London suburb of Ealing while en route from London to Oxford. The train was crowded with almost 600 people when the locomotive and the first four-passenger cars ran off the rails, struck and embankment, and overturned. Born: Zulfiya Zabirova, Uzbek professional cyclist and 1996 Olympic gold medalist for the women's time trial event, later the 2002 world champion in the same event; in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union Died: Povilas Plechavičius, 83, former commander of the Army of Lithuania, and leader of the 1926 military coup d'état that overthrew President Kazys Grinius December 20, 1973 (Thursday) Spain's Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco was assassinated in Madrid by the Basque terrorist organization ETA, which had set a bomb on a street and detonated it as Carrero was departing Mass at the Cathedral of San Francisco de Borja near Madrid. Carrero was killed along with his chauffeur and a police bodyguard. Oracuto Fernandez Miranda was appointed as the interim premier until a permanent replacement could be selected. Investigators learned that the assassins had rented a basement apartment across from the church and dug a tunnel to a point under the street in order to place explosives beneath Carrero's route. Police identified Jose Benaran as the person who detonated the bomb, and Jose Abaitua as the person who dug the tunnel Thirteen harness racing drivers were arrested for allegedly conspiring to fix Superfecta races at Roosevelt and Yonkers Raceways in New York. The U.S. House of Representatives voted, 355 to 4, to pass the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The only opposing votes were from Congressmen Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, H. R. Gross of Iowa, Robin Beard of Tennessee and Bob Price of Texas. Died: Bobby Darin (stage name for Walden Robert Cassotto), 37, American pop music singer, died after heart surgery to repair artificial heart valves he had received almost three years earlier. December 21, 1973 (Friday) The Geneva Conference opened under the auspices of the United Nations, in an attempt to negotiate a solution to the Arab–Israeli conflict. From the conference, disengagement agreements would be worked out in 1974 between Israel, Egypt and Syria, and an agreement on the Sinai peninsula in 1975. The Cancer Letter, an influential weekly magazine, was launched by Jerry D. Boyd of the National Information Service company. Born: Tomasz Sikora, Polish biathlete and Olympic gold medalist; in Wodzisław Śląski Anita Lerche, Danish multilingual pop singer; in