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August 15, 1971

Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from August 15, 1971

New Complex Highlights The 2 Worlds of Newark

By Fox Butterfield Special to The New York Times

Contrast between Newark's white-controlled business community and surrounding black ghetto areas seen highlighted by $50-million Gateway Center, massive downtown office and hotel complex, which, when completed, will have direct link to Penn Station enabling commuters to get to their offices without setting foot in sts; business community, committed to city's future, has begun series of remedial educ and job programs in effort to keep gap from widening; signs of growing divergence between white and black Newark cited; illus

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Music on My Birthday

Billboard 200

The Top 50 albums for the chart week of August 11, 1971, covering August 15, 1971.

  1. 1
    Album cover for Tapestry by Carole King

    Tapestry

    Carole King

    Last week
    1
    Peak
    1
    Weeks
    19
  2. 2
    Album cover for Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon by James Taylor

    Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon

    James Taylor

    Last week
    2
    Peak
    2
    Weeks
    15
  3. 3
    Album cover for Jesus Christ Superstar by Various Artists

    Jesus Christ Superstar

    Various Artists

    Last week
    4
    Peak
    1
    Weeks
    39
  4. 4
    Album cover for Ram by Paul & Linda McCartney

    Ram

    Paul & Linda McCartney

    Last week
    3
    Peak
    3
    Weeks
    11
  5. 5
    Album cover for Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones

    Sticky Fingers

    The Rolling Stones

    Last week
    5
    Peak
    1
    Weeks
    14

Notable Births

Adnan Sami

1971Adnan Sami, Indian singer, musician, music composer, pianist and actor[†]

Adnan Sami Khan is an Indian singer, musician, composer, actor and pianist. He performs Indian and Western music in many languages, such as Hindi, Urdu, English, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. He has been awarded with Padma Shri for his remarkable contribution to music. His most notable instrument is the piano. He has been credited as "the first musician to have played the santoor and Indian classical music on the piano". A review in the US-based Keyboard magazine described him as the fastest keyboard player in the world and called him the keyboard discovery of the nineties.

Notable Deaths

Paul Lukas

1971Paul Lukas, Hungarian-American actor (born 1887)[†]

Paul Lukas was a Hungarian actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, for his performance in the film Watch on the Rhine (1943), reprising the role he created on the Broadway stage.

Historical Events

Richard Nixon

1971President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.[†]

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 36th vice president under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961, and also as a representative and senator from California. His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Bahrain

1971Bahrain gains independence from the United Kingdom.[†]

Bahrain, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island country in West Asia. Situated on the Persian Gulf, it comprises a small archipelago of 50 natural islands and an additional 33 artificial islands, centered on Bahrain Island, which makes up around 83 percent of the country's landmass. Bahrain is situated between Qatar and the northeastern coast of Saudi Arabia, to which it is connected by the King Fahd Causeway. The population of Bahrain is 1,501,635 as of 14 May 2023, of whom 712,362 (47.44%) are Bahraini nationals and 789,273 are expatriates spanning 2,000 ethnicities. Bahrain spans some 760 square kilometres (290 sq mi), and is the third-smallest nation in Asia after the Maldives and Singapore. The capital and largest city is Manama.

Historical Context for August 15, 1971

In 1971, the world population was approximately 3,769,847,865 people[†]