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Year 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. Year 1970 is the Unix epoch time.
Events of 1970
January
February
- February 1 - A train collision near Buenos Aires, Argentina kills 142.
- February 10 - An avalanche at Val d'Isère, France kills 39 tourists.
- February 11 - Osumi, Japan's first satellite, is launched on a Lamba-4 rocket.
- February 13 - Black Sabbath's debut album, Black Sabbath (album) released; often regarded as the first true heavy metal album.
- February 14 - Iconic live album "The Who: Live at Leeds" recorded.
- February 17 - MacDonald family massacre: Jeffrey R. MacDonald kills his wife and children at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, claiming that drugged-out "hippies" did it.
- February 17 - Author David Irving is ordered to pay £40,000 libel damages to Capt. John Broome over his book "The Destruction of Convoy PQ17".
- February 18 - A jury finds the Chicago Seven defendants not guilty of conspiring to incite a riot, in charges stemming from the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Five of the defendants are found guilty on the lesser charge of crossing state lines to incite a riot.
- February 19 - Birth of Joacim Cans, lead and backing vocals of the HammerFall, a Swedish Metal Band
- February 20 - Construction begins on the Bogazici Bridge crossing the Bosphorus in Istanbul.
- February 22 - Guyana becomes a Republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.
March
- March 1 - Rhodesia severs its last tie with the United Kingdom, declaring itself a racially-segregated republic.
- March 5 - The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect, after ratification by 43 nations.
- March 6 - A bomb being constructed by members of the Weathermen and meant to be planted at a military dance in New Jersey, explodes, killing 3 members of the organization.
- March 12 - Teenagers in the United Kingdom vote for the first time, in a by-election in Bridgwater.
- March 15 - The Expo '70 World's Fair opens in Suita, Osaka, Japan.
- March 16 - The complete New English Bible is published.
- March 17 - My Lai massacre: The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident.
- March 18 - General Lon Nol ousts Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.
- March 18 - United States Postal Service workers in New York City go on strike; the strike spreads to the state of California and the cities of Akron, Ohio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Boston, and Denver, Colorado; 210,000 out of 750,000 U.S. postal employees walk out. President Nixon assigns military units to New York City post offices. The strike lasts 2 weeks.
- March 21 - The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto.
- March 21 - "All Kinds of Everything" sung by Dana (music and text by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith) wins Eurovision Song Contest 1970 for Ireland.
- March 25 - The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight (700 mph/1127 km/h).
- March 31 - NASA's Explorer 1, the first American satellite and Explorer program spacecraft, reenters Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
- March 31 - Japan Airlines Flight 351, carrying 131 passengers and 7 crews from Tokyo to Fukuoka, is hijacked by nine Japan Red Army group. 23 Passengers freed at Fukuoka Airport, mainly children, old aged. 108 passengers and all crew member with Red Army group are leaved Fukuoka, bound for Gimpo Airport, near Seoul, South Korea, same day.
April
- April 1 - President Richard Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, banning cigarette television advertisements in the United States, starting on January 1, 1971.
- April 1 - American Motors Corporation introduces the Gremlin.
- April 8 - A huge gas explosion at a subway construction site in Osaka, Japan kills 79 and injures over 400.
- April 10 - Paul McCartney announces that the Beatles have disbanded, while at the same press conference, announcing the release of his new solo album.
- April 11 - 74 people, mostly young boys, die as an avalanche buries a tuberculosis sanatorium in the French Alps.
- April 11 - Apollo program: Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched toward the Moon. On April 13, an oxygen tank in the spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission and return in 4 days.
May
- May 1 - Demonstrations against the trial of the New Haven Nine, Bobby Seale, and Ericka Huggins draw 12,000. President Richard Nixon orders US forces to cross into neutral Cambodia, threatening to widen the Vietnam War, sparking nation wide riots and leading to the Kent State Shootings.
- May 4 - Kent State shootings: Four students at Kent State University in Ohio are killed and nine wounded by Ohio State National Guardsmen at a protest against the incursion into Cambodia.
- May 6 - Arms Crisis in the Republic of Ireland: Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney are dismissed as members of the Irish Government, due to accusations of their involvement in a plot to import arms for use by the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland.
- May 6 - Feyenoord wins the European Cup after a 2-1 win over Celtic.
- May 8 - Unionized construction workers attack about 1,000 students and others protesting the Kent State shootings near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street and at New York City Hall, leading to the Hard Hat riot.
