The #1 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes defeated the #2 ranked USC Trojans, 27 to 16, before a crowd of 102,063 fans to win college football's Rose Bowl and the recognition by the NCAA as college football's national champion.
North Vietnam released three American prisoners of war to a five-member U.S. Army team at a rice paddyfield near South Vietnam's border with Cambodia. A fourth had escaped captivity from the Viet Cong the day before. One of the POWs, Specialist 4 James Brigham of Ocala, Florida, died less than three weeks later at a Washington hospital after surgery for a brain abscess.
Born:
*Verne Troyer, diminutive American film actor known for portraying Mini-Me in the Austin Powers film series; in Sturgis, Michigan
*Mr. Lawrence, American writer and voice actor known for SpongeBob SquarePants; in East Brunswick, New Jersey
Died:Barton MacLane, 66, American film and television actor
Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch purchased the largest-selling British Sunday newspaper, The News of the World as shareholders of the News voted to accept his bid over that of British book publisher Robert Maxwell. Murdoch would purchase newspapers in the U.S. in the 1970s, notably the New York Post, and enter television in the 1980s with the founding of the Fox Network.
The government of France announced that its office of government property would start a campaign for the sale of individual lots on the Maginot Line that had been built during the 1930s in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent a German invasion.
China Airlines Flight 227 crashed into a mountain peak on the island of Taiwan while en route from Hualin to Kaohsiung, killing all 24 people on board.
Born:
*Dean Francis Alfar, Philippine speculative fiction author
*Robby Gordon,
*Tommy Morrison, American heavyweight boxer who held the WBO title for four months in 1993; in Gravette, Arkansas
*Christy Turlington, American supermodel and advocate for maternal health; in Walnut Creek, California
The 91st United States Congress had its opening day as the U.S. Senate swore in 15 new members and 20 re-elected ones, and selected Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia as the new president pro-tempore. Democrat Senators voted 31-26 to choose Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts rather than incumbent Russell B. Long of Louisiana as the majority whip, while Republicans approved Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, 23-20, over Roman L. Hruska of Nebraska. The U.S. House of Representatives re-elected John W. McCormack of Massachusetts as Speaker of the House, and voted 251 to 160 to allow controversial Congressman Adam Clayton Powell to take his seat.
*Howard McNear, 63, American radio and television actor, known for being Floyd the Barber on TV's The Andy Griffith Show and as Doc Adams in the radio version of Gunsmoke
*Commodore Cochran, 66, American swimmer and track athlete, 1922 and 1923 NCAA track champion in the 440-yard dash, and 1924 Olympic gold medalist in the 4 x 400 swim relay
The tiny North African enclave of Ifni was ceded by Spain to Morocco in a treaty signed at the Moroccan capital of Rabat, subject to the expected approval by the Spanish parliament, the Cortes. On June 30, the last Spanish Governor-General, Jose Miguel Vega, would haul down the Spanish flag and the cession would be complete.
Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashed into a house on its approach to London's Gatwick Airport, killing 50 of the 62 people on board and two of the home's occupants.
The Soviet Union launched Venera 5 toward Venus. A course correction maneuver would be initiated on March 14 and on May 16, 1969, the Venera 5 transmitter would be landed on the surface of Venus, sending back data until the atmospheric pressure and intense heat caused its failure above the surface.
Born:
*Marilyn Manson, American rock singer known for his band of the same name; in Canton, Ohio
*Shea Whigham, American film and cable TV actor known for Boardwalk Empire; in Tallahassee, Florida
Allegheny Airlines Flight 737 crashed on its approach to Bradford, Pennsylvania, killing 11 people on board during a multistop flight from Washington DC to Detroit. The accident came less than two weeks after the fatal crash on Christmas Eve of Allegheny Airlines Flight 736, on its way to Bradford as part of the same route, killing 20 people.
Richard Nixon was officially elected President of the United States as Congress certified the results of the votes cast on December 16 of the electoral college members who had been elected by American voters on November 5. The final result was certified after both houses of Congress debated removing one of the electoral votes was 301 votes for Nixon, 191 for Democrat candidate Hubert Humphrey, and 46 for Wallace.
The final passenger train traversed the Waverley Line, which subsequently closed to passengers.
Trial began in the case of Sirhan Sirhan for the June 5, 1968 murder of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. It would last for 15 weeks, as the jury heard testimony from 89 witnesses. After three days of deliberation, the jury found Sirhan guilty of first-degree murder and of five counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Sirhan would be sentenced to death on May 21, but all death penalty sentences in the United States would be set aside in 1972, and Sirhan would spend the rest of his life at Corcoran State Prison.
Twenty-three people were burned to death in a fast moving grass fire in Australia's Victoria state. All but six of them were motorists who were near the Geelong suburb of Lara and who had been traveling on the National Route 1, the highway that links Geelong to Melbourne.
