Where Did This Happen?: 1970s Edition Quiz

Answer: USA

By the start of the 1970s, the tide had already begun to turn in the Vietnam War, and the United States was slowly reducing the number of its ground troops. By February 1970, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had begun secret peace negotiations with a Hanoi representative in Paris.

Although secret bombing of suspected North Vietnamese supply camps in eastern Cambodia had already been going on for months, it was a surprise to many when U.S. President Richard Nixon signed an order on April 28 authorizing U.S. troop to enter Cambodia.

In a televised speech to the nation on April 30, Nixon attempted to justify his decision by claiming that the action was necessary to guarantee the success of the U.S. troop withdrawal and the efforts to ready the South Vietnamese for a greater combat role. Several members of his own National Security Council opposed the move, fearing it would intensify domestic protests against the war.

They were proved right when a new wave of anti-war demonstrations soon broke out across the country. Between the end of April and the end of June, thirteen major operations were carried out in Cambodia by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops.

Answer: Uganda

Soon after the January military coup, Idi Amin self-proclaimed himself president. Nicknamed the "Butcher of Uganda", the eight years of his rule were rife with both ethnic and political purges, including torture, unlawful imprisonments, and mass killings.

He was finally overthrown on April 11, 1979 by forces of the Uganda National Liberation Front and Tanzanian troops. Amin fled to Libya and later died in exile in Saudi Arabia in 2003.

Answer: West Germany

Members of the Palestinian Black September terrorist group entered the Olympic village in Munich, Germany early in the morning of September 5, 1972. They took eleven Israeli athletes hostage and demanded the release of over 200 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

They also sought the release of two of the founders of a German terrorist group, the Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof Group. By the end of the day, all eleven hostages were dead, along with a policeman and five of the terrorists. Sadly, a forensic expert, Georg Sieber, had been asked prior to the Games to create scenarios for possible security problems. One of these, Situation 21, described a scenario much like the events that actually occurred.

The Olympic planning committee had chosen not to follow through with his suggested preventive measures.

Answer: Chile

The Chilean military and national police worked together to overthrow the government of President Salvador Allende. When the presidential palace was stormed, Allende was found shot in the head, apparently a suicide. Immediately, a military junta, with representatives from each of the military branches, took control and suspended political activity. Some 40,000 people considered to be opponents were rounded up, questioned, many tortured and some killed. Within two months of the takeover, Pinochet had consolidated power and named himself de facto president. In December 1974, the junta transferred the executive power to him. He continued to serve as president until 1990. When he died in 2006, he was facing over 300 charges of crimes, including human rights abuses.

The Chilean government has since officially acknowledged that over 3,000 people either disappeared or were killed and that over 38,000 people endured political imprisonment and/or torture under the regime.

For years, there was considerable speculation over both Allende's death and the role the American CIA might have played. In 2000, the CIA released a report acknowledging that they had had prior knowledge of the coup and that they had provided support to the military junta afterwards. In 2011, Allende's body was exhumed and an independent forensic team confirmed death by suicide.

Answer: India

India carried out its first successful nuclear test 100 meters/300 feet underground on May 18, 1974, becoming the sixth country with nuclear capacity. It was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who officially approved the test. When the test was carried out, she issued a statement affirming that India was committed to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

The nuclear device itself was officially named the "Peaceful Nuclear Explosive" and was more generally referred to as the "Smiling Buddha". India was a signatory to the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water, but had refused to sign the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) because the treaty did not differentiate between military and peaceful nuclear explosions.

Answer: Cambodia

When the Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, seized control of Phnom Penh, Cambodia in April 1975, they immediately began moving the city's population to labor camps in the countryside. Those with connections to the previous government, professionals, intellectuals, monks, and ethnic minorities were purged. Fifteen ethnic minorities were officially banned. Huge numbers starved to death or were killed when they were no longer useful.

The elderly, sick, and children were especially vulnerable.

It has been estimated that over one million people were buried in mass graves sites known as killing fields. In total, almost two million died under Pol Pot's rule. The Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown when Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979.

Answer: South Africa

In 1974, the South African Minister of Bantu Education and Development passed the Afrikaans Medium Decree. The decree made obligatory the use of the Afrikaans language together with English in all black schools from the last year of the primary level through high school.

Indigenous languages were to be used used only for teaching religious instruction, music and physical education. Until then, most local governments had used a combination of indigenous languages and English. Many black students did not know any Afrikaans and, for most, Afrikaans was considered the language of the oppressive apartheid rulers. On the morning of June 16,1976, between 10,000 and 20,000 students walked through streets of the Soweto township near Johannesburg.

They were heading toward a local stadium where they were going to protest the decree and to demand equal educational treatment with white South Africans. Police, who had barricaded the route, opened fire on the children. The violence escalated and by the next day 1500 heavily armed police moved in.

The Soweto Uprising quickly spread through the country. Most sources say that 23 people died on the first day and that the total death count was somewhere between 176 and 700. Photos of dead children were instrumental in raising international awareness and opposition to the apartheid system. June 16 is now a South African holiday "Youth Day" in remembrance of the Soweto Uprising.

Answer: Spain

On March 27,1977 KLM Flight 4805 began its takeoff while Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway of the Los Rodeos Airport (later renamed Tenerife North Airport) in the Canary Islands, an autonomous region of Spain. The final death toll from the collision was 583. Subsequent investigations determined that a series of factors led to the crash, including a sudden blanket of fog that limited visibility, but that the major fault was miscommunication between the control tower and the KLM pilot. The pilot mistook a route clearance instruction for takeoff clearance. Following the accident, major changes were made to aviation procedures, among them requirements for standard phrases and greater use of English.

Answer: England

Louise Brown was the world's first baby born as a result of in vitro fertilization (IVF), conceived when her parents' egg and sperm were united in a Petri dish or cell culture dish. She was born at the Royal Oldham Hospital, near Manchester, England. Her birth was the culmination of years of research by Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards, a British physiologist, working in collaboration with Patrick Steptoe, a British obstetrician and gynaecologist.

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Edwards for his IVF work.

As Steptoe was already deceased, he was not eligible for consideration. The scientific journal "Nature" estimated that more than six million babies were conceived through IVF in the forty years following the birth of Louise Brown.

Answer: USA

Between 75,000 and 125,000 gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people and allies took part in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights to demand equal civil rights and urge the passage of protective civil rights legislation.

The demands included such steps as the repeal of all anti-lesbian/gay legislation, an end to discrimination in the military and federal government, and an end to discrimination in lesbian-mother and gay-father custody cases.