Harris and Hughes would be good choices, but I feel like they run into the same issue as Nelson - adding another liberal Midwesterner to the ticket really doesn't balance it that well, though this is less true with Harris because of his different political style and generational differences (as well as the fact that Oklahoma is at least peripherally Southern).
McGoverning
- Thread starter Yes
- Start date
Wow, today's an interesting day to learn that Baye and Inouye have accusations against them. That's...huh. Inouye would definitely be a shoe-in, if I was in America at the time and didn't know that.
No Magnuson love? Darn it! This is really well reasoned, I'd go for Glenn in the situation, he has most of the necessary qualities for the job, plus as you say, he's a fucking astronaut! What's not to love!?
It doesn’t help that the accusations seem to have been deleted from their Wikipedia pages? Or maybe they were never there in the first place, but it’s still weird.
I didn’t think about Magnuson because of his age, but other than that he’s a really solid choice.
PNWKing
Banned
Milton Shapp sounds like a fun "outsider" candidate. He's from Pennsylvania, as for the whole "Jewish VP" situation, I don't even know. I'm sure most people would say that a woman, let alone a black woman would be a liability on any ticket in June 2020, but ask Vice President Kamala Harris how that turned out.
It’s definitely something that seems like it could go both ways. On the one hand, even if the American people would actually be fine with that, that doesn’t mean that a risk-averse White House would necessarily know that or feel like they could risk it. On the other hand, between wanting to show that they’re not running scared of bigots and the possibility that such a candidacy might provoke some gaffes on the part of Republican spokespeople, it might in an odd way actually be an asset for his chances in some ways.
He’s also just not someone who shows up all that much in alternate history.
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As far as sexual assault allegations are concerned...this is the 1970s, for good and, in this case, ill. I suspect most people will dismiss that type of accusation, or accusers would be reluctant to bring them forward, or both, so they likely won't have much effect.
I agree with that - after all, Lenore Kwock didn't bring her accusations forward OTL so much as get outed under false pretenses, and her story got swept under the rug even in the 1990s - but I think it works differently for the two Senators involved, in part because one of them is white and the other isn't, and in part because, while I don't want to minimize sexual harassment, I feel like what Bayh is accused of having done would be viewed as a lot more acceptable than what Inouye is accused of having done.
Honestly, re-reading this and consulting TV Tropes makes this timeline even better, IMO. My first time reading this, my eyes would glaze over at the length of the posts but now I’m able to absorb more of it.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Not to mention Shapp was one of the pioneers of cable TV.
An entrepeneur has to be popular among the American people.
I know this might be small but in the wiki it says that's the last election where the AIP won electoral votes but I imagine Lester Maddox running in 76 and taking a couple of southern states with him
Methinks you should include something about McGovern being the first Democrat to lose every state in the South.
McGoverning: Meanwhile Back At The Timeline, or, Almanack Da Goodies
Well, it's not the same as a fresh chapter. (Yet.) But it occurs to me that it's been some time since we covered secondary events in the McGoverningverse and this might be a reasonably useful way to do so. It's done rather in almanac style, a calendar of events by month, only the events in that month aren't in chronological order nor are they in order of importance, they're arranged more to give a varied impression of what's going on in the world at that time. Is it comprehensive? Lord no. But it catches a real variety of interesting points and issues from the year. Some will be familiar - this situates some things past chapters have mentioned on a chronological timeline - others only crop up here because they don't necessarily rate a spot in actual chapters but do reveal some of what's up in the McGoverningverse. I've chosen 1974 because it's a year in which we've spent some considerable time so far and while there are still stories to tell, it's a more complete year, in terms of our narrative picture so far, than later years.
A couple of ground rules:
Are there things left off this list? Oh heavens yes. I can think of at least six significant things (happening mostly in May and from August through the rest of the year respectively) that we'll get to in upcoming chapters close at hand. One can have some fun speculating on that. That is to say, what things are left off the list because they're spoilery, and what ones are absent because they either haven't happened (hi, butterflies!) or haven't happened yet. Lots to ponder.
Significant Events of 1974
January
A couple of ground rules:
- Let's try to avoid "What about [LAUNDRY LIST OF INDIVIDUALS]?" questions; and
- It's perfectly possible to ask about any of a variety of minor incidents one can find with Google/Wiki/actual paper-bound almanacs from the period, but also time consuming and not always productive in terms of understanding the stronger eddies and currents in an ATL's flow
Are there things left off this list? Oh heavens yes. I can think of at least six significant things (happening mostly in May and from August through the rest of the year respectively) that we'll get to in upcoming chapters close at hand. One can have some fun speculating on that. That is to say, what things are left off the list because they're spoilery, and what ones are absent because they either haven't happened (hi, butterflies!) or haven't happened yet. Lots to ponder.
