1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970
The Organization of American States (OAS) ousts Cuba from membership January 22 following pressure from Washington; Premier Castro issues a Second Declaration of Havana February 2, calling on all Latin American people to rise up against imperialism.
Soviet authorities release U.S. espionage pilot Gary Powers February 10 in exchange for Soviet espionage agent Col. Rudolf Abel, who has been in U.S. hands since 1957 (see Powers, 1960).
President Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline, arrives at New Delhi March 12 on a 2-week goodwill tour, accompanied by her sister Lee (Princess Stanislaus) Radziwill. Mrs. Kennedy has come from Rome, where she was received in a private audience by Pope John XXIII and conversed with him in fluent French. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover has lunch in private with President Kennedy March 22 and advises him that the Bureau has 70 recordings of wiretapped telephone calls to JFK from 28-year-old New York-born Los Angeles divorcée Judith Campbell (née Inmoor), who was introduced to JFK by Frank Sinatra at Las Vegas in 1960 and has been phoning JFK to arrange trysts. She is also sleeping with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, now 63, and Giancana's Las Vegas associate Johnny Roselli, says Hoover, and they have been involved in the CIA's efforts to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro. Kennedy breaks off the relationship with a phone call that afternoon, and it will remain a secret until 1975.
South Vietnamese forces launch "Operation Sunrise" March 22 to eliminate Vietcong guerrillas. U.S. military personnel in the country have grown by January to number 2,646 and help the South Vietnamese with arms and money (see 1961). The international control commission on Indochina reports June 2 that North Vietnam is supplying the Vietcong rebels in violation of the 1954 Geneva agreement on Vietnam, but although the commission has Canadian, Indian, and Polish representatives the Poles do not sign the report; escalation of U.S. involvement draws criticism from the U.S. press, but by year's end the U.S. military presence has grown to 11,300 (see 1963).
The Cuban missile crisis in October produces a tense nuclear confrontation between Washington and Moscow that comes perilously close to an exchange of nuclear weapons and marks a turning point in the Cold War (see 1961). The National Security Agency has since late 1960 been intercepting messages concerning Soviet ships bound for Havana with cargo manifests suspiciously left blank, it has been clear since mid-1961 that such ships were delivering tanks, IL-28 light bombers, MiG-15, -17, and -19 fighter planes, and Czech-built weaponry. U.S. aerial surveillance has discovered Soviet offensive missile and bomber bases in Cuba, CIA analysts in August have observed construction of sites for SA-2 surface-to-air missiles that can shoot down U-2 photographic reconnaissance planes, the NSA in September has reported the first operation of an SA-2-related radar system. It reports October 10 that Cuba's air-defense system appears complete, a CIA U-2 plane makes a reconnaissance flight October 14 and returns undamaged, an analysis of its photographs October 15 reveals that Soviet engineers are preparing sites for SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles. President Kennedy convenes secret meetings of his senior military, diplomatic, and political advisers, he announces the U-2 findings on television October 22 and proclaims an air and sea "quarantine" of Cuba to prevent shipment of arms to Fidel Castro, but he resists pressures from Pentagon officials and CIA director John A. McCone to invade the island, "take out" the missiles, and replace the Castro regime. President Kennedy takes State Department official George Ball's advice and establishes a naval blockade of Cuba. The CIA expresses doubts that the missiles are armed with nuclear warheads (it will be learned only 30 years hence that there are 162 such warheads and that Castro and Che Guevara have urged their use against U.S. targets). Some 43,000 Russians are in northern Cuba, Soviet field commanders have authority to use the missiles if U.S. forces invade Cuba, but former Stalinist Anastas I. Mikoyan, now 67, advises restraint. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations in New York says October 25 that the United States has proof that Moscow has set up missile installations in Cuba and is prepared to present it in the council chamber. He says the weapons must be removed from Cuba and asks the Soviet Union's chief UN delegate Valerian A. Zorin to admit that the missiles are in Cuba. Says Zorin, "I am not in an American courtroom, sir, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in the fashion in which a prosecutor does. In due course, you will have your reply." To which Stevenson snaps, "Yes or no, don't wait for the translation, yes or no?" Zorin refuses to be hectored and says the answer will be forthcoming; Stevenson says he is prepared to wait for an answer "until hell freezes over if that is your decision, and I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room."
Fidel Castro cables Nikita Khrushchev October 26 demanding a Soviet strike against the United States, Attorney General Kennedy meets with Ambassador Anataoly F. (Fedorovich) Dobrynin, 41, at his embassy and learns that Moscow will withdraw the missiles from Cuba if U.S. nuclear missiles are withdrawn from Turkey, President Kennedy rejects the deal when Premier Khrushchev offers it publicly October 28, U.S. general Lauris J. Norstad opposes quick removal of the 15 obsolescent Jupiter rockets from Turkey, Norstad is unexpectedly retired from his post as NATO commander, Khrushchev agrees to dismantle the Cuban missile sites and remove them, the Cuban blockade ends, and the U.S. missiles in Turkey will be quietly removed early next year. Diplomatic finesse has resolved the crisis, many will misinterpret the outcome as proof that "hanging tough" can make the Russians back down, and it will be decades before the world knows just how close it came to a nuclear exchange that would have obliterated Cuba and killed some 80 million Americans.
Massachusetts voters elect President Kennedy's 30-year-old brother Edward M. (Moore) Kennedy to the Senate seat vacated by JFK when he took office as president early last year. Young Ted has had little political experience but his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, has outspent all rivals to give the youngest Kennedy son "his turn" (see 1969).
A military coup in Burma March 2 ousts Prime Minister U Nu, who has served since the country gained independence in 1948. Gen. U Ne Win, now 51, takes over with support from former freedom fighter San Yu, 45, and will effectively rule the country until 1990, stifling democratic opposition, jailing hundreds of political leaders without trials, and turning the prosperous country into one of the world's poorest nations; U Nu goes into exile in India and will not return until July 1980 (see 1981).
India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru issues orders October 12 that the army is to free all Indian territory of "Chinese intruders." A border dispute between the two countries has involved some military skirmishing since 1959, but Chinese forces invade northern India October 19, defeating the Indian Army and penetrating well beyond the border region before withdrawing from most of the invaded area and establishing a demilitarized buffer zone. Pakistan's president Mohammad Ayub Khan establishes close relations to Beijing (Peking) and receives substantial military aid.
Civil war threatens in the Independent Congo Republic following President Joseph Kasavubu's repudiation of the Fundamental Law of May 1960 (see 1961). Fighting breaks out at Stanleyville January 13, UN Secretary-General U Thant orders UN troops in Congo to stop the fighting, the Katanga Assembly agrees February 15 to reunite Katanga with Congo, but new fighting breaks out in October between Katanga troops and the forces of the central government (see 1965).
An organization of African states is established in early February by leaders of 20 nations meeting at Lagos, Nigeria. Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, and the United Arab Republic boycott the Lagos meeting; their ministers meet at Casablanca in April and agree to set up an African common market.
Ghana's Kwame N. Nkrumah declares a general amnesty for refugees May 5 and orders the release of many political prisoners.
Burundi in Central Africa gains full independence from Belgium July 1 with a monarchy dominated by the Tutsi (Batusi and Watusi) minority. Attempts to overthrow the government by Hutu tribesmen will fail, and Tutsi from Burundi will attack Rwanda until 1967.
Algeria's rebel provisional government receives no invitation to Lagos and violence continues there (see 1961); the head of the illegal Secret Army Organization (OAS) has issued a manifesto calling for mobilization of Algerians against a cease-fire with France. Paris proclaims Algerian independence July 3 after a national referendum in which the Algerians have voted for independence by nearly 6 million to 16,534. Leaders of the provisional government have a falling out that leads to civil war, but in late September the national assembly asks Mohammed Ahmed Ben Bella, 46, to form a cabinet, and he will be Algeria's president until 1965.
Eritrea becomes an integral part of Ethiopia after 10 years of union on a federal basis (see 1952), but hostilities will persist between Muslim Eritreans and Christian Ethiopians (see 1993).