Two FBI agents, Anthony Palmisano and the Edwin R. Woodriffe, were shot and killed in an apartment building in southeast Washington DC while trying to apprehend Billie Austin Bryant, who had robbed the Citizens Bank in nearby Oxon Hill, Maryland. Bryant was apprehended the same day, only two hours after he was placed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List, the shortest amount of time between placement on the list and capture. Woodriffe was the first African-American FBI agent to die in the line of duty. The killing of him and Palmisano marked only the second time that two FBI men were killed together; the first time had been on November 27, 1934, when Ed Hollis and Samuel Cowley were killed by gangster Baby Face Nelson.
The Condon Committee, chaired by University of Colorado physicist Edward Condon, released its report Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects and concluded that "nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby." The Condon Report, commissioned by the United States Air Force at the cost of $520,000 recommended that the Air Force close its Project Blue Book investigation of UFO reports, and the USAF would do so at the end of the year.
New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath accepted an award from the Miami Touchdown Club, three days before Super Bowl III and said in his after-dinner remarks to the crowd, At the time of Namath's boast, the nine-year old American Football League had not come close to winning either of the first two Super Bowls against the 49-year old NFL, losing by scores of 35-10 and 33-14.
The publishers of The Saturday Evening Post announced that the weekly magazine would cease publication after almost 148 years, discontinuing after its February 8 issue. Publisher Martin S. Ackerman said at a news conference that the Post had lost more than five million dollars in 1968 and commented that "We just could not sell enough advertising and cut expenses fast enough. Apparently, there is just not the need for our product in today's scheme of living." The Post had started publication in 1821 in Philadelphia, using the same printing shop used by the Pennsylvania Gazette, which had been founded by Benjamin Franklin. Until 1942, the magazine's masthead had carried the false claim that it was "founded in 1728 by Benjamin Franklin".
The Soviet Union launched their second exploration vehicle toward Venus in five days, Venera 6, after the Sunday launch of Venera 5. The second probe would arrive on May 17, a day after the first one's arrival, and, like the first, would cease functioning above the surface because of the Venusian temperature and atmospheric pressure.
The Kingdom of Sweden became the first Western nation to grant formal diplomatic recognition to the Communist republic of North Vietnam. Although the decision by the Swedish cabinet was made on the evening of January 10 in Stockholm, January 11 is recognized as the date in Vietnam because of the six-hour time difference in Hanoi.
U.S. Army Special Forces Reserve officer Robert Helmey used an unloaded shotgun to hijack United Airlines Flight 459 to Cuba, diverting it from its Jacksonville to Miami flight and forcing a landing in Havana. In a month with regular hijackings of U.S. flights, Helmey's case stands out because he was the first successful hijacker to be prosecuted in the United States. Immediately after he landed in Cuba, he was arrested by the Castro government and would spend 109 days in solitary confinement in a Cuban jail before being deported to Canada, which in turn would return him to American authorities on May 5. A jury would find him not guilty of all charges on November 20, accepting his defense of temporary insanity, making Helmey the first skyjacker of a commercial aircraft anywhere to be acquitted at trial.
U.S. Army First Lieutenant Harold A. Fritz distinguished himself in combat in the Vietnam War by leading the defense of his outnumbered 28-man platoon against a larger force of North Vietnamese attackers during two successive ambush attacks. Despite being seriously wounded in the first moments of the battle, Fritz inspired his men in leading the fight until American tanks were able to come to the platoon's rescue. He would be awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism on March 2, 1971.
The American Football League champion New York Jets, led by brash quarterback Joe Namath, upset the National Football League champion Baltimore Colts, 16 to 7, to win Super Bowl III in Miami. Namath would later write that "The rewards and great memories for me come not only from being part of a team and a league that were overwhelmingly underdogs and winning it all, but equally because we lifted people's spirits in a very difficult time" in New York City and would add, "I have been told many times over the years that the Jets, and then the Mets and Knicks, helped people emotionally deal with all this adversity."
Led Zeppelin, the first Led Zeppelin album, was released in the United States.
Martial law was declared in Madrid, as the University was closed and over 300 students were arrested.
Scandinavian Airlines Flight 933 plunged into the Santa Monica Bay off of the coast of California, drowning 15 of the 45 people on board. The Douglas DC-8 jet was making its approach to Los Angeles after departing from Seattle on a flight that had originated at Copenhagen in Denmark, and was nearly seven miles off course when it descended into the sea, impacting at 7:21 p.m. local time. Thirty survivors were able to evacuate on the airplane's life rafts.
