April 1966: Difference between revisions

1966

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The following events occurred in April 1966:

April 1, 1966 (Friday)

• General Pham Xuan Chieu, a member of South Vietnam's 10-man military junta who was appearing as an emissary of Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ to seek popular support, was surrounded by a mob of 1,000 students and Buddhist activists as he arrived at city government offices. The group then held him captive, transported him around the city in a cycle rickshaw, forced him to make a speech at the local radio station, and then released him unharmed.
• At the Communist Party Congress, Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Y. Malinovsky made a cryptic reference to "the blue belt" of national defense, then discussed recently constructed intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines, along with other weapons that could destroy "any planes and many rockets of the adversary".
• Born: Chris Evans, English radio presenter, in Warrington
• Died: Brian O'Nolan, 54, Irish humorist who wrote under the pen names "Flann O'Brien" and "Myles na Gopaleen", of throat cancer

April 2, 1966 (Saturday)

• Ten thousand protesters (including 2,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and sailors in uniform) marched through the streets of Da Nang in South Vietnam and denounced both the United States and the South Vietnamese government of Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky. Da Nang Mayor Nguyen Van Man, who was allowed protesters free use of city offices, motor vehicles and printing facilities, was accused of treason by Ky, who said that he planned to have Man executed by a firing squad.
• On his fourth day in office, Ecuador's new President, Clemente Yerovi, announced that he was cancelling a presidential election that had been scheduled for July.
• Died: C. S. Forester (Cecil Louis Troughton Smith), 66, English adventure novelist

April 3, 1966 (Sunday)

• At 18:44 UTC (9:44 p.m. in Moscow), the Soviet lunar probe Luna 10 became the first man-made object to orbit the Moon. Luna 10 would make a complete trip around the Moon every three hours and would transmit signals back to earth until May 30.
• A North Sea gale ran the British passenger ship Anzio aground at Donna Nook, Lincolnshire, near the mouth of the Humber River and was demolished. The ship, which had recently been purchased and was en route from London to Inverness to be delivered to its new owners, was occupied only by its skipper, Adam Fotheringham and twelve other crewmembers, and there were no survivors. The bodies of ten men, all wearing life jackets but killed after being battered by debris and the rocks, washed ashore on the beach while three men (including Captain Fotheringham, were presumed to have gone down with the ship.
• Died: Battista Farina, 72, Italian car designer

April 4, 1966 (Monday)

• NASA announced the names of its fifth series of astronauts, 19 men qualified for missions in the 1970s. From the fifth generation of explorers came Apollo astronauts Fred Haise and Jack Swigert (Apollo 13), Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa (Apollo 14), James Irwin and Alfred Worden (Apollo 15), Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly (Apollo 16) Ronald Evans (Apollo 17) and Vance D. Brand (Apollo-Soyuz); Skylab astronauts Paul J. Weitz (Skylab 2), Jack R. Lousma (Skylab 3) and Gerald P. Carr and William R. Pogue (Skylab 4); and space shuttle astronauts Joe Engle, Don L. Lind and Bruce McCandless II. Two would not go into outer space; John S. Bull would be disqualified by a medical condition, while Edward Givens would be killed in an automobile accident in 1967.
• A deadly tornado family affected the I-4 corridor in Central Florida from the Tampa Bay area to Brevard County. Eleven people were killed across the state in what remains one of only two F4 tornadoes ever to strike that U.S. state. "Florida Twisters Kill 9", Chicago Tribune, April 5, 1966, p1
• So Sau Chung began a hunger strike at the entrance of the Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong's Central District, sparking the Hong Kong 1966 riots. At issue was the recent announcement that the fare for ferry boats would be increased by one cent; the next day, hundreds of youths joined him in a protest. Within days, thousands of young protesters were setting fires, smashing glass windows, and battling British colonial police.
• Born: Viceregal, Canadian Champion Thoroughbred racehorse, at Windfields Farm (died 1984)

April 5, 1966 (Tuesday)

• The first Congressional hearing about unidentified flying objects (UFOs) was convened in Washington, before the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by U.S. Representative L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina. The request for the Congressional investigation had been made by House Republican leader (and future U.S. President) Gerald R. Ford of Michigan.
• The International Convention on Load Lines was signed in London, UK.
• The final original episode of Dr Kildare was broadcast on NBC television. In its final season, the popular show had been moved from one hour on Thursday nights, to half-hour programs shown on Monday and Tuesday "with disastrous results" and was canceled after poor ratings.
• Soviet Union Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin said in a speech to the 23rd Communist Party Congress that the nation would begin measuring economic success by profits rather than by achievement of production target quantities. Starting in 1967, Kosygin said, nearly one-third of factory workers would be eligible for incentive bonuses, and asked the Party Congress to approve a new Five Year Economic Plan implementing the changes.

