10 Stories That Gripped the World 50 Years Ago in 1975

The year 1975 saw its fair share of momentous events, including harrowing catastrophes, political upheavals, and some happenings in the music and movie worlds to lighten the tone a little. Things were grim for Vietnam and Cambodia; transport disasters struck in England and the Great Lakes, and a household name in computing first appeared. Read on for more on those and other stories that gripped the world five decades ago in 1975.

Related: 10 Eyewitness Accounts of History

10 Vietnam War Ends

On the last day of April, the Vietnam War, a marathon conflict that actually started in 1954, finally came to an end when North Vietnamese troops entered Saigon and the South Vietnamese government surrendered. During the 1950s, only a small number of U.S. military advisors were in South Vietnam, but as the years rolled by, the number of American troops rocketed until, at their peak in 1969, they numbered 543,400. By 1973, nearly all U.S. troops had left.

The final chaotic evacuation of American soldiers, civilians, and other foreign nationals started on April 29. A shocked American public watched appalling scenes on their TVs as panicked civilians, supported by 800 U.S. Marines, scrambled to escape the onslaught of the Communist North. Unforgettably haunting images showed people struggling to board helicopters on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

This horrendous conflict saw the deaths of some two million civilians on both sides, 1.1 million North Vietnamese fighters, 250,00 South Vietnamese soldiers, and 58,000 American troops.^[1]

9 The Iron Lady Arrives

“Iron Lady” was the nickname British Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher earned for herself because of her determined anti-communism stance during the Cold War. In 1975, the Conservative Party’s general election victory that made Thatcher prime minister was still four years away. However, the year was still a highly significant one for Thatcher, as that was when she became the first female leader of the Conservatives. Indeed, she was the first woman to lead any major British political party. She’d come a long way from her provincial background in the town of Grantham, where her father had owned a grocery store.

Born in 1925, Thatcher won a place at the elite Oxford University, where she studied chemistry and joined the Conservative Party. Elected as an MP for the North London constituency of Finchley in 1959, Thatcher held the post of prime minister for 11 years. That was despite having herself said in 1970, “There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime—the male population is too prejudiced.”^[2]

8 Micro-Soft Founded

It was in April 1975 that Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Micro-Soft, and no, that’s not a misprint. It was the original name before it was streamlined to simply become Microsoft. And if you’ve managed to live your life without ever using any of Microsoft’s products, we’d venture that you may well have been living in a cave high in the Himalayas.

Famously, Gates and Allen, pals since boyhood, started their company in a garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, before moving up a rung to headquarter their fledgling business in the city’s Sundowner Motor Hotel. The duo first developed software for the long-forgotten Altair 8800 computer.

However, their big breakthrough came in 1981 when they worked with IBM to create the operating system that made personal computers mainstream, MS-DOS. Then, it was but a hop, skip, and a jump to the world of Windows and multi-billionaire status for Gates and Allen.^[3]

7 Attempted Assassinations of President Gerald Ford

You could say that September 1975 was a terrible month for President Gerald Ford since there were two separate attempts on his life. But then again, you might think that he was a very lucky man since both bids to kill him failed.

The first assassination attempt came on September 5 when the president was visiting Sacramento, California. The assailant, armed with a .45 caliber handgun, was 26-year-old Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme described as “a petite, red-haired, freckle-faced young woman”. As she aimed her weapon, Secret Service agents jumped on her, manhandling her to the ground before she could fire. Fromme, a member of the infamously murderous Manson Family, received a life sentence but was paroled in 2009.

The second attempt on Ford’s life came just 17 days later when Sara Jane Moore, “a mentally unstable accountant,” fired a single shot at the president, which missed. A former Marine at the scene, Oliver Sipple, grabbed her arm, bringing the attempt to an end. Like Fromme, Moore earned a life sentence but was freed on parole in 2007.^[4]

6 A Very Large Shark

Stephen Spielberg was just 27 when he scored his first blockbuster hit with Jaws, his movie about a Great White shark that strikes fear into the hearts of residents in a New England coastal town. The film’s memorable tagline was “You’ll never go in the water again.”

Released in June, the movie version of Peter Benchley’s novel was the highest-grossing cinematic release of all time in 1975. It won three Oscars, including one for John Williams, who composed the film’s nerve-jangling theme tune. The $12 million production was dogged by problems getting the mechanical shark to work correctly.

