| World Chronology: 1966 |
1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970
An encyclical issued by Pope Paul VI January 1 during a 37-day truce in Vietnam asks for an end to hostilities in Southeast Asia. Japan's prime minister Eisaku Sato announces an international peace mission January 25, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's chairman J. W. Fulbright challenges the legality of U.S. military intervention January 28, Sen. Fulbright questions Secretary of State Dean Rusk, 56, but U.S. bombing of North Vietnam begins by the end of the month. International Days of Protest in many world cities criticize U.S. policy in Vietnam.
India's prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri signs the Tashkent Agreement January 10 with Pakistan's president Ayub Khan, ending last year's 17-day war under terms brokered by Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin. Both sides agree to pull back all armed forces to the positions they held prior to August 5 of last year, restore diplomatic relations, and discuss economic, refugee, and other issues, but Indian citizens criticize the agreement for not containing a renunciation of guerrilla warfare, and rancor over the Kashmir controversy continues. Shastri dies of a heart attack at Tashkent, Uzbekistan, January 11 at age 61; Mrs. Indira Nehru Gandhi, 48, daughter of the late Jawaharlal Nehru, is elected to succeed him January 19.
Former Indonesian prime minister Sutan Sjahrir dies at Zürich April 9 at age 57.
Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) launches a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution August 5 to purge and reorganize China's Communist Party. The People's Republic fires her first nuclear bomb from a guided missile October 27. Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, gets her first political job December 5. Now 52, she is made cultural consultant to the General Political Department of the Chinese Army as Mao acts to end the insolence of Red Guard youths, but Mme. Mao will become increasingly sympathetic toward the youths. The Red Guards will prove their "revolutionary integrity" in the next decade by humiliating and beating anyone with a Western education, anyone who deals with Western businessmen or missionaries, and any intellectual suspected of "reactionary" thinking.
Gen. Arthur E. Percival, British Army (ret.), dies at London February 1 at age 78.
Australia's prime minister Sir Robert Gordon Menzies resigns after a second ministry that has continued since 1949. Now 71, he is succeeded by Sydney-born federal treasurer Harold (Edward) Holt, 57, who increases Australian troop deployment in support of South Vietnam (but see 1967).
President Johnson visits New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea from October 19 to November 2, leaders of the allied nations pledge support for the war in Vietnam in a conference at Manila October 24 to 25, targets around Hanoi come under intensive bombing in early December, and by year's end 389,000 U.S. troops are in South Vietnam (see 1967).
Former French president Vincent Auriol dies at Paris January 1 at age 81.
President de Gaulle proposes a "Europeanized Europe" free of U.S. and Soviet domination. He announces March 11 that France will withdraw her troops from NATO and requests that NATO remove all its bases and headquarters from French soil by April 1 of next year (see 1949). De Gaulle sends his foreign minister to visit Eastern European capitals, he visits the USSR himself from June 20 to July 1, and Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) moves July 1 from Paris to Casteau, outside Brussels. Former French premier Paul Reynaud dies of an intestinal ailment at Neuilly September 21 at age 87.
Former Finnish prime minister Väinö Tanner dies at Helsinki April 19 at age 85.
Romania's premier Nicolae Ceausescu proposes dissolution of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact alliance in a meeting of Warsaw Pact powers at Bucharest July 4 to 6. Ceausescu also asks that all nations withdraw their troops from the soil of all other nations.
France severs diplomatic relations with Morocco in January over last year's Ben Barka affair.
Jordan suspends relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in July (see 1964), but her forces are unable to stop PLO raids across the Jordan into Israel. Israeli tanks and aircraft attack the Jordanian village of Sammu November 13 in reprisal for the PLO raids and the undeclared war brings agitation by Palestinians for the overthrow of Jordan's Hussein, who has Saudi and U.S. support (see Six-Day War, 1967).
Vice Admiral William F. Raborn Jr. resigns as CIA director June 30 and his Philadelphia-born deputy Richard (McGarrah) Helms, 53, becomes the first career official to head the agency, having served under Allen W. Dulles, John A. McCone, and the rather inept Raborn. An expert at covert operations whose German language skills made him useful to the Office of Strategic Services in World War II, Helms supervised construction in 1955 of a 500-yard tunnel connecting East and West Berlin for use in tapping telephone lines to Moscow and eavesdropping on conversations with Soviet agents in Poland and East Germany. He oversaw the coup that toppled Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1961 and was by some accounts involved also in efforts before 1963 to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro (see 1973).