Significant Events of 1974
January
- The "Philippine Spring" occurs as mass popular demonstrations against Ferdinand Marcos' martial-law regime are accompanied by backchannel messages from the United States government to the Philippine Armed Forces that intervention against the protests could result in withdrawal of American military and economic supports. Within ten days several key elements of the Army and Air Force side with the demonstrators. Within two weeks Marcos is pressured to step down, through personal intervention by Undersecretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke. A civil-military council takes charge for an interim period and calls snap elections. Liberal Party stalwart Jovy Salonga is elected President of the Philippines at the beginning of February.
- On New Year's Day Harold Wilson returns to Number 10 Downing Street by forming Labour's first coalition government since the early 1930s together with Jeremy Thorpe's Liberals.
- Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport opens; all significant air carriers except fledgling Southwest Airlines leave Love Field for the new facility at DFW. Braniff International purchases land adjacent to DFW's footprint to build a fully integrated corporate campus next to their chief base of operations.
- After a combination of irrigation digging by area farmers and heavy floods, subsidence near Xian, China, reveals two separate points of entry to the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang.
- Four members of the Japanese Red Army and a pair of Palestinian fedayeen hire a light boat to attack Singapore's major oil refinery at Pulau Bukom. Suspicious behavior attracts a Maritime Police launch. A JRA member discharges a firearm at the police boat too near a fuel leak aboard the rogue vessel; this ignites first the fuel, then the terrorists' explosives, and blows the boat to kingdom come.
- A four-month smallpox epidemic, the last before the disease's eradication outside laboratories, breaks out in India.
- The United States Congress passes the Earned Income Credit Program (EICP) into law as a major new system of income redistribution.
- Global Television becomes Canada's third major broadcast network.
- Skylab-4 returns to earth after a record-breaking stay in orbit.
- President McGovern signs the act creating the Federal Rules of Evidence into law
- In Super Bowl VIII two teams undefeated in the regular season face off, as the Los Angeles Rams beat the Miami Dolphins 24-17. The Dolphins' powerful defense contains the Rams' running game but Los Angeles' veteran quarterback Roman Gabriel throws for three touchdowns in the win, for which he receives the game's Most Valuable Player award.
- After three and a half months of constant talks and interim measures, the Cambridge Group of the United States, West Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, and France launches a "community float" system of mutual currency reinforcement and protection, and schedules a full economic summit on commodity shortages and anti-inflation measures for Burlington, Vermont in April.
- President George McGovern signs the Medicare Expansion and Consolidation Act of 1974 (MECA) into law. The legislation creates a national framework, and network, for publicly-funded health insurance coordinated with private, supplemental insurance and the use of health management organizations (HMOs). McGovern describes this as finishing the work begun by presidents Truman and Johnson before him.
- Blazing Saddles premieres in the United States
- Egypt and the United States reestablish normal diplomatic relations, as US and Soviet forces deployed along the Suez Canal withdraw in favor of United Nations contingents sent to replace them.
- Forces in favor of Enosis - political union between Cyprus and Greece - including major elements of the Cypriot National Guard rise up in revolt on Cyprus. The rebels assassinate Cypriot president Archbishop Makarios III, install a puppet government, and launch violent attacks on ethnic Turkish communities throughout the island. The young democratic government in Athens and the United States impose political and economic sanctions on Cyprus. A laggard response to the disaster dooms Suleyman Demirel's coalition government in Turkey as mass demonstrations call for Turkish intervention.
- Portuguese premier Marcelo Caetano attempts a mass firing of the Portuguese military's general staff, whose most senior officers have made plain their desire for an end to the Colonial Wars and the Estado Novo regime. Collectively the generals refuse to go and a network of leftist and left-leaning junior officers and NCOs organizes a "General Strike of the Army" across the armed forces. The strike is met with a mass outpouring of popular support and Caetano chooses to flee the country rather than spark the kind of bloodshed seen in Greece in May '73. An ostensibly nonpartisan military council takes charge in his place with the task of developing a process for democratization and a new constitution. Along with Greece and the Philippines this is seen as the latest "McGovern Moment" around the world.
- Turkish premier Bulent Ecevit, returned to power by popular outcry at the tribulations of ethnic Turks on Cyprus, launches Operation Ergenekon, reinforcing embattled ethnic communes with Turkish Army supplies and paratroopers. The progress of Enosis forces' efforts at ethnic cleansing grinds to a halt.
- The Sears Building, designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, opens in Chicago.