Uganda becomes an independent state within the British Commonwealth October 9. The country includes five kingdoms, the largest of them being Buganda, and adopts a federal form of government to overcome the reluctance of Buganda's king Sir Edward Mutesa II to abandon the privileged position of his tribe and his country, but conflict will continue between President Mutesa and Milton Obote, 38 (see 1966).
Tanganyika becomes a republic December 9 with Julius K. Nyerere as president (see 1961; 1964).
Western Samoa gains independence January 1 after more than 47 years of New Zealand colonial rule.
Indonesian police arrest former prime minister Sutan Sjahrir January 17 on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government. Now 52, he will be held without trial until 1965, when he will be allowed to travel to Switzerland for treatment after suffering a stroke.
Jamaica, B.W.I., gains full independence August 6; veteran political leader Alexander Bustamante, 79, will serve as prime minister until 1967.
Trinidad and Tobago gains independence August 31 (see 1889). Historian-politician Eric Eustace Williams, 51, will serve as prime minister until his death in 1981.
The Tupamaro guerrilla group founded by Uruguayan leftist Raul Sendic, 37, begins a Latin American insurgency movement whose activities will include assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, and robbery on behalf of the poor.
Two-time German Weimar Republic chancellor Hans Luther dies at Düsseldorf March 10 at age 83; former first lady and U.S. envoy to the United Nations Eleanor Roosevelt dies of anemia and a lung infection at New York November 7 at age 78; former French president René Coty at Le Havre November 22 at age 80; former Dutch queen Wilhelmina at Het Loo November 28 at age 82.
Adolf Eichmann goes to the gallows at Jerusalem May 31 at age 56 in punishment for his role in the Holocaust during World War II (see 1961). Philosopher Martin Buber, now 85, calls the execution a "mistake of historical dimension."
The Swiss government adopts a law requiring banks to catalog all unknown accounts in an effort to locate assets of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust (see 1946). Few such assets have been identified, an agency set up to handle inquiries about them has turned up only $2 million, and the banks claim some accounts that have not been resolved (see 1995).
South Africa's Nationalist government asserts power to restrict the freedom of those opposed to rigid racial laws (see 1961). It declares the African National Congress (ANC) an illegal organization, ANC leader Nelson R. Mandela leaves the country in January for the first time to avoid arrest for organizing illegal demonstrations, goes to Addis Ababa, proceeds with Oliver Tambo to Tanzania and London, undergoes military training in Algeria, but returns through East Africa and is arrested August 2, placed on trial, and sentenced to 5 years of prison labor. His wife, Winnie, is banned and severely restricted, but she will defy the order and become a spokeswoman for the ANC in her husband's absence (which will go on for 27 years; see 1963).
U.S. manufacturing firms with federal contracts of $50,000 or more are ordered January 29 to report the number of blacks on their payrolls.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 2 March 26 in the case of Baker v. Carr that the Constitution guarantees the right of equal protection and that each vote should therefore carry equal weight regardless of where the voter lives. The decision obliges the Tennessee legislature to reapportion itself on the basis of population and stop giving overrepresentation to rural areas.
The U.S. Department of Justice orders court action May 8 to halt racial segregation in hospitals built with federal funds.
Southern School News reports that at least some token school integration has taken place in response to the Supreme Court decision of 1954 in all Southern states except Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina but that practically no action has been taken in Northern school districts.
Racial tension grips the South as black student James (Howard) Meredith, 29, attempts to enter the University of Mississippi, whose administrators have been ordered to admit the Air Force veteran by the federal court of appeals of the Fifth Circuit at New Orleans, an order that has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court (see 1961). The University, writes Judge John Minor Wisdom, has "engaged in a carefully calculated campaign of delay, harassment, and masterly inactivity." Rioting breaks out on the "Old Miss" campus September 30 despite a televised appeal by President Kennedy for peaceful desegregation, U.S. marshals accompany Meredith, federal troops stand guard beginning October 1, and Meredith will live on campus for the next 10 months under constant federal guard (see 1966). The New Orleans federal appeals court orders the Justice Department to bring criminal proceedings against Mississippi's governor Ross Barnett who has interfered with the court's order to admit black students to "Old Miss."
Mississippi sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer (née Townsend), 45, responds to a voter-registration drive mounted by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). About 42 percent of the state is black but only 6 percent of blacks are registered to vote. Hamer fails her registration test, as do virtually all other Mississippi blacks, and when news of her activity leaks out she is fired from her plantation job and forced to vacate the house in which she and her husband, Perry, have lived for 18 years. She makes a second visit to the courthouse and succeeds in having her name placed on the voter rolls by convincing the registrar that she will keep coming back until she is registered (see 1963).
The U.S. Supreme Court voids the sentences in June of six Freedom Riders who were convicted in Louisiana after trying to desegregate a bus terminal (see 1961).
Algeria grants women the right to vote on the same basis as men (see Tunisia, 1956; Morocco, 1963).
Britain gets her first woman high-court judge October 8 as Elizabeth Lane takes her seat.
Marine Corps pilot John Glenn makes the first U.S. Earth orbits February 7 (see 1961; transportation, 1957); launched into space in the Mercury capsule Friendship 7, he completes three orbits, covering 81,000 miles at an altitude of 160 miles (see 1969).
The unmanned National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spacecraft Ranger 4 crash-lands on the moon, as it was designed to do, becoming the first U.S. vehicle to reach the lunar planet.
Polar explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson dies at Hanover, N.H., August 26 at age 82.
President Kennedy places embargoes on nearly all trade with Cuba February 3 (he exempts foods and medicines), but other countries do not follow the U.S. example.
President Kennedy reduces tariff duties on some 1,000 items March 7 to increase foreign trade.
The U.S. Department of Labor establishes minimum wages for migratory Mexican workers March 9.
United States Steel Co. raises prices by $6 per ton April 10 (see strike, 1959). Former USS president Benjamin F. Fairless has died at Ligonier, Pa., January 1 at age 71, and the company has been headed since 1955 by Riverside, Pa.-born lawyer Roger M. (Miles) Blough, 58. President Kennedy reacts angrily, he has recently persuade the United Steel Workers union to accept a contract he hailed as "noninflationary," he tells reporters at a news conference April 11 that the price increase is unjustified, and criticizes "a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility [shows] . . . utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans." Two other companies do not follow Big Steel's lead, and White House "jawboning" forces a price rollback April 14.
Capitalism and Freedom by economist Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, calls centralized, bureaucratized social welfare services antithetical to traditional values of individualism and calls, instead, for a negative income tax, or guaranteed income (see Friedman, 1957; 1963).
African ministers meeting at Casablanca in April agree not only to establish a common market but also to set up an African payments union and an African development bank.
Business leader-statesman Owen D. Young dies at St. Augustine, Fla., July 11 at age 87.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average falls to 535.76, down from 734.91 late last year and closes December 31 at 652.10, down from 731.14 at the end of 1961.
The face of small-town American begins to change as the first Wal-Mart store opens July 2 at Rogers, Ark. Oklahoma-born retail merchant Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton, 44, has run a Ben Franklin store with his brother James L. "Bud," 40, at Bentonville; when he proposed a chain of discount stores in small towns, Ben Franklin dismissed the idea, so Walton has gone into business for himself. Walton keeps overhead low, stocks his shelves and racks with the lowest-priced merchandise to be found, develops innovative distribution methods, and works to build an army of "associates" (never called employees) inculcated with a belief in customer service. His strategy, he will later write, is "simply to put good-sized discount stores in little one-horse towns which everybody else was ignoring." Keeping its costs to a minimum ("Every time Wal-Mart spends one dollar foolishly it comes right out of our customers' pockets," Walton will write), using a warehouse network and a large fleet of trucks, the chain will grow to have more than 1,700 stores by 1992, putting many local Main Street stores out of business as shoppers drive to the outskirts of town for better prices. By the end of the century Wal-Mart will have grown so large and powerful that it will be able to dictate wholesale prices of goods charged by its suppliers, who will in many cases have their products made by low-cost labor overseas.