April 6, 1966 (Wednesday)

• Mihir Sen of the Bihar state in India became the first person to swim across the 33 mile wide Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka, arriving at Dhanushkodi on India's Pamban Island 25 hours and 36 minutes after departing Sri Lanka.
• The Beatles began their "Studio Years", discontinuing public concerts in favor of simply releasing new albums and singles for sale, as the first song was recorded for their upcoming album Revolver. That session, with John Lennon singing "Tomorrow Never Knows", marked the first use of automatic double tracking (ADT), invented by EMI recording engineer Ken Townsend, and the first to include music played backwards
• The first secret meeting concerning the merger of professional football's National Football League and the American Football League took place at a parking lot in Dallas, between Dallas Cowboys owner Tex Schramm and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt.
• First Wilson ministry: Reginald Prentice replaced Charles Pannell as Minister of Public Buildings and Works and George Thomson replaced Douglas Houghton as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the UK government. The Earl of Longford succeeded Sir Frank Soskice as Lord Privy Seal, and Frederick Lee became Secretary of State for the Colonies.
• Born: Vince Flynn, American thriller novelist known for the "Mitch Rapp" series of political thrillers, starting with 1999's Transfer of Power; in Saint Paul, Minnesota (d. 2013)

April 7, 1966 (Thursday)

• After an 80 day operation, the United States finally recovered the hydrogen bomb that had been been lost off of the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea. After being raised from the sea by a winch, the bomb was loaded onto the rescue ship USS Petrel and shipped back to the United States.
• Test pilot Robert G. Ferry landed a Hughes OH-6A Pawnee helicopter in Ormond Beach, Florida after flying 2,213.1 miles from Culver City, California without refueling, to set the record for the longest non-stop helicopter flight.
• The United Kingdom asked the United Nations Security Council for authority to use force to stop the Joanna V, an oil tanker that anchored outside the harborwas loading petroleum at a port in Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) and preparing to violate the United Nations embargo against Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)

April 8, 1966 (Friday)

• Leonid Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since he taking over leadership from Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, was unanimously elected by the Party's Central Committee as the party's leader, now referred to as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In addition, the 12-man Presidium of the CPSU was renamed the Politburo, and its roster was changed to 11 members. The last of the "old Bolsheviks" in the Kremlin hierarchy, 70-year old Anastas Mikoyan and 78-year old Nikolai Shvernik were allowed to retire, and Shvernik was replaced by newcomer Arvid Ya. Pelshe. The other ten members of the Politburo were Brezhnev, Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, party ideologist Mikhail Suslov, Russian Federation premier Gennady Voronov, Russian first deputy premiers Kiril Mazurov and Dmitry Polyansky, and Ukraine Party First Secretary Pyotr Shelest.
• In one of the most controversial covers of TIME Magazine, the national newsweekly's cover for Good Friday, 1966, was had a black background and, in bold red letters, the question "Is God Dead?"
• NASA launched its first Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, OAO-1, with detection instruments that would measure stellar ultraviolet radiation without the interference that ground-based telescopes faced on Earth. Unfortunately, the spacecraft's batteries were depleted two days after the launch, after a high-voltage arc when powering up the trackers.
• The terrorist group Fatah caused its first death in Israel when an Israeli farmer was killed by a land mine that had been placed by members who had sneaked across the border with Syria. After more mine casualties, Israel would launch air strikes against Syria and in June, would take the first strike against its Arab neighbors in the Six Day War.
• Buddhists in South Vietnam protested against the fact that the new government had not set a date for free elections.
• The Norwegian cargo ship Stavfjord collided with the Cuban ship Oriente 16 nautical miles (30 km) north of Ameland, Netherlands. Both ships sank, but all crew rescued by the Dutch ship Luden.
• Born: Robin Wright, American actress, in Dallas

April 9, 1966 (Saturday)

• The United Nations Security Council adopted its Resolution 221 by a 10-0 vote, with five abstentions, authorizing the United Kingdom to use military force to enforce a U.N. embargo against Southern Rhodesia. Two permanent members, the Soviet Union and France, abstained, but did not veto the British sponsored resolution. The vote authorized the Royal Navy to halt the Greek oil tanker Joanna V, already at anchor outside the Portuguese Mozambique port of Beira, from going any further and unloading its petroleum cargo for delivery through a pipeline to Rhodesia. and to stop the incoming ship Manuela from sailing into Beira.
• Died: Sutan Sjahrir, 56, Indonesia independence leader and that nation's first Prime Minister; and Barry Butler, 31, English footballer, in a car accident