- With a bit more tenacity from prime minister Gough Whitlam, and the nearly silent but friendly disposition of the United States (who think the candidate's childhood ties to America and fondness for Whitlam might dispose him kindly to the McGovern administration), Ken Myer agrees to accept the post of Governor-General of Australia. Ten days after the appointment Whitlam calls an election; when the vote comes the ALP does slightly better in the House than IOTL (the Liberals' young prospect John Howard is denied a seat, for example) while the DLP holds on to a pair of Senate spots in what is otherwise a hung Senate much as IOTL.
- Volkswagen debuts the Volkswagen Golf, front-wheel drive successor to the legendary Beetle, and the leading edge of a series of fuel-efficient hatchbacks designed to capitalize on consumers' desire for affordable, fuel efficient vehicles.
- Israeli premier Golda Meir resigns her office, citing health reasons, ahead of the report from the Agranat Commission convened to examine Israel's disastrous failure to see the October War of 1973 coming. After brief political confusion over the succession Alignment elder Yigal Allon body-checks favored candidates Yitzakh Rabin and Shimon Peres to take Meir's place.
- Charles De Gaulle airport opens outside Paris.
- The UCLA Bruins narrowly defeat North Carolina State 76-73 to secure their eighth straight NCAA men's basketball title.
- Despite death threats, and during a seven-game win streak for his Atlanta Braves, Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth's home run record in front of a home crowd at Fulton County Stadium. In town to meet with Georgia's governor, Jimmy Carter, about recruiting Carter as the inaugural United States Secretary of Energy at the end of his term, lifelong baseball fan President George McGovern attends the game and congratulates Aaron afterward. Four days later a Molotov cocktail is thrown at Aaron's home but fails to ignite properly.
- The Ramones perform at CBGB for the first time.
- Structured peace talks on Cyprus - chaired by a triumvirate of UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Thorpe, and American diplomatic eminence Averell Harriman - get underway to resolve the bloody ethnic conflict on the island, accompanied by an American aircraft carrier group offshore to keep the parties separated at sea and stall further Turkish intervention.
- President McGovern signs the Airlines Deregulation Act of 1974 into law. The act radically alters government's relationship to US air carriers and launches a free-for-all to develop new, usually low-cost carriers and consolidate existing carriers into workable economic units under the new laissez faire regime.
- President George McGovern signs significant expansions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) into law.
- Four fedayeen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attack Janusz Korczak Middle School in the town of Kiryat Shmona at the start of the school day, killing two teachers and sixteen students with grenades and rifle fire. As the authorities respond the terrorists seize hostages among the fleeing students and barricade themselves in the school. They shoot one student and demand a helicopter to take them to Lebanon. Israeli troops counterattack. In the ensuing shootout all four terrorists, four students, and the commander of the Israeli troops, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, are killed.
- Famed record producer Phil Spector dies in a single-vehicle car crash in Los Angeles. A postmortem shows high levels of alcohol and amphetamines in Spector's system.
- On April Fool's Day, across the interior United States, a massive upper-level jet stream collides with a thread of lower-level wet weather and sharp temperature contrasts that border the system's swath across the country. Unanticipated daytime heat between the Great Plains and the Great Lakes caused additional instability along with punctuated convective systems. The result is a catastrophic outbreak of some 177 recorded tornados across Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, including at least a dozen recorded F5 storms. One catastrophic F5 destroys most of Chickasha, Oklahoma near the far western end of the system with more than thirty fatalities. Another F5 tears through the suburban outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, while a substantial F4 tornado "skips" directly through downtown Louisville, Kentucky where it kills eighteen people and does over $200 million in structural damage (ed. over a billion in OTL 2021 dollars), notably to the historic Brown's Hotel and with the destruction of the Freedom Hall arena. Several small communities in Kentucky are destroyed entirely with over one hundred total deaths from the whole storm system.
- Operation Smiling Buddha marks India's first underground test of a nuclear explosive device, met with surprise and frequently with condemnation around the world.
- Federal enabling legislation and bureaucratic reorganization creates the United States Department of Commerce & Industry, designed to continue the work of the former Department of Commerce but also become an "American MITI," a reference to the Japanese government agency that draws up and manages Japanese national industrial policy. Near the end of the month retired US Army general James Gavin is confirmed and sworn in as the department's first secretary.
- The 1974 Canadian federal election takes place: hopes among PCs and Dippers for a "gotcha!" election against premier Pierre Trudeau's slow-moving response to rampant inflation fail. While Robert Stanfield's Progressive Conservatives take only slight losses, Trudeau's Liberals reap much larger gains from a collapse in the third-party New Democrats' vote (losing over half their seats including their leader's) and from the Creditistes to give the Grits a bare parliamentary majority, enough of a victory for the ever-confident Trudeau to take it as a mandate for policy.