Uganda's prime minister Milton Obote assumes full powers February 22 and deposes Sir Edward Mutesa II from the presidency March 2 (see 1962). Charges have been raised in the Parliament that he had his military commander Idi Amin Dada supply guerrillas in Congo with arms 2 years ago, that Obote and Amin misappropriated $350,000 in gold and ivory from the guerrillas, but Amin's men arrest the five ministers who raised the issue, and Obote suspends the nation's constitution. An almost illiterate giant who stands six foot four, Amin attracted the attention of British colonial officers after joining the King's African Rifles in 1946, fought against Mau Mau rebels in Kenya a decade later, and was the highest ranking Ugandan officer when the country obtained independence in 1962. Obote abolishes the kingdoms within his country and deposes Buganda's king Sir Edward F. W. Walugenbe Mutebiluwanguela Mutesa II, 42, who is sent into exile (his country is part of Uganda) and will die in 1969 (see 1968).
Ghana's army and police officers stage a coup February 24 and oust President Nkrumah, who is away on a visit to Beijing (Peking). Given refuge and named co-president by Guinea's president Sékou Touré, Nkrumah threatens military action to regain the power he held for 15 years.
President Mobutu of the Democratic Republic of Congo takes over all legislative powers from Parliament in March and renames the nation's cities July 1. Leopoldville becomes Kinshasa, Stanleyville Kisingani, Elisabethville Lubumbashi (see Zaire, 1971).
Malawi becomes a republic and elects prime minister Hastings Kamuzu Banda president (see 1964). Wearing dark suits and homburgs but affecting the lion-tail fly whisk of an African king, Banda refuses to make speeches in African languages, will hire only white foreigners to run his ministries and the businesses that will bring him a fortune, and will establish an Eton-like school at his native Mtunthama, where poor students will study Greek and Latin and learn African history from white teachers with a British point of view. He is eccentric and often cruel, but Banda is also witty and will have himself reelected continually until 1994.
South Africa's prime minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd is assassinated at Cape Town September 6 at age 65 after an 8-year administration in which he has tightened racial restrictions. His minister of justice B. J. Vorster, now 50, succeeds him a week later (see human rights, 1964); Vorster will continue the Verwoerd policies of apartheid and support for the white regime in Rhodesia.
The UN General Assembly terminates South Africa's mandate in South-West Africa (Namibia), but South Africa calls the action illegal, ignores it, and refuses a UN administrative commission entry into the mandate territory.
Botswana becomes an independent republic within the British Commonwealth September 30 and elects Sir Seretse Khama first president of the bleak territory known heretofore as British Bechuanaland.
Lesotho becomes an independent kingdom within the British Commonwealth October 4 after 82 years as the crown colony Basutoland. The new state is surrounded by South Africa but ruled by her Oxford-educated king Moshoeshoe II, 28, who runs into difficulties when he tries to establish more effective control. He is imprisoned and released only after promising to abide by the constitution, he will be exiled in 1970, but he will have two more reigns before his death in early 1996.
The U.S. Department of Commerce orders economic sanctions against Ian Smith's Rhodesia March 18, prohibiting export of anything that may be useful (see 1965). Smith meets with Britain's Prime Minister Wilson on a warship off Gibraltar in early December. They make a tentative agreement that Rhodesia will have majority rule within 10 or 15 years, the Salisbury government rejects the agreement December 5, London appeals December 6 for UN sanctions against the Smith government, the UN Security Council imposes mandatory sanctions, but South Africa and Portugal refuse to participate.
Gen. Courtney H. Hodges (ret.) dies of a heart attack at San Antonio, Texas, January 16 at age 79; Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (ret.) near San Francisco February 20 at age 80.
Former Nicaraguan dictator Emiliano Chamorro dies of a heart attack at Managua February 26 at age 95; former Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas at Mexico City October 19 at age 75.
The South American nation of Guyana becomes an independent state within the British Commonwealth May 26 (see British Guiana, 1964). Forbes Burnham, now 44, becomes first prime minister of the new South American nation, heretofore called British Guiana, and will remain in office until his death in 1985; a moderate socialist with racist and demagogic leanings, he will use what the U.S. State Department will later characterize as "wiretaps, mail interceptions, and physical surveillance" to "monitor and intimidate" his political opponents, led by Cheddi Jagan, rigging one election after another to retain personal power (see 1992; new constitution, 1980).