The first Kmart discount store has opened at the Detroit suburb of Garden City. The 63-year-old S.S. Kresge Co. has been losing money with its five-and-ten-cent stores; it soon opens 17 more Kmarts, the chain will have sales second only to those of Sears by 1977, but Wal-Mart will pass it in the 1980s. The 60-year-old Minneapolis-based Dayton Co. has opened its first Target store May 1 at the St. Paul, Minn., suburb of Roseville, selling nationally advertised goods at discount prices; there will be more than 1,000 such stores in 47 states by the end of the century as Target surpasses Kmart.
New York's Consolidated Edison Co. announces plans to build a million-kilowatt nuclear generating station at Ravenswood, Queens. The Atomic Energy Commission rejects the proposal following a public outcry at the utility's seeming disregard of public safety, but the AEC approves construction of a plant 28 miles north of the city at Indian Point on the Hudson (see 1963).
The S.S. France arrives at New York February 8 on her maiden voyage from Le Havre. Launched late last year by the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, the $81.3 million 66,348-ton French Line ship measures 1,035.2 feet in overall length and is the longest of the great transatlantic passenger liners and the last to be built in this century.
Europe's Arlberg-Orient Express goes out of service May 27 after nearly 79 years of operation between Paris and Istanbul; the Simplon-Orient Express ends service as well. Both have fallen victim to the airplane, which has cut travel time between Paris and Istanbul to 2 hours.
The IL-62 jet designed by S. V. Ilyushin goes into service for Aeroflot (see 1954; 1968).
Paris and London sign an agreement November 29 for joint design and development of a supersonic passenger plane (see 1969).
John Foster Dulles International Airport opens 24 miles from downtown Washington to supplement Baltimore's Friendship and Washington's National airports. Dulles is the first civil airport specifically designed to handle jets, and its mobile lounges are adjustable to the height of any aircraft door, saving passengers from having to walk to loading gates.
The Lear jet introduced by aviation pioneer William P. Lear will be the leading make of private jet aircraft within 5 years.
Aircraft pioneer Sir Frederick Handley Page dies at London April 21 at age 76 as the RAF begins deploying his Victor B2 long-range medium bomber.
The Trans-Canada Highway formally opens July 30 at Rogers Pass, British Columbia, after 12 years of construction (more than 3,000 kilometers remain unpaved). Stretching from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Victoria, B.C., the world's longest national highway (7,821 km) will have cost over $1 billion by the time it is finished in 1970.
The Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge opens to traffic October 31 after 2 years' construction; the steel-girder truss toll bridge joins Ontario to Michigan's upper peninsula.
Chicago-born physical chemist Richard Williams, 34, records in his laboratory notebook April 13 that liquid crystals can be electronically controlled to modulate light (see science, 1888). Employed by the David Sarnoff Research Center at Princeton, N.J., Williams files a patent disclosure on "electro-optic elements utilizing an organic nematic compound" (it will be called Williams Domains), and next year (with Philadelphia-born electrical engineer George H. Heilmeier, now 25) will publish a landmark article on the subject of liquid crystal display (LCD); the technology will find numerous applications, notably low-cost digital readouts in electronic devices such as watches, calculators, and computer terminals (see plasma, 1964).
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) is founded by Dallas IBM salesman H. (Henry) Ross Perot, 32, whose data processing firm will make him a billionaire (and a 1992 presidential candidate).
Cardiff-born Trinity College, Cambridge, graduate student in physics Brian D. Josephson, 22, explores the properties of a junction between two superconductors and discovers what will become known as the Josephson effect. Japanese solid-state physicist Leo (originally Reiona) Esaki, 37, at Sony Corp. and Norwegian-born physicist Ivar Giaever, 33, at General Electric have studied the phenomenon of tunneling, which enables electrons to function as radiated waves that can pass through solid barriers that are "impenetrable" according to laws of classical mechanics; Josephson expands on their work to demonstrate theoretically that tunneling between two superconductors can enable electrons to flow across an insulating layer in ways that will ultimately permit computers to switch speeds 10 to 100 times faster than with conventional silicon-based chips, thereby vastly increasing data-processing capabilities.
Physicists Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'eman attend a meeting at Geneva of the 8-year-old Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) and hear a speaker announce a finding that makes them realize their "Eightfold Way" theory about subatomic particles was correct (see 1961). Now at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Gell-Man predicts the finding of a new subatomic particle that will be called the omega minus (see 1964).
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Cincinnati-born University of California, Berkeley, history of science professor Thomas S. (Samuel) Kuhn, 40, questions the belief that scientific change comes about through a strictly rational process. Instead of being a steady, incremental acquisition of knowledge, he writes, it is the result of what he calls a "paradigm shift"—"a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions" in which "one conceptual world view is replaced by another."
Physicist Arthur H. Compton dies at Berkeley, Calif., March 15 at age 69; astronomer-archaeologist Andrew (Ellicott) Douglass at Tucson March 20 at age 94, having established the principles of (and coined the name for) dendrochronology, the dating and interpreting of past events by analyzing tree rings; physicist-oceanographer Auguste Piccard dies at Lausanne March 24 at age 78; naturalist-oceanographer William Beebe at the New York Zoological Society's tropical research station in Trinidad June 4 at age 84; physicist Niels Bohr at his native Copenhagen November 18 at age 77.
Saskatchewan adopts a universal healthcare insurance plan through the efforts of Scottish-born clergyman-turned-statesman Thomas C. (Clement) "Tommy" Douglas, 57, whose New Democratic Party (NDP) won last year's provincial election. Saskatchewan has had public, universal hospital insurance since 1947, having been the first province with such coverage, and by last year all 10 provinces and two territories had public plans that provided comprehensive coverage for in-hospital care (see 1965; U.S. Medicare, 1964).
Britain and France remove thalidomide from the market (see 1961). A July 15 editorial in the Washington Post credits FDA researcher Frances Kelsey with having prevented thalidomide birth defects in thousands of U.S. infants, she receives praise in the Senate for her "courage and devotion to the public interest," President Kennedy gives her a medal for distinguished service in a White House ceremony, but although the drug is banned from pharmacies, U.S. physicians have received thousands of sample packages of Kevadon and given a few to expectant mothers.
The thalidomide affair spurs Congress to give the FDA extensive new authority to regulate the introduction of new drugs. The Harris-Kefauver Amendment to the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act (Drug Efficacy Act) requires companies to prove that their products work before they can be approved; it also contains provisions to prevent drug firms from overcharging and from confusing buyers of prescription drugs (but it grandfathers 749 ineffective ingredients used in non-prescription drugs and weight-loss products). President Kennedy has requested a law that will police the pharmaceutical industry in a message that asked also for a broad program of consumer protection, a "Consumer Bill of Rights" that would include a "Truth in Lending" law and a "Truth in Packaging" law (see consumer protection, 1966; commerce, 1968).
John F. Enders, now 65, produces the first successful measles vaccine, but it will not be introduced until 1966 (see Salk, 1952).
Virologist Thomas M. Rivers dies at New York May 12 at age 73.
The Essalen Institute encounter-group mental therapy center is founded at Big Sur, Calif., by entrepreneurs Michael Murphy, 32, and Richard Price; it will attract psychologists and psychotherapists who will include Fritz Perls and Ida Rolf.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 7 to 2 June 25 that reading a 22-word prayer in New York public schools violates the First Amendment (Engel v. Vitale) (seeEverson, 1946). New York's regents had written a bland, non-sectarian school prayer ("Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country") to be read at the start of each school day with the idea that it would promote good moral character, provide spiritual training, and help combat juvenile delinquency (see 1963).
Pope John XXIII opens the Second Vatican Council at St. Peter's Basilica October 11 and speaks for 38 minutes to more than 2,600 bishops who have come from all over the world for the church's largest such gathering ever. It is less than a century since Vatican I was convened in 1869, and the world's population has tripled since then to 3.1 billion. Vatican II will continue for 3 years; it will eliminate from Church doctrine the notion that the Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus, allow the Mass to be celebrated in local languages, have the priest face his flock during Mass, and struggle with issues that have prevented an essentially medieval institution from aggiomamento (updating).
