Hans Remembers- Saturday February 21, 1970- 50 years ago.

• The Jackson Five- make their first ever appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. The band perform their new single “ABC”- which would go to #1 on the charts- their first four singles in fact would go to #1. Front man- Michael Jackson tells Dick that he likes the weather in Los Angeles-where it is much warmer than their home town of Gary, Indiana– and that he digs The Beatles.

• A special commission chaired by former U.S. Defense Secretary Thomas Gates Jr- recommends that and end be put to the drafting of American men into the military. The recommendation to President Richard Milhous Nixon-was to go to an all volunteer force. The Tricky One would reverse his position and extend the draft for two more years.

• I don’t know if I would have wanted to fly in an airplane in this era. It sure does seem like there were a lot of plane crashes. The one on this date though was due to terrorism. All 47 aboard a Swissair Flight 330 which departed Zurich and was bound for Tel Aviv was damaged by  a terrorists bomb. The pilot turned the plane back toward Zurich but didn’t make it- crashing in the forest at Wurenlingen- obliterating the plane and everyone and everything onboard. The pilots last message to the tower was “We’re crashing. Goodbye everybody.”