1963: Information and Much More from Answers.com
- ️Sun Sep 04 1966
1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970
The White House issues an order February 8 prohibiting travel to Cuba and making it illegal for U.S. citizens to have commercial or financial transactions with Cuba (see 1962; 1977).
President Kennedy broadens eligibility for the Medal of Freedom established by former president Truman in 1945. Executive Order 11085 issued February 22 permits a president to award the civilian decoration to 1) any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, or 2) world peace, or 3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.
The nuclear-powered submarine U.S.S. Thresher sinks April 10 in 8,400 feet of water 220 miles off Cape Cod, killing all 129 men aboard in the worst submarine disaster of all time. The ship has put to sea with no sure way of blowing water out of her ballast tanks in an emergency at low depths; the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has failed to test silver-brazed joints with sound waves.
"Ich bin ein Berliner," President Kennedy says June 26 in a speech at West Berlin during a 4-day visit to West Germany. Kennedy pledges support for efforts to defend West Berlin from communist encroachment, reunify Germany, and work toward European unity (but while his statement is intended to convey the idea that he shares the troubles of Berliners it literally means, "I am a jelly doughnut"). West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer resigns October 16 at age 87 and is succeeded by Ludwig Erhard, now 66.
British journalist H. A. R. Philby disappears from Beirut; the Soviet Union gives him asylum July 30.
The Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty signed at Moscow August 5 by Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union bans all above-ground nuclear testing. Michigan-born scientist Jerome (Bert) Wiesner, 51, has helped to draft the treaty, whose terms also ban testing in outer space and underwater. More than 100 other governments sign the treaty within a few months, but not France or the People's Republic of China (see Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1968). Senate minority leader Everett M. Dirksen, now 67, (R. Ill.) plays a crucial role in securing ratification of the treaty.
President Kennedy answers questions about Vietnam on CBS television September 2 and 9: "I don't think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there," he says. "In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it—the people of Vietnam—against the communists."
Admiral Alan G. Kirk, U.S. Navy (ret.), dies at New York September 15 at age 74; congressman Francis E. Walter (D. Pa.) has died at Washington, D.C., May 31 at age 69.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22 ends a 34-month administration that has initiated domestic social programs that Kennedy's successor will carry out. The 46-year-old president slumps in the seat of his open Lincoln Continental as his motorcade approaches the Dallas World Trade Center for a scheduled speech, the rifle bullets that killed him are believed to have come from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Elm Street, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, now 55, is sworn in as president on Air Force One en route to Washington by a judge who reads the oath of office from a copy of the World Almanac. Jacqueline Kennedy, now 34, impresses the world with her stoicism following her husband's assassination. She required two units of blood after giving birth by Cesarean section in August to a third child, who was premature and died after 1½ days. Having planned and conducted the restoration of the White House during JFK's brief 1,000 days in office, the first lady stands beside President Johnson as he takes the oath of office and then plans the state funeral for her late husband, whose body she cradled after he was shot. President Kennedy's alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, is a Marine Corps veteran who has spent some time in the USSR, married the daughter of a KGB colonel, and handed out literature for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee at his native New Orleans. He has used a $20 mail-order rifle to pick off the president, and Dallas police arrest him 80 minutes after the assassination on charges of having killed patrolman J. D. Tippit. Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby, 52, shoots Oswald to death with a handgun November 24 in the basement of the Dallas city jail as police are moving the suspect to safer quarters, and millions watch the shooting on television (see Warren Commission, 1964).
British Labour Party leader Hugh (Todd Naylor) Gaitskell dies of kidney complications related to pleurisy and pericarditis at London January 18 at age 56, having persuaded his party to reverse its stand favoring unilateral disarmament. Politicians who include Richard (Howard Stafford) Crossman, 55, push to make economist (James) Harold Wilson, 46, the party leader.
British statesman Herbert L. Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel (of Carmel and of Toxeth), dies at London February 5 at age 92; former general Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough at his native London March 18 at age 92, having outlived most of his critics; World War II commander-in-chief of New Zealand forces (and governor-general of New Zealand from 1946 to 1952) Bernard C. Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg, dies at Windsor July 4 at age 74.
Britain's Profumo-Christine Keeler scandal makes world headlines. The war minister Lord John Dennis Profumo, 48, is charged with having been intimate with call girl Christine Keeler, 21, to whom he was introduced by Viscount Astor's osteopath friend Stephen Ward who has his own cottage at Astor's Cliveden estate and whose mistress, model Marilyn "Mandy" Rice-Davies, 18, is Keeler's flatmate (she has previously been mistress to the notorious London slumlord Peter Rachman, and when told in court that Lord Astor has denied knowing her, she replies, "He would, wouldn't he?"). Facing charges that he lived off immoral earnings, Ward claims that Profumo has used his flat to meet Keeler. Profumo is married to actress Valerie Hobson, 46, but the real scandal arises from the fact that Keeler is sleeping with Soviet naval attaché Evgeny "Honeybear" Ivanov, a known spy attached to the Russian embassy, who has asked Keeler to find out from Profumo when nuclear warheads will be delivered to West Germany. Profumo confesses to the affair and resigns in early June; Keeler draws a 9-month sentence in December for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Britain's prime minister Harold Macmillan, now 69, resigns for reasons of health October 18. Queen Elizabeth asks Sir Alexander Douglas Home, 60, earl of Home, to form a new cabinet; he resigns his peerages, calls himself Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and is the first prime minister to have a seat neither in the House of Lords nor the Commons.
Three-time French premier Camille Chautemps dies at Washington, D.C., July 1 at age 88; former French premier Robert Schuman of 1950 Schuman Plan fame of a cerebral blood clot near Metz September 4 at age 77; former French governor general of Indochina Jean Decoux at Paris October 21 at age 79.
Former Italian minister of justice Aldo Moro heads a Christian Democratic Party-led government that takes office December 4. Still only 47, Moro has served in cabinets since 1954, put through sweeping reforms in the country's prison system, and will remain prime minister until June 1968.
Turkey's premier Inönü survives repeated assassination attempts and a constitutional crisis but finds it impossible to govern with only minority support (see 1961). The Justice Party formed 2 years ago makes broad gains in the country's elections, the ruling coalition breaks up, and Inönü forms a new minority government from his own Republican Peasants' National Party with support from the New Turkey Party (see 1965).
A military coup d'état at Baghdad February 9 overthrows the government of Iraq's prime minister Abdul al-Karim Quasim, who is killed at age 48 (see 1959). The Kurdish revolt that began nearly 2 years ago has kept the army bogged down, Quasim has depended on the army's support, but military purges have driven many officers into open opposition to the Kassem regime. Abd ar-Rahman Arif returns from exile, and his Baath Party takes power briefly with help from Saddam Hussein, now 25, who resumes his studies at Baghdad. Arif and his Baathist thugs torture and kill thousands of communists and left-wing sympathizers, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, 48, becomes prime minister for 10 months, but the Baathists are then overthrown and Hussein is among those imprisoned by the new regime of President Arif, who will head the government until his death in a helicopter crash in 1966 (Arif's brother will then take over and rule until 1968).
Israel's Ukrainian-born president Itzhak Ben-Zvissak (Itzhak Shinsheglevitz) dies of stomach cancer at Jerusalem April 23 at age 78; Premier David Ben Gurion resigns June 16 at age 76 and is succeeded by Ukrainian-born former finance minister Levi Eshkol (Levi Shkolnik), 67. Israeli and Syrian forces clash August 20 along the demilitarized zone north of the Sea of Galilee, but UN truce observers persuade both sides to accept a cease-fire August 25.
"Learn from Comrade Lei Feng," says China's Chairman Mao March 5. A soldier in the Red Army, Lei Feng stepped out of his truck on a rainy day last year and was killed accidentally when the truck driven by a fellow soldier slipped and knocked down a telephone pole that struck him. Lei Feng's diary was "discovered" after the incident, and an October 20, 1961, entry said, "A person's life is limited, but to serve the people is unlimited." Lei will be hailed for decades as the ultimate, altruistic "model worker," especially when government propagandists need to inspire people in the face of hardships.