April 10, 1966 (Sunday)

• The Royal Navy, acting under the authorization of the UN Security Council, boarded the oil tanker Manuela and directed it not to continue toward Beira. Over the next two years, the Navy would stop 29 more ships in order to prevent Rhodesia from getting oil through its pipeline from Mozambique.
• The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party approved a directive that disapproved of almost all of the literary and artistic works that had been created since the 1949 founding of the People's Republic, on the ground that they reflected an "anti-party and anti-socialist black line... that combines bourgeois literary theory and modern revisionis literary theory" that was contrary to the thought of Chairman Mao. The ruling, sent out nationwide, made criminal suspects of China's artists and writers during the Cultural Revolution.
• New Jersey became the first U.S. state to create a Public Defender's Office to pay for free criminal defense for anyone charged with a crime and unable to afford a provate attorney.
• The march of grape farm workers from Delano, California came to a conclusion after 250 miles and 25 days as the original group of 65 was joined by thousands of supporters at the State Capitol building at Sacramento, where union leader Cesar Chavez announced the successful negotiation of a favorable contract between the National Farm Workers Association and Schenley Industries.
• Died: Evelyn Waugh (Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh), 62, British writer of novels, biographies and travel books

April 11, 1966 (Monday)

• The inaugural Singapore Grand Prix motor race was won by Lee Han Seng of Singapore. The race would be discontinued after 1973, but revived thirty-five years later in 2008.
• Emmett Ashford made his debut as the the first African-American Major League Baseball umpire, appearing in Washington, D.C. at third base in the Washington Senators' season opening game against the Cleveland Indians. Cleveland won, 5-2, before a record Washington baseball crowd of 44,468.
• The conservative newsweekly U. S. News and World Report became the first American news magazine to analogize the Vietnam War as a "stalemate" with neither side likely to defeat the other. Newsweek would not use the term until December 19, and TIME not until June 30, 1967.
• Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, the only licensed distributor in the United States of LSD discontinued all further American sales of the hallucinogenic drug. According to a spokesman, Sandoz had "released it only to highly qualified clinical investigators", but voluntarily quit due to "unforseen public reaction".
• Born: Lisa Stansfield, English singer, in Manchester
• Died: Chris Soumokil, 60, South Moluccan separatist leader who fought against the government of Indonesia, was executed in an Indonesian prison. On April 25, 1950, he had proclaimed the "Republic of South Maluku" on several of the the islands that made up the South Moluccas and named himself President, but had been arrested in 1963.

April 12, 1966 (Tuesday)

• For the first time, North Vietnam was bombed by American B-52 planes, after years of bombing runs by smaller planes. In the largest bombing mission by any nation since World War II, 29 B-52s dropped 585 tons of bombs on the Mụ Giạ Pass through the Annamese Mountain Range, in an attempt to break the supply line that was nicknamed the "Ho Chi Minh trail". Although the objective was to create landslides that would close off the pass completely, a reconnaissance mission the next day found that the Viet Cong guerillas had cleared the area, filled the craters in the road, and were driving their trucks through the pass once more.
• Singer Jan Berry of the rock music duo Jan & Dean was seriously injured when he lost control of his Corvette automobile and crashed into a parked truck on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California, near (but not at) the slight turn on the Boulevard that was the inspiration for the group's 1963 hit song, "Dead Man's Curve". Berry would remain in a coma for ten months and then undergo years of rehabilitation after awakening.
• U.S. President Johnson told France's President de Gaulle that the United States would not comply with his ultimatum to remove all American troops before April 1, 1967.
• The first reported instance of a flag burning in the course of protests against Vietnam took place in a theater in New York City, where an antiwar skit entitled LBJ was being performed.
• The trial of Egyptian dissident Sayyid Qutb began in Cairo, after his indictment on charges of conspiring to overthrow the government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic. Qutb and two of his accused co-conspirators would be convicted and hanged on August 29.
• Died: Sir Waithilingam Duraiswamy, 91, Ceylonese lawyer, politician and speaker of the State Council of Ceylon

April 13, 1966 (Wednesday)

