Remember A Day | Cannibal crash survivors, 10-year-old gives birth to twins and China blanks Soviet sit-down request: headlines from 40 years ago
- A journey back through time to look at significant news and events reported by the South China Morning Post from this week in history
A 10-year-old girl giving birth to twins and petrol prices rising by 500 per cent made the headlines four decades ago this week.
June 3, 1979
● One of two survivors of an Idaho plane crash said he and his sister-in-law ate parts of her father’s body while they desperately waited to be rescued from the snow-covered White Cloud Mountains in the western United States. Brent Dyer, 20, said the decision to eat part of the body of Donald Johnson, 50, was made after he and Donna Johnson, 18, had been without food for nearly a month. The trio were passengers on board a light aircraft which crashed on May 5 that year.
● A 10-year-old girl gave birth to twins in a hospital in Indianapolis a week before. A spokeswoman for the American Medical Association said the case was unique, based on their records. The mother’s identity and information about her pregnancy were not disclosed. The twins weighed 3 lbs and 6 oz each were doing well upon discharge. Hospital records showed there had been instances of girls as young as six years old giving birth in some Native American tribes.
June 4, 1979