● The British defence minister, Francis Pym, arrived in Beijing for a six-day visit during which he would attempt to push forward talks on the sale of British military hardware to China. Pym was the first British defence minister to visit China.

March 25, 1980

● Japan’s Mitsui Company planned to ship water to Arab desert sheikhdoms in the supertankers which arrived in Japan laden with crude oil, according to Newsweek. The magazine quoted Mitsui as saying the seaborne water would cost less than desalination procedures, and that the “trade” could begin in 1981 after tankers were converted and cleansed to prevent contamination.

● Part of the property stolen from the home of an American consulate official and which was recovered by police, had been stolen again from the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department. The valuables – jewellery worth HK$20,000 (about US$4,000 at the time) – was stolen from the property store of the CID headquarters in Victoria Barracks.

● The Independent Commission Against Corruption was set to launch its biggest public relations campaign to drive home the effects of corruption on the community. To help ensure success, an international advertising agency had been appointed.

● The High Court was told that a syndicate which brought illegal immigrants to the city from Macau made HK$1.5 million (about US$300,000 at the time) out of one trip smuggling 105 people.

Man exchanging wife for a buffalo and Americans rushing to be test tube mothers

March 26, 1980

● London police were hunting six gunmen and a bogus policeman who hijacked a truckload of silver ingots worth £4 million (about HK$44 million at the time) in the country’s biggest bullion robbery. The raid took less than a minute. A man posing as a police officer conducting a traffic census in London’s East End directed the articulated truck and its escorting vehicle off the road. Six men armed with shotguns then bundled the truck driver and his two-man escort into a nearby van. The trio were later found bound, gagged, but unhurt in a locked garage several miles away.

● A prisoner on day leave parachuted back to jail with his girlfriend because he was running late. Prison authorities in Sydney refused to identify the inmate. The 30-year-old prisoner jumped from a plane hired at an airfield 14 miles from the jail with his girlfriend, who as sponsor for the day leave was required to return him to prison. A prison spokesman said: “There is nothing in the regulations to say he could not arrive back by parachute.”

March 27, 1980

● A Mong Kok flat believed to be used as a smelting centre for stolen gold ornaments was uncovered by police. Officers seized 30 taels of gold worth HK$100,000 (about US$20,000 at the time).

March 28, 1980

● The British royal family, under increasing public scrutiny by inflation-plagued citizens, was heavily criticised after the Conservative government gave it a £538,000 (about HK$5.9 million at the time) pay rise and stung just about everyone else with an austerity budget. Critics were most bitter about a 30 per cent pay increase for Queen Elizabeth’s daughter, Princess Anne, who already received £85,000 of the taxpayers’ money in the Civil List, the annual state allowance for members of the royal family.

March 29, 1980

● The wife of a British surgeon had been sentenced to 80 lashes in public in Saudi Arabia for breaking the country’s strict alcohol laws, the Foreign Office said. Penelope Arnot was sentenced by a Jeddah court for serving alcohol at a party where an English nurse and a Dutchman died after falling from a fifth-floor window. Her husband had served five months of a one-year jail term for the same offence.

Remember A Day looks at significant news and events reported by the Post during this week in history