Singapore gains independence August 31 and the Federation of Malaysia established formally September 16 joins Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and North Borneo (see 1957; Singapore, 1959). Malayan prime minister Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj, now 60, serves as prime minister of the new federation and will remain such until 1970, but Lee Kuan Yew remains Singapore's PM (see Singapore, 1965; riots, 1969).
The South Vietnam government of Ngo Dinh Diem falls the night of November 1 in a coup engineered by Gen. Duong Van Minh, Nguyen Khanh, and other anticommunist officers. Diem has been president since the republic was proclaimed in 1955, but he has alienated Buddhists by having hundreds of them killed or imprisoned while showing preference toward fellow Roman Catholics (who represent a small minority of the population), has never fulfilled his promises of land reform, and has used heavy-handed and ineffective military tactics to oppose communist insurgents, losing U.S. support; his opponents kill Diem along with his security chief as civil war continues in Vietnam (see Tonkin Gulf, 1964).
Thailand's dictator Sarit Thanarat dies at his native Bangkok December 8 at age 55 after an oppressive 5-year rule in which he has suspended constitutional rights, jailed dissenters without trial on charges of subversion, banned political parties, suppressed opposition newspapers, but encouraged new economic policies that favored private investment, foreign and domestic. He is succeeded as prime minister by Gen. Thanom Kittikachorn, but it will turn out that Sarit was lining his own pocket, and revelations of his corruption will taint the regimes of his successors.
Post-colonial Africa has its first military coup: Togo Army sergeant Etienne Eyadéma, 26, assassinates the country's 60-year-old president Sylvanus Epiphenio Olympio, who has held office since 1960; Eyadéma will seize the presidency for himself early in 1967, Africanize his name to Gnassingbe, and retain office until his death in 2005 despite more than seven attempts on his life.
Moroccan nationalist leader Abd el-Krim dies at Cairo February 6 at age 81 after 37 years in exile.
Zanzibar's sultan dies in July and is succeeded by his son, who will reign briefly as Sayyid Jamshid ibn Abdullah; Zanzibar gains independence December 10 and becomes a member of the British commonwealth (see Tanzania, 1964).
Dahomey (later Benin) has a military coup d'état in October; Col. Christophe Soglo overthrows the government of Hubert Maga, who was elected president in December 1960 and will return to power as part of a triumvirate in 1970 (see 1972).
Kenya achieves independence December 12 after 43 years as a British crown colony. Kikuyu leader Jomo Kenyatta is president of the new republic.
Peru's Popular Action Party candidate Fernando Belaunde Terry wins the June presidential election with 40 percent of the popular vote (see 1956). Now 50, he puts together a reformist coalition, and undertakes a program of land reform and road construction to open the Amazon Valley to settlement, but opposition elements control the Congress and will thwart his efforts (see 1968).
Haiti's president François "Papa Doc" Duvalier moves further toward absolutism late in the year, promoting himself as the semidivine embodiment of the nation (see 1961; 1964).
"I have a dream," says Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a ceremony held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., January 1 to commemorate the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation: "I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."
The U.S. Supreme Court orders that indigent defendants in all criminal cases be provided by the states with the services of defense attorneys. Florida drifter Clarence Earl Gideon, now 52, was charged in 1961 with having broken into a Panama City poolroom with intent to commit a misdemeanor, he could not afford a lawyer, argued his own case before a jury, and insisted he was innocent; the local court sentenced him to 5 years' imprisonment, and when his demand for a writ of habeas corpus was denied he wrote from the state prison to Washington. The March 18 ruling in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright overturns the court's 1942 decision in Betts v. Brady. Tennessee-born Washington, D.C., lawyer Abe Fortas, 52, has argued the case before the court; a protégé of Justice William O. Douglas, he is a friend of Vice President Johnson and will be appointed to the Supreme Court in 1965.
Civil-rights worker Coretta Scott King places a call Easter Sunday, April 14, to President Kennedy asking for the release of her husband, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) has played a leading role in organizing a march on Washington April 12 to demand more civil rights for minorities. King has led 50 volunteers despite concerns that his probable arrest would seriously hinder vital fund-raising efforts. He and his Alabama-born chief aide, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, 37, have been placed in solitary confinement.
Mississippi activist Fannie Lou Hamer is arrested while returning home from a civil-rights meeting at Winona and beaten severely by her jailers (see 1962). Some of the injuries she sustains will prove permanent (see 1964).
The U.S. Supreme Court rules May 20 that convictions by lower courts in cases of sit-ins to protest discriminatory practices by retail establishments were unconstitutional.
Alabama politician George C. (Corley) Wallace, 43, takes office as governor and says in his inaugural address (written by Ku Klux Klansman Asa Carter), "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Defeated by extremist John Patterson when he ran for governor in 1958, Wallace determined never to be "out-segged" again, received official KKK support, and won by a landslide. Wallace blocks the door of the University of Alabama's Foster Auditorium at Tuscaloosa June 11 and refuses to allow Assistant Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach to escort Vivian Malone and James A. Hood inside. President Kennedy immediately federalizes Alabama's National Guard, whose general Henry V. Graham appears in green battle attire; he tells the governor that it is his "sad duty" to order him to step aside, Wallace complies after making a statement, and the two black students are enrolled at the university despite vows by Gov. Wallace that no blacks shall be admitted. Malone will defy harassment and in 1965 will become the university's first black graduate.
NAACP leader Medgar Evers, 37, is shot to death June 12 in the doorway of his home at Jackson, Miss., immediately after a presidential broadcast on civil rights. Two juries will fail to convict white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith of the murder, but he will be convicted in 1994 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
President Kennedy asks Congress June 19 to enact far-reaching civil-rights legislation that will include provisions to bar discrimination in the use of privately owned public facilities.
Civil-rights advocate and 1956 vice-presidential candidate Sen. Estes Kefauver (D. Tenn.) dies at Bethesda, Md., August 10 at age 60.
More than 200,000 black and white Americans conduct a "march on Washington" August 28 to demonstrate support for civil rights.
New Orleans must desegregate all of its public parks, playgrounds, community centers, and cultural facilities, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rules.
Three Alabama cities desegregate public schools despite Gov. Wallace's continued opposition. While most whites accept the change, four black Alabama schoolchildren are killed and 19 people injured September 15 when a bomb explodes at Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church while 200 are attending Sunday services. The church has been a staging area for anti-segregation demonstrations, but the deaths of Denise McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, Addie Mae Collins, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14, provoke racial riots, and police dogs are used to attack civil-rights demonstrators. Ku Klux Klan leader Robert Chambliss has gone to the church with three other KKK members in Thomas E. Blanton Jr.'s turquoise Chevrolet, with Confederate flags flying from its two rear antennae, and planted dynamite with a timer in the church basement; Chambliss will be convicted in 1977 of having perpetrated the outrage and will die in prison in 1985. Black schoolboy Virgil Ware, 13, is killed later the same day outside Birmingham while riding on the handlebars of his 16-year-old brother's bicycle; white schoolboy Michael Lee Farley, 16, has threatened him from the window of his car after attending a segregationist rally and has handed a gun to his friend Larry Joe Sims, also 16. Both attend an all-white school, although Sims comes from a family that has sympathized with the plight of blacks; one will be sentenced to 6 months' in a juvenile detention center, the other to probation. A Birmingham police officer shoots black schoolboy Johnnie Robinson, 16, in the back September 15 after Robinson throws rocks at a car painted with racist graffiti; the officer will never face charges.
Minister of justice B. J. (Balthazar Johannes) Vorster puts through legislation that makes all South Africans subject to arrest without charge for periods of up to 90 days at a time (see 1962); the only vote registered in the House of Assembly opposing the new law is Helen Suzman. Police raid a Rivonia farmhouse just north of Johannesburg July 12, arrest Walter Sisulu, and find a copy of African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson R. Mandela's plan for carrying out sabotage (see 1964; politics, 1959; 1966).
Morocco and Congo grant women the right to vote on the same basis as men. Iran grants voting rights to women.