- The Twenty-Eighth and Twenty-Ninth Amendments to the US Constitution, which together with the Twenty-Seventh form what are known as the "War Powers Amendments," pass their votes in Congress and head to the states for ratification. The amendments are seen as a major feature of what some political scholars have by then begun to call the "Second Progressive Era" starting in 1961.
- Liverpool decisively ends a sterling run by Bristol City as a Kevin Keegan hat-trick puts Liverpool up over the Robins 3-1 at Wembley Stadium to win Liverpool's second FA Cup.
- The "Broad Street Bullies" - also known as the Philadelphia Flyers - defeat the Montreal Canadiens to win the 1974 Stanley Cup Final.
- Eighteen people are killed and nearly 150 injured by a major bomb blast at a PCI (Italian communist) rally in Brescia, Italy. The fascist terrorist organization Ordine Nero claims responsibility through a cut-out organization. Ten days later Carlo Maria Maggi, suspected of a role in planning and ordering the bomb blast, is shot dead in Ostia by a passing motorcyclist suspected of being part of the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades.)
- Juan Miro's Hope of a Condemned Man triptych is first exhibited in Barcelona, a commentary on legal injustices under the Franco/Carrero Blanco regime.
- Bayern Munich powers past Celtic 3-1 to win the UEFA league champions' title.
- Tottenham Hotspur launch a massive second-half comeback to beat Standard Liege 3-2 for the UEFA Cup.
- Alert luggage crew at the new Charles de Gaulle airport spot a suspicious item slated to load aboard an Air France international flight; this turns out to be an explosive device planted by the Japanese Red Army. A second device, not found by ground crew, explodes aboard Japan Air Lines Flight 452 which breaks up over the Mediterranean just north of Corsica with the loss of 172 lives. The JRA announces the start of a bombing campaign designed to free captive members of the group held in Japan, France, and Israel.
- The Rambouillet Talks begin at the Chateau de Rambouillet in suburban Paris. The wide-ranging arms control negotiations will take place between the Soviet Union on one side and a joint delegation of the United States, United Kingdom, and France on the other. France had at first strongly resisted joining but, after considerable persuasion especially by US Secretary of State Sargent Shriver, France preferred to charter and host the talks rather than be left out. After ten months of haggling the two sides will sign the Comprehensive Arms Reduction Treaty (CART) in April 1975.
- Yigal Allon bets on the Israeli public's desire for stability and calls a legislative election. This results in a stable Alignment majority that gives Allon a mandate both to govern domestically in his own right and to pursue peace and security issues at the international level.
- The British government creates the nationalized British Aerospace and British Shipbuilders corporations through enabling legislation, and makes preparations to take a controlling share of troubled automotive giant British Leyland.
- Three people are killed by an explosion at Gulf Oil's headquarters in Pittsburgh, caused by the Weather Underground.
- Four people are killed in Los Angeles, and part of an apartment building leveled, when a bomb being built by Muharem Kurbegovich explodes accidentally. Kurbegovich is among the dead.
- The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time.
- Jon Pertwee makes his final appearance as the Third Doctor on Doctor Who in the sixth part of "Paradox of the Daleks" and, at episode's end, regenerates into actor Jim Dale.
- The United States Congress passes what is commonly known as the Heinz Act: this declares the National Football League a "benign monopoly" as the only legal professional league for the American-rules game, in return for substantial new powers of government oversight and government intervention in labor relations through the NLRB's new subsidiary the Football Labor Relations Board (instantly dubbed "the Flurb" by league figures and sportswriters.)
- Israeli Defense Forces units complete their withdrawal from the Sinai as United Nations peacekeepers finish taking up their posts in the region.
- The 1974 FIFA World Cup gets underway in West Germany.
- Roughly three dozen participant states sign the Helsinki Accords: this creates the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, along with the structured goals and terms of the accords. The Soviet Union claims that the accords formally recognize Moscow's sphere of influence in the Eastern Bloc. Western nations and exiled dissidents from Eastern Europe and the Baltic claim the opposite, that the agreement creates means and metrics to hold satellite states accountable for human rights and free-press violations. The accords also set out means for family reunions across the Iron Curtain, economic and cultural exchanges, and other improved pan-European ties.
- Poland's unstoppable offense powers them past a team of aging Brazilian veterans who exhausted themselves reaching the World Cup final, 3-1. In the third-place match West German keeper Sepp Maier keeps a clean sheet against the mighty Dutch "Clockwork Orange" squad as the host nation takes third with a 1-0 win.
