LOSE YOURSELF IN 1970

DRAMA IN THE SKIES

Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked five airliners in September. They included one operated by BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), the first time that a British aircraft had been seized in flight.

Four planes – an El Al Boeing 707, a TWA Boeing 707, a Swissair Douglas DC-8 and a Pan Am Boeing 747 – were taken on 6 September but the attempt on the El Al flight from Tel Aviv to New York failed and it made an emergency landing at Heathrow where the one surviving hijacker was promptly arrested. In response a PFLP sympathiser hijacked a BOAC Vickers VC10 flying from Bombay to London three days later to pressurise the British into releasing its prisoner.

Three of the planes were diverted to an airstrip in Jordan where they were blown up after the passengers had been freed, following negotiations with the UK government that saw the captive hijacker also freed.

HELLO, GLASTONBURY!

Dairy farmer Michael Eavis decided to stage a small music festival on his 150-acre Worthy Farm in Pilton near Glastonbury in Somerset. The idea came from the earlier open-air Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, where Eavis saw Led Zeppelin. He put on his own Pop, Folk & Blues Festival in September. Some 1500

people attended the event, for which tickets were £1 (and milk from the farm was free). The main acts were meant to be The Kinks and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, but they were replaced at the last minute by Tyrannosaurus Rex, soon to change their name to T. Rex, featuring lead singer Marc Bolan.

The following year, the festival – now named Glastonbury Fair – saw the first incarnation of the Pyramid Stage and some bloke called David Bowie.