• U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1966 Uniform Time Act, setting a common date (the last Sunday in April) for all states in the U.S. to set their clocks forward one hour, beginning on April 29, 1967, and to set clocks forward one hour on the last Sunday in October, starting in 1967. At the time, 18 states observed daylight savings time (DST), 14 switched time zones rather than changing their clocks, and the other 18 left the option up to their local governments. Before the Uniform Act was passed, the prescribed days for changing the clocks varied across the nation; in the state of Iowa alone, there were 23 different DST periods.
• Field Marshal Abdul Salam Arif, the 45 year old President of Iraq, was killed in a helicopter crash, along with ten of his aides, after the aircraft failed during a sandstorm after their takeoff from Al-Qurnah in southern Iraq, north of the port of Basra. The dead included Interior Minister Abdul Latif Daraji and Minister of Industry Mustafa Abdullah, and the Basra district governor. Prime Minister Abdel Rahman Bazzaz became the Acting President, pending a selection of Marshal Arif's successor.
• One day after the Atlanta Braves played their first regular season baseball game since moving from Milwaukee (a 3-2 loss in Atlanta to the New York Mets) , Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Elmer W. Roller ordered the team to return to Milwaukee by May 18, unless the National League intended to grant Milwaukee an expansion franchise in 1967. Judge Roller also fined the league, the Braves, and the other nine NL teams $5,000 apiece for violating Wisconsin's antitrust laws. Major League Baseball Commissioner William D. Eckert announced that Judge Roller's decision would be appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court would reverse Judge Roller's ruling in August.
• William Olson, a 24 year old American Peace Corps volunteer and teacher from Spencer, New York, was eaten by a crocodile while he and five other Corps members were swimming in the Baro River at Gambela, Ethiopia. Olson, whose remains were recovered only after the crocodile was killed and opened up, was the first Corps volunteer to die in Ethiopia, and the first to be killed by an animal.
• Died: Felix von Luckner, 84, German naval officer known during World War One as "the Sea-Devil" (Der Seeteufel). During the war, he commanded his sea raider SMS Seeadler (literally "Sea Eagle") in the capture of 16 merchant ships, with a minimum loss of enemy lives; Carlo Carrà, 85, Italian Futurist painter; and Georges Duhamel, 81, French novelist

April 14, 1966 (Thursday)

• Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Thieu, President and leader of the military junta that ruled South Vietnam, signed a decree promising that free national elections for a civilian government would take place by September 15.
• The three convicted assassins of Malcolm X were each sentenced to life in prison, after having been found guilty of murdering the Black Nationalist leader at the Audobon Ballroom in New York City on February 21, 1965. "Norman 3X" Butler (later Muhammad Abdul Aziz), "Thomas 15X" Johnson (later Khalil Islam) and Thomas Hagan (aka Talmadge Hayer), all members of the Black Muslim's Nation of Islam movement, had been found guilty on March 11. Johnson had been the first to fire, cutting down Malcolm X with two blasts from a shotgun, and Hagan and Butler then completed the execution with their pistols. Butler and Johnson would be paroled in 1985 and 1987, respectively, while Hagan would be be released from prison after 44 years in 2010.
• Vatican City released the results of its 1966 census, and announced that the 108.7 acre nation had a population was 890 people inside its walls, of whom 566 were Vatican citizens. Of that 566 people, 60 were priests, 124 were other members of the clergy, 220 were members of the Swiss Guard, 162 were civilian employees and their families.

April 15, 1966 (Friday)

• An American military spokesman reported that there had already been 1,361 U.S. servicemen killed in the Vietnam War as of April 9, already more than the 1,342 that had died during the entire year of 1965. By April, according to the press release, the combat death rate for U.S. Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force personnel had was now averaging 100 people per week.
• A mob of 2,000 Indonesian Chinese protesters attacked the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Jakarta, smashing windows and doors, throwing documents into bonfires, and teraring down the PRC flag. The protesters, Indonesian citizens with Chinese ancestry, made the attack after a two-hour rally in which they pledged their loyalty to Indonesia.
• Uganda's Prime Minister Milton Obote declared himself to be the President of Uganda under the newly approved constitution of that African nation. The office had been vacant since March 2, when Dr. Obote sent the ceremonial President, Sir Edward Mutesa, into exile.
• Born: Chai Ling, Chinese women's rights activist who guided the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 while she was a student at Beijing University; in Rizhao, Shandong province

April 16, 1966 (Saturday)

• The millennium of the founding of the nation of Poland, and the 1,000th anniversary of the date that its rulers first endorsed the Christian faither, was celebrated by both church and state in separate ceremonies at the city of Gniezno. Poland's first ruler, Mieszko the First, had received Christian baptism on Easter Sunday, April 15, 996, at the age of 26. Church ceremonies at St. Adalbert's Cathedral ended in time for Communist Party leaders to assemble at the town square for public addresses.
• After 83 years at West 39th Street and Broadway, New York City's original Metropolitan Opera House conducted its final performance before closing its doors. A standing room only crowd watched a five hour performance of operatic arias by 60 different singers at "The Met". To introduce the program, the Met's general manager, Sir Rudolf Bing, summed up the move to the new location at the Lincoln Center on West 63rd Street, saying "The company goes on and will do all we can to deserve your continued support. The queen is dead. Long live the queen!"
• Chinese intellectual, poet and journalist Deng Tuo was publicly chastised by the government newspaper Beijing Daily, which revealed that he had written literary and political works that were now judged as counterrevolutionary, and listed the various pen names that he had used. More denunciations would followed and on May 17, he would commit suicide.
• Died: Nandalal Bose, 83, Indian painter

