On April 12 in San Francisco, a judge, reserving his final decision on sentencing of 22-year-old Patricia Hearst for armed bank robbery, ordered that she be committed for a 90-day psychiatric study. Judge Oliver Carter made the surprise move after a request from Hearst's lawyer. Judge Carter, following the letter of the law, temporarily imposed the maximum sentence of 25 years' jail on two counts but said he would reduce the sentence no matter what the outcome of the study. Hearst was convicted on March 20 of willingly taking part in the holdup of a San Francisco bank branch two years ago. The jury rejected her contention that she was forced into the crime by the radicals who kidnapped her 10 weeks before the robbery.
So how did an airline celebrate delivery of a new aircraft 33 years ago? Well, Air New Zealand hosted the 'highest cocktail party of the year'. Some 200 airline staff, journalists, businessmen and travel agents gathered at Kai Tak to board one of the carrier's new DC-10s, which will be used on the New Zealand-Australia-Hongkong route. 'Where do you think we are going?' asked one person. But no one was really concerned once in the air, with the corks of bubbly popping all over the place. The DC-10 made its way 150 miles to the south of the Colony 30,000 feet above the South China Sea, turned around and came back to Kai Tak after an hour.
A Moscow factory opened the first workshop in the Soviet Union to offer alcoholics a job and therapy at the same time. The 'Proletarian Toil' metalworking factory took the initiative at the urging of health authorities as an experiment into ways of tackling alcoholism. In the 18 months since it opened, 150 people answered the advertisements. So far 45 of the alcoholics broke the habit, 78 were under observation and 28 returned to the bottle.
Three women visited an Australian base at the Antarctic for the first time this year. They spent 12 days at Casey, on the Antarctic coast, in January during the summer changeover period. The changeover is when the supply ship Thala Dan berths at the base to pick up 26 scientists and support staff who spent the winter there and drop off a new crew of 26. Jutta Hosel, a photographer with the Antarctic division of the Department of Science and Consumer Affairs, Elizabeth Chipman, the division's publications officer, and Sheilagh Robinson, officer in charge of personal cables from Antarctic base staff all went to Macquarie Island for three days in 1971.
Fishermen were caught by their prey on April 10 off Pompano Beach, south Florida. Bathers ran in terror from the surf when bluefish went into a feeding frenzy. 'I really felt I was in Jaws,' said one victim as she was being treated for cuts on her hand at a hospital. She was riding the waves at the beach when she was surrounded by the slashing fish. 'Then a big fish, at least 2 feet long, grabbed me. I grabbed him with my other hand and whacked him. His eyes - he was looking at me so mean.' About 400 bluefish were caught but the fishermen were bitten when they reached into the water to retrieve their catch.
'Hang Teng - Protesters Demand' was the front-page headline on the third day of coverage of the purging of former vice-premier Teng Hsiao-ping (Deng Xiaoping). Wall posters in Shanghai demanded the death sentence for Teng. It was not clear whether they had been officially sanctioned. About 200,000 people attended a mass rally, some factories were closed and some areas were barred to foreigners, sources said. He was stripped of all his posts on April 7. Hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets beating gongs and drums, and chanting slogans heralding the party pronouncements to dump Teng in the 'rubbish bin of history'. The 73-year-old's departure followed a bitter three-month power struggle. The People's Daily named the former vice-premier as the 'chief capitalist roader', a revisionist and an enemy of Chairman Mao Tse-tung.