City College of New York psychology professor Kenneth B. Clark, 48, founds Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU) to supplement local teaching facilities as a way to combat unemployment among youth in the New York ghetto (see human rights, 1954).
Hearst Corp. shuts down the Los Angeles Examiner after 59 years of publication; its final issue appears January 7.
First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy conducts television viewers through the White House February 14, presenting historical facts along with the human side of previous executive mansion occupants. Many antiques and paintings have been donated to the White House in response to her pleas. CBS and NBC carry the program simultaneously.
Ninety percent of U.S. households have at least one TV set; 13 percent have more than one. Panasonic and Sony enter the U.S. market with the first Japanese-made black-and-white sets.
A British White Paper published in July criticizes the existing structure of independent television (see Minow, 1961). Industrialist Sir Harry Belkington has chaired a commission whose report recommends that it be reorganized so that independent companies shall produce and sell programs to the Independent Television Authority, that the ITA should, in turn, schedule programs and sell advertising time. It also recommends that by 1964 the BBC should launch a second, UHF (ultra-high frequency) TV channel on 625 lines, the general standard used on the Continent, that BBC should give up its old 405-line standard, initially in the London area only, and that color television be introduced as soon as possible on the 625-line standard.
Telstar 1 launched the night of July 10 is the first communications satellite; it carries 12 voice circuits, transmitting signals at what later will be calculated as 768,000 bits per second. Designed by Bell Laboratories engineer John R. Pierce, it is used to transmit the first live transatlantic telecasts between the United States and Britain. The Communications Satellite Act signed into law by President Kennedy August 31 creates COMSAT (Communications Satellite Corp.) to handle space communications on a profit-making basis under government supervision (see Echo 1, 1960; exploration, 1961; Early Bird, 1965).
ABC begins color telecasts for 3½ hours per week beginning in September, 68 percent of NBC prime evening time programming is in color, but CBS confines itself to black and white after having transmitted in color earlier (see 1954). All three networks will be transmitting entirely in color by 1967.
Digitized voice circuits are used for the first time to transmit local telephone calls in the United States.
The Bell 103 modem (modulator-demodulator) introduced by Bell Laboratories translates data into analog signals that can be sent via telephone lines at 300 bits per second. Computers will communicate via modems that within 40 years will be transmitting data at 1 million bits per second.
The Pentel introduced by Tokyo's Stationery Co. in August is the world's first felt-tip pen. Created by company founder Yukio Horie with help from Masao Miura, it has been inspired by writing brushes used for calligraphy and employs a radically new device that feeds ink through the tip by means of capillary action.
Der Spiegel publishes an exposé of West Germany's defense minister Franz-Josef Strauss, 47, revealing the weakness of NATO forces despite expenditure of large sums of money (see 1946). Strauss has the magazine's offices searched and staff members arrested in late October, publisher Rudolf Augstein turns himself in to police, Chancellor Adenauer accepts Strauss's resignation under pressure from public opinion, charges that he tried to censor the press will blight his hopes of becoming chancellor, but Augstein will remain imprisoned for 103 days. Although treason allegations will be dropped for lack of evidence, Augstein in the next 5 years will write more than 150 commentaries under the pen name Jens Daniel attacking Adenauer.
Former vice president Richard M. Nixon holds a press conference in November after losing a bid to defeat California governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, 57, by nearly 300,000 votes: "As I leave you I want you to know—just think how much you're going to be losing: You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." He complains that the press has been against him ever since his attacks on Alger Hiss in the late 1940s; writes Boston-born Washington Star columnist Mary McGrory, 44, "For Richard M. Nixon, it was exit snarling."
Nonfiction: The Other America: Poverty in the United States by former St. Louis welfare worker Michael Harrington, 34, says the nation has a huge "underclass" of employed people living below the poverty line and neglected by society; The Gutenberg Galaxy by Canadian critic Marshall McLuhan, 51, says, "The medium is the message": since spoken words are richer in meaning ("hotter") than written words TV can save mankind by turning the world into a global village; On Thermonuclear War and Thinking about the Unthinkable by Hudson Institute cofounder Herman Kahn; Thoughts for Our Times by Syracuse, N.Y.-born Roman Catholic priest and educator Theodore M. (Martin) Hesburgh, 45, who has been president of Notre Dame University at South Bend, Ind., since 1952 and is making it excel in academics as well as athletics; The Guns of August by New York-born historian Barbara Tuchman (née Wertheim), 50, is about World War I; The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy by Tennessee-born economist James M. Buchanan, 42, and Gordon Tullock; The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations by English economist Barbara Mary Ward, 48; Let My People Go by South African reformer Albert J. Luthuli, now 64, who was arrested in 1956 after 4 years of nonviolent protest against apartheid and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960; Copper Town by anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker is a study of the media in Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia) and their effect on a troubled colonial society; Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White Jr., who calls technology "a prime spiritual achievement"; Patriotic Gore by Edmund Wilson is about the Civil War; Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff by Illinois-born Johns Hopkins historian Stephen E. (Edward) Ambrose, 26; Henry James: The Conquest of London, 1870-1881 and Henry James: The Middle Years, 1882-1895 by Pittsburgh-born, Saskatchewan-raised New York University biographer-critic (Joseph) Leon Edel, 55, who will complete his five-volume work in 1972; The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith is about the famine of the mid-1840s; Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements by Canadian author George Woodcock, 50; Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck; Sex and the Single Woman by Arkansas-born New York writer Helen Gurley Brown, 40.
President Kennedy and the first lady give a black-tie White House dinner April 29 for prominent writers and intellectuals who include James Baldwin, John Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Robert Frost, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Katherine Anne Porter, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Styron, and Lionel and Diana Trilling. Says Kennedy in a brief speech, "This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
Socialist egalitarian economic historian R. H. Tawney dies at London January 16 at age 81; social critic C. Wright Mills of heart disease at Nyack, N.Y., March 20 at age 45; historian George M. Trevelyan at Cambridge, England, July 21 at age 86.
Fiction: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Odin den v zhizni Ivana Denisovicha) by Soviet novelist Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 44, is based on years spent in Siberian forced-labor camps; Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Waco, Tex.-born political scientist Harvey Wheeler, 43, is about a nuclear war caused by an accident; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Colorado-born novelist Ken (Elton) Kesey, 27, is a satire on the dehumanization of Western society; Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges; Aura by Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, 33; King Rat by English-born U.S. novelist James Clavell, 37, who spent 3 years in a Singapore prisoner-of-war camp; The Reivers by William Faulkner; Letting Go by Philip Roth; Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter; A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed by English novelist-critic Anthony Burgess (John Anthony Burgess Wilson), 45 (whose latter book depicts an overpopulated world); Morte d'Urban by Illinois-born novelist J. F. (John Farl) Powers, 45; Another Country by James Baldwin; The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing; Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner; The Garden of the Finzi Continis (Il giardino dei Finzi Contini) by Giorgio Bassani; Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov; Reinhart in Love by Thomas Berger; A Long and Happy Life by North Carolina novelist (Edward) Reynolds Price, 29; We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson; Diary of a Mad Old Man (Futen rōjin nikki) by Junichiro Tanizaki; The Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna) by Kobo Abe; The Pumpkin Eater by English novelist Penelope (Ruth) Mortimer (née Fletcher), 44; Love and Friendship by Chicago-born novelist Alison Lurie, 35; The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell; The Blood of the Lamb by Peter De Vries, whose daughter Emily has died of leukemia; The Prize by Irving Wallace; The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith; The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie; Dead Cert by Welsh-born British jockey-turned-crime novelist Dick Francis, 41; The Ipcress File by London-born espionage novelist Len Deighton, 33; Love in Amsterdam by London-born mystery novelist Nicolas Freeling, 35; The Light of Day by Eric Ambler; Cover Her Face by Oxford-born mystery novelist P. D. (Phyllis Dorothy) James, 42, whose Inspector Adam Dalgleish is a perceptive poet as well as an officer of the law.
