Part of a relief column composed mainly of South Vietnamese 21st Division troops finally arrives in the outskirts of An Loc. The division had been trying to reach the besieged city since April 9, when it had been moved from its normal station in the Mekong Delta and ordered to attack up Highway 13 from […]
Continue readingFlash Flood Hits Rapid City
A flash flood in Rapid City, South Dakota, kills more than 200 people on this day in 1972. This flood demonstrated the danger of building homes and businesses in a floodplain region. The native Sioux called the river Minnelusa when European settlers overtook the Black Hills region in 1876 as part of one of the […]
Continue readingFlash Flood Hits Rapid City
A flash flood in Rapid City, South Dakota, kills more than 200 people on this day in 1972. This flood demonstrated the danger of building homes and businesses in a floodplain region. The native Sioux called the river Minnelusa when European settlers overtook the Black Hills region in 1876 as part of one of the […]
Continue readingMcGovern Continues To Campaign Against The War
Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota) announces at a news conference that he would go “anywhere in the world” to negotiate an end to the war and a return of U.S. troops and POWs. McGovern, who had swept the Democratic Party spring primaries, was one of the earliest and most vocal opponents of American policy in […]
Continue readingSouth Vietnamese Forces Clear Kontum Of Communist Troops
South Vietnamese forces drive out all but a few of the communist troops remaining in Kontum. Over 200 North Vietnamese had been killed in six battles in and around the city. The city had come under attack in April when the North Vietnamese had launched their Nguyen Hue Offensive (later called the Easter Offensive), a […]
Continue readingLaird Testifies Before Congress
Testifying before a joint Congressional Appropriations Committee, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird says the increase in U.S. military activity in Vietnam could add up to $5 billion to the 1973 fiscal budget, doubling the annual cost of the war. This increased American activity was in response to the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, also called […]
Continue readingAngela Davis Acquitted
Angela Yvonne Davis, a black militant, former philosophy professor at the University of California, and self-proclaimed communist, is acquitted on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping by an all-white jury in San Jose, California. In October 1970, Davis was arrested in New York City in connection with a shootout that occurred on August 7 in […]
Continue readingTrains Collide In Bangladesh
The collision of two trains in Jessore, Bangladesh, kills 76 people on this day in 1972. This disaster resulted from one simple error by a train-station operator. An express train loaded far beyond capacity, as is common in Bangladesh, left the southern port city of Khulna heading north. It was passing through Jessore on June […]
Continue readingUnited States And USSR Issue A Joint Communique
In a joint communique issued by the United States and the Soviet Union following the conclusion of summit talks with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev during President Richard Nixon’s visit to Moscow (the first visit ever by an U.S. president), both countries set forth their standard positions on Vietnam. The United States insisted that the future […]
Continue readingMark Donohue sets Record At Indy 500
On May 27, 1972, Mark Donohue wins the Indianapolis 500 with an average speed of 163.645 miles an hour, six miles an hour faster than the previous speed record. Mark Donohue, born and raised in Summit, New Jersey, caught the hot-rod bug as a teenager in the 1950s. “The hot-rod phenomenon flew East from California […]
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