• A panel of technical experts testified that the
18½-minute gap in the tape recording of President Nixon's conversation with
H. R. Haldeman on June 20, 1972, was made by someone pushing the record-erase button at least five times and as many as nine times.
White House attorney
James D. St. Clair objected to all questions about whether the erasure was deliberate. • The first of the 10 "BTK Murders" took place in the U.S. city of
Wichita, Kansas, as a security alarm installer,
Dennis Rader, strangled a family of four people, two of them children. Rader would kill three more victims in the 1970s, then resume the murders in 1985, and would taunt the Wichita police before finally being arrested in 2005. • The
Malari incident took place in
Jakarta, capital of
Indonesia, as thousands of students protested against a state visit by Japan's Prime Minister
Kakuei Tanaka. The riot then turned into an attack on Chinese Indonesians in the suburb of
Glodok. Indonesian security forces intervened, and at least 11 people were killed, 137 injured, and 700 arrested. The mob burned 144 buildings in and around Jakarta. • The Brazilian Congress
voted, 400 to 76, to elect General
Ernesto Geisel over rival candidate
Ulysses Guimarães as
President of Brazil, but not before opposition members halted the proceedings three times with protests. • A school bus-type vehicle carrying farm workers
fell into a drainage canal southwest of
Blythe, California and near
Ripley, California at approximately 6:30 a.m.
PST, before sunrise, killing 19 people and injuring 28. •
Comet Kohoutek, discovered from Earth on March 18, 1973, and predicted to be even brighter than
Halley's Comet, made its closest approach to Earth, coming no closer than 0.8 astronomical units or , and being barely visible to the naked eye. • A Japanese company, Sato Foods Industries Co., Ltd., received U.S. patent No. 3,786,159 for a process for manufacturing
alcohol powder. • The three astronauts on
the third crewed U.S. space mission to Skylab set a new world record for
time spent in space, breaking the mark of 59 days, 11 hours set by the
previous crew on its mission from July 28 to September 25, 1973. Launched on November 16, 1973, the new Skylab astronauts reached 60 days in space later in the day, and would complete 84 days, 1 hour and 12 minutes in space upon their return on February 8. • Actor
John Wayne visited
Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the invitation of
The Harvard Lampoon, to debate students and promote his new film,
McQ. Wayne rode through
Harvard Square from the
Lampoon Castle to the Harvard Square Theatre in an
armored personnel carrier from
Fort Devens, confronted on the way by Native Americans expressing support for the protesters on trial for the
Wounded Knee Occupation. At the debate, Wayne claimed not to be able to hear a question about his participation in enforcing the
Hollywood blacklist. (right) and
Henry Winkler (left) • The U.S. TV sitcom
Happy Days debuted on
ABC. After switching in 1975 to being filmed in front of a live audience,
Happy Days would reach number one in the
Nielsen ratings in the United States. Critic reaction was mixed, with Jay Sharbutt of the Associated Press writing, "It is a half-hour comedy series. It is set in the 1950s. It is awful," but adding that it "does a pretty fair job of recapturing the atmosphere of the era," and
Kay Gardella of New York's
Daily News commenting that as a midseason replacement, "some of the new arrivals are worse than the shows that were dropped." • The
Knight Street Bridge opened, joining Vancouver and
Richmond, British Columbia. •
Born: Adam Ledwoń, Polish footballer with 18 caps for the Poland National Team; in
Olesno (committed suicide 2008) •
Died: •
Josef Smrkovský, 62, Czechoslovak politician who had led the reforms of the
Prague Spring of 1968 and was later punished, died of cancer. •
Charles Rosher,
A.S.C., 88, English-born cinematographer •
Yosef Serlin, 67, Israeli Minister of Health, 1952 to 1955, and
Zionist activist, lawyer and member of the
Knesset ==January 16, 1974 (Wednesday)==