Novelist-poet (and onetime Nazi propagandist) George Sylvester Viereck dies at Mount Holyoke, Mass., March 18 at age 77, having served 4 years' in federal prison from 1943 to 1947; Hugo Wast dies at Buenos Aires March 28 at age 78; novelist-poet Vita Victoria Sackville-West at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, June 2 at age 70; novelist William Faulkner at his home in Oxford, Miss., July 6 at age 64; Clyde Brion Davis at his Salisbury, Conn., home July 19 at age 68; Herman Hesse of a heart attack at Montagnola, Switzerland, August 9 at age 85; Isak Dinesen (Baroness Karen Blixen) at her native Rungstedlund, near Copenhagen, September 7 at age 76; bookshop operator Sylvia Beach at Paris October 5 at age 75; novelist Edgar Lewis Wallant of a ruptured aneurism at Norwalk, Conn., December 5 at age 36.
Poetry: The Materials by George Oppen, now 54, who returned from exile in Mexico 4 years ago after the death of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and began to write again; The Jacob's Ladder by Denise Levertov; Salt by Wislawa Szymborska includes "Conversation with a Stone"; Pictures from Bruegel by William Carlos Williams; All My Pretty Ones by Anne Sexton; The Tennis Court Oath by John Ashbery, who supports himself at Paris by writing art criticism for the New York Herald Tribune while living on a Fulbright fellowship; A Sad Heart at the Supermarket by Randall Jarrell; Silence in the Snowy Fields by Minnesota-born poet Robert (Elwood) Bly, 35; Water Street by James Merrill; Waterlily Fire by Muriel Rukeyser; Long Live Man and Selected Poems by Gregory Corso.
Poet Robinson Jeffers dies at Carmel, Calif., January 20 at age 75; Wilfred W. Gibson at Virginia Water, Surrey, May 26 at age 81; poet-novelist Richard Aldington at Surey-en-Vaus, France, July 27 at age 70, having celebrated his birthday less than 3 weeks earlier in the Soviet Union; poet-painter-novelist E. E. Cummings dies at North Conway, N.H., September 3 at age 67; Ralph Hodgson at Minerva, Ohio, November 3 at age 91.
Juvenile: James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl; The Summer Birds by English author Penelope (Jane) Farmer, 33; The Snowy Day by Brooklyn, N.Y.-born illustator Ezra Jack Keats (originally Jacob Katz), 46; The Big Honey Hunt by Philadelphia-born author-illustrators Jan (Janice Grant) and Stan Berenstain, 39, who have been working for Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel); A Wrinkle in Time by French-born New York author Madeleine L'Engle, 44; Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present by Charlotte Zolotow (illustrated by Maurice Sendak).
Author-artist Ludwig Bemelmans dies at New York October 1 at age 64.
Painting: 100 Cans (of Campbell's Beef Noodle Soup), Green Coca-Cola Bottles, and Do-It-Yourself: Landscape (synthetic polymer paint and Prestype on canvas), and Black and White Disaster (acrylic and silkscreen enamel on canvas) by Andy Warhol; Blam!, Baked Potato, Tire, Takka-Takka, and Head, Red and Yellow by New York-born pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, 39, who has employed comic-strip techniques; Still Life No. 15 by Cincinnati-born New York pop artist Tom Wesselmann, 31; Silver Skies by James Rosenquist; Actual Size and Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights by Omaha-born California painter Ed (Edward Joseph) Ruscha, 24; Fool's House and Diver by Jasper Johns; Ace by Robert Rauschenberg; White-Dash Blue by Ellsworth Kelly; The Three by Barnett Newman; Movements with Squares by Bridget Riley; Cantabile by Kenneth Noland; Stripes by Morris Louis; Eat/Die and The American Hay Company by Robert Indiana; Salads, Sandwiches, and Desserts (oil on canvas) by Wayne Thiebaud; Blue Flower (oil, glue, nails, and canvas on canvas), Little Sister (oil on canvas), and Starlight (oil on canvas) by Agnes Martin; The Garden Road by Fairfield Porter. Franz Kline dies at New York May 13 at age 51; Morris Louis of lung cancer at Washington, D.C., September 7 at age 50.
Sculpture: Two Cheeseburgers, with Everything by Swedish-born New York sculptor Claes Oldenburg, 33; Black Shovel (oil on canvas with rope, shovel, box, earth, and wall panel) by Jim Dine; Voltri Bolton X by David Smith; Single Form (Memorial) (stone) by Barbara Hepworth.
Photography: In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World by Illinois-born photographer Eliot (Furness) Porter, 60, who taught biochemistry at Harvard for 10 years until he quit in 1939 to devote full time to his work in Kodachrome, beginning with birds and moving on to natural landscapes.
Polaroid Corp. introduces color film invented by Edwin H. Land (see 1947). The high-speed film produces color prints in 60 seconds (Polaroid's black-and-white film produces prints in 10 seconds).
Theater: The Funny House of a Negro by Pittsburgh-born playwright Adrienne (Lita) Kennedy (née Hawkins), 29, 1/14 at New York's Circle-in-the-Square Theater; The Physicist (Die Physiker) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt 2/21 at Zürich's Schauspielhaus; Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and We're Feeling So Sad by New York playwright Arthur Kopit, 24, 2/26 at New York's off-Broadway Phoenix Theater, 454 perfs.; The Knack by English playwright Ann Jellicoe, 34, 3/23 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with Philip Locke, Julian Glover, Rita Tushingham; A Thousand Clowns by Brooklyn-born playwright-cartoonist Herbert George "Herb" Gardner, 27, 4/5 at New York's Eugene O'Neill Theater, with Jason Robards Jr., Nebraska-born actress Sandy Dennis (Sandra Dale), 24, Brooklyn-born actor William Daniels, 35, 428 perfs.; The Owners of the Keys (Najitele kilcu) by Milan Kundera in April at Prague's National Theater; Chips with Everything by English playwright Arnold Wesker, 29, 4/27 at London's Royal Court Theatre (to the Vaudeville 6/12), with Frank Finlay, John Kelland, 288 perfs.; The Season at Sarsaparilla by Patrick White 9/14 at Adelaide University; The Rabbit Race (Esche und Angora) by Martin Walser 9/23 at Berlin's Schillertheater; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee 10/13 at New York's Billy Rose Theater, with Arthur Hill as George, Uta Hagen as Martha, 664 perfs.; Seidman and Son by Elic Moll (based on his 1958 novel) 10/15 at New York's Belasco Theater, with California-born actor Hy Anzell, 38, Vincent Gardenia, Sam Levene, 216 perfs.; Calculated Risk by Joseph Hayes (based on a play by George Ross and Campbell Singer) 10/31 at New York's Ambassador Theater, with Joseph Cotten, Frank Conroy, 221 perfs.; Lord Pengo by S. N. Behrman 11/19 at New York's Royale Theater, with Charles Boyer, Agnes Moorehead, Henry Daniell, 175 perfs.; Exit the King (Le roi se meurt) by Eugène Ionesco 12/5 at the Théâtre de L'Alliance, Paris.
Vaudeville veteran James Barton dies of a heart attack at Mineola, N.Y., February 19 at age 71; Lucile Watson at New York June 24 at age 83; Myron McCormick of cancer at New York July 30 at age 54; novelist-playwright Patrick Hamilton of liver cirrhosis and kidney failure at Sheringham, Norfolk, September 23 at age 58. Accidentally run over by a car 30 years ago, he sustained multiple injuries, required plastic surgery, and has been a heavy drinker. Actor Frank Lovejoy dies of an apparent heart attack in his New York hotel suite October 2 at age 50; department store heiress and theater patroness Vivian Beaumont (Allen) dies at New York October 10 at age 77 (see Beaumont Theater, 1965).
