● Prince Charles should find a job as governor of one of Britain’s remaining colonies, Labour MP Willie Hamilton suggested. Hamilton said: “Unless something is soon found for him he will begin soon to look like nothing more than a rich jet-setting playboy.” At that time, Britain had 13 dependent territories, the largest of which was Hong Kong.

● Chinese Communist Party Chairman Hua Guofeng openly criticised his predecessor, Mao Zedong, for mistakes he made in the final years of his life, and set the stage for more big changes at party and state congresses scheduled for later that year.

● Britain and China had finally settled the terms of their civil aviation agreement and air services between London and Beijing were expected to begin in November that year.

Miracle cancer cure, moving Mao, and policeman given City of London honour: headlines from 40 years ago

August 12, 1980

● China declared the end of personality cults with a party central centre directive banning the construction of new memorial halls named after Chairman Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders. Elaborate funeral services for senior officials were also to be banned. Instead, the party directed that there should be more praises for the workers, peasants and soldiers while giving less publicity to individuals.

● Britain’s euthanasia society, Dignity in Dying, fearing its officials could be jailed, said it would not publish a previously announced guide on how to commit suicide. Executives of the 45-year-old group, whose offices were raided by police a month earlier, declared the decision meant “tragedy and continued distress and personal suffering” for thousands of incurably ill people longing for death.

August 13, 1980

● Demonstrators shouted “Death to the queen” and “Death to Carter” during rallies outside the British Embassy in Tehran in protest over the arrest of 68 Iranian students in London a week before.

August 14, 1980

● A young man in southern China who claimed to be a God in touch with the heavenly spirits had been executed for killing 13 of his disciples, People’s Daily said. The paper said the 24-year-old farmworker convinced the secretary of his commune in Guizhou province in southwest China that he was the God of Literature, and often went up to heaven to tell the other Gods about the virtues and vices of the people he knew.

August 15, 1980

● Police in Melbourne had charged a 46-year-old Yugoslav migrant with imprisoning his eight children in a fortresslike suburban house for 10 years. Detectives who raided the house said the captives, aged between two and 21, were allowed only one meal a day, knew almost nothing about Australia and were unfamiliar with simple gadgets such as telephones. The father kept them inside the timber house rigged with alarms and sirens and screened at the back by a five-metre high iron fence.

● Britain’s pioneer of budget air travel, Sir Freddie Laker, offered travellers the cheapest tickets at that time from London to New York. The airline entrepreneur announced that from October 15 that year, he would offer a single standby standard fare of £78 (about HK$858 at the time) on his Skytrain flights to New York. Similar standby tickets for Miami would cost £82.

Nudists run amok, Concorde cancelled, and Elton John draws MP’s ire: headlines from 40 years ago

● After months of speculation about who would buy Gammon House from the Carrian Group, the word was out that the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) was the successful suitor with a bid of HK$1.18 billion (about US$236 million at the time) for roughly 75 per cent of the building. Several reliable sources confirmed that the Chinese government was the actual buyer, through the CAAC, behind the bid.

August 16, 1980

● Seven Israeli aircraft cabin cleaners almost died after eating a tart left behind by a passenger. While cleaning the cabin of an Israel Airlines Boeing 747 arrived from New York, the crew shared a large cream tart they found on one of the seats. When the team left the aircraft they almost became unconscious. The pastry’s filling was heroin, which was apparently left behind by a passenger who decided not to risk trying to get it through customs.

● Playboy magazine’s Playmate of that year was killed with a shotgun blast in the face by her estranged husband, who then shot himself dead, police in Los Angeles said. Dorothy Stratten, 20, was found sprawled across a bed in her two-storey west Los Angeles home.

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