There was a whole lot that went on in 1973. The year commenced with the expansion of the European Economic Community with the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland plus Denmark joining on January 1. The European Economic Community down the road turns into the European Union. Peace negotiations carried on from 1972 during the war within Vietnam. On January 15 the US President, Richard Nixon announces the suspensions of war action within North Vietnam citing progress with the peace negotiations. By March 17, almost all of the remaining US military continue to depart Vietnam. On January 22nd, the boxer George Foreman overcame Joe Frazier in one of the all-time classic battles to get the heavyweight world boxing championship. In the Chinese province of Sichuan on February 6th, a 7.6 quake kills 2200 individuals and injuring 2700 people. On April 1 the UK starts the Value Added Tax (VAT) in to the tax system.

The year of 1970 was a fascinating year for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it is most memorable because of the wide variety of calamities which occurred, several big and several small. Initially on January 5th these was a 7.1 magnitude Tonghai quake which affected Tonghai County, within the Yunnan province in China, having an approximated 10,000 and 15,000 people killed and over 26,000 injured. On February 1 the Benavídez railway catastrophe close to Buenos Aires in Argentina occured with the derailing of a train killed 236 individuals. An avalanche at Val-d’Isère in France on February 10 killed 41 travellers to the vicinity. On April 11 one more avalanche above a TB respite hospital in the French Alps killed 74 individuals, many of them being adolescent boys. On March 4, the France sub Eurydice imploded whilst undertaking a training dive in the Mediterranean Sea killing all on board. In Osakain Japan on April 8th, a natural gas explosion at a metro construction site killed 79 people and injured over 400. On May 31st a 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Ancash, in Peru accompanied by a landslide buried the town of Yungay. It was determined that in between 66,000 and 70,000 individuals were killed. On July 3 all 112 individuals on board Dan-Air Flight 1903 were killed when the British De Havilland Comet plane crashes into mountain tops north of Barcelona in Spain. Yet another crash on July 5th occurred with Air Canada Flight 621 crashing close to Toronto Airport, Toronto, in Ontario killing all 109 passengers and crew on board. In Melbourne, Australia on October 15th a part of the new West Gate Bridge fell into the river beneath, killing 35 building workers. On October 15 a cholera epidemic breaks out in Istanbul in Turkey that later develops on October 28th to east Slovakia leading to Hungary to close its border with Czechoslovakia. On November 13, a 120-mph tropical storm hits the heavily populated Ganges Delta region in East Pakistan (in what is currently known as Bangladesh), kills an estimated 500,000 individuals which makes it the 20th century’s most severe cyclone disasters. On December 12th there had been a landslide in western Colombia which left 200 people dead.

There had been plenty of interesting things that came about in the year of 1972, and not really all of them were of any great historic importance but were of interest. The year had been selected ae The International Year of the Book by the United Nations. At the beginning of 1972 Kurt Waldheim, a politician and diplomat from Austria, starts as the Secretary-General of the U. N.. He remains in the job until 1981. There was a calamity in New Delhi in India on January 21 when a bootlegger distributed some wood alcohol for a marriage party and a one hundred of them die from getting poisoned. On the 24 January, a Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi is discovered in Guam in which he’d spent twenty-eight years concealed in the rainforest after he failed to surrender after World War 2 as he had not been prepared to affirm that Japan had given up. Later in Japan Shoichi turn out to be a popular television personality and an advocate of a uncomplicated living lifestyle. By the end of the month, on the 30th there was Bloody Sunday in which the British Army killed fourteen unarmed nationalist civil rights protestors in Derry, Northern Ireland. This further inflamed tensions between Northern Ireland and the English. The Winter Olympic games come about from February 3rd-13th around Sapporo, Japan. On February 17th, a landmark is achieved by the Volkswagen Beetle as their product sales overtook the ones from the Ford Model Tautomobile when the 15,007,034th VW Beetle was released.