The Dominican Republic elects moderate Joaquin Balaguer, 59, president over Juan Bosch after more than a year of occupation by an inter-American peacekeeping force. Balaguer has U.S. support and embarks on a program of economic and social reform as the OAS withdraws its force in October.
Former Virginia governor and U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd dies at his Berryville country estate October 20 at age 79, having fought lynchings while at the same time opposing civil-rights reforms; former Massachusetts governor and U.S. secretary of state Christian A. Herter dies at Washington, D.C., December 30 at age 71.
Film actor Ronald Reagan wins election as governor of California, having supported Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential bid and campaigned as a Republican against Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown with promises to "clean up the mess in Berkeley" (see education, 1964; 1967).
Hattiesburg, Miss., farmer-businessman-civil rights leader Vernon F. Dahmer, 58, announces January 8 that he will accept payments of the $2 poll tax at the small grocery store on his property to make it easier for blacks to vote. Two carloads of Ku Klux Klan nightriders firebomb the grocery store at about 2 o'clock in the morning of January 10 and throw Molotov cocktails into Dahmer's house; his wife, Ellie, and their three children escape through the back windows, running through walls of flame while Dahmer fires at the outlines of masked figures out front, and although he too escapes out the back his lungs are so badly seared by the fire that he dies 13 hours later. An abandoned car and dropped pistol provide clues that lead authorities to charge 13 members of the KKK, including White Knights of the KKK founder and Imperial Wizard Sam H. Bowers, 40, of nearby Laurel, Miss., with murder, but juries in four separate trials will be deadlocked. Three men will ultimately be convicted of murder in the case and a fourth of arson; none will serve more than 10 years (see 1998).
President Johnson appoints New York State senator and former NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer Constance Baker Motley, 44, to the United States District Court January 25. A protégée of NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, her appointment has been proposed by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D. N.Y.), and she becomes the first black woman to hold a federal judgeship.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 March 24 that poll taxes are unconstitutional (Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections), but Justices Black, Harland, and Steward dissent, arguing that state legislatures should change their laws to reflect changing times and the federal judiciary should not intervene.
Los Angeles-born Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John W. Gardner, 53, orders that federal funds be withheld from 12 Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi school districts that are in violation of 1964 Civil Rights Act guidelines; his May 13 order ignores Northern school districts that have done nothing to desegregate schools.
The University of Mississippi's first black graduate James Meredith is shot from ambush and wounded June 6 while walking from Memphis to Jackson, Miss., in a voting rights demonstration (see 1962). The march continues until June 26, when 15,000 demonstrators rally before the state capitol.
A month of racial riots and looting begins June 23 at Cleveland; blacks on Chicago's West Side riot for three nights in mid-July.
Atlanta has race riots in its black Summerhill section, having been the first city in the South to integrate its public schools without disturbance.
Gov. George C. Wallace signs a bill September 2 forbidding Alabama's public schools to comply with the Office of Education's desegregation guidelines.
Folk singer Joan Baez escorts a small group of black children to the door of an all-white elementary school at Grenada, Miss., September 19, but state patrol officers bar their entry (see 1967).
The U.S. Army's First Cavalry Division at An Khe in Vietnam's Central Highlands establishes an official military brothel within the perimeter of its base camp. So does the First Infantry Division at Lai Khei, near Saigon, and the Fourth Infantry Division at Pleiku. Most of the women inside the barbed-wire enclosures are Vietnamese refugees; the Committee for the Defense of the Vietnamese Woman's Human Dignity and Rights is founded to protest the brothels and the rape of women by U.S. troops.
Algerian women walk out of a meeting with the Revolutionary Council March 8 after being told that they already have all the rights they seek and have no further need to fight for them.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) announces its founding June 30 to help U.S. women gain full equality. Founder and president of the new civil-rights organization is Betty Friedan (see 1967).
Massachusetts voters elect the first black U.S. senator. The state's attorney general Edward W. Brooke, 47, will join Edward M. Kennedy at Washington.
