Today in Alternate History

4/12/70 Soviet Submarine K-8 explodes in the Bay of Biscay. Only one of her nuclear-tipped torpedoes explodes, but the other begin to leak. The disaster will devastate the Mediterranean for decades and give the Soviet Union a permanent black eye.

4/13/70 Apollo 13 is lost with all hands.
 
14th April 1976: Lee Harvey Oswald one of several men arrested then released for the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is killed by a hit and run driver in Seattle.

14th April 1979: the last chinese marines are rounded up in Taiwan as NATO and SEATO fleets tighten the Chinese exclusion zone.
 
June 29, 1978: In a statement to the press, Martin Luther King declares his support for the ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

"Fifteen years ago, I had a dream that a person must be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin. Today, the Supreme Court has upheld that principle. The wrongs of Jim Crow cannot be righted by any racial quota or by discriminating against whites in the college application process or any other."

His statement draws condemnation from the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and leads to a split in the NAACP between the King's supporters and what becomes known as the Jackson-Sharpton wing, which eventually forms the Rainbow Coalition. Ultimately, Dr. King will support the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan in 1980, giving Reagan 40% of the African-American vote that year, and work with Nancy Reagan in discouraging drug use by children and teenagers.
 
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