May 4
An all-female Japanese team summits Manaslu in Nepal, becoming the first women to climb an 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) peak.
The Expo ’74 world’s fair opens in Spokane, Washington.
May 6 – Willy Brandt West Germany’s chancellor resigns; replaced by Helmut Schmidt.
May 17 – Dublin and Monaghan bombings: The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), explode four car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland. The attacks kill 33 civilians and wound almost 300, the highest number of casualties in any single day during “The Troubles”.
A massive, two-hour shootout between the Los Angeles Police Department and members of the Symbionese Liberation Army leaves six SLA members, including SLA leader Donald DeFreeze, dead.
May 18
Australian federal election, 1974: Gough Whitlam’s Labor Government is re-elected with a reduced majority, defeating the Liberal/Country Coalition led by Billy Snedden. Whitlam consequently becomes the first Labor Prime Minister to be re-elected in his own right. The Democratic Labor Party meanwhile lost all five of their Senate seats, effectively wiping them out as a political force.
Nuclear test: Under Project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon, becoming the 6th nation to do so.
The Warsaw radio mast is completed, the second tallest structure ever built (it collapses on August 8, 1991).
May 19 – The Philadelphia Flyers defeat the Boston Bruins to become the first team from the 1967 NHL expansion class to win the Stanley Cup in the North American National Hockey League.
May 30 – NASA’s ATS-6 satellite is launched.
June
June 4 – The Cleveland Indians stage an ill-advised Ten Cent Beer Night for a game against the Texas Rangers at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Cleveland forfeits after alcohol-fueled mayhem and violence spreads from the stands onto the field.
June 13 – The 1974 FIFA World Cup begins in West Germany.
June 17 – A bomb explodes in Westminster Hall, the oldest part of the British Houses of Parliament. The hall’s annex, housing offices and a canteen, is destroyed by the bombing, attributed by police to the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army.
June 26 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time, to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
June 29
Isabel Perón is sworn in as the first female President of Argentina, replacing her sick husband Juan Perón, who dies 2 days later.
America Sings attraction opens to the public for the first time at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.
July
July 7 – West Germany beats the Netherlands 2–1 to win the 1974 FIFA World Cup. The West German football team are awarded the new FIFA World Cup Trophy.
July 8 – Two weeks after the attraction’s opening, an 18-year-old employee is crushed to her death while working on America Sings at Disneyland. This is the first casualty to occur to an employee at a Disney Park.
July 15
The Greek military junta sponsors a coup d’état in Cyprus, replacing President Makarios III with Nikos Sampson.
News anchor Christine Chubbuck commits suicide during a live broadcast on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida.
July 16 – Elmer Wayne Henley is sentenced to life imprisonment for assisting Dean Corll in murdering 28 Texas boys from 1970 to 1973.
July 19 – Railcar explosion in Decatur, Illinois. A tanker car collides with a Norfolk & Western boxcar. Seven people are killed, 349 are injured and $18 million in property damage.
July 20 – The Turkish invasion of Cyprus occurs.
July 23 – The Greek military junta is replaced by a civilian government, the metapolitefsi.
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