Every Tuesday, Marblehead Patch digs through the Marblehead Messenger microfilm archives at Abbot Public Library to find out what was happening on this week in local history.

In 1974:

Yacht Stolen By Teens Headed for Caribbean:

"Carefully laid plans of a 16-year-old and his 14-year-old girl, both from Pittsfield, to steal a $100,000 yacht in Marblehead and sail it to the Caribbean started off smoothly enough. The 54-foot yacht, normally requiring a crew of four was here waiting to be taken out of the waters of Little Harbor and be put in her winter berth at Hood's Boatyard.

Boatyard officials had decided to wait until after Thanksgiving to berth the craft. Quietly, probably after dark, the teenagers got out to the boat and started south.

They got as far as Martha's Vineyard before the dream trip ended ingloriously when they ran aground near Menemsha. The were eventually picked up by Martha's Vineyard authorities and the coast guard."

639 Phone Numbers Appear:

In December of 1974, Marblehead added an additional telephone dialing prefix- 639. Giving customers another option besides NEptune-1. Soon after direct dialing came in it was 631.

Janice T. Judge, manager of the Salem office of New England Telephone, told the Messenger that they just couldn't get enough number combinations to go around with the old letter-number system of NE1 and had to switch to 631 in the early 60's. There's just not enough number combinations for Marblehead's population.

Dr. Strangelove at Marblehead High School: Marblehead High School's Film Society presented "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" in the school's auditorium Friday night at 7:30 p.m. Tickets were $1 each and there was free popcorn.

Glovers Regiment Makes First Public Appearance:

"A sharp crack of musket fire reverberates down Pleasant as members of newly-formed re-enactment group - Glover's Regiment - salute the opening of the Marblehead Bicentennial Commission's office. Only a handful watched the highly colorful regiment's first public appearance."

MacDonald Remembers Pearl Harbor:

"If you're forty-ish or over you remember where you were and what you were doing that Sunday 33 years ago, Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor. At 7:55 a.m. that Sunday morning, Alexander MacDonald, 77 Pond St., was working on some landscaping in his yard at Koko Head, a couple of miles beyond Diamond Head, Honolulu Hawaii."

Car Hits Three Buildings and Two Autos:

"An 18-year-old youth was arrested shortly after midnight last Friday after the car he was driving punched a hole in Goodwin's Store on Washington Street, bounced off a stone wall opposite the store and then went on to hit two cars and two houses on Mugford Street, police reported."

Holiday Gift Ideas:

There were a number of holiday advertisements in this edition of The Messenger. The Spirit of '76 Bookstore was promoting Bobby Orr's autobiography entitled Bobby Orr: My Game and Hartley's in Salem was offering a sale on Levi and Lee Cord Jeans.

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Were you a Marblehead resident in 1974? Do you recognize any of these names or events? Let us know in the comments section below.