The United States Court of Appeals of the Fifth Circuit at New Orleans pioneers affirmative action. Writing the majority opinion in the case of United States v. Jefferson County, Judge John Minor Wisdom affirms in December that Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas must all integrate their public schools from kindergarten on up. "The Constitution is both colorblind and color-conscious," he says. "To avoid conflict with the equal protection clause, a classification that denies a benefit causes harm or imposes a burden must not be based on race. In that sense, the Constitution is colorblind. But the Constitution is color-conscious to prevent discrimination being perpetuated and to undo the effects of past discrimination. The criterion is the relevancy of color to a legitimate government purpose" (see Wisdom, 1961; 1969).
Soviet space program designer Sergei Korolev dies at Moscow January 14 at age 59.
The U.S. space vehicle Gemini 8 docks with an unmanned Agena rocket stage March 16 in the first docking ever with another space vehicle, but Gemini 8 malfunctions thereafter, necessitating the first U.S. emergency landing. Gemini 9 goes into space June 3 carrying Chicago-born astronaut Eugene A. (Andrew) Cernan, 32, and Oklahoma-born astronaut Thomas P. (Patten) Stafford, 35, and returns after a 3-day mission; the men have rendezvoused three times with a target vehicle and conducted activities outside their spacecraft. Gemini 10 goes into space July 18 with Rome-born astronaut Michael Collins, 35, and John W. Young, who dock with the Agena target vehicle, use its engine to attain an altitude of 475 miles, and return to Earth July 21.
German munitions maker Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach dies at his native Essen July 30 at age 59, having built a fuse factory inside Auschwitz, used its inmates to build a howitzer factory in Silesia, and employed inmates of 137 other concentration camps during World War II.
Women workers at a Levi Strauss factory in Georgia walk off the job August 10; some 450 employees participate in the strike.
The United States has 2,377 corporate mergers, up from 844 in 1960 (see 1967).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes October 7 at 744.32 and ends the year December 30 at 785.69, down from 969.26 at the end of 1965.
Mastercard has its beginnings in the Master Charge credit card introduced by New York's Marine Midland Bank at the urging of Buffalo banker Karl H. Hinke, 60, to compete with the BankAmericard that will be renamed Visa. Marine Midland licenses other banks to issue the plastic card that will be available, like BankAmericard, to bank customers without charge and be accepted by hotels, restaurants, auto rental agencies, and airlines as well as by retail merchants, but a group of midwestern banks mail out 5 million credit cards in the Chicago area just before Christmas, many wind up in the hands of felons, and consumers who never received them will receive bills for thousands of dollars in charges. Congress will hold hearings next year, and some critics will demand that credit cards be outlawed.
The BankAmerica Service Corp. created by California's Bank of America licenses other banks to issue the BankAmericard and participate in the system (see 1958). By year's end there are 2 million BankAmericard holders and 64,000 merchant outlets (see 1968).
Former chain-store magnate S. S. Kresge dies at Mountain Home, Pa., October 18 at age 99, having retired 4 months earlier.
The Tennessee Valley Authority orders construction of a 1 million kilowatt nuclear power plant at Decatur, Ala., in the heart of the coal country. By late 1972 there will be 30 nuclear plants generating electricity in the United States with 51 more under construction and 72 on order.
Lady Bird Johnson dedicates Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River in Arizona September 22. Built partly to produce energy for nearby Las Vegas, the 710-foot-tall dam has generators that produce more than 1.3 million kilowatts of electricity.
The halogen lamp invented by West Virginia-born General Electric engineer Frederick A. Mosby, 42, is about 20 percent more efficent than an ordinary incandescent lamp. GE engineers Elmer Fridrich and Emmet Wiley showed late in 1953 that placing iodine in a quartz heat lamp prevented deposits of evaporated tungsten on the inner bulb wall, but some of their tungsten halogen lamps worked and others did not. The head of GE's large lamp department at Nela Park in Schenectady, N.Y., asked chemist Edward Zubler to study what was happening inside the light bulb; Zubler and Mosby reported in a 1959 paper that their tungsten halogen lamp showed "virtually 100% lumen maintenance" and a "considerable increase" in life.