- May 9 - In Washington, D.C., 100,000 people demonstrate against the Vietnam War.
- May 11 - Henry Marrow is murdered in a violent hate crime in Oxford, North Carolina.
- May 11 - Lubbock Tornado: An F5 tornado hits downtown Lubbock, Texas, the first to hit a downtown district of a major city since Topeka, Kansas in 1966 (28 are killed).
- May 14 - Ulrike Meinhof helps Andreas Baader escape.
- May 14 - In the second day of violent demonstrations at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, state law enforcement officers fire into the demonstrators, killing 2 and injuring 12.
- May 17 - Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat Ra II, to sail the Atlantic Ocean.
- May 23 - A fire occurs in the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits in north Wales, contributing to its partial destruction and amounting to approximately £1,000,000 worth of fire damage.
- May 24 - The scientific drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the USSR.
- May 26 - The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 becomes the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2.
- May 27 - A British expedition climbs the south face of Annapurna I.
- May 31 - The 1970 Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people are killed.
- May 31 - The 1970 FIFA World Cup is inaugurated in Mexico.
June
July
August
- August 7 - Harold Haley, Marin County Superior Court Judge, is taken hostage and murdered, in an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
- August 17 - August 18 - The U.S. sinks 418 containers of nerve gas into the Gulf Stream near the Bahamas.
- August 17 - Venera program: Venera 7 is launched. It will later becomes the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from another planet.
- August 26 - The Women's Strike For Equality takes place down Fifth Avenue in New York City.
- August 26-August 30 - The Isle of Wight Festival 1970 takes place on East Afton Farm off the coast of England. Some 600,000 people attend the largest rock festival of all time. Artists include Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Doors, Chicago, Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Joan Baez, Ten Years After, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Jethro Tull.
September
- September 1 - An assassination attempt against King Hussein of Jordan precipitates the Black September crisis.
- September 4 - Salaheddin Ali Nader Shah Angha receives the official leadership of the Oveyssi Sufi order and receives the "Robe of Faghr" by Shah Maghsoud Sadegh Angha.
- September 3-September 6 - Israeli forces fight Palestinian guerillas in southern Lebanon.
- September 5 - Vietnam War: Operation Jefferson Glenn begins - The United States 101st Airborne Division and the South Vietnamese 1st Infantry Division initiate a new operation in Thua Thien Province (the operation ends in October 1971).
- September 6 - The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacks 4 passenger aircraft from Pan Am, TWA and Swissair on flights to New York from Brussels, Frankfurt and Zürich.
- September 7 - An anti-war rally is held at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, attended by John Kerry, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.
- September 7 - Fighting breaks out between Arab guerillas and government forces in Amman, Jordan.
- September 8-September 10 - Jordanian government and Palestinian guerillas make truces they keep breaking.
- September 9 - Guinea recognizes East Germany.
- September 9 - Elvis Presley begins his first concert tour since 1958 in Phoenix, Arizona at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
- September 10 - Cambodian government forces break the siege of Kompong Tho after 3 months.
- September 11 - The Ford Pinto is introduced.
- September 13 - The first New York City Marathon begins.
- September 15 - King Hussein of Jordan forms a military government with Muhammad Daoud as the prime minister.
- September 18 - Jimi Hendrix dies from choking on his own vomit while unconscious due to a barbiturate overdose in London.
- September 19 - Kostas Georgakis sets himself ablaze in Genoa, Italy as a protest against the Greek military junta of 1967-1974.
- September 20 - Syrian armored forces cross the Jordanian border.
- September 20 - Luna 16 lands on the Moon and lifts off the next day with samples. It lands on Earth September 24.
- September 21 - Palestinian armored forces reinforce Palestinian guerillas in Irbidi, Jordan.
- September 22 - Tunku Abdul Rahman resigns as prime minister of Malaysia, and is succeeded by his deputy Tun Abdul Razak.
- September 26 - The Laguna Fire starts in San Diego County, burning 175,425 acres (710 km²).
- September 27 - Richard Nixon begins a tour of Europe, visiting Italy, Yugoslavia, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
- September 28 - Gamal Abdal Nasser dies; Vice President Anwar Sadat is named temporary president of Egypt.
- September 29 - The U.S. Congress gives President Richard Nixon authority to sell arms to Israel.
- September 29 - In Berlin, Baader-Meinhof Gang members rob 3 banks, with loot totaling over DM200,000.
October
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