Television: General Hospital 4/1 on ABC with John Beradino, Emily McLaughlin in a series produced by five-foot-two-inch dynamo Gloria Monty (to 3/26/2004); Dr. Finlay's Case on BBC with Andrew Cruyckjank as Dr. Cameron in a series based on A. J. Cronin stories (to 1971); The Virginian 9/19 on NBC with Lee J. Cobb (later Charles Bickford, then others) (to 9/8/1971); The Jetsons (cartoon series) 9/23 on ABC with Hanna-Barbera animation, voices of George O'Hanlon, Peggy Singleton, Janet Waldo, Mel Blanc (to 4/18/1964); The Tonight Show in September on NBC with host Johnny Carson, now 37, and guests who include Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, John Crawford, and Rudy Vallee. Former host Jack Paar left the show 3/30 after nearly 5 years on the air, his announcer Hugh Downs remained, as did bandleader Skitch Henderson, NBC tried to replace Paar with personalities such as Arlene Francis, Merv Griffin, Jerry Lewis, Art Linkletter, Groucho Marx, and Soupy Sales, Carson turned down the network's first offer, and he brings with him announcer Ed "Heeeeere's Johnny" McMahon. Henderson will continue to lead the band until 1966, trumpet player Doc Severinson will succeed him, the political and social humor of Carson's monologues and his comic skits gain him quick popularity. He will move the show from New York to Los Angeles permanently in 1972, and no other late-night network will have an audience to match his (to 5/22/1992; 4,531 episodes); The Beverly Hillbillies 9/26 on CBS with Buddy Ebsen, now 54 (to 9/7/1971, 216 episodes); Combat 10/2 on ABC with Rick Jason, Vic Morrow in a World War II infantry series (to 8/29/1967); McHale's Navy 10/11 on ABC with Ernest Borgnine (as Lieut. Quentin McHale), Joe Flynn (to 8/30/1966).
Radio personality John Henry Faulk, now 48, wins a libel suit that will be credited with ending the industry's blacklisting of alleged communists (see 1951). CBS fired Faulk in September 1957 following accusations in publisher Vincent W. Hartnett's bulletin Aware, a supermarket operator threatened to remove products made by companies that sponsored or hired performers whom he considered to be pro-communist, Edward R. Murrow provided financial backing for Faulk's case, the store operator died just before the case went to court, and a New York Supreme Court jury hands down its decision June 28 after an 11-week trial. British-born lawyer Louis Nizer, 60, obtains a $3.5 million judgment that will be reduced to $550,000 on appeal.
Films: Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water with Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz; David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia with Irish actor Peter O'Toole, 30, Egyptian-born actor Omar Sharif (Michel Shalhouz), 30, Alec Guinness; Sidney Lumet's Long Day's Journey into Night with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards Jr., Dean Stockwell; John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with James Stewart, John Wayne, Sarah Miles; Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country with Virginia-born actor Randolph Scott (Randolph Crance), 59, Joel McCrea; François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player with Paris-born actor-singer Charles Aznavour (Varenagh Aznavourian), 38; Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo with Toshiro Mifune. Also: Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd with Robert Ryan, Ustinov, Melvyn Douglas; Hiroshi Imagaki's Chushingura with Koshiro Matsumoto, Yuzo Kayama, Toshiro Mifune; George Seaton's The Counterfeit Traitor with William Holden, Lilli Palmer; Blake Edwards's Days of Wine and Roses with Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick; Pietro Germi's Divorce, Italian Style with Marcello Mastroianni; Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel with Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal; John Huston's Freud with Montgomery Clift; John Ford, Henry Hathaway, and George Marshall's How the West Was Won with Carroll Baker, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Carolyn Jones, Eli Wallach; Guy Green's Light in the Piazza with Olivia de Havilland, Rossano Brazzi, Los Angeles-born actress Yvette Mimieux, 20, Memphis-born George Hamilton, 23; Tony Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner with Michael Redgrave, Tom Courtenay, 24; John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate with Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury; Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker with Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, now 15, Victor Jory, Inga Swenson; Kon Ichikawa's The Outcast with Raizo Ichikawa; Arthur Dreifuss's The Quare Fellow with Patrick McGoohan, Sylvia Sims; Richard Brooks's Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Texas-born actor (Elmore) Rip Torn, 31; Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly with Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Max (Carl Adolf) von Sydow, 33, Lars Passgard; Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck; Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with Bette Davis, Joan Crawford; Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light with Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Max von Sydow.
Comedian Ernie Kovacs dies instantly January 13 at age 42 when his station wagon hits a power pole at Los Angeles; actor Kenneth MacKenna dies at Hollywood January 15 at age 62; director Michael Curtiz of cancer at Hollywood April 11 at age 73; director Frank Borzage of cancer at Hollywood June 19 at age 72; producer Jerome Irving "Jerry" Wald of heart disease at Beverly Hills July 13 at age 49; Victor Moore following a stroke at an East Islip, N.Y., actors' home July 23 at age 86; Marilyn Monroe takes an overdose of sleeping pills and dies at her Hollywood home August 5 at age 36; silent-film cowboy star Hoot Gibson dies of cancer at Woodland Hills, Calif., August 23 at age 70; director Tod Browning while recovering from cancer surgery at Hollywood October 6 at age 82; actor Charles Laughton of cancer at Hollywood December 15 at age 63; Thomas Mitchell of cancer at Beverly Hills December 17 at age 70.
Hollywood musicals: Morton Da Costa's The Music Man with Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, music and lyrics by Meredith Willson, songs that include "Trouble."
Broadway musicals: No Strings 3/15 at the 54th Street Theater, with Diahann Carroll, Richard Kiley, book by Samuel Taylor, music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers, songs that include "The Sweetest Sounds," 580 perfs.; I Can Get It for You Wholesale 3/22 at the Shubert Theater, with Lillian Roth, dancer Harold Lang, Jack Kruschen, Brooklyn-born singer-actress Barbra (originally Barbara Joan) Streisand, 19, Brooklyn-born actor Elliott Gould (originally Elliot Goldstein), 23, music and lyrics by Harold Rome, book from the 1934 Jerome Weidman novel, 301 perfs.; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum 5/8 at the Alvin Theater, with Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, songs that include "Comedy Tonight," 964 perfs.; Little Me 11/17 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, with Sid Caesar, Joey Faye, Virginia Martin, book by Neil Simon, music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, songs that include "Real Live Girl," 257 perfs.; Never Too Late 11/27 at the Playhouse, with Paul Ford, Maureen O'Sullivan, Orson Bean, House Jameson, book by Sumner Arthur Long, 41, music by John Kander, lyrics by Jerry Bock and Chicago-born writer Sheldon Harnick, 38, songs that include the title cha-cha, 1,007 perfs.
Former London musical stage beauty Lily Elsie dies at London December 16 at age 76.
Opera: Italian soprano Adriana Maliponte, 19, makes her Paris Opéra debut in March singing the role of Micaela in the 1875 Bizet opera Carmen; New Orleans-born mezzo soprano Shirley Verrett, 31, appears in Carmen at the Spoleto Festival and makes a sensation; she will debut at the New York City Opera in 1964, at La Scala in 1966, and at the Met in 1968; Katerina Ismailova 12/20 at Moscow, with music by Dmitri Shostakovich, who has revised his politically unacceptable 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of the Mzensk District.
Opera impresario John Christie dies at Glyndebourne, England, July 4 at age 80; soprano Kirsten Flagstad at Oslo December 7 at age 67.
First performances: Symphony No. 8 by Roy Harris 1/17 at San Francisco; Symphony No. 7 by David Diamond 1/26 at Philadelphia's Academy of Music; Symphony No. 12 by Darius Milhaud 2/16 at the University of California, Davis; Momente by Karlheinz Stockhausen 5/21 at Cologne (scored for soprano, four choruses, 13 players, and percussion, it requires chorus members to speak, whisper, laugh, scream, clap, and stamp their feet as well as sing); War Requiem by Benjamin Britten 5/30 at the new Coventry Cathedral; Quincunx by Elisabeth Lutyens 7/12 at the Cheltenham Festival (scored for a very large orchestra, the work is based on a geometrical astrological pattern and employs the 12-tone scale whose use Lutyens has pioneered in Britain); Symphony No. 8 by Lincoln Center president William Schuman 10/4 at New York's new Philharmonic Hall; Symphony No. 13 by Dmitri Shostakovich 12/18 at Moscow, with voices singing words by poet Yegveny Yevtushenko that deal harshly with anti-Semitism. Premier Khrushchev suppresses the work.
Violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler dies at New York January 29 at age 86; composer Jacques Ibert at Paris February 5 at age 71; conductor Bruno Walter (Bruno Schlesinger) at Beverly Hills February 17 at age 85; composer-conductor Sir Eugene Goossens at London June 13 at age 69.
New York's Philharmonic Hall opens September 23 as part of the new Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts nearing completion on Columbus Avenue between 62nd and 66th streets on a site acquired with federal aid and built with contributions of more than $165 million. The 2,863-seat concert hall designed by Max Abramovitz becomes the new home of the New York Philharmonic after 69 years at Carnegie Hall; it will be renamed Avery Fisher Hall in 1974 (see Fisher, 1937; 1969), but its acoustics are so poor that it will undergo repeated guttings and redesigns until 1976 (see Opera House, 1966).
"We Shall Overcome" is copyrighted by Nashville, Tenn., schoolteacher Guy Carawan, who has added rhythmic punch to a song that will be the hymn of the U.S. civil-rights movement, sung in protest demonstrations throughout the world. The late Zilphia Horton, co-director of the Highlander Folk Center at Monteagle, Tenn., learned it from striking black tobacco workers at Charleston, S.C., in the mid-1940s; she taught the song in 1947 to folk singer Pete Seeger and to Frank Hamilton (who added a verse).
Popular songs: "Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer" by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Charles Tobias; "Days of Wine and Roses" by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Johnny Mercer (title song for the film about alcoholism); "Dream Baby" and "Leah" by Roy Orbison; "Twistin' the Night Away" by Sam Cooke; "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "I'll Try Something New" by Smokey Robinson for the Miracles; "Ramblin Rose" by Noel and Joe Sherman; "What Now My Love" ("El Manthout") by French crooner-composer Gilbert Bécaud (originally François Gilbert Silly), 34, lyrics by Pierre DeLanoe (English lyrics by Carl Sigman); "Roses Are Red, My Love" by Al Byron and Hugh Evans; "The Wanderer" by Ernest Maresca; "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" by George Cory, lyrics by Douglas Cross; "The Lonely Bull" by California trumpet player-vocalist-composer Herb Alpert, 27; "Takin' Off" by jazz composer Herbie Hancock, 22, who received his degree in musical composition 2 years ago from Grinnell College in Iowa; "Surfin' Safari" by the Beach Boys Brian Wilson, 20, Dennis Wilson, 17, Mike Love, 21, Al Jardine, 19, and Carl Wilson, 25; Peter Paul and Mary (album) by a trio that includes Mary (Ellin) Travers, 25, Peter Yarrow, 24, and Paul Stukey, 23; "I Found a Love" by Alabama-born singer-songwriter Wilson Pickett, 21, who began his career as a gospel singer; Golden Apples of the Sun (album) by Judy Collins includes "Minstrel Boy" and "The Silkie"; "The One Who Really Loves You," "You Beat Me to the Punch," and "Two Lovers" by Mary Wells; Texas-born rhythm & blues singer-songwriter Barbara Lynn (Barbara Lynn Ozen), 20, records "You'll Lose a Good Thing"; Patsy Cline records her songs "She's Got You" and "When I Get Through with Me You'll Love Me Too"; Ray Charles records a pop version of the 1957 Don Gibson country music song "I Can't Stop Loving You" and it has sales of 1 million copies; "Do You Hear What I Hear?" by New York-born pianist Gloria Shayne, lyrics by her Strasbourg-born husband Noel Regney, 40 (their song will earn a small fortune and become a Christmas standard).
Warner Brothers releases the album My Son, The Folk Singer by Chicago-born New York gag writer Allan Sherman (originally Allan Copelon), 37; it quickly becomes the fastest-selling album in Warner's history with parodies such as "Sarah Jackman" based on Jewish suburban humor.
New York disk jockey Alan Freed pleads guilty to two charges of commercial bribery and pays a $300 fine, having taken payola from record companies (see 1954). Freed has said that every disk jockey did it, and only New York and Pennsylvania have made it illegal, but the hard drinking, womanizing Freed's career is over.
Songwriter Maceo Pinkard dies at his New York apartment July 19 at age 65.
Philadelphia-born basketball star Wilton Norman "Wilt" Chamberlain, 25, scores a record 100 points for the 76ers in a game with the New York Knickerbockers at Hershey, Pa., March 2. His total for the season is 4,029 (50.4 per game), and by the time he retires from National Basketball Association play in 1973 after 14 seasons the seven-foot one-inch Chamberlain will have scored 31,419 points (30.1 per game).
Prizefight authorities withdraw Archie Moore's light-heavyweight title February 10 on grounds that Moore, now 48, has failed to defend the title (see 1956). Charles "Sonny" Liston wins the world heavyweight boxing title September 25. Now 28, he knocks out Floyd Patterson in the first round of a championship bout at Chicago.
Jockey Eddie Arcaro retires at age 46 with bursitis in his right arm, having won 4,779 victories in 24,092 races to set a record that will stand until Bill Shoemaker breaks it in 1972.
Rod Laver wins the "grand slam" in tennis (Australia, France, Britain, and the United States); Karen Susman (née Hantze), 19, (U.S.) wins in women's singles at Wimbledon, Margaret Smith, 19, (Australia) at Forest Hills.
Golfer Arnold Palmer wins his second consecutive British Open and his third Masters Tournament. Columbus, Ohio-born golfer Jack (William) Nicklaus, 22, wins the U.S. Open, defeating Palmer in a playoff match after Palmer has come from seven strokes off the pace in the final round.
The New York Mets and Houston Colts play their first seasons. The Mets succeed the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers, who moved to California in 1958.
The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the San Francisco Giants 4 games to 3.
Australia's first bid for the America's Cup in ocean yacht racing fails as the U.S. defender Weatherly defeats Gretel 4 races to 1.
Brazil retains the World Cup in football (soccer) by defeating Czechoslovakia 3 to 1 at Santiago, Chile, and wins without Pele, who has torn a thigh muscle in an earlier game with the Czechs.
New Balance Athletic Shoe introduces the first running shoe without seams and with a very wide foot base, selling it direct to athletes by mail order (see 1906). Dress shoes have nailed-on heels that increase pressure on the forefoot, but New Balance's Trackster has a sneakerlike toe and heel, a ripple sole, and a rubber wedge tucked between its upper and its sole to relieve pressure on the Achilles' tendon (see 1972).
Havaianas flip-flop sandals are introduced at São Paulo, Brazil. Initially intended for beach use, the cheap rubber footwear will gain worldwide popularity and early in the next century be promoted as high-priced fashion accessories.
Former Christian Dior designer Yves Saint Laurent establishes a Paris house under his own name (see 1957). Now 26, he will introduce a ready-to-wear line under the name Rive Gauche in 1966 and launch a menswear line in 1974.
Pittsburgh-born New York designer Anne Fogarty (née Whitney), 43, establishes a business under her own name that will continue until about 1974.
Veteran Harper's Bazaar fashion editor Diana Vreeland joins Vogue as editor-in-chief (see 1937). Now 62, she will continue in the Vogue position until 1971, exercising great influence on what chic American women wear and becoming famous for pronouncing corduroy "cor du roi" and for such aphorisms as, "Pink is the navy blue of India" and "The bikini is the most important thing since the atomic bomb." Of Coco Chanel she says, "Her first customers were princesses and duchesses and she dressed them like secretaries and stenographers" (see 1913; 1954; 1971).
MIT computer programmers headed by student Steve Russell, 24, create the first computer game, Spacewar, using the new PDP-1 minicomputer made by Digital Equipment Corp. (see Bushnell, 1972).
The Arco lamp designed by Milan architect Achille Castiglione, 44, has a chrome ball shade suspended seven feet from its marble base on an arch of steel.
Trident sugarless gum gives chewers a way to get sweetness and flavor without damaging their teeth. Introduced by American Chicle Co., it contains an artificial sweetener and will eventually come in a variety of flavors.