Jet-propulsion rocket pioneer Theodore von Kármán dies of a heart attack at Aachen, West Germany, May 6 at age 81. His laboratory at the California Institute of Technology will become the National Aeronautics and Space Admnistration (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Soviet cosmonaut Lieut. Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, 26, returns to earth June 19 aboard the spaceship Vostok VI after making 48 revolutions of the globe in less than 3 days; she volunteered for the mission, proved that her physical endurance and stamina were equal to those of a man, went through arduous technical and physical training, and is the first woman to circle the globe in outer space. Premier Khrushchev notes that she was in space longer than all four U.S. astronauts combined, and scoffs at the West's "bourgeois" notion that woman is the weaker sex.
The European Economic Community vetoes British entry after President de Gaulle raises objections.
British economist Lord (William Henry) Beveridge of 1942 Beveridge Plan fame dies at Oxford March 16 at age 84; International Monetary Fund managing director Per Jacobsson of a heart attack at London May 5 at age 69.
U.S. factory workers average more than $100 per week for the first time in history, but unemployment reaches 6.1 percent by February.
Congress votes June 10 to guarantee women equal pay for equal work, but the Equal Pay Act will prove difficult to enforce. By 2004 working women will still be earning only 77¢ overall for every $1 men earn, altogether a woman earning an hourly wage will be more likely to receive close to equal pay than a white-collar worker.
Studebaker Corp. terminates its employee pension plan, leaving more than 4,000 workers at its South Bend, Ind., plant with less of their promised pension-plan benefits or none at all. The default reveals that virtually all U.S. employees are at risk of losing their private pension-plan retirement funds (see ERISA, 1974).
More than 50 million U.S. taxpayers support the Treasury, up from 4 million in 1939. Payroll withholdings cover most income taxes (see 1943).
New Hampshire conducts the first state lottery—a sweepstakes ostensibly to raise money for state education. The state ranks last in terms of state aid to education; the lottery will not raise this ranking, nor will it contribute more than 3 percent of state education aid in any year, but other states will follow New Hampshire's example as politicians seek substitutes for progressive income taxes, postponing fundamental tax reforms and adequate funding for social services.
The U.S. federal budget is nearly $100 billion, up from $9 billion in 1939. Almost half the total goes for military appropriations as U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia begins to escalate.
An inflation begins in Indonesia that will depreciate the currency 688-fold in the next 7 years (see politics, 1965).
U.S. federal employees number 2.5 million, up from 1.13 million in 1940.
Pecos, Tex., financier Billie Sol Estes, 43, is convicted of selling finance companies $24 million worth of mortgages on nonexistent fertilizer tanks. He will serve 6 years of a 15-year sentence for mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud.
Bayonne, N.J., salad oil king Anthony De Angelis, 47, is indicted for fraud. His Allied Crude Vegetable Oil & Refining Corp. has rigged its tanks, using seawater in place of the salad oil that served as collateral for warehouse receipts. The deficiency runs to 827,000 tons of oil valued at $175 million; De Angelis goes bankrupt and some investors are ruined.
Omaha investor Warren Buffett purchases 5 percent of American Express, whose stock has been depressed by the De Angelis scandal (see Buffett, 1956). Buffet has seen that people are continuing to charge meals and other purchases to their American Express credit cards, decides that predictions of the company's demise are overblown, and will see his investment multiply more than sixfold.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 21 points in 30 minutes at news of the Kennedy assassination, but recovers to close December 31 at 762.95, up from 652.10 at the end of 1962.
Enel is founded in February to consolidate 1,200 Italian electric plants into a single national agency under terms of a nationalization law.
A nuclear reactor installed by Jersey Central Power and Light is the first commercial reactor and the first nuclear power plant large enough to compete with coal and oil fuel. Jersey Central's 640-million-kilowatt Oyster Creek plant will be followed by much larger installations, 41 nuclear plants will be ordered in the next decade, 56 will account for 8 percent of total U.S. energy production by 1975, but the rising price of uranium, anxieties about nuclear disasters, and rising construction costs will delay the growth of nuclear power and demand for electric power will fall far short of forecasts.
Con Edison opens a nuclear-powered electric power station on the Hudson River at Indian Point, N.Y. (see 1962).
Two-thirds of the world's automobiles are in the United States (which has 6 percent of the world's population).
Seattle's 12,596-foot Second Lake Bridge is completed; it is longer than Scotland's Tay II Bridge of 1887 and will remain the longest bridge of any kind until 1972.
Trolley car service ends at Baltimore, where electric trolleys were first introduced just 88 years and 84 days earlier. Buses replace the trolleys November 4.
New York City renames its 15-year-old Idlewild Airport John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport following the assassination of the president November 22.
A Trans-Canada DC-8 jet takes off from Montreal November 27 and crashes 4 minutes later, killing all 118 aboard—the worst air disaster thus far in Canadian history.
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (Ascii) system for representing letters and numbers comes into use for computer programming code, replacing the various digital codes that have made it difficult if not impossible to exchange data between machines from different computer makers. Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.-born computer programmer Robert W. Bemer, 43, played a role in developing Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL) for the Defense Department while working for IBM (see 1959) and last year left IBM to join Sperry Rand's Univac division, where he has worked under the guidance of the American National Standards Institute to create the new system.
Cairo-born Cambridge University graduate student William D. (Donald) Hamilton, 27, publishes a paper (based on his doctoral thesis) that breaks new ground in the study of evolutionary biology.
Nobel physiologist Herbert Spencer Gasser dies at New York May 11 at age 74, having pioneered fundamental discoveries relating to the functions of various nerve fibers used for transmitting specific kinds of impulses (e.g., cold, heat, and pain).
The American Heart Association's 120-member board of directors votes June 8 to adopt a resolution urging joint educational efforts with other voluntary and official health groups to discourage smoking, especially among teenagers and high-risk adults. The physicians respond to a report on smoking and cardiovascular disease issued in July 1960 (see 1959; Surgeon General's Report, 1964).
Houston surgeon Michael (Ellis) De Bakey, 54, uses an artificial heart for the first time to take over the functions of blood circulation during heart surgery.
A paper on cardiac stress tests published by Boston-born University of Washington cardiologist Robert A. (Arthur) Bruce, 46, is based on studies Bruce has made since the 1940s, using treadmills and electrocardiograms (EKGs) to analyze minute-by-minute changes in respiratory and circulatory function. Bruce reports that his test can detect telltale signs of angina pectoris, any previous heart attack, or a ventrical aneurism; the procedure will soon become known as the Bruce Protocol, and it will later be augmented by ultrasound analysis that can help make it more accurate.
New York-born research physician Baruch S. (Samuel) Blumberg, 38, in Australia discovers an antigen in the blood serum of an Aborigine that in 4 years will prove to be part of a virus that produces hepatitis B, the most severe form of hepatitis. This "Australian antigen" causes the body to produce antibodies that enable health professionals to screen blood donors and eliminate those who might transmit hepatitis B. Blumberg's finding will lead to the development of a safe and effective vaccine using the Australian antigen.
The muscle relaxant and anticonvulsant Valium introduced in December is five to 10 times more potent than the Librium brought to market by Roche Laboratories in 1960, has no more unwanted side effects, costs more, and will soon be even more widely prescribed than Librium. Roche chemist Leo H. Sternbach synthesized the benzodiazepine antianxiety drug in 1959 and has been awaiting FDA approval.
U.S. marshals and FDA officials raid the 9-year-old Church of Scientology in January and seize about 100 electronic devices along with two tons of literature that they say constitute "mislabeling" of the devices; Scientology's counseling methods constitute "a substantial public hazard," says the government. Robert H. Thomas now heads the Church, whose "auditors" have been using battery-powered "e-meters," similar to the polygraphs employed to some extent as lie detectors. Thomas and his lawyers claim the seizure violates their constitutionally-guaranteed freedom to exercise religion, and they will battle in the courts for 8 years to have the seized materials released (see 1968).
Mother Seton is beatified at Rome March 17 (see 1959).
Pope John XXIII dies of peritonitis brought on by a stomach tumor at the Vatican Palace June 3 at age 81 after a 5-year reign in which he has convened a Second Vatican Council. John is succeeded by the cardinal archbishop of Milan Giovanni Battista Montini, 66, who is elected June 21 and will reign until 1978 as Pope Paul VI. The new pontiff breaks with tradition November 2 and admits five women as delegates to Vatican II but tries for the most part to keep the Church faithful to traditions that have not become too obviously anachronistic.