Container-ship pioneer Malcom McLean gives a party to inaugurate Europe's first container facility at Rotterdam but draws boos from the crowd as dockworkers realize the new way to ship cargo will cost most of them their jobs (see 1958). Transatlantic container-ship service begins in April with the sailing of the S.S. Fairland from Port Elizabeth, N.J., and its cargo reaches its destination 4 weeks earlier than it used to. U.S. trucking regulations will standardize the size of containers, railroads will standardize the size of containers, railroads will offer piggyback service carrying containers on flatcars, and in place of boxes measuring 10 to 40 feet in length the industry will come up with a twenty-feet equivalent unit (TEU), each box typically containing nearly 22 tons (English journalist Richard F. Gibney will coin the term TEU in 1969). U.S. firms such as American Export Isbrandtsen, Moore-McCormack, and United States Lines will get into the business, and the German firm Hapag-Lloyd and the Danish firm Maersk will lead the way in having overseas port facilities converted to container-ship loading and unloading.
Pan Am orders 25 Boeing 747 jumbo jets, setting a lead that other carriers will have to follow. Depending on seat configuration, the new planes will carry from 342 to 490 passengers, numbers that will tax the capacities of existing terminal facilities. Few airlines will be able to keep their 747 jets filled and many, including Pan Am, will suffer financial reverses as a result of adopting the unprofitable jumbo jets (see 1970).
Laker Airways is founded by English aviation executive Freddie Laker, 44, who made his first fortune ferrying cargo to Berlin during the 1948-1949 Berlin Blockade. Laker has bought 12 obsolete bombers with a $100,000 loan from a friend, converted them to cargo carriers, and used his profits to help start Britain's largest independent airline (British United, or BU), but he has quarreled with BU's chairman and left to start his own charter airline, carrying passengers but no cargo.
The de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter flown for the first time June 7 will open Canada's north country to bush pilots and gain a worldwide reputation for rescue operations in remote areas. Built at the company's Downsview plant in Toronto, it can be equipped with pontoons or skis in place of wheels.
Delta Airlines founder C. E. Woolman dies of a heart attack at Houston September 11 at age 76.
A British airliner catches fire over Japan March 5 and crashes into Mt. Fuji, killing 124; a military-chartered plane crashes into the South Vietnamese village of Binh Thai December 24, killing 129.
FIAT chief Vittorio Valletta, 82, signs an agreement to build a $1 billion automobile plant in the Soviet Union. It is to be constructed at Togliattigrad, named for the late Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti (see 1967).
Afghanistan's "Eisenhower" Highway opens between Kabul and Kandahar. Built with U.S. aid, the 305-mile road is paved with crushed gravel and asphalt; it makes the two cities only 6½ hours apart (see 2003).
The Astoria-Megler Bridge that opens August 27 across the mouth of the Columbia River completes the Pacific Coast highway between Mexico and Canada, linking Astoria, Ore., with Megler, Wash., via the largest continuous truss span in the world. Replacing a scheduled ferry that began service in 1921, the bridge is 4.1 miles and has a main span of 1,232 feet (370 meters) in length, and by 1993 the bridge will be carrying more than 1.6 million vehicles per year.
British Motor Holdings Ltd. is created by a merger of Jaguar Cars Ltd. and the Austin-Morris interests (see 1960). The new automotive giant produces Austin, Jaguar, and MG automobiles and employs 160,000. But in 6 years the company will be in such dire financial straits that only a huge government-guaranteed loan will save it from bankruptcy. Leyland Motors Ltd. acquires the 62-year-old Rover Co. Ltd. and becomes Leyland Motor Corp. Ltd., producing Rover as well as Triumph motorcars (see Triumph, 1961; British Leyland, 1968).
New York City makes Fifth Avenue one-way southbound and Madison Avenue one-way northbound beginning January 14 to ease congestion caused by a transit strike (see Third and Lexington Avenues, 1960); Tiffany & Co. president Walter Hoving, 68, has led opposition to one-way traffic and says Fifth Avenue is now a "superhighway."
Former General Motors chairman Alfred P. Sloan Jr. dies at New York February 17 at age 90; automobile designer Battista Pininfarina at Lausanne, Switzerland, August 3 at age 70.
A subway opens at the Georgian capital Tbilisi in the Caucasus; the city has grown to become a major industrial center with a population exceeding 1 million.
New York City transit fares rise to 20¢ July 5; they have been 15¢ since 1953 (see 1970).
