May 24, 1976 – CBS World News Roundup – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
It was Primary season then, 40 years ago. On May 24, 1976 the race was tightening and heading to the big prize of California on June 8. On this day it was the Oregon Primary and the following day it was six more, all hotly contested. President Ford was campaigning in Nevada on this day. It was one of the states slated to cast votes in the coming day. The campaigning there was expected to last a total of 3 hours. Ford and his aides thought victory in Nevada was unlikely, and so very little time was budgeted. Ford opted instead to come back to California where the stakes were much higher and the delegate count considerably larger, and where Reagan was ahead as of this day. Aides felt a Ford victory in California would assure a Ford nomination on the first ballot, come convention-time.
The once-decidedly chilly relations between the U.S. and Sweden were warming a bit on this day. Secretary of State Kissinger met with Sweden’s Prime Minister Olaf Palme. The get-together symbolized burying of the hatchet between the U.S. and Sweden. A return to normalcy in relations following the sharp strain that had developed at the time of the 1972 Christmas Bombings of North Vietnam. Palme denounced the U.S. for the B-52 raids and then-President Nixon shot back by recalling the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden. But things had since eased between Washington and Stockholm. Kissinger officially arrived the previous night – greeted by a crowd estimated at some 10,000 who were protesting his visit.
Meanwhile in Beirut, the PlO joined the Lebanese leftists in rejecting the French offer of peacekeeping troops and the fighting once again escalated in the Capitol and the countryside. Police reported some 71 persons killed overnight.
In Tokyo – right-wingers broke through police lines and smashed several windows of the Japanese Parliament. But they failed to halt the ratification of the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Japan, the only nation to suffer a nuclear attack, became the n96th nation to ratify.
And that’s a small slice of what went on this May 24, 1976, as reported by the CBS World News Roundup.