Reading the Lord's Prayer or verses from the Bible in U.S. public schools is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court rules June 17 in Murray v. Curlett and School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (seeEngel v. Vitale, 1962). The 8-to-1 decision caps a militant campaign by Beechview, Pa.-born Baltimore atheist Madalyn Murray (née Mays), 44, who filed a suit 3 years ago on behalf of her teenaged son William, born out of wedlock to William J. Murray Jr., a married Roman Catholic whose wife would not grant him a divorce. She and her first husband, John Henry Roths, enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and U.S. Marines, respectively, after their marriage in 1941. She divorced Roths after the war, she has called herself Mrs. Murray, she founds the group American Atheists, Inc. that she will head until 1995, and she will marry Richard O'Hair in 1965. Philadelphia-born Unitarian Edward L. (Lewis) Schempp, 55, and his wife, Sidney, won their suit 4 years ago with support from the Civil Liberties Union, their Pennsylvania township appealed the case, and Justice Tom C. Clark says in his majority opinion that the 14th Amendment's due process protections and the First Amendment's establishment clause bar the state from requiring school children to recite prayers. No Christian organization has filed a brief in support of school prayer, but the decisions that such prayer violates the First Amendment produce widespread protests; critics say the Court has violated the amendment by imposing the secular religion of atheism at the expense of the country's Christian majority, they label Murray a Marxist, LIFE magazine next year will call her "the most hated woman in America," her son William will be converted to "Born Again" Christianity at Dallas on Mother's Day in 1980, and he will become an outspoken evangelist (see 1995; Wallace v. Jaffree, 1985).
Mircae Eliade and the Dialectics of the Sacred by Cambridge, Mass.-born Emory University teacher and radical theologian Thomas J. J. (Jonathan Jackson) Altizer, 35, sparks a Death of God movement among U.S. Protestants and atheists. "We must recognize that the death of God is a historical event: God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence," says Altizer, and some other theologians join him either in asserting that the traditional Judaeo-Christian God died in the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth or simply that belief in God is impossible or meaningless in the modern world and that people must fulfill themselves in secular life.
Lithuanian-born Zionist leader Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver dies of a heart attack at Cleveland November 28 at age 70.
University of California president Clark Kerr predicts in his book The Uses of the University, "What the railroads did for the second half of the last century and the automobile for the first half of this century may be done for the second half of this century by the knowledge industry."
The Economic Value of Education by economist Theodore W. Schultz details the superior earning power of college graduates.
Yale University president A. Whitney Griswold dies of cancer at New Haven April 19 age 56.
U.S. first class postal rates go to 5¢ per ounce January 7 (see 1958). U.S. Postmaster General J. Edward Day, 49, orders that five-digit ZIP codes be used by July 2 to speed sorting of mail. Adoption of the Zoning Improvement Plan crowns a 20-yar battle by veteran postal employee Robert A. (Aurand) Moon, 45, who invented a three-digit code (see 1968).
Facsimile messaging pioneer Edouard Belin dies at Territet, Switzerland, March 4 on the eve of his 87th birthday.
A "hot line" emergency communications link between Washington and Moscow goes into service August 30 under an agreement signed June 20 to reduce the risk of accidental war. The line will operate via satellite beginning early in 1978.
Zenith Radio and Sylvania Electric Co. begin producing their own color picture tubes for television sets after having bought the tubes for years from RCA. Both companies pay royalties to RCA, which controls basic patents, but Zenith will grow to surpass RCA as the leading U.S. producer of color TV sets.
MCI Communications has its beginnings in a company founded to provide microwave links for truck drivers driving on roads between Chicago and St. Louis (see 1969; food [Radarange], 1947).
AT&T introduces transistorized electronic Touch-Tone telephones November 18 in two Pennsylvania communities. Available on an optional basis at extra cost, the new phones have far more capabilities than the electro-mechanical dial phones introduced in 1919.
CBS acquires Los Angeles TV station KTTV for less than $10.4 million after 12 years of joint ownership with the Times-Mirror Co., whose management stopped publishing the Evening Mirror last year after losing $25 million on the paper in 14 years. Headed by Norman Chandler, 60, and his son Otis, 32, Times-Mirror is a major publisher of telephone directories, and it will make the 82-year-old Los Angeles Times that Harrison Gray Otis took over in 1882 the nation's largest standard-size general newspaper in terms of circulation and the world's largest in terms of advertising volume.
New York City newspapers resume publication April 1 after a 114-day strike, but Hearst's financially weakened New York Mirror ceases publication October 15 after 41 years in which it has built up a circulation surpassed in the United States only by that of the New York Daily News.
Washington Post and Newsweek publisher Philip Graham goes on a day's outing August 3 with his wife, Katherine (née Meyer), from his psychiatric hospital at Rockville, Md., and kills himself with a shotgun at age 48.
Australian-born Washington, D.C., political cartoonist Pat Oliphant, 28, begins satirizing the movers and shakers of the nation's capital, beginning a career in which his four weekly cartoons will be syndicated to some 375 newspapers.
Political cartoonist Sir David Low dies at London September 19 at age 72, having created the fictional character Colonel Blimp.
Worcester, Mass., advertising man Harvey R. (Ross) Ball, 42, creates a smiley yellow face for his client State Mutual Life Assurance Co. (later Allmerica Financial Corp.), which has merged with another company and asked him to help assuage the feelings of its workers. Ball receives $45 for his artwork, does not apply for a copyright or trademark, and will soon see his creation widely reproduced on all sorts of merchandise. Others will claim to have originated the icon that will appear on a U.S. postage stamp in 1999 (see 1968).
Nonfiction: The Feminine Mystique by Peoria, Ill.-born feminist Betty Friedan (née Bettye Goldstein), 42, argues that women as a class suffer various forms of discrimination but are victimized especially by a system of delusions and false values that encourages them to find personal fulfillment through their husbands and children: "It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself" (see human rights [NOW], 1966); The Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States by John Chamberlain; The Rise of the West by Vancouver, B.C.-born University of Chicago history department chairman William (Hardy) McNeill, 45, who traces the rise of civilizations worldwide through 5,000 years of recorded history and shows how they acted upon each other; Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City by New York-born Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer and his New York-born colleague Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 36. They will write in a foreword to a 1970 edition of their book that they never imagined that blacks would want to be treated as a separate ethnic group and are "saddened and frightened" by the implications of this choice; The Emancipation Proclamation by John Hope Franklin; The Fire Next Time (essays) by James Baldwin; The Civil War: Fredericksburg to Meridian by Shelby Foote; The South and the Southerner by Atlanta Constitution publisher Ralph McGill, whose editorial attacks on the Ku Klux Klan and other bigots won him a 1958 Pulitzer Prize; The Radical Right by sociologist Daniel Bell; The American Way of Death by English-born U.S. writer Jessica (Lucy) Mitford, 45, deplores U.S. traditions of burial and the methods of undertakers.
Historian Herbert Asbury dies of heart disease at New York February 24 at age 71; anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits at Evanston, Ill., February 25 at age 67; critic-cultural historian Van Wyck Brooks at Bridgewater, Conn., May 2 at age 77; educator-author Edith Hamilton at Washington, D.C., May 31 at age 85; scholar-author C. S. Lewis at Oxford November 22 at age 64; historian Perry Miller at Cambridge, Mass., December 9 at age 58; A. J. Liebling of bronchial pneumonia at New York December 28 at age 59.