An explosion aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise near Hawaii killed 27 U.S. Navy men and injured 314. The accident happened during operation of an aircraft engine starter unit and the placement of a cart with four Zuni rockets too close to the exhaust port of the starter unit. The hot exhaust detonated one of the Zuni warheads, and the explosion sent shards of metal into the fuel tank of the F-4 Phantom that was being prepared for takeoff; the tank then exploded, causing a fire that ignited the other three Zuni rockets and then causing a chain reaction that set off other bombs and rockets as burning fuel spilled from the flight deck to the hangar deck.
The Soviet Union launched Soyuz 4, with cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, at 1:39 in the afternoon from the Baikonur Space Center. For the first time since the Soviet space program had started, film of a rocket was shown on Soviet Union television on the same day that it happened. A video of Shatalov boarding the rocket, along with the last five minutes of the countdown, and the liftoff, was telecast within 90 minutes.
India's Madras State was formally renamed as Tamil Nadu.
American spy Morton Sobell was released from federal prison after serving 17 years of a 30-year sentence for conspiracy to sell atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. Incarcerated since 1951, Sobell was ordered freed from the United States penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, by order of the United States Court of Appeals in New York.
The Soviet Union launched Soyuz 5, the first Russian ship to have a three cosmonauts, from Baikonur at 1:14 p.m., with the goal of docking in orbit the previous day's launch Soyuz 4. On board the second Soyuz were Boris V. Volyanov, Aleksei S. Yeliseyev and Yevgeny V. Khrunov. The two ships docked the next day and made the first transfer ever of a Soviet cosmonaut from one craft to another as Khrunov and Yeliseyev joined Vladimir Shatalov on Soyuz 4.
Student Jan Palach set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He would die of his injuries three days later. Palach's death disturbed Czechoslovakians and triggered nationwide student protests against the occupation.
The fastest train in the United States up to that time, Penn Central's Metroliner, inaugurated service between Union Station in Washington, D.C. and the Penn Station in New York City, making the journey at speeds of up to.
The southern African nation of Zambia converted to decimalisation of its currency, replacing the Zambian pound with the Kwacha, subdivided into 100 ngwee. The initial rate of exchange of old currency for new was 1.7094 kwacha for one Zambian pound, which was initially pegged to one British pound sterling.
Born:
*Roy Jones Jr., American professional boxer with championships at four weight classes ; in Pensacola, Florida
*Per "Dead" Ohlin, Swedish heavy metal musician, in Västerhaninge
For the first time in the history of manned spaceflight, human beings returned to Earth in a different spacecraft than the one that they had departed upon. While American crews had performed the first docking of spaceships, the Gemini astronauts had always come back in the same vehicle that they had started with. Alexei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny V. Khrunov, sent up on Soyuz 5, landed safely in Soyuz 4 in the Kazahk SSR, about northwest of Karaganda, charging the company with monopolizing the digital computer industry, programming hindering competitors and limiting the development of the computer programming by its policy of selling its hardware, software and technical support as an inseparable package. The suit would continue until 1982, when it would be dropped because of changes in the industry.
The parties to the Paris Peace Talks came to an agreement on the shape of the conference tables and the placement of the representatives who were negotiating an end to the Vietnam War. After being delayed for nearly six weeks over procedural disagreements raised by South Vietnam's Nguyen Cao Ky, the parties came to an accord that "The two sides would be 'clearly separated' by two rectangular tables with a round one in the middle" and that the tables would have "no nameplates, no flags and no written minutes of the understanding" on the setup. Substantive talks would not begin until a week later, after the inauguration of President Nixon. Lyndon Johnson, whose term as U.S. President would expire two days after the agreement on the tables, would write later that "I regretted more than anyone could possibly know that I was leaving the White House without having achieved a just, honorable, and a lasting peace in Vietnam."
Born:
*Jesse L. Martin, African-American stage and TV actor; as Jesse Lamont Watkins in Rocky Mount, Virginia
*Dave Bautista, American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist; in Washington, D.C.
In the third major plane crash in the U.S. in two weeks, United Airlines Flight 266 crashed into the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff from Los Angeles, killing all 38 people on board. A minute before the 6:21 p.m. crash, the captain reported that he had an engine fire and was attempting to return the Boeing 727 to the airport. The plane plunged into the sea about a mile from the crash of SAS Flight 933 less than a week earlier.
An assassination attempt was carried out on Leonid Brezhnev by deserter Viktor Ilyin during a motorcade in Moscow for the four cosmonauts of Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5. Brezhnev and Soviet head of state Nikolai V. Podgorny were riding inside a closed limousine, several cars behind the cosmonauts vehicle, and the shots were fired as the procession approached the Kremlin's Borovitsky Gate. The incident wasn't reported in the Soviet press, and western reporters only learned of it 24 hours later when a Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the rumors. One person was killed, several were injured. Brezhnev escaped unharmed.
The United States launched Orbiting Solar Observatory 5 at 11:48 a.m. to study solar flares.
Eugen Gerstenmaier, President of West Germany's Bundestag and second only to Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, announced his resignation after the media and rival legislators rejected his claims that he had been a resistance fighter against Adolf Hitler during the World War II.