Philip Morris introduces "Marlboro Country" ("Come to where the flavor is") to advertise its top filter-tip cigarette in competition with R. J. Reynolds's Winston brand. Marlboro has been promoted since 1925 as a "woman's" brand with a choice of ivory or red ("beauty") tips; Richmond, Va.-born Philip Morris CEO Ross R. Millhiser, 42, has given approval to a campaign featuring men (most of them advertising agency art directors) in full evening dress but with tattoos on the backs of their hands to suggest that they were not to the manor born; the cowboy theme (created by the Chicago advertising agency Leo Burnett under the direction of its creative head Don Tennant) changes the brand's image. Singer Julie London delivers the commercials ("You get a lot to like with a Marlboro: filter, flavor, flip-top box"), and the ads will make Marlboro the leading brand worldwide for women smokers as well as men, lifting Philip Morris from its position as Richmond's sixth largest tobacco company to one the world's largest consumer products companies.
Cigar smokers are the chief victims of President Kennedy's embargo on trade with Cuba. U.S. cigar sales exceed 6 billion per year, with 95 percent of Cuban cigars rolled and wrapped in U.S. plants, but without Cuban tobacco cigar sales will fall to 5.3 billion per year by 1976 despite population growth.
Seattle's Space Needle opens April 21 as the focal point of the city's futuristic World's Fair. Inspired by Germany's Stuttgart Tower, the 605-foot structure designed by artist Edward E. Carlson and architect John Graham has cost $4.5 million (it will be revitalized in 2000 at a cost of $20 million).
The Vanna Venturi house is completed at Chestnut Hill, Pa., to designs by Philadelphia-born postmodernist architect Robert Venturi, 37, who has worked for Eero Saarinen at Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and Louis I. Kahn at Philadelphia.
Montreal's Place Ville Marie gets its first high-rise buildings with underground galleries built according to a plan put forward by New York developer William Zeckendorf.
The Motel 6 chain is founded at Dallas, offering accommodations at $6 per night; when it begins franchising its name in 1998 it will be the largest U.S. chain of company-owned and operated budget motels, with 781 units (most of them on interstate highways) providing a total of 86,000 rooms at rates averaging $37 per night.
Silent Spring by biologist Rachel Carson warns of dangers to wildlife in the indiscriminate use of persistent pesticides such as DDT (see 1943; Osborne, 1948; medicine, 1961). Now 55, Carson claims that DDT also poses a safety threat to human health, and her book (excerpted in the New Yorker magazine in June, published September 27) will lead to a federal ban on the use of DDT, despite testimony by reputable scientists that the pesticide poses no significant hazard to humans or even to most birdlife. Developing countries will follow the U.S. lead or risk losing foreign aid money, but alternatives are less effective; they cost three to four times as much as DDT, and failure to use DDT will cause hundreds of thousands to die of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.
Alaskan Eskimos are found to have high concentrations of Cesium-137 in their bodies as a result of eating caribou meat, their staple food. The caribou have grazed on lichens and have absorbed fallout dust from atmospheric nuclear tests.
The National Seashore established by act of Congress protects flora and fauna on the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts by setting aside beachfront property on which development is prohibited (see Cape Hatteras, 1937).
Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona is established by act of Congress. The 94,189-acre park embraces Indian ruins, petrified wood, and colorful desert land.
Maine's Baxter State Park is designated as such to honor former governor Percival P. Baxter, who has spent 31 years acquiring piecemeal a 202,000-acre tract that he presents to the state. The park encompasses scenic forest land surrounding 5,273-foot Mt. Katahdin, Maine's highest peak.
An earthquake at Qazvin, Iran, September 1 registers 7.3 on the Richter scale and leaves 12,230 dead.
Britain has a cold spell that freezes outdoor house pipes, interferes with plumbing, and creates general misery (see 1963).
Florida loses nearly 8 million citrus trees as temperatures fall to 24° F. and remain below freezing.
An International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) established at Los Baños in the Philippines has support from both the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and the Philippine government (see 1903; IR-5, IR-8, 1964). Rockefeller Foundation experts Paul Mangelsdorf, J. George Harrar, Warren Weaver, Edwin J. Wellhausen, Robert F. Chandler, and others have toured Asian hunger areas and recommended creation of the institute. The average Asian eats more than 300 pounds of rice per year as compared with six pounds in the West and many rice-consuming nations, including the Philippines, do not produce enough for domestic needs. IRRI will advance the "Green Revolution," but while per-capita food production in the developing countries has increased in the past decade at an annual rate of 0.7 percent it will increase at an annual rate of only 0.2 percent in the decade ahead.
The United Farm Workers (UFW) has its beginnings in the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) founded by California labor organizer César Estrado Chavez, 32, with support from New Mexican organizer Dolores Huerta (née Fernandez), also 32, who will be arrested 18 times in the next dozen years as she devotes her life to signing up workers, leading boycotts, fighting the use of pesticides that damage workers' health, and lobbying in behalf of migrant workers in the state legislature at Sacramento and in Congress, obtaining disability insurance, unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, and other benefits that have been denied them. Huerta will be called "La Pasionaria" of the farmworkers. The NFWA represents stoop-labor in California's Coachella, Imperial, and San Joaquin valleys (see 1965).
Michael Harrington gives evidence in his book The Other America of persisting hunger and malnutrition in the world's richest nation. The book revives interest in school lunch programs to combat malnutrition, distribution of farm surpluses to the poor, and a food-stamp program that will expand the choices of free foods available to the poor.
Biochemist and vitamin pioneer Conrad Elvehjem dies at Madison, Wis., July 27 at age 61.
Frozen, dehydrated, and canned potatoes account for 25 percent of U.S. potato consumption.
Diet-Rite Cola is the first sugar-free soft drink to be sold nationwide to the general public (see No-Cal, 1952). Introduced by Royal Crown Cola, the cyclamate-sweetened cola will soon have powerful competitors (see Tab, 1963).
Tab-opening aluminum end cans for soft drinks and beer developed with backing from Aluminum Corp. of America make their first appearance (see environment, 1960). Pittsburgh's Iron City Beer in tab-opening cans is test-marketed in Virginia. Many brewers question whether the cans are worth their extra cost, consumers cut their fingers opening the cans, but designers improve the tabs. Milwaukee-based Schlitz will introduce beer in the self-opening cans on a national scale in February of next year, more than 40 brands will be sold in the cans by July, more than 65 by August, and more than 90 percent of beer cans will be self-opening by 1970 as the convenience of six-packs increases beer sales. Discarded tabs will be a hazard for bare feet until designs are further improved (see 1963).
The first Taco Bell fast-food restaurant opens at Downey, Calif. Entrepreneur Glenn Bell, 36, began 10 years ago with a one-man hamburger and hot dog stand at San Bernardino, immediately found himself in competition with the McDonald brothers, experimented with fast preparation of tacos, and by 1956 had three Taco Tia restaurants (in San Bernardino, Barstow, and Redlands), each making $50,000 per year. He began to franchise the Taco Tia name, formed a partnership to launch a chain of El Tacos restaurants, has sold his interest in El Tacos, and will soon have eight Taco Bell units in and about Long Beach, Paramount, and Los Angeles.
China resumes the birth control campaign suspended in her Great Leap Forward Program of 1958, but a proposal by the World Health Organization that it offer family-planning advice brings rebukes from 30 nations.
The U.S. Food and Drug Commission releases a report August 4 to the effect that 28 American women developed blood clots that are believed to have resulted from taking oral contraceptives since September 1961, and that six have died. G. D. Searle disputes any causal relationship but, under pressure from U.S. Food and Drug Commissioner George A. Larrick, issues a warning to physicians August 7 that taking Searle's Enovid oral contraceptive may increase a woman's risk of blood clots. The American Medical Association issues a statement 2 days later, saying that it has made a "careful scientific review of oral contraceptives" and "found absolutely no evidence that [their] use . . . [causes] thrombophlebitis [blood clots in a vein]."
About 96 percent of British women now marry by age 45, up from 83 percent in 1921. Average age at marriage worldwide is now about 24, up from about 17 at the turn of the century, and this has had a greater effect in reducing fertility in much of the world than the introduction of oral contraceptives.
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