Fiction: Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour—An Introduction by J. D. Salinger; The Tenants of Moonbloom by the late Edward Lewis Wallant; The Bell Jar by the late poet Sylvia Plath, whose autobiographical novel is an account of manic depression; V by Glen Cove, L.I.-born novelist Thomas Pynchon, 26; The Centaur by John Updike; The Group by Mary McCarthy; The Icicle (Fantasticheskiye Povesti) (stories) by Andrei Sinyavsky; Dog Years (Hundejahre) by Günter Grass; The Clown by Heinrich Böll; Acquainted with Grief (La cognizione del dolore) by Carlo Emilio Gadda; Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; Big Sur by Jack Kerouac; The Second Stone by Newark, N.J.-born novelist-critic Leslie Fiedler, 46; The Collector by English novelist John Fowles, 45; Honey for Bears by Anthony Burgess; The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West, whose book meets with a poor critical reception but will have sales of 12 million copies worldwide; Careful, He Might Hear You by Sumner Locke Elliott; Cliffs of Fall, and Other Stories by Australian-born U.S. author Shirley Hazzard, 32; The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark; The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima; A Summer Bird-Cage by English novelist Margaret Drabble, 24; The Benefactor by New York novelist-critic Susan Sontag, 30; If Morning Ever Comes by Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler, 22; The Thin Red Line by James Jones; The Birds by Daphne du Maurier; The Battle of Villa Fiorito by Rumer Godden; The Venetian Affair by Helen MacInnes; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by English novelist John le Carré (David Cornwell), 31.
Novelist Sylvia Plath takes her own life at London February 11 at age 31 by putting her head in a gas oven (her husband, English poet Ted Hughes, now 32, whom she married in 1956, has left her for the wife of another poet); novelist John Cowper Powys dies at Blaenau Ffestiniogg, Merioneth, Wales, June 17 at age 90; Oliver La Farge at Albuquerque, N.M., August 2 at age 61; novelist-essayist Aldous Huxley of cancer at Hollywood, Calif., November 22 at age 69.
Poetry: Requiem by Anna Akhmatova, now 75, whose book was banned in the USSR but is published at Munich (it is a cycle of poems on the Stalin purges that saw her only son arrested); At the End of the Open Road by Louis Simpson; The Moving Target by W. S. Merwin; The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright; Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law by Adrienne Rich; Thoughts on a Concerto by Telemann by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Poet Robert Frost dies at Boston January 29 at age 88; William Carlos Williams at his native Rutherford, N.J., March 4 at age 79; Theodore Roethke of a coronary occlusion at Bainbridge, Wash., August 1 at age 58; Luis Cernuda at Mexico City November 5 at age 61; Tristan Tzara at Paris December 25 at age 67.
Juvenile: Where the Wild Things Are by illustrator-writer Maurice Sendak, now 35; Clifford the Big Red Dog by Kokomo, Ind.-born cartoonist-illustrator-writer Norman Bridwell, 35; Amelia Bedelia by South Carolina-born author Peggy (Margaret Cecile) Parish, 36, who will write more than 30 books, 11 of them about a clumsy housemaid; The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan (Delano) Aiken, 38, English-born daughter of poet-novelist Conrad Aiken; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, illustrations by Joseph Schindelman; The Hades Business (stories) by English high-school student Terry Pratchett, 15, whose title story appeared 2 years ago in the High Wycombe Technical High School magazine. He will become his country's largest-selling author; Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective by New York author Donald J. Sobol, 39, illustrations by Leonard Shortall; Tigers in the Cellar by Almond, N.Y.-born author-illustrator Carol (Elizabeth) Fenner, 33; Tituba of Salem Village by Connecticut author Ann (Lane) Petry (née Clarke).
The New York Review of Books begins publication in February, a second issue appears in April, and it is published on a bi-weekly basis starting September 26 with a third issue that includes drawings by David Levine. Poet Robert Lowell and his novelist wife, Elizabeth Hardwick live in a colossal duplex apartment at 15 West 67th Street, they had dinner during the newspaper strike in the spring with Random House editor Jason Epstein and his wife, Barbara, at the Epsteins's similar apartment a few doors down the street, and together they developed the idea of a periodical that would carry literate book reviews like the ones that ran in the strike-bound New York Times and Herald Tribune. The first issue was laid out on the Lowells' dining room table.
Painting: Homage to the Square "Curious" by German-born New York painter Joseph Albers, now 75, who was a master at Weimar's Bauhaus for 10 years until 1933 and has been a major force on U.S. painters and architects ever since; Second Marriage and A Rake's Progress (etchings) by English painter David Hockney, 26, whose etchings have been inspired by a visit to New York; Jackie (The Week That Was) (silkscreen), Ethel Scull 36 Times (synthetic polymer paint silkscreened on canvas) and Red Race Riot (synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas) by Andy Warhol; Nomad by James Rosenquist; Map by Jasper Johns; Estate and Tideline by Robert Rauschenberg; Red, Blue, Green and Green, Blue, Red by Ellsworth Kelly; Drowning Girl, Hopeless and Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein; Still Life No. 30 by Tom Wesselmann; The Red Smile by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born painter Alex Katz, 36, who has been concentrating on portraits since 1957; Two Rows of Cakes (brush with black ink and watercolor) by Wayne Thiebaud; Man and Child by Francis Bacon; Rape of the Sabines by Pablo Picasso. Georges Braque dies of cerebral congestion at Paris August 31 at age 81.
Sculpture: Fountain, Wheels, Litanies, and Swift Night Ruler by Robert Morris; The Wave (plexiglas, wood, and beads) by Agnes Martin; Cinema (plexiglas) by George Segal; Cubi XVII by David Smith; Nervures Minces (iron) by Alexander Calder; Big Change (laminated pine plywood) by H. C. Westermann; Two Forms with White (Greek) (wood and stone) by Barbara Hepworth; John XXIII (portrait bust) by Giacomo Manzu, now 54. Piero Manzoni dies in his Milan studio February 6 at age 29.
Steuben Glass cofounder Frederick Carder dies at Corning, N.Y., December 10 at age 100.
Eastman Kodak introduces Instamatic cameras that can be loaded with film cartridges. Eastman also introduces Kodachrome-X, Ektachrome-X, and Kodacolor-X films with twice the speed of their predecessors (see 1936; 1944; 1946; Kodachrome II, 1961).
A U.S. news photographer snaps pictures of an elderly Buddhist monk in Vietnam being doused with gasoline, lighting a match, and dying of self-immolation June 10. The New York Times refuses to print the horrifying pictures, but other newspapers do, and President Kennedy sees one.
Portrait photographer Louis Fabian Bacharach dies at Boston July 24 at age 82.
Theater: The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore by Tennessee Williams 1/16 at New York's Morosco Theater, with Hermione Baddeley, Mildred Dunnock, 69 perfs.; Photo Finish: An Adventure in Biography by Peter Ustinov 2/12 at New York's Brooks Atkinson Theater, with Ustinov, Dennis King, Eileen Herlie, 159 perfs.; The Deputy (or The Representative) (Der Stellvertrecar) by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, 31, 2/23 at Berlin's Theater am Kurfurstendamm (his play is about the failure of the late Pope Pius XII to speak out against Nazi atrocities, although some later evidence will credit the pope with having helped rescue more than 800,000 Jews); Spring 71 (Le printemps 71) by Arthur Adamov 4/26 at the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe, Paris; The Scavengers (La politique des restes) by Adamov 5/31 at London's Unity Theatre Club; Play (Spiel) by Samuel Becket 6/14 at Ulm's Ulm-Dönau Theater (in German); The Workhouse Donkey: A Vulgar Melodrama by John Arden 8/8 at the Chichester Festival Theatre; A Case of Libel by Henry Denker (based on lawyer Louis Nizer's book My Life in Court) 10/10 at New York's Longacre Theater, with Sidney Blackmer, Van Heflin, Philip Bourneuf, 242 perfs.; Barefoot in the Park by Neil Simon 10/23 at New York's Biltmore Theater, with Ocala, Fla.-born actress Elizabeth Ashley (Elizabeth Cole), 22, Robert Redford, Mildred Natwick, Kurt Kasznar, 1,502 perfs.; The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Edward Albee (based on the Carson McCullers novel) 10/30 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Colleen Dewhurst, William Prince, Roscoe Lee Brown, 123 perfs.; Mr. Krott, Larger than Life (Uber lebengross Herr Krott) by Martin Walser 11/30 at Stuttgart's Staatstheater.
The Guthrie Theater opens May 7 at Minneapolis with a production of Hamlet directed by Tyrone Guthrie, now 62. Named for impresario Tyrone Guthrie and intended to house a world-class repertory, the 1,300-seat house at 125 Vineland Drive has been designed by Minnesota architect Ralph Rapson with an innovative thrust stage and assymetrical orientation.