The Montréal Métro that opens October 14 inaugurates a subway system with rubber-tired, air-conditioned cars that replace the trolley buses used since 1937 and operated until June 28. Built in 4½ years by some 5,000 workers at a cost of $213.7 million, it has 26 stations; 20 of them open immediately.
IBM introduces the single-cell Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) cell that will be called the "crude oil" of the information age (see System/360, 1964). The one-transistor cell will be the mainstay of modern computer memory systems (see SQL, 1970).
Hewlett-Packard's HP 2116A is the company's first computer (see 1951); designed as a controller for test and measurement instruments, it will lead the Palo Alto, Calif.-based instrument maker in new directions (it has already entered the medical field by acquiring a Waltham, Mass., company and next year will introduce a non-invasive fetal heart monitor for use in obstetrics) (see laser interferometer, 1971).
Polyethylene (Terylene) co-inventor John R. Whinfield dies at Dorking July 6 at age 65.
Punjabi-born University of Wisconsin biochemist Har Gobind Khorana, 44, announces a complete decipherment of the genetic code (see Sanger, 1955). Having synthesized vitamin A in 1959, Khorana has built on the work of New York-born National Institutes of Health biochemist Marshall Warren Nirenberg, 39, and Urbana, Ill.-born Cornell University biochemist Robert William Holley, 44 (see Human Genome Project, 1989).
Physicist Albert W. Hull dies at Schenectady, N.Y., January 22 at age 85; Nobel physicist Frits Zernike at Groningen, Netherlands, March 10 at age 77; Nobel chemist György Hevesy at Freiburg, Germany, July 6 at age 80; nuclear physicist V. I. Veksler of a heart attack at Moscow September 22 at age 59; Nobel chemist Peter Debye at Ithaca, N.Y., November 2 at age 82; mathematician L. E. J. Brouwer at Blaricum, Netherlands, December 2 at age 85.
The world's first effective, inexpensive vaccine against rubella (German measles) vaccine is introduced by the National Institutes of Health (see 1964). An NIH team headed by Auburn, N.Y.-born physician Paul D. (Douglas) Parkman, 34, and Harry Martin Meyer Jr., 38, has developed a way to provide safe and lasting immunity to the virus and devised a test to measure that immunity (see 1969; mumps, 1967).
The U.S. infant mortality rate falls to 24.3 per thousand live births, down from 29 in 1951, but the British rate falls to 20, down from 30, and the Swedish rate to 15. Experts blame inadequate healthcare delivery systems and poor nutrition among expectant mothers in low income groups for the relatively poor U.S. showing.
Human Sexual Response by Cleveland-born physician William H. (Howell) Masters, 50, and his Missouri-born psychologist colleague Virginia Johnson (née Eshelman), 41, at Washington University in St. Louis is by some accounts the first comprehensive study of the physiology of human sexual activity under laboratory conditions. Masters and Johnson have used electrocardiographs, electroencephalographs, and other biochemical equipment in their research (see 1970).
Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital opens a Gender Identity Clinic and begins performing sex-change operations (see Jorgensen, 1952). In the next 6 years it will do about 500 such operations, mostly on men wanting to be women. The United States has an estimated 7,500 transsexuals, who are sometimes suicidal until they undergo the sex-change procedure that often raises their self-esteem. Hopkins requires that candidates for the procedure live as members of the opposite sex for several months before surgery.
China relies on "barefoot doctors" with only rudimentary nursing skills as the Cultural Revolution closes medical schools and denigrates trained physicians.
The U.S. Senate votes 49 to 37 September 21 to prohibit voluntary prayers in U.S. public schools (see Supreme Court decision, 1963).
Virginia's General Assembly votes in March to authorize expansion of George Mason College into a 4-year, degree-granting institution with a long-range mandate to expand into a major regional university (see 1957; 1972).
University of Wisconsin students protest draft deferment examinations. They occupy administration buildings May 16 to begin a sit-in demonstration (see 1965; Columbia, 1968).
A controversial study completed by English psychologist Sir Cyril Burt, now 83, rebuts arguments that intelligence levels are determined chiefly by environmental factors. Saying that such arguments are not supported by evidence, he submits new research plus work that he published in 1955 and 1958 comparing IQ tests of 53 pairs of monozyotic twins (identical twins who were raised separately) and claims that intelligence levels are inherited (but see 1971).
