15, 1971 (Thursday) All forty people on board a Philippine Air Force C-47 transport were killed when the plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Cesar Basa Air Base at Floridablanca for a flight to Nichols Air Field at Manila. The plane was transporting Philippine Air Force officers and their families. A 3-year old child survived the crash but died later at a hospital. The revised writing system of the Malayalam language of India went into effect for all government publications in the state of Kerala, reducing its 1,000 characters to 57 (42 consonants and 15 vowels). The effective date was the first day of the Kerala New Year on the Malayalam Calendar, the 1st of Metam 1146 at that time. Sergei Anokhin, a Russian test pilot in training to become a cosmonaut, was injured in the crash of a Tupolev Tu-16 into the Aral Sea while the bomber was flying parabolas for zero-G tests of the engine of the Molniya Block L upper stage, to study why the stage was continually failing to restart in earth orbit. The U.S. fishing vessel Lynda K was lost in the Gulf of Alaska somewhere between Homer and Seward, Alaska. Born: Finidi George, Nigerian soccer player, in Port Harcourt Died: Vladimir Rolović, 54, Yugoslavia's Ambassador to Sweden, died eight days after being shot by Croatian terrorists. Friedebert Tuglas, 85, Estonian writer and Soviet dissident April 16, 1971 (Friday) Computer scientist Abhay Bhushan wrote , the first File Transfer Protocol for ARPANET, the U.S. Department of Defense computer communication network that was the predecessor to the Internet. Born: Natasha Zvereva, Soviet Belarusian tennis player, in Minsk, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, Mexican-American singer known as the "Queen of Tejano Music"; in Lake Jackson, Texas (murdered 1995) April 17, 1971 (Saturday) The People's Republic of Bangladesh was declared by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, at Baidyanathtala, a city on the border with India, where the leaders of the rebellion had relocated. A provisional government for Bangladesh was sworn in, with Mujibur as the first President and Tajuddin Ahmad as the first Prime Minister. A legislature, the Constituent Assembly of Bangladesh, was created with many of the East Pakistan politicians who had been elected to the Pakistan National Assembly that had been canceled in March before it could meet. Baidyanathtala would later be renamed Mujibnagar in honor of Mujibur Rahman. In the Belgian general election, the Belgian Socialist