Playwright John Whiting dies of cancer at London June 16 at age 45; Clifford Odets of cancer at Los Angeles August 14 at age 57; playwright-film maker Jean Cocteau of heart disease in his house at Milly-la-Foret, near Fontainebleau, October 11 at age 74; J. J. Shubert—last of the famous Shubert brothers—of a cerebral hemorrhage in his apartment atop the Sardi Building at New York December 26 at age 86; Theatre Guild founder Lawrence Langner of an apparent heart attack at New York December 26 at age 72.
Television: Crossroads on Britain's ATV with Noele Gordon as Meg Richardson in a domestic soap opera set in the fictitious King Oak Crossroads Motel (to 1988); My Favorite Martian 9/29 on CBS with Ray Walston, Bill Bixby (to 9/4/1966, 107 episodes); The Fugitive 9/17 on ABC with David Janssen as pediatrician Richard Kimble, who has been falsely convicted of murdering his wife in a series created by Roy Huggins, 49. It is based on the 1954 murder of Marilyn Sheppard, whose husband, Sam, is serving time in the Ohio State Penitentiary (to 8/29/1967); Farmer's Daughter 9/20 on ABC with Inger Stevens as Katrin "Katy" Holstrum, William Windom, Cathleen Nesbitt (to 9/2/1966, 101 episodes); Petticoat Junction 9/23 on CBS with Bea Benarderet as Shady Rest Hotel manager Kate Bradley (Benarderet will die in 1968 and be replaced by June Lockhart as hotel resident Dr. Janet Craig), Edgar Buchanan (to 9/21/70); Let's Make a Deal (quiz show) 12/30 on NBC with host Monty Hall (to 4/1/2003).
The world's first multiplex movie theater designed as such opens at the Ward Parkway shopping center of south Kansas City under the management of local theater operator Stanley H. Durwood (originally Dubinsky), 43, whose family acquired the 600-seat downtown Roxy Theater a decade ago. With television reducing the size of audiences, he closed off the Roxy's balcony to save the cost of an usher and has gone on to buy other large, 1930s-era theaters, cutting each of them into several smaller theaters. Durwood's company will build its first four-screen complex in 1966, its first six-screener will open in 1969, and Durwood will be credited also with inventing the arm-rest cup holder.
Films: Elia Kazan's America, America with Stathis Giallelis, Frank Wolff, Elene Karam, Lou Antonio; Federico Fellini's 8½ with Marcello Mastroianni; John Sturges's The Great Escape with Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, James Coburn, Donald Pleasence, 44; Martin Ritt's Hud with Patricia Neal, Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Brandon de Wilde (based on the 1961 Larry McMurtry novel Horseman, Pass By); Luchino Visconti's The Leopard with Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon; Tony Richardson's Tom Jones with Albert Finney, 27. Also: Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds with Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Minnesota-born actress Tippi (originally Nathalie) Hedren, 28, Suzanne Pleshette; Stanley Donen's Charade with Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau; Louis Malle's The Fire Within with Maurice Ronet; Robert Wise's The Haunting with Julie Harris, Claire Bloom; Shohei Imamura's The Insect Woman; George Pollock's Murder at the Gallop with Margaret Rutherford (as Miss Marple), Robert Morley, Flora Robson; Joseph Losey's The Servant with Dirk Bogarde, James Fox, Sarah Miles; Ingmar Bergman's The Silence with Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom; Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life with Irish actor Richard Harris, 29; John and Faith Hubley's The Hole (animated short).
Actor Dick Powell dies of lymph gland cancer at Hollywood January 3 at age 58; Monte Blue at Milwaukee February 18 at age 73; Monty Woolley of kidney and heart ailments at Albany, N.Y., May 6 at age 74; ZaSu Pitts of cancer at Hollywood June 7 at age 63; Technicolor pioneer Herbert T. Kalmus at his Los Angeles home July 11 at age 81; actor Richard Barthelmess at Southampton, N.Y., August 18 at age 68; Adolphe Menjou of chronic hepatitis at Beverly Hills October 29 at age 73.
Stage musicals: Half a Sixpence 3/21 at London's Cambridge Theatre, with Tommy Steele (Thomas Hicks), 27, music and lyrics by David Hendon, book by Douglas Cross based on the 1905 H. G. Wells novel Kipps, 1,997 perfs.; She Loves Me 4/23 at New York's Eugene O'Neill Theater, with Barbara Cook, Jack Cassidy, music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, 39, songs that include "Days Gone By," 301 perfs.; Pickwick 7/4 at London's Saville Theatre, with book by Wolf Mankowitz (based on the Charles Dickens novel), music by Cyril Ornadel, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, songs that include "If I Ruled the World."
Broadway songwriter Otto Harbach dies at New York January 24 at age 84; John "Ole" Olsen of Olsen and Johnson fame after a kidney-stone operation at Albuquerque, N.M., January 26 at age 71; William Gaxton after a 4-month illness at New York February 2 at age 69; Lew Leslie of arteriosclerosis at Orangeburg, N.Y., March 10 at age 73; lyricist Christopher Hassall commits suicide at his native London April 25 at age 51; composer Dave Stamper at Poughkeepsie, N.Y., August 18 at age 79.
Opera: The Long Christmas Dinner 3/13 at New York's Juilliard School of Music with music by Paul Hindemith, libretto from a play by Thornton Wilder; Russian soprano Tatiana Troyanos, 24, sings the role of Hoppolyta 4/15 in the 1960 Britten opera A Midsummer Night's Dream; Janet Baker sings the role of Polly in a revival of the 1728 Pepusch-Gay work The Beggar's Opera at London. She appeared last year as Dido with the English Opera at the Aldeburgh Festival in the 1689 Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas.
Composer Francis Poulenc dies at Paris January 30 at age 64; soprano Amalita Galli-Curci at La Jolla, Calif., November 26 at age 81; composer Paul Hindemith at Frankfurt-am-Main December 28 at age 68.
Munich's reconstructed National Theater with its Staatsoper opens November 23.
Cantatas: Cantata Misericordia by Benjamin Britten in September at Geneva for the 100th anniversary of the Red Cross; Song of Human Rights by Howard Hanson 12/10 at Washington D.C., with a text that includes excerpts from President Kennedy's inaugural address (the work was commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Organization).
Berlin's Philharmonic Hall opens October 15 in Tiergarten Park. Designed by Hans Bernhard Scharoun, it has 2,218 seats.
First performances: The Country of the Stars by Elisabeth Lutyens (based on a text by Boethius) 3/20 at London's Holy Trinity Church (commissioned by the Musical Times); Motet Opus 27 by Lutyens (set to a text by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) 12/5 at London.
Conductor Fritz Reiner dies at New York November 15 at age 74.
The Beatles score their first big success with a recording of "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The "Fab Four" Liverpool rock group includes songwriters John Lennon, 22, and Paul McCartney, 20, who are supported by George Harrison, 20, and drummer Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), 24, who has succeeded the original Beatles drummer, Peter Best. Their long hair will be widely imitated and their music—"Yeah Yeah Yeah"—will raise rock to new heights of artistry and popular appeal.