China's universities begin to close as the Cultural Revolution sweeps all before it. Chairman Mao's remark of June 26, 1965 ("The more books you read, the more stupid you become") is widely quoted.
The Times of London runs news rather than classified advertisements on its front page for the first time, changing its format after 178 years.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that material with redeeming social value is uncensorable. The court hands down three decisions March 21 that modify the stand on obscenity it took in its 1957 decision in Roth v. United States, but it still defines obscene material as any matter that "to the average person applying contemporary standards, the dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest." In the case of Ginzburg et. al. v. United States it upholds a Philadelphia federal court, ruling 5 to 4 that the lower court was correct in finding Brooklyn, N.Y.-born publisher Ralph Ginzburg, now 36, guilty of "pandering" and using "salacious" methods to promote his hard-cover erotic art magazine Eros; it sentences Guinzburg to 5 years' imprisonment and fines him $42,000, but Justice Potter Stewart says in his dissent, "Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Long ago those who wrote our First Amendment charted a different course. They believed a society can be truly strong only when it is truly free" (see 1967).
Oakland Tribune publisher Joseph R. Knowland dies at Piedmont, Calif., February 1 at age 92; right-wing gossip columnist Hedda Hopper at Hollywood February 1 at age 75; the National Geographic magazine's original editor Gilbert H. Grosvenor February 4 at age 90 on the Baldeck, Nova Scotia, estate that once belonged to his late father-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell; German-born cartoonist Vicky (Victor Weisz) dies of a sleeping-bill overdose at London February 23 at age 52; cartoonist Russ Westover of "Tillie the Toiler" fame of heart failure at San Raphael, Calif., March 5 at age 79; cartoonist Gus Edson of a heart attack at Stamford, Conn., September 26 at age 65.
National Panasonic exports the first Japanese-made color TV sets to the United States (see Sony, 1965). South Korea's Lucky Goldstar develops that country's first black-and-white TV set (see 1976).
Physicist William H. Eccles dies at Oxford April 29 at age 90, having pioneered the development of radio communication; right-wing radio commentator Fulton Lewis Jr. dies of a heart attack at Washington, D.C., August 21 at age 63.
Nonfiction: Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power by Robert D. Novak and his Pennsylvania-born columnist partner Rowland Evans Jr., 45; Revolutionary Change by Phoenix, Ariz.-born University of California, Berkeley, political science professor and Asia expert Chalmers (Ashby) Johnson, 35; Quotations of Chairman Mao is published at Beijing (Peking); Babi Yar by Soviet author Anatoly V. Kusnetzov, 36; On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz; The Reforming of General Education by Daniel Bell; Spaceship Earth by Barbara Ward; Socrates and Aristophanes by Leo Strauss; Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag; The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman; Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Louisville, Ky.-born journalist Hunter S. (Stockton) Thompson, 29, who has been West Coast correspondent for Nation magazine since 1964 and calls his craft "Gonzo Journalism."
Philosopher William Ernest Hocking dies at Madison, N.H., June 12 at age 92 in the stone house he built himself; former Herald Tribune literary editor Irita Van Doren dies at New York December 18 at age 75.
Fiction: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud; The Comedians by Graham Greene; Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth; The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon; Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by singer-turned-novelist Richard Fariña; Up Above the World by Paul Bowles; Black Light by Galway Kinnell; The Solid Mandela by Patrick White; Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys; The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West; The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa; The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy; The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry; The Origins of the Brunists by Iowa-born novelist Robert Lowell Coover, 34; Omensetter's Luck by Fargo, N.D.-born novelist William H. Gass, 42; The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein; Black Rain (Kuroi ame) by Masuji Ibuse, now 68, whose novel about the lasting social effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima wins him the Order of Culture; Ryoma on the Move (Ryoma Ga Yuku) (eight volumes) by Japanese novelist Ryotaro Shiba, who depicts the 1860s samurai Ryoma Sakamoto as an idealist with bold dreams, a sense of humor, and an ability to get things done; The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault; Le Vice-Consul by Marguerite Duras; A Dream of Africa (Dramouss) by Camara Laye, who went into exile in Senegal 2 years ago; The Partnership by English novelist Barry (Foster) Unsworth, 36; The Late Bourgeois World by Nadine Gordimer; Tai-Pan by James Clavell; Shadow Dance by English novelist Angela Carter, 26, whose book will be titled Honeybuzzard in America; Trust by New York-born novelist Cynthia Ozick, 38, who has spent 6½ years writing her Jewish-centered novel; To the Precipice by New York novelist Judith Rossner (née Perelman), 31; Rocannon's World and Plant of Exile by California-born fantasy and science-fiction writer Ursula Le Guin (née Kroeber), 36; The Valley of the Dolls by Philadelphia-born novelist Jacqueline Susann, 45, a former actress whose book is criticized for its profanity and its explicit description of breast cancer; The Harrad Experiment by Boston-born novelist Robert H. Rimmer, 49, whose manifesto for free love is a bestseller; The Thirty-First Floor by Swedish crime novelist Per Wahlöö, 40; Death Shall Overcome by mystery writer Emma Lathen (New York-born Mary J. [Jane] Latsis, 39, and Martha Hennissart, a lawyer and economic analyst, respectively, who met as graduate students at Harvard and have written three previous thrillers based on a fictional Wall Street banker); The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by New Jersey-born mystery writer Dorothy Gilman (Butters), 43.