- The first main line of Seoul's subway system opens for passengers.
- A summit in Luanda between Portuguese, South African, and Rhodesian leaders results in an agreement that the white minority-rule states will pursue "peaceful coexistence" with the Portuguese colonies in Angola and Mozambique when those become independent in the coming year.
- An Air Viet Nam 707 outbound from Saigon, first to Singapore then on to Sydney, explodes over the Gulf of Thailand with the loss of all 136 aboard. That tally includes just over thirty Australian citizens and a quartet of Japanese diplomats in the midst of a change of station from South Vietnam to Australia. The Japanese Red Army claims responsibility for the bombing as part of their campaign to free JRA prisoners in several countries.
- Seizing an early opportunity, high-wire artist Philippe Petit crosses between the towers of the New York World Trade Center high-wire walking.
- Argentine president Juan Peron dies of heart failure; he is succeeded by his wife Isabel, who shortly thereafter stages a self-coup to consolidate power in order to use Argentina's military and police state against revolutionary terrorism counter to the Peron regime from both right and left.
- Hurricane Dolly develops as a tropical depression along the equator and a high-pressure system along the coast of South America angles its development up a lean arc through the western Caribbean. A focused storm - hurricane-force winds extend less than eighty miles out from the eye - it nevertheless develops into a Category 4 hurricane. Dolly plows through Jamaica, destroying several small communities across the central highlands, flooding out low-lying areas around Montego Bay, and causes over 400 deaths. The storm picks up energy again over warm water in the Gulf of Mexico and makes a direct hit on Morgan City, Louisiana. Morgan City bears Dolly's brunt and is substantially destroyed, with at least 112 deaths reported throughout the parish and flooding throughout the wider Atchafalaya basin.
- Three operatives of Ordine Nero blow themselves up, along with two carabinieri in close proximity, to avoid capture after their bomb plot is revealed through information gleaned by McGovern administration reformers at the top levels of the CIA. The plotters intended to collapse the San Benedetto Val di Sambro train tunnel through the Apennines in time to destroy a train that was scheduled to carry both Italian prime minister Aldo Moro and former Christian Democratic premier Mariano Rumor to a political meeting in Bologna.
- Bloody riots take place in Burma amid rumors that, during a national rice shortage due to heavy monsoons, surplus supplies of food, medical equipment, and other necessities are decaying in government stockpiles held by Ne Win's authoritarian junta.
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia premieres in the United States
- The Pound Hill disaster: Laker Airways Flight 322, a DC-10-10 outbound from Gatwick Airport to JFK Airport in New York on the carrier's "Skytrain" transatlantic service, suffers the sudden loss of a cargo door shortly after takeoff. This causes explosive decompression and severs key control cables; the aircraft, packed with budget seating, plows at full speed into the low ground by Pound Hill just south of Crawley near Gatwick. All 335 persons aboard are killed. An investigation spearheaded by Minister for Transport Eric Varley reveals that McDonnell Douglas was informed by Convair (makers of the cargo doors) about the high likelihood of door failure that could cause such a catastrophic outcome, and that measures designed to substantially correct the flaw not only were not carried out on the DC-10s sold to Laker but also paperwork to that effect was falsified. Ultimately McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics (owners of Convair) will, between them, pay over $250 million (ed. nigh on $1.5 billion in OTL 2021 money) in settlement money to the various civil claimants and the British government.
- The first Canadair CL-84 Dynavert (now given the in-service designation CV-84 Puffin) enters advanced testing with the United States Marine Corps as a tilt-rotor cargo platform. An airborne early-warning (AEW) variant with radar mounted above the fuselage is under development. Both cargo and AEW versions will be bought by the Marine Corps and Britain's Royal Navy, while the Canadian Forces' Air Command will purchase two squadrons' worth, one as specialist troop transports, the other for search-and-rescue work in offshore waters and the Arctic north.
- The Skycycle X-2's parachute does not deploy prematurely; as a result Evel Knievel successfully jumps a stretch of the Snake River Canyon outside Twin Falls, Idaho. This is seen later as the crowning achievement of Knievel's checkered but fascinating career.
- Six Tu-16 bombers of the Iraqi Air Force are tracked by Kuwaiti and Iranian radar as en route towards a major oil refinery in northern Kuwait. Acting in the "policeman of the Gulf" role they have often claimed, newly commissioned Imperial Iranian Air Force F-14s fire long-range Phoenix missiles at the Iraqi aircraft, shooting down five. The sixth Tu-16 crashes in southern Iraq after mechanical failures triggered by its evasive maneuvers. There follows several months of intermittent shelling between Iraqi and Iranian military forces positioned on either side of the strategic Shatt al-Ahrab waterway.