Popular songs: "Mississippi Goddam" by Nina Simone is a response to the killing of Medgar Evers; The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (album) by Dylan includes the songs "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"; "Blame It on the Bossa Nova" by U.S. songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil; "In Dreams," "Falling," and "Blue Bayou" by Roy Orbison; "It's All Right" by Curtis Mayfield; "Ring of Fire" by Virginia-born Nashville country music singer (Valerie) June Carter, 33, of the Carter Sisters and Oklahoma-born Merle Kilgore, 29, is about her falling in love with singer Johnny Cash (who met Carter backstage at Grand Ole Opry in 1956 and will marry her in 1970); "Man and the Donkey" by Chuck Berry; "Doin' Mickey's Monkey" by Smokey Robinson for the Miracles; "I (Who Have Nothing)" by Italian composer Carlo Donida, English lyrics by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who have adapted the lyrics by Mongol Eng to the song "Uno Dei Tante;" English pop singer Dusty Springfield (Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien), 24, scores her first hit with "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"; Judy Collins #3 (album) includes Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" and Tim Rose's antiwar song "Come Away Melinda"; Conversations with Myself (album) by jazz pianist Bill Evans; "On Top of Spaghetti" by folk singer Tom Glazer, who has written new lyrics to the classic "On Top of Old Smoky"; Tenafly, N.J.-born singer Lesley Gore, 17, has beginner's luck with her recording of "It's My Party," will have other hits through 1967, but will make little money from her career until 1988; Brenda Lee, now 18, records "As Usual," has another hit, and by 1969 will have had 48 of her singles and 15 of her albums on the pop music charts; "Come and Get These Memories" by Motown (Detroit) singers Martha and the Vandellas (Martha Reeves, 22; Rosalind Ashford, 20; and Annette Sterling. Motown secretary Reeves has nagged her boss Berry Gordy to let her cut a record, she has recruited two fellow secretaries, and their record is a hit); Tennessee-born country singer Dottie West, 30, records "Here Comes My Baby" (it will win the first Grammy award ever presented to a female country vocalist); End of the World (album) and Cloudy (album) by Skeeter Davis, who hits the charts with two hot singles, "I'm Saving My Love" and "(It's Not) The End of the World"; Wayne Newton appears at New York's Copacabana night club, records the German song "Danke Schoen" with help from singer Bobby Darin, and at age 21 has his first hit, selling more than 1 million copies of what will be his signature song.
Country singer Patsy Cline records "Faded Love," "Leavin' on Your Mind," and "Sweet Dreams (of You)" and dies March 5 in the crash of a twin-engine Comanche in Tennessee while en route home from a Kansas City benefit (Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and pilot Randy Hughes are also killed). Dead at age 31, Cline has been a star for 5 years. Hawkins's widow, Jean Shepard, now 29, is left with two small boys to raise; Tin Pan Alley composer Harry Akst dies at Hollywood, Calif., March 31 at age 69; bandleader Ted Weems of emphysema at Tulsa May 6 at age 62; Edith Piaf of various illnesses at Paris October 11 at age 47; blues vocalist Dinah Washington at Detroit December 14 at age 39.
Singer Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi, now 47, appears at the Edinburgh Festival to great acclaim. She will sing at the United Nations in New York in 1966.
Golfer John Henry Taylor dies at Northam, Devonshire, February 10 at age 91, having won the British Open five times. Jack Nicklaus wins his first Masters Tournament.
Charles "Chuck" McKinley, 22, (U.S.) wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Margaret Smith in women's singles; Rafael Osuna, 24, (Mex), wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Maria Bueno in women's singles.
Baseball legend Rogers Hornsby dies at Chicago January 5 at age 66.
The Los Angeles Dodgers win the World Series, defeating the New York Yankees 4 games to 0.
Cincinnati-born Navy quarterback Roger (Thomas) Staubach, 21, completes more than 115 passes (nine for touchdowns) and becomes the fourth college junior to win the Heisman Trophy.
National Football League commissioner Pete Rozelle fines and suspends Green Bay Packers star Paul Hornung and Detroit Lions star Alex Karras for placing bets on NFL games but does not postpone the NFL games scheduled for November 24—2 days after President Kennedy's assassination.
Former professional wrestler George Raymond "Gorgeous George" Seward dies at Hollywood, Calif., December 26 at age 48 (approximate).
New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, 54, divorces his wife of 31 years and on May 4 marries the former Mrs. Margaretta Murphy (née Fitler), 36, whose nickname is "Happy." Many believe that the divorce and remarriage will ruin any chance Rockefeller may have for winning the presidency.
World chess champion Mikhail Botvinnik loses at Moscow May 20 to Soviet chess master Tigran Petrosian, 33, who will hold the title until 1969.
Head & Shoulders shampoo is introduced nationwide by Procter & Gamble, whose researchers concluded in 1955 that the Olin Chemical Co. compound zinc pyrithione could prevent dandruff by retarding cell growth, hired Vanderbilt University chemists to develop a shampoo containing the compound, and test marketed it in 1960.
Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc., is founded in September by Texas-born entrepreneur Mary Kay Rogers (née Mary Kathlyn Wagner), 45, with $5,000 in capital and nine saleswomen. Rogers (she will soon marry gift wholesaler Mel Ash, her third husband) worked for a division of Stanley Home Products from 1938 to 1952, she has paid the heirs of Arkansas tanner J. W. Heath $500 for the formulas of skin-scare products that he developed, her 20-year-old son Richard is her financial administrator, and her door-to-door sales company has first-year revenues of $200,000. It will grow in the next 15 years to gross $35 million as Mary Kay builds an extensive line of skin, hair, nail, and body care products, enlisting a network of more than 850,000 "sales consultants" in 37 countries, rewarding top producers with pink Cadillacs, and making her company the largest U.S. direct seller of skin-care products, with annual sales of $1.2 billion.
Louisiana-born New York couturier Geoffrey Beene, 36, starts a company under his own name, breaking with the established practice of having manufacturers' names on labels. Giving originality precedence over commerce, Beene will compete successfully with European designers.
The miniskirt appears in December in "swinging" London. Designed by Welsh fashion pioneer Mary Quant, 29, the provocative new skirt comes to six inches above the knee. (Paris designer André Courrèges introduces the skirt almost simultaneously but will be better known for his boots.) Quant and her husband, Alexander Plunket-Greene, opened a shop with a partner 8 years ago on the King's Road, Chelsea, and attracted a following among the district's writers, artists, photographers, models, and their friends who dropped in to drink brandy and buy her boots, patterned stockings, and other "mod" creations at their store, the Bazaar. Their new enterprise (Mary Quant Limited) will become an international conglomerate of fashion, cosmetics, fabrics, bed linens, children's books, dolls, and wine, and Quant's skirt eventually will dwindle to micro-mini lengths.
A British train robbery August 8 nets $7 million, mostly in banknotes. A team of robbers stops a train near Cheddington, 36 miles northwest of London; Scotland Yard detectives headed by Robert Fabian, 72, and Thomas M. J. Butler, 50, will apprehend the perpetrators.
Organized crime leader Vito Genovese's onetime lieutenant Joseph Valachi testifies September 25 before the U.S. Senate's McClellan committee at Washington, D.C. Genovese has continued to control his Mafia "family" from the federal penitentiary at Atlanta, he has given orders that Valachi be killed, and Valachi has turned state's evidence in revenge. Valachi eschews the word Mafia in his testimony, calling the crime organization "Cosa Nostra."
American Museum of Natural History attendant John Hoffman unlocks the heavy metal gate at the entrance to the Morgan Hall of Gems on the morning of October 30 and finds that thieves have broken into glass cases containing priceless gems. Among the missing stones is the world's largest blue star sapphire—the 563.35-carat Star of India. The thieves have also taken an 88-carat engraved emerald, a huge emerald "Easter egg" from 17th-century Russia, some smaller emeralds, a 737-carat aquamarine, the 15-carat Eagle Diamond, and well over 100 other faceted and uncut diamonds. Inspired by last year's Eric Ambler novel The Light of Day, Los Angeles-born Miami beachboy-cat burglar Jack Roland "Murph the Surf" Murphy, 27, and his accomplices Allan D. Kuhn and Roger F. Clark checked out of their New York hotel room in early October, rented a large apartment in West 86th Street, and spent 10 days studying the museum's layout. While Clark waited outside in their white Cadillac on the night of October 29, Murphy and Kuhn scaled the rough granite wall to the fifth floor, swung down to a ledge outside the Gem Hall on the fourth floor, and eluded the guards. An alarm battery had gone dead, the two men escaped with their loot, and they leave the next morning for Miami, but someone has overheard them say something in the elevator of their West 86th Street apartment and has told the police, Clark is arrested at New York, and FBI agents arrest the two others in Kuhn's Miami apartment (see 1964).
New York's Pan Am building (Met Life building as of 1991) is completed above Grand Central Terminal. Designed by Emery Roth & Sons with help from architects Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius, the 59-story structure has 2.4 million square feet of office space, but its pre-cast concrete curtain wall raises protests that it blocks the vista of Park Avenue.