April 17, 1966 (Sunday)

• Abdul Rahman Arif was sworn in as the new President of Iraq, three days after the death of his brother and predecessor in office, Abdul Salam Arif. He would remain in office for a two years, before being overthrown by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr on July 17, 1968.
• Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, announced that his nation was severing the last of its ties to the United Kingdom, closing the British mission in the capital oat Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabawe and removing the last of its staffers at the former High Commissioner's office at the Rhodesia House.
• Wrotham transmitting station in Kent, England, became the first BBC transmitter to broadcast in stereo.

April 18, 1966 (Monday)

• The Sound of Music, which had already broken the record for highest grossing motion picture, won the award for Best Picture at the 38th Academy Awards ceremony, held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California.
• China declared that it would stop economic aid to Indonesia.
• François Luakabwanga became governor of Congo's Lulua Province for the third time.

April 19, 1966 (Tuesday)

• Ian Brady and Myra Hindley went on trial at Chester Crown Court, before Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson, for the murders of three children who had vanished between November 1963 and October 1965.
• Bobbi Gibb becomes the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.
• Died: Javier Solís, 34, Mexican ranchera & bolero singer (complications following gallbladder surgery) and Väinö Tanner, 85, Finnish politician

April 20, 1966 (Wednesday)

• Born: Vincent Riendeau, Canadian ice hockey player, in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec

April 21, 1966 (Thursday)

• For the first time, an artificial heart was installed in a human being, as Dr. Michael DeBakey implanted the device into miner Marcel DeRudder in order to keep him alive. Five days later, DeRudder would die from a ruptured lung.
• The opening of the Parliament of the United Kingdom was televised for the first time.
• Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie, known to his followers as "Ras Tafari" visited Jamaica for the first time, meeting with Rastafarian religious leaders. He was greeted at Kingston airport by around 100,000 adherents from all over Jamaica.

April 22, 1966 (Friday)

• Gurkha Captain Rambahadur Limbu wass awarded the Victoria Cross for an action that took place in Borneo in November 1965.

April 23, 1966 (Saturday)

• Died: George Ohsawa, 72, Japanese founder of the macrobiotic diet and philosophy

April 24, 1966 (Sunday)

• The 1966 United States Road Racing Championship season began, with the Stardust Grand Prix at Las Vegas, Nevada. The opening race was won by Canada's John Cannon
• A "mini-census" was conducted across the United Kingdom in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, using a ten percent sample. The detailed results, however, were ordered sealed for a century and are not scheduled to be released until January 1, 2067.
• Died: Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky, 86, Russian/Soviet skyscraper architect

April 25, 1966 (Monday)

• The first edition of the British newspaper Morning Star (formerly the Daily Worker) was issued.
• William Gordon Wheeler was appointed Bishop of Leeds in the Roman Catholic Church.
• Died: Maria Nikolaevna Kuznetsova, 85, Russian/Soviet opera singer and dancer

April 26, 1966 (Tuesday)

• A new government, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye, was formed in the Republic of Congo,
• A second B-52 strike took place on the Mụ Giạ Pass, but the damage was repaired within 10 hours and convoys were seen using the pass the next day. A CIA report would later note that the "Communists will spare no effort to keep it open".
• Born: Natasha Trethewey, US poet, in Gulfport, Mississippi

April 27, 1966 (Wednesday)

• In the first meeting between officials of the Roman Catholic Church and the Soviet Union),

Pope Paul VI received Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko at the Vatican .

April 28, 1966 (Thursday)

• Battle of Sinoia: In Rhodesia, the British South Africa Police killed seven ZANLA men in combat, escalating the second Chimurenga or Rhodesian Bush War.
• Born: Ali-Reza Pahlavi, titular prince of Iran, in Tehran (died 2011)

April 29, 1966 (Friday)

• The total number of U.S. troops in South Vietnam reached 250,000 with one-quarter of a million Americans committed to the war there.

April 30, 1966 (Saturday)

• Regular hovercraft service began over the English Channel, between Ramsgate and Calais. It would be discontinued in 2000.
• Died: Prince Frederick of Prussia, 54, son of Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany (drowned)