The 99-year lease, made by the Bryan–Chamorro Treaty, had given the U.S. the right to place military bases on the islands, and had originally been set to expire on August 4, 2013. Franz Jonas was re-elected as President of Austria for another six-year term, defeating Kurt Waldheim. The Austrian chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, faced elections scheduled for October 10 for the Nationalrat. Parliamentary elections were held in Hungary. For the first time under Hungary's Communist government, voters had a choice between members of the nation's Communist Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSzMP) and non-official challengers, with 402 candidates running for the 352 seats of the Országgyűlés. In 49 races, voters had a choice between two candidates. The non-official challengers were still required to pledge support to the MSzMP's agenda, and eight of the Communist incumbents were defeated for re-election by a non-MSzMP opponent. For 168 seats, the non-Communist candidate was unopposed. Of those elected, 224 were members of the Communist nation's sole legal political organization, the other 178 were independents. Party General Secretary János Kádár, Hungary's de facto leader, continued as its de jure leader as well as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Todor Zhivkov was re-elected as leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The 110-member Central Committee of the Party also re-elected the 11 full members of the Politburo, but dropped Deputy Premier Lachezar Avramov from the Politburo. The vote came at the conclusion of the 10th Party Congress, which had opened four days earlier. After its unsuccessful attempt to dock with the Salyut 1 space station, and then to unhook from the space station, Soyuz 10 returned to Earth, landing in the Kazakh SSR at 5:40 in the morning local time (2340 UTC 4/24) almost exactly 48 hours after it had launched. Died: T. V. Soong (Soong Tse-ven), 76, Chinese banker and former Premier of the Republic of China from 1945 to 1947, choked to death at a dinner party at the home of Edward Eu, the chairman of the U.S. branch of the Bank of Canton. April 26, 1971 (Monday) U.S. Air Force Majors Thomas B. Estes and Dewain C. Vick set a supersonic flight endurance record, spending 10 hours and 30 minutes in the air in a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird and traveling in excess of (equivalent to halfway around the world) and slowing to subsonic speeds only for refueling. At times, the aircraft exceeded Mach 3. The