But Jaws did not take the coveted Oscar for best movie that year, which instead went to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II. And Roy Scheider’s memorable portrayal of Police Chief Martin Brody also failed to excite the Oscar judges.^[5]

5 Banqiao Dam Failure

Built in 1951-52, the Banqiao Dam was a 387-foot (118-meter) high clay barrier across the River Ru in western China’s Henan Province. It was constructed during the Chinese Communist Party’s determined dash to modernize their nation. Unfortunately, it soon began to betray evidence of shoddy workmanship. Cracks began to appear in the dam wall, which could hold as much as 17.4 billion cubic feet of water, so efforts were made to reinforce it.

Until August 1975, the repairs seemed to have worked, but it was then that catastrophe struck in the shape of Typhoon Nina. This cataclysmic storm produced water levels that were twice as high as the once-in-a-1,000-year flood specification that the Banqiao Dam had been built to. The first day of the typhoon produced more rain than the area usually had in a whole year, followed by three more days of heavy rain.

The dam breached, resulting in a 30-mile-an-hour (48 km/h) deluge of water over 30 feet (9 meters) high and as much as 7 miles (11.3 km) across. Other dams in the area also collapsed, and the floods killed some 26,00 people. A further 145,000 died from disease caused by contaminated water.^[6]

4 Born to Run

“Born to Run” was, of course, the title of Bruce Springsteen’s first big commercial hit single, which gave his career the boost that saw him transformed from an artist with a small but loyal following into a major American star. In 1973, his label Columbia promoted him as the next Bob Dylan with little success, but that was all changed by “Born to Run’s” entry into the Top 40 two years later.

The hit single was taken from Springsteen’s third album of the same name, and it also became a rock classic. Springsteen’s entry into America’s rock star pantheon was cemented by cover articles in both Newsweek and Time Magazine later in the year.

It was a year that also saw two other musical firsts. In January, Barry Manilow scored his first hit with “Mandy,” while a band with a rather different style, the Sex Pistols, played their first raucous gig at London’s Saint Martin’s College of Art in November.^[7]

3 Horror in Cambodia

In a century notable for its grim episodes, the Khmer Rouge’s power grab in Cambodia, or Kampuchea as the group renamed it, easily ranks as one of the grimmest of all. On April 17, after five years of bitter civil war, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, marched into Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, and quickly began to impose its fanatical brand of Marxism. They planned to completely reset Cambodian society, and the first thing the Khmer Rouge cadres did was to herd the entire population of the capital into the countryside.

That brutal move was just the start of a viciously cruel campaign that saw as many as two million Cambodians lose their lives to murder, disease, and starvation. The Khmer Rouge killed anyone they judged to be bourgeois or intellectual. People were singled out for persecution on bizarrely spurious pretexts such as speaking a foreign language, enjoying high culture, or even just wearing spectacles.

The unfortunate people of Cambodia had to live under this ruthless communist dictatorship until 1979, when invading Vietnamese troops overthrew the regime.^[8]

2 Tragedy on Lake Superior

Launched in 1958, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a 730-foot (222-meter) long freighter weighing 13,000 tons, which plied its trade on the Great Lakes. On a November day, the Fitzgerald sailed from the Lake Superior port of Superior, Wisconsin, bound for Detroit, Michigan, loaded with 26,000 tons of iron ore.

The day after setting off, the Fitzgerald’s skipper, Ernest McSorley, a man with 44 years of experience, radioed another ship on the Lakes. He told his colleagues that his vessel had met “one of the worst seas he had ever been in” and that his ship was listing and its radar equipment was out of action.

Hours later, McSorley told another vessel on the Lakes that his ship was coping with the difficult circumstances. Yet shortly after, the Fitzgerald’s radar signal disappeared. She had sunk with all hands, and every one of the 29-strong crew perished.

No distress signal was sent prior to the sinking, and the lifeboats were untouched, so investigators concluded that the sinking must have happened very suddenly. They also suspected that the ship may have sunk because she was overloaded.^[9]

1 A London Tube Disaster

The London Underground—or the Tube as locals call it—is generally a very safe service that many Londoners use on a daily basis. But on a February morning in 1975, something went terribly wrong.

Carrying 300 passengers, a train traveled between two Central London stations, Old Street and Moorgate on the Northern Line. As the train pulled into Moorgate, the driver, 56-year-old Leslie Newson, should have been applying the brakes. But he didn’t, and the six-carriage train smashed into a wall at 40 mph (64.4 km/h). To this day, no one has discovered exactly why Newson failed to slow the train as it entered the station.

In the resulting crash, Newson and 42 of his passengers lost their lives, and nearly 80 were injured in the worst accident the Tube system has ever seen. Although it wasn’t the worst-ever death toll on the Tube. That came in 1943 when a German bomb smashed into East London’s Bethnal Green Tube station, where Londoners were sheltering, and killed 173. But that, of course, was no accident.^[10]