News from the US and around the world 50 years ago.
Lunar landings kept happening. On February 5, Apollo 14, commanded by America’s first astronaut Alan Shepard, made the US’s third landing on the moon. The mission returned to Earth on February 9.
On February 6, Gunner Robert Curtis became the first British Army soldier to die in the Northern Ireland conflict between the majority Protestants and minority Catholics, known as “The Troubles.” The conflict went on for almost 30 years.
Swiss male voters approved on February 7 a referendum giving Swiss women the right to vote in national elections and hold federal office. Women remained ineligible to vote in local elections in eight of Switzerland’s 22 cantons.
The First Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) moved into Laos on February 8, many in American-piloted helicopter troopships.
The 6.5 Sylmar earthquake, also known as the San Fernando earthquake, struck Los Angeles at 6 am on February 9. Fifty-eight people were killed by falling debris, many of them in the collapses of the Olive View Hospital and the VA Hospital in Sylmar.
President Richard Nixon ordered on February 10 installation of voice-activated recording devices in the Oval Office and on its telephones. Nixon and three White House aides, including Deputy Assistant to the President Alexander Butterfield, were the only ones to know of the system. In 1973, Butterfield made the explosive disclosure of “the tapes” in Congressional testimony related to the Watergate investigation.
An agreement reached on February 14 between 23 oil companies, facing an embargo on their product, and six oil-exporting countries in the Middle East changed the initiative in oil-pricing from the companies to the exporting nations. Thus began years-long increases in the price of oil and gas.
For the first time, “Presidents Day” was celebrated in the US on February 15. The new holiday conflated previous holidays honoring the birthdays of George Washington (February 22) and Abraham Lincoln (February 12).
Tornadoes, primarily in Mississippi, on February 21 killed 123 people. Nineteen storms raged through northeastern Louisiana, Mississippi, and southern Tennessee.
Golfer Jack Nicklaus won the PGA Championship on February 28, becoming the first golfer to win all four major tournaments — the Masters, British Open, US Open, and PGA — more than once. Earlier that day, male voters in the European principality of Leichtenstein voted not to allow women to vote. The margin was 80 votes, 1,897 to 1,817.