page_title: April 1970
section_title: April 19, 1970 (Sunday)
hierarchical_section_title: April 1970 / April 19, 1970 (Sunday)
context_page_description: The following events occurred in April 1970:
context_section_description: Elections were held in Colombia for a new President and for the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives.  Pursuant to an agreement that Colombia's Conservative Party and Liberal Party would alternate control of the presidency, all four of the candidates were from factions of the Conservative Party, and none won a majority. Misael Pastrana Borrero, formerly Colombia's ambassador to the United States, received 1,625,025 votes (40.7%) of those cast.  His closest challenger, former President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of the ANAPO (Alianza Nacional Popular, the National Popular Alliance) faction, had 1,561,468 or 39.1 % of the votes.  Charging fraud, Rojas Pinilla threatened to capture the presidency by force (as he had done in a 1953 military coup) and President Carlos Lleras Restrepo placed the country under martial law the next day
  In advance of the centennial of the April 22, 1870 birth of Vladimir Lenin, a 62 feet (19 m) high statue of the father of Communism Lenin was dedicated in East Berlin's Leninplatz.  East Germany's Prime Minister and Communist Party general secretary, Walter Ulbricht, told a crowd of tens of thousands that the monument would remind Germans of the more than 300,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin in 1945.  The granite statue would be dismantled, removed and buried in 1992, after the reunification of Germany, the head would be unearthed in 2015 for a display in an exhibition.
  The first Lada compact car, the initial offering of the Soviet Union's AvtoVAZ automobile company, rolled off the assembly line of the Volga Automotive Plant in the city of Tolyatti, in the Russian SFSR.  The original model, the VAZ-2101, was marketed in Eastern Europe as the "Zhiguli", and in the rest of the world as the "Lada 2101".
  The first intercontinental World Cup Rally (so called because the destination from London was the city where the quadrennial FIFA World Cup was scheduled) began at Wembley Stadium as 50,000 spectators watched the start of the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally, sponsored by the London Daily Mirror tabloid.  The 96 drivers (from 22 nations) drove through London and on to Dover to board the ferry across the English Channel to continental Europe, with a route going through Europe, Africa and South America before proceeding through Central America.  The Ford Escort team of Finland's Hannu Mikkola and Sweden's Gunnar Palm arrived first in Mexico City, on May 27
  Born: Luis Miguel (stage name for Luis Miguel Gallego), U.S.-born Mexican pop singer and one of the most successful recording artists in Latin American history; in San Juan, Puerto Rico
caption: East Berlin's Lenin Monument
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