A rare, midwinter tornado, killed 29 people as it passed through the predominantly-black town of Hazlehurst, Mississippi at 6:25 in the morning. Most of the victims were African-American.
Spain's President Francisco Franco decreed a three-month state of emergency and suspended five civil rights, allowing police to search without a warrant, hold prisoners indefinitely without charges, prevent public assemblies and to exile dissidents to their home provinces. Censorship of all publications, lifted on April 9, 1966, was put into effect the next day.
On the third day of nine consecutive days of heavy rainfall in southern California, mudslides killed nine people in their homes north of Los Angeles in a single day. The final death toll would be 95 people, and $138,000,000 in damage in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
NR-1, the smallest nuclear submarine ever put into operation and the only nuclear-powered sub for research rather than military use, was launched from Groton, Connecticut.
The Vatican issued Comme le prévoit, a directive from on guidelines for translation of the Latin liturgy into local languages in accordance with previous papal directives in Sacrosanctum concilium.
The funeral of Jan Palach was conducted in Prague and was the occasion for thousands of people to take action to protest the continued Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Thirteen people were killed in an early morning fire at the stately Victoria Hotel in Dunnville, Ontario.
Elvis Presley stepped into American Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, recording "Long Black Limousine", thus beginning the recording of what would become his landmark comeback sessions for the albums From Elvis in Memphis and Back in Memphis. The sessions yielded the popular and critically acclaimed singles "Suspicious Minds", "In the Ghetto", and "Kentucky Rain".
Died: Edwin T. Pratt, 38, African-American civic leader and Executive Director of the Seattle Urban League, was shot and killed by a shotgun blast as he stepped out of his home in Shoreline, Washington.
Fourteen men, 9 of them Jews, were executed in Iraq for spying for Israel. Eleven of the men were hanged at Liberation Square in Baghdad. Afterwards, their bodies "each wrapped with a white poster bearing the text of the death sentence" were "removed from the gallows and hung up on a gate overlooking the square" for public display, where they were viewed by what state radio referred to as "200,000 jubilant Iraqis"; the other three were hanged at Basra. On February 20, Iraq would hang seven men convicted of spying for Israel, all of them Iraqi Muslims, and display their bodies at Liberation Square.
The largest oil spill in U.S. history, up to that time, took place off of the coast of Santa Barbara, California during the drilling of the ocean floor by Union Oil from its Platform A offshore rig. Well Number A-21 had reached a depth of when, at 10:45 in the morning, the trouble began with a blowout when the drill pipe was removed from the hole. For the next 11 days before the well was capped, between of crude oil would be released and an oil slick was created on the ocean and of beaches. In 1989, its magnitude would be exceeded by the Exxon Valdez spill. The incident would inspire Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to organize the first Earth Day in 1970.
Born:
*Mo Rocca, American TV and radio host, in Washington, D.C.
*Kathryn Morris, American TV actress, in Cincinnati
In the longest-lasting and destructive cases in Canadian history of student protesters occupying a college building, a crowd of 500 black and white students took control of the ninth floor of the Hall Building and the computer center at Sir George Williams University in Montreal. What is now known as the "Sir George Williams affair" began on the fourth day of anger over the university's handling of allegations of racism against one of the professors; though it started peacefully, the occupation would not end until February 11, with the a fire that would destroy the computers and cause one million dollars of damage. Eventually, 49 whites and 48 blacks would be arrested.
The Beatles gave their last ever public performance in what is now called "the rooftop concert", setting up their instruments on the roof of the London building that served as the corporate headquarters for their recording company, Apple Corps. Lasting for 42 minutes, the impromptu concert atop the five-story building at 3 Saville Row was filmed for their 1970 film Let It Be. The group opened with a few runthroughs of their soon-to-be-released single "Get Back" and its B-side, "Don't Let Me Down". After three more songs, London police arrived and allowed John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to perform one final song. The group closed with the song that opened the concert, their last public words being "Get back to where you once belonged."
The tragedies of 16-year old David Milgaard, wrongfully convicted of a rape and murder, and of the 20-year old victim, Gail Miller, began a couple of hours after Milgaard and two friends arrived in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to visit one of his friends. Miller's body was found at 8:30. A month later, Milgaard's friend told police that he suspected Milgaard, a high school drop out and hippie, of the crime. For the next 22 years, David Milgaard would be incarcerated in a Saskatchewan prison, given a life sentence in 1970 after his conviction, until his release on April 16, 1992. Five years later, DNA testing would not only exonerate Milgaard, but would identify the person who had committed the crime. Milgaard would receive CDN $10,000,000 in 1999 for the miscarriage of justice.
Died:Meher Baba, 74, Indian Gubdy spiritual master who claimed to have been an avatar of the deity Vishnu
