1970s Decade Quiz

Mahalo. Live and learn.

I always looked on the Bee Gees as Aussies. But they're Manx!

Talent and success have no correlation one way or the other in the music business.

I couldn't stand disco, but they had some great songs in the late '60s - To Love Somebody, I Started a Joke, I've Gotta Get a Message to You, etc.

Bloody awful? Have you heard of 'How Deep Is Your Love' or 'Too Much Heaven'? They're one of my favourite vocal groups.

I love disco, as well as several other genres, such as swing, big band, rock n' roll, doo-wop, blues, jazz, country...

Well they were born on the Isle of Man to English parents. So no the members were not Australian, but the band did form in Australia and they had their first commercial success in Australia.

However the olympic cities is also geography and history and "fun" memory game trying to remember them all, there aren't so many afterall.

You've never seen that question in your life.

The World Cup was not held in 1968.

I know very little about football/soccer, but the World Cup questions I recall seeing all regard significant World Cup events. For example, I know that Uruguay both hosted and won the first World Cup (1930, I think). England hosted and won in 1966 (which is its only win, notable because the country is absolutely obsessed with football and always seems to underperform in the Cup). Argentina won in 1986 with Maradona after the infamous "hand of God" play against England...that's about all I know. I recall the winners of the last five tournaments or so, but only because the event itself is such a huge deal all over the world and I was by then old enough to remember it when it happened. I don't recall seeing any questions asking for a winner in a random year in which the tournament didn't particularly stick out.

Would probably be better than a theocracy. Especially if the corrupt king in question was one that supported education and rights for women, positive relations with the Western world, democratic reforms in his own country, and liberal secular values as the Shah did. He was corrupt. He did enrich himself at the expense of the Iranian people. Few monarchs haven't. But the forces that overthrew him were not clamoring to usher in a democratic liberal utopia like confused people think. They were, Mossadegh and his political party that tried to usurp power in the 50s included, a mix of staunch nationalists/protectionists/isolationists/jingoists a la Trump, anti-Semitic bigots, misogynists, and religious nuts. Maybe a handful of student protesters in Tehran hated the Shah for suppressing full democracy in the country or his treatment of political prisoners, but the mob that gave the revolution its power? They hated the Shah for very different, less noble reasons.

Misleading oversimplification. Operation Ajax was 1953. The Shah had ruled Iran since 1941. His family had been in power since the 1920s. The monarchy in Iran had been in place in some form for 2500 years. The CIA had no hand in this. (they were not around in 550 BC) Iran under the Shah was a progressive and liberal country that had recently introduced many reforms such a secularization and liberalization of female education, among other things (e.g. in 1922 women made up 16% of enrolled students. By 1977 before the Islamic revolution they were 40%.). The country also has happy to have friendly and positive trade relations with the outside world and Western countries including the US, UK, and Israel. British Petroleum had come to the relatively impoverished and undeveloped country in 1908. They legally acquired exploration and drilling rights from the legitimate non-puppet government of Iran. They then spent millions of pounds building up the oil infrastructure of Iran from scratch.

Untold amounts of British resources (money, capital, expertise, technology, know-how, manpower, equipment, men lost to disease climate accidents and bandits) were poured into Iran to develop its oil industry and create profit for both Iran (16%), which did nothing but exist, and the company which had put up 100% of the resources needed to create this profit. In 1925 Iran demanded more money. In return for doing nothing of any value, their share of the profit was upped to 25% and they were granted other various concessions. But that wasn't enough and they continued to threaten to cancel the deals they had previously made. In 1933, with approval and oversight from the Hague, another new deal was struck giving Iran even more (again for doing nothing). Again this didn't seem to be enough.

During WW2 Iran, which was seen as friendly to the Nazis and Axis powers, was occupied by the British and Soviets. They pressured the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son, who was more Western friendl

Notice up to this point the USA hasn't been mentioned because they had nothing at all to do with any of this. When did they become involved? When their *extremely* generous deal with the Saudis became known to the Iranians. Americans went to and explored for oil in Saudi Arabia same as British companies had in Iran. Americans spent millions of dollars, lives, resources, allocating their technology and experience and expertise to develop the Saudi oil infrastructure and greatly enrich the country. And after doing so their thanks? The Saudis threatened to steal everything that the Americans built and had invested. I used to teach corporate history of Saudi Aramco in the country, this is according to their own in-house text books so don't think I'm being biased. The Saudis consider themselves to be very clever thieves here. To stop this from happening the US government stepped in, gave the Saudis 50% of all Aramco profits, and tax subsidies to the oil companies to cover their losses.

Iran caught wind of this and, as usual, without doing or offering anything, became greedy and wanted more money. AIOC (British Petroleum) didn't want to give up even *more* of their profits, *again*, after deals had been negotiated and renegotiated over and over. Nationalist forces in Iran were gaining power and popularity. Reasonable prime minister Razmara was assassinated by an Islamist group. Ultra nationalist PM Mosaddegh was elected. Negotiations between the Nationalists in Iran and the British were not fruitful. A power struggle in Iran ensued, with Western powers obviously backing the Western-friendly Shah against the Nationalist PM who wished to steal their assets.

At this point, the US finally became nominally involved. The USA was fighting the Korean War at the time and the Cold War and needed British support in both. They were worried about Iran being taken over by Communists and wished the Shah to remain in power (he had been since '41 remember).

To this end the CIA staged a riot in Tehran that gave the Shah an excuse to remove Mosaddegh. That's it. One American intelligence agency staged an event of civil unrest to give a reigning monarch an political excuse to exercise his constitutional authority and remove a PM he had already been dueling with, but was reluctant to remove because he was popular. But to hear others tell the story you would believe that the 2500 year old Iranian monarchy was invented by the USA, that the PM of Iran held absolute power instead of governing at the pleasure of the Shah, and that democracy had been flourishing in Iran. What the USA did was about equivalent to Russian interference in the American presidential election of 2016. They did not invade and set up a puppet government.

My own version is also very simplified (and still probably overlong).. it wasn't exactly BP in '08 for example but APOC, etc, but not as bad as your version.

TL;DR: there was an internal power struggle in Iran. Millenia-old Western-friendly monarchy vs. year-old ultra nationalist Western-hostile prime minister who wanted to steal millions/billions in foreign (British) infrastructure and resources, among other things. The US backed the monarch in this internal power struggle, lending him nominal aid in the 1950s.

I know nothing about the causes and background. All I know is that when I was in college in the early '70s, there were many Iranian students on campus, and the US was very friendly with Iran. Education for women was being promoted in Iraq. A family member who worked for McDonnell-Douglas occasionally went to Iran to fix the helicopters we sold them. I think the idea then was to keep a balance of power between Iran and Iraq but mainly to keep the Soviet Union's hands off the oil.