salyut 1, the first space station. David Scott and James Irwin drive the Lunar Rover on the moon’s surface as part of the US Apollo 15 lunar mission, piloted by Alfred Worden. The American spacecraft Mariner 9 becomes the first human-built object to orbit another planet when it enters orbit around Mars: initial results are few because Mars is covered by a huge dust storm, but eventually 7,323 pictures are returned. The Soviet Union’s spaceprobe Mars 3 lands and broadcasts an unreadable television signal for about 20 seconds before it goes dead. Three Soviet cosmonauts died during the reentry of their Soyuz 11 spacecraft, when a pressure valve was accidentally opened; Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev were the first humans to die in space – hopefully, they’ll be the last. Films: Dirty Harry, A Clockwork Orange and The French Connection. Greenpeace is founded; Britain introduces decimal currency.

1972

In the United States, the use of DDT is restricted to protect the environment, especially birds, whose populations are falling catastrophically. Richard M. Nixon (Republican) is elected President of the United States for a second term. The Godfather and The Candidate are films that explore different forms of power in America. Native American Indians march on Washington and occupy the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The California State Board of Education demands that Biblical accounts of creation are taught equally alongside Darwinian theory. A Soviet spacecraft, Venera 8, soft lands on Venus and John Young, Thomas Mattingly and Charles Duke are the fifth Apollo crew to land on the moon. US spaceprobe Pioneer 10 is launched; in June 1983, it became the first human-created object to leave the solar system, heading towards the bright star Aldebaran, the “Eye of the Bull” in the Taurus constellation. In the last manned lunar landing, Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt spend 44 hours on the moon’s surface and return with 243 lb. of material. The first video tapes for home recording are introduced. Uganda expels all its Asian population. The Troubles in Northern Ireland worsen and its local government is abolished; In Britain, national coal and dock strikes push the government to declare a State of Emergency.

1973

EF Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered is a radical rejection of the whole direction of economic and social development since WWII. Richard Adams publishes Watership Down. Popular films: The Excorcist and The Day of the Jackal. The UK joins the European Economic Community (Common Market). Astronomers study Comet Kohoutek as it swings by Earth, detecting complex molecules including CH, HCN and H₂O. A live calf is produced from a frozen embryo for the first time and computer-coded labels are introduced in supermarkets along with the pull-tab on soft-drink and beer cans. British civil servants go on strike for the first time ever; the ‘Cod War’ between Britain and Iceland warms up when an Icelandic trawler rams a British warship sent to enforce fishing limits – then the two sides sit down and come to an agreement. A full-scale war develops in the Middle east; the Arabic states attack Israel, who then invade Syria and Egypt; the Arab states retaliate against the West’s support of Israel by first raising oil prices then embargoing oil exports, leading to a world energy crisis; US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Vietnam War) meets Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to hammer out a deal that will end the fighting (and get the oil flowing again). The shortages give the West a dark Christmas; a light spot in the UK – Pink Floyd release Dark Side Of The Moon.

1974

Richard Nixon resigns as President of the USA after the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford takes over as (38th) President. In central China, a ‘terracotta army’ – 6,000 lifesize, lifelike model soldiers – are found guarding the tomb of China’s 1st Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. The Towering Inferno and Chinatown both fill cinemas but don’t win Oscars – The Sting instead sweeps up seven. Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish (both UK) receive the Nobel Physics prize for their discovery of pulsars. A revolution overthrows the 44-year dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. Warnings that chlorofluorocarbons (freons), commonly used as spray propellants and in refrigeration, may be destroying the ozone layer in the atmosphere are made by S Rowland and M Molina – the ozone layer affords protection against excessive ultraviolet radiation which can cause skin cancer. India explodes its first atom bomb; Russia deports dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. IRA bomb outrages in England kill a total of 26 and provoke the Government in passing the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act. Abba win the Eurovision song contest; ‘streaking’ – running naked in public places – becomes a fad.

1975

The last US troops are evacuated from South Vietnam in April, ending the war during which 57,000 Americans and 1,700,000 Vietnamese died. Charles Kowal discovers a fourteenth moon of Jupiter and the first pictures from the surface of Venus are received from the Soviet probes Venera 9 and 10. A Soviet space probe lands on Mars. The first co-operative US-Soviet space mission, the Apollo Soyuz Test Project, is launched – a three-man Apollo spacecraft docks with the two-man Soviet Soyuz 19. The first liquid-crystal displays for pocket calculators and digital clocks are marketed in the UK and the first personal computer, the Altair 8800, is introduced in kit form in the United States; it has 256 bytes of memory. A 19-year old US computer nerd called William H. Gates III starts up a company called Microsoft. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a hit UK comedy film; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a US black-comedy film. Sex discrimination in outlawed in Britain; the British Conservative party elect Margaret Thatcher as leader. Queen introduce the pop video to the world with their Bohemian Rhapsody.