New York's Pennsylvania Station of 1910 comes down beginning October 28 to make way for a graceless new rail depot designed by Charles Luckman Associates plus a 29-story office building, a new 20,000-seat Madison Square Garden sports arena to replace the Garden of 1925, a 1,000-seat Felt Forum, a 500-seat movie theater, and a 48-lane bowling alley (see Landmarks Preservation Law, 1965).
Houston's 33-story Tenneco building (initially the Tennessee building) is completed to designs by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Yale University's Art and Architecture Building is completed to designs by Paul Rudolph, 44, who heads Yale's department of architecture.
Leicester University's brick-and-glass engineering building is completed to designs by British architect James Frazer Stirling, 37, who moves away from stylistic uniformity.
Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes apartments are completed as part of a slum-clearance project that began in 1959. Named for the city's first black housing authority chairman, the 28 high-rise buildings extend for two miles on the city's South Side, contain 4,321 units, 99 percent of their 11,000 tenants are black, and within 25 years the structures will be controlled by criminal gangs and drug dealers (see 1998).
U.S. motels have a 70 percent occupancy rate versus 64 percent for conventional hotels. Motel rooms top the million mark, up from 600,000 in 1958.
Tokyo's first high-rise building goes up following removal of a government ban on structures more than 31 meters tall (see earthquake, 1923; Los Angeles, 1957).
Architect J. J. P. Oud dies at Wassenaar near The Hague April 5 at age 73.
Fallout of radioactive strontium-90, strontium-89, cesium-137, barium-140, and iodine-131 in world rainfall reaches its peak after 2 years of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union and the United States. Milk is particularly affected, since cows eat grass that has been contaminated by fallout (although mothers' milk can have as much strontium-90 as cows' milk). The Food and Drug Administration, Public Health Service, Atomic Energy Commission, and state agriculture departments all take samples and issue monthly bulletins on levels of radiation, which hereafter will decline (except in 1968, following test explosions by the Chinese and French); by 1970 rainfall will be depositing less than 5 percent as much strontium-90 as it does this year.
An earthquake July 26 in Yugoslavia's Macedonian Province registers 6.0 on the Richter scale but is of such shallow depth just beneath Skopje that it destroys 80 percent of the city, killing 1,070 and leaving more than 120,000 homeless. Relief aid comes in from 78 countries, and Skopje will be rebuilt as the "City of International Solidarity."
A massive landslide in the Dolomite Mountains north of Venice October 9 dumps 270 million cubic meters of rock into a reservoir on the Piave River, the dam does not break, but the reservoir overflows with enough force to destroy the towns downstream, killing 2,500 people.
Thermal pollution kills millions of striped bass at a new Con Edison nuclear generating plant on the Hudson before a mesh screen is erected to fence out the anadromous fish, letting them swim upriver to spawn.
Mexican farmers plant high-yielding semidwarf wheat developed by Rockefeller Foundation scientists and introduced for the first time on a commercial basis (see 1945; Borlaug, 1944; 1966).
Congress shifts policy with regard to farm supports: instead of giving farmers high support loans, it inaugurates a deficiency payment system under whose provisions farmers are to be paid only when actual prices do not reach target prices. The new system allows prices to decline beginning with this year's crop and will lead to greatly increased domestic use of feed grains.
Agronomist Donald F. Jones dies at Hamden, Conn., June 19 at age 73, having made hybrid corn commercially feasible; the U.S. corn crop tops 5 billion bushels for the first time, up from 3 billion in 1906, thanks in large part to hybridization.
The number of U.S. farmers falls to 13.7 million—7.1 percent of the population. The number of man-hours employed in U.S. agriculture falls below 9 million, down from 20 million in 1940. The average farm worker produces enough food and fiber for 31 people, up from 15.5 in 1950 (see 1973).
Famine continues in the People's Republic of China, where by some estimates 20 to 40 million people will have died by next year in what critics of Maoist agricultural policies will call the worst famine in history (see 1961). Beijing (Peking) is forced to seek grain from the West, and Canada makes a major sale of wheat to the PRC in August.
Soviet crops fail both in Kazakhstan and in the Ukraine (see agriculture, 1953). Fully one-third of U.S. grain exports in the next 3 years will go to drought-stricken India, but substantial quantities will go to the communist countries.
Canada completes a $500 million wheat sale to the USSR in September. "Comrade Khrushchev has performed a miracle," Muscovites joke: "He has sown wheat in Kazakhstan and harvested it in Canada." Khrushchev declares the Kazakhstan virgin lands experiment a failure and seeks nearly 2 million tons of U.S. wheat. President Kennedy approves the sale, former vice president Nixon and most other Republicans oppose it, but it goes through at year's end with support from President Johnson. When the contracts are finally implemented early next year, Continental Grain will handle the largest portion of the Soviet wheat sales, with Cargill, Inc. accounting for 500,000 tons of hard wheat and 200,000 tons of durum wheat (see 1964).
Typhoons destroy nearly half of Japan's standing crops. The resulting food shortages boost Japanese demand for imported foodstuffs.
Vitamin E proves useful in treating severe cases of kwashiorkor, macrycitic anemia, and creatinuria (see 1938; Williams, 1931).
The U.S. National Research Council revises its "Recommended Daily Allowances" of nutrients (see 1943); the USDA revises its Handbook No. 8 to give data on 2,483 food items with vitamin and mineral content plus other information (see 1950).
Weight Watchers Inc. has its beginnings in a high-protein diet developed by physician Norman Jolliffe, now 62, of the New York City Department of Health and followed by Queens, N.Y., housewife Jean Neditch, 39, who has reduced her weight from 213 pounds to 142. Overweight Great Neck, L.I., housewife Felice Lippert (née Marks), 33, and her husband, Albert, adopt Neditch's diet regimen, begin to lose weight themselves (they will eventually lose 100 pounds between them), start holding sessions for others in their kitchen, come up with the name Weight Watchers, rent a space in Little Neck for weekly meetings, and charge people $2 each to come hear Neditch speak. The first meeting attracts 22, the second 66, and within a year the Lipperts will begin selling franchises. The Barbie Doll introduced 4 years ago by the U.S. toy company Mattel, Inc., is helping to give young women an unrealizable ideal of slim beauty (seeZiegfeld Follies, 1907); some adopt drastic diet regimens, many have become anorexic in a pathological quest for weight loss. Weight Watchers represents a healthier approach: using a form of group therapy, it completely proscribes some foods, permits others without restriction, and accustoms people to a diet that they can stay on without constant "yo-yo" gains and losses. Weight Watchers Inc. will grow into a worldwide operation with average weekly attendance of half a million and a line of frozen foods designed to help maintain proper weight.
Julia Child prepares boeuf bourguignonne on television February 11 as she begins a series of cooking demonstrations on Boston's educational television station.
British sales of frozen foods reach £75 million, up from £7.5 million in 1955, but frozen vegetables, fish, meat, cake, and other items still account for only 1.5 percent of total food expenditures.
Average U.S. per capita meat consumption reaches 170.6 pounds, but veal consumption drops to five pounds, down from 9.7 in 1949. Average chicken consumption is 37.8 pounds per capita, up from 23.5 in 1945 when chicken was more costly than beef.
Average U.S. per capita butter consumption falls to 6.7 pounds, down from 18.3 in 1934 and 7.5 in 1960; margarine consumption rises to 9.3 pounds, up from 8.6 in 1957; cheese 9.4 pounds, up from seven in 1949.
The price of sugar on the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange soars from 3¢ lb. to nearly 13¢ in 5 months as the lack of Cuban sugar (see 1960) and other factors make themselves felt.
Quaker Oats Co. introduces Cap'n Crunch, a pre-sweetened breakfast food that will receive heavy promotion from TV commercials and become wildly popular.
Procter & Gamble announces August 29 that it will acquire J. A. Folger and Co. and enter the coffee business (see 1908). After paying $126 million for the company, P&G drops the apostrophe from the name Folger's, runs television commercials featuring a Mrs. Olson (played by actress Virginia Christine), and will use its marketing techniques to make Folgers the top-selling brand in the nation, <a href="/topic/surpassing" class="alnk" target="_top" name="&lid;=ALI