- British Secretary of State for Defence Anthony Crosland releases the 1974 United Kingdom Defence Review white paper, commonly known as the Crosland Report. In it Crosland outlines notable cutbacks in both the British Army and Royal Navy in favor of funds put towards development of new technologies for fewer but more advanced weapons system, and a substantial revamping of Britain's nuclear deterrent.
- After months of talks, the parties to the Cyprus conflict agree to a definite cease-fire and a staged process of disengagement between enemy forces. This triggers a much more complex process that will attempt to reconstruct a functional Cypriot government, as ethnic Turkish authorities claim self-rule over a patchwork of ethnic enclaves across the island.
- In South Korea, authoritarian president Park Chung Hee stages a (politely rigged) referendum on the Yushin constitution of 1972 that grants Park wide-ranging powers. This is approved by what is officially an overwhelming majority of voters; Park uses the mandate to consolidate his position against any potential "McGovern Moments."
- In an early example of the scramble to create a working deregulated air-travel system in the United States, Braniff International stages a hostile takeover of smaller regional carrier Texas International Airlines. Braniff intends to develop Texas International's network as a feeder system to and from Braniff's headquarters airport at Dallas-Fort Worth, one of the earliest examples of the deregulated "hub and spoke" system of travel. (Ed. and also because fuck Frank Lorenzo directly in the eye, that's what.)
- The Rockford Files premieres on NBC
- General Antonio de Spinola is dismissed as the head of the interim military command that now governs Portugal. Spinola, a conservative at heart, has grown disillusioned with the strong leftward swing of post-revolutionary politics and his attempts to take direct control of the collective-government committee are rebuffed.
- The post-merger National Football League (four seasons out from the union of the old NFL with the AFL) decisively breaks the color bar at quarterback as three different African American quarterbacks around the league spend time under center from the start of the 1974 season. In Los Angeles with the Rams, James Harris platoons together with veteran star Roman Gabriel (himself a biracial Filipino-American.) In Pittsburgh Joe Gilliam platoons with Terry Bradshaw to great effect. With the Denver Broncos, Marlin Briscoe returns to the team from Miami in a dual role as a wide receiver and second-string quarterback in support of starter Charley Johnson.
- At an all-party conference in Kansas City, prior to the November midterm elections, the Democratic Party approves a calendar for the 1976 presidential primaries, makes a variety of plans and declarations about legislative policy, and elects Stewart Udall as party chairman.
- Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks join Fleetwood Mac
- Os Eventos de 8o Outubro take place in Brazil. At a mass rally and march against martial-law regulations in Rio de Janeiro, with over 120,000 people in attendance, an agent provocateur pulls a pistol and fires into the front rank of the parade. The gunfire kills four people, including some notable victims, and wounds four more. Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider, saved from harm by what many see as a miraculous coincidence - his heavy metal crucifix stops a bullet - restores calm while marchers subdue the gunman. Within forty-eight hours junta president Ernesto Geisel launches a clean-sweep operation to shut down the infamous DOI-CODI counterintelligence service and round up other extremists within the regime who may have ties to the Rio attack. By the end of the month talks have begun between Geisel and the unified opposition party to schedule Diretas Ja (popular-vote driven) elections and the careful dismantling of Brazil's military dictatorship.
- After considerable effort, and by a 53-41 margin, the United States Senate passes the Revenue Reform Act, the McGovern administration's sweeping tax reform proposal. With approval from both houses of Congress this allows President McGovern to sign the bill into law - among other things it guarantees revenue sources to support MECA and the Earned Income Credit Program - shortly before the upcoming midterm elections, a final key to a series of domestic legislation on which the Democratic Party's campaign efforts rest.
- Hurricane Gertrude, a vast, slow-moving storm system, parks itself along the northwest coastlines of Mesoamerica and pours catastrophic levels of rain into the region. Massive floods occur in Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize, with some distaff flooding into northern El Salvador. Many coastal communities in Honduras and Guatemala are simply destroyed. There is extensive flooding in the Honduran cities of Roatan - much of which is destroyed - and the capital Tegucigalpa. Belize City also finds itself under five feet of water. The storm is believed to be responsible for over 5,000 deaths in the three countries. The Organization of American States, together with the British (in Belize) and American militaries, become involved in extensive disaster relief. Wide-ranging protests break out in both Honduras and Guatemala about the failure of those nations' governments to provide adequate support and relief. In Guatemala the largely Mayan protestors are met by bloody-handed government repression.
- The St. Louis Cardinals' over-the-hill gang of veteran players fight through the National League to reach the World Series. There, in a series where each victory is won at the other team's stadium, St. Louis defeats the seemingly unstoppable Oakland As 4-3 over seven games. This includes the last career pitching victory for future Hall of Famer Bob Gibson of St. Louis, who announces his retirement after a team visit to the White House where they are welcomed by lifetime Cardinals fan President George McGovern.
- A United Airlines 727-200 inbound to Cleveland's Hopkins Airport on instrument approach in heavy weather delivers misleading altitude signals to its crew. The aircraft crashes in the Cleveland suburbs just south of the airport, killing 77 of those on board and eight more on the ground. The Federal Aviation Administration then mandates that ground-proximity sensors be installed on all turbine and turbojet-powered aircraft operating in the United States.
- Angered what they see as pro-Buddhist favoritism in social and economic policy, and by a new anti-inflationary consumption tax they see as unfair to urban Catholic merchants, a number of independent Catholic politicians withdraw from Duong Van "Big" Minh's governing coalition in South Vietnam's parliament. This makes Minh's government substantially dependent on seats held by the National Liberation Front - the political arm of the Viet Cong.
- Dutch police investigate an Amsterdam apartment thought to be a safe house for members of the Japanese Red Army. One of the four JRA members renting the apartment panics and draws a gun; in the exchange of fire a Dutch plainclothes detective is killed and a different JRA member seriously wounded. The terrorists barricade themselves inside and exchange fire with the authorities for more than six hours. Two terrorists are killed by sharpshooters from the Koninklijke Marechausee (Dutch gendarmes) and a third when a Molotov cocktail he has made explodes in his hands, setting fire to the apartment. Firefighters douse the blaze and the original wounded JRA member is removed on a stretcher. It appears the terrorists intended to attack either the French or Japanese embassies in the Netherlands in an effort to free JRA prisoners from those countries.
- On the last Friday of the month, in the court of the Federal District of the District of Columbia, Richard Nixon, the immediate past President of the United States, pleads guilty to a single federal count of obstruction of justice. Nixon is given a ten-year suspended sentence (that may be shorted by good behavior), and fined $50,000, but allowed to retain his US passport privileges in a plea deal with the Department of Justice. Later that day the mentally disturbed Samuel Byck, obsessed with Nixon and convinced the former president is a danger to America's poor, shoots a civil pilot and steals a single-engine Cessna aircraft, which he pilots across the Potomac and crashes into a house in Alexandria, Virginia in a failed attempt to assassinate Nixon. Byck and two people on the ground die in the crash.
- In the 1974 United States midterm elections, the incumbent Democrats do surprisingly well with only minor losses, though there are several signal Republican victories in the South, especially in Texas, Georgia, and Alabama. The commentariat sees this as a cautious endorsement of President McGovern's domestic policies, if not entirely of the president himself, also as a judgment on the still-prominent and bitterly contentious figure of Richard Nixon.
- On a diplomatic visit to North Vietnam, Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko holds a closed-door meeting with the North Vietnamese Politburo. There, Gromyko delivers the message that Moscow would prefer that Hanoi allow the economic and political situation of South Vietnam to degenerate on its own in the near term, rather than launch an opportunistic military offensive. Moscow's heavy investment in the Rambouillet Talks dictates that they would prefer that American opponents of arms control not have easy causes or avenues to oppose a potential Comprehensive Arms Reduction Treaty.
- Concerned by the bloody, fractious, five-way infighting among independence movements in Angola as effective Portuguese control recedes, the US Undersecretaries of State for African Affairs (Patricia Roberts Harris) and International Security Affairs (David Aaron) become directly involved brokering a comprehensive conference to establish a viable transitional authority in Angola and plan for independence that can be backed by the Organization for African Unity, fearing that disorder might prompt South African intervention, among other things. The process is fraught from the start. American intentions for the conference to take place in Mombasa, chaired by Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta, are undermined for a time by accusations that Kenyatta may be connected to the murder of two political rivals. The three main Angolan independence movements - MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA - walk out on the start of the conference for over two weeks in protest at the attendance of Bakongo and Cabindese representatives, whose concerns they consider either marginal or illegitimate. Only by December is the summit able to start work.
- General Vito Miceli, former head of SID - Italy's military intelligence agency - is arrested as part of a general sweep tied to intelligence gathered about a possible coup attempt. A second ostensible plotter, Gen. Ugo Ricci, dons his dress uniform and shoots himself rather than be arrested by the carabinieri. The two are tied to a murky series of reports and revelations about Italy's part in the Gladio network of "reactionary guerrillas" in NATO countries.
- A quartet of armed Palestinians disguised as maintenance workers shoot their way across the tarmac at Dubai's airport and board a British Airways VC-10 parked at a hardstand awaiting taxi clearance. The hijacked jet flies first towards Beirut where the runway is blocked by vehicles to deny a landing, then on towards Libya; Muammar Gaddafi unexpectedly denies landing clearance and the aircraft shoots past to Tunis. The hijackers demand the freedom of Palestinians held in Egypt and the Netherlands and, after hours of haggling about safe passage, they shoot and kill an Indian passenger (the aircraft had originally been on a Bombay-to-Heathrow flight with a stopover at Dubai.) After two days of talks directed in part by President Bourguiba, the hijackers are allowed to deplane with the flight crew still hostages (after releasing the passengers) and take a small bus to a Tunisair aircraft that will have the freed Egyptian prisoners aboard, to be piloted by a volunteer French pilot. The Egyptian prisoners are not, in fact, aboard. The "pilot" is in fact Lt. Christian Prouteau, commander of France's recently created Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, summoned by the Tunisians to resolve the situation. Drawing a concealed revolver Prouteau kills the two lead hijackers at close range as they exit the bus; the other two are simultaneously shot by GIGN snipers. Some of the flight crew will receive awards, and Prouteau a Queen's Commendation for Brave Conduct, in the Queen's 1975 New Year List.
- After budgetary delays the Transbay Tube of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system opens, the longest and deepest immersed tube tunnel in the world.
- The Godfather Part II premieres in the United States.
- Gen. Alexander Haig, Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army and former senior aide of recently-convicted former president Richard Nixon, announces his early retirement from the military. This is widely seen as a form of protest against the defense and national security policies of the McGovern administration. Within a week of his retirement Haig is offered a visiting fellowship with the American Enterprise Institute.
- The McGovern administration presides over the winding down of SEATO (the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization.) At the same time, the US is involved in the active promotion of ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations), encouraging membership for Brunei and observer status for South Vietnam, along with American promises of infrastructure support and expansion of Food for Peace activities (notably "Green Revolution" work championed by the agency's chief Norman Borlaug) along with increased collaborative resources for tropical medicine.
- Inspired by a United States Army enlisted man who landed a helicopter on the West Lawn of the White House, a student radical in Thailand commandeers a single-engine Piper Cub and crashes it into the Royal Palace in Bangkok to protest the ruling military junta. The student dies in the crash; no one on the ground is harmed though damage is done to the palace's historic façade.
- Though it takes longer than OTL to organize, and a fiercely committed George Foreman knocks Ali flat at one point in the fourth round, the older and disfavored Muhammad Ali still ropes his dope in Kinshasa, Zaire, in the "Rumble in the Jungle" fight which, with the growing spread of cable television technology in the United States and satellite-feed broadcast to movie theatres, may have been seen by more than one in four of 1974's living humans when it airs.
- Despite a trip to Britain for more advanced medical treatment - that did improve his quality of life - New Zealand's premier Norman Kirk dies in his sleep at home from a massive coronary. In the Labor Party leadership election that follows, a full-court press by New Zealand's unions leads Kirk's deputy Hugh Wyatt to beat the younger, seemingly more charismatic Bill Rowling for the job by a single vote. The hotly contested leadership election will dog Labor as they ready to face a national vote in 1975.
- A summit meeting of the European Communities' member nations confirms the direct election of the European Parliament by those nations' citizens.
- France uses both carrots and sticks to dissuade Moussa Traore's regime in Mali from invading neighboring Upper Volta. Paris sends two regiments of the Foreign Legion to Upper Volta and offers drought-stricken Mali a panoply of development aid and food support, including American Food for Peace supplies.
- The island of Malta becomes a republic.
- The University of Texas' powerfully built running back - and first African American scholarship player - Roosevelt Leaks wins the 1974 Heisman Trophy. His team will finish the season ranked fourth; the University of Alabama will go on to beat Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl on the first day of 1975 to claim the national title in both the AP and UPI polls.
- Tropical cyclone Selma brings serious flooding to the Darwin, NT area. Fifteen lives are lost with major property damage in the city centre and in coastal areas as far north as Brinkin.
- Jiang Qing, wife of the "Great Helmsman," convinces Mao to strip Deng Xiaopeng of his role as First Vice-Premier because of the "anti-Maoist" activities of political researchers working on Deng's behalf.
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Thanks for the birthday present! Can you do one for 1973 as well? 1972 is pretty much covered, I think.