Novelist Frank O'Connor dies at Dublin March 10 at age 63; C. S. Forester at Fullerton, Calif., April 2 at age 65; Evelyn Waugh at Taunton in Somerset, England, April 10 age 62; Richard Fariña is killed in a motorcycle accident at Carmel, Calif., April 30 at age 29; Margery Allingham dies at Colchester, England, June 30 at age 62; William McFee at New Milford, Conn., July 2 at age 85; Lillian Smith of cancer at Atlanta September 28 at age 68; Gregorio López y Fuentes at Mexico City December 10 at age 71.
Poetry: Xenia by Eugenio Montale; High and Low by John Betjeman; The Tale of Fatumeh (Sagan om Fatumeh) by Gunnar Ekelöf; Rivers and Mountains by John Ashbery; May 24th or So by Chicago-born New York poet James (Marcus) Schuyler, 43; Live or Die by Anne Sexton.
Poet Anna Akhmatova dies at Moscow March 5 at age 76; Delmore Schwartz of an apparent heart attack at New York July 11 at age 52; André Breton of a heart ailment at Paris September 28 at age 70.
Juvenile: The Gilded Bat by Edward Gorey; The Green Man by Alan Treece, who dies at Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire June 10 at age 54 (approximate); Christmas Tree on the Mountain by Carol Fenner.
Painting: Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, Blue by Barnett Newman; Yellow and Red Brushtrokes by Roy Lichtenstein; Flowers (silkscreen) by Andy Warhol; The Dylan Painting by Brice Marden; Winsor 34 by Robert Ryman; Hatos II by Victor Vasarely; Le triomph de la musique by Marc Chagall for New York's new Metropolitan Opera House; The Mirror by Fairfield Porter. Alberto Giacometti dies at Chur, Switzerland, January 11 at age 64; Hans Hofmann of a heart attack at New York February 17 at age 85; Maxfield Parrish at Plainfield, N.J., March 30 at age 95; collector Duncan Phillips of a heart attack at Washington, D.C., May 9 at age 79; Jean Arp of a heart attack at Basel June 17 at age 78.
Conceptual artist Yoko Ono, 33, has a show at London's Inica Gallery, it includes a tiny panel stuck to the ceiling with the word yes on it, 25-year-old musician John Lennon of the Beatles wanders into the gallery, climbs a white ladder to view the panel through an attached microscope, and the two begin a relationship that will continue until Lennon's murder in December 1980. Born in Tokyo and raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., feminist Ono presented her Cut Piece performance work last year, sitting impassively while people slowly cut off her clothes (see Bed-In, 1969).
Sculpture: Platform (two rectilinear, fiberglass boxes on the floor) and Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body at Ten-Inch Intervals by Fort Wayne, Ind.-born sculptor Bruce Nauman, 25; Soft Toilet (vinyl, plexiglass, and kapok on painted wood) by Claes Oldenburg; The Truck and The Legend of Lott (both plaster of paris) by George Segal; Antimobile (laminated Douglas fir, plywood, metal) and Death Ship Run Over by a '66 Lincoln Continental by H. C. Westermann; Not Yet (nine dyed fishnet bags with clear polyethylene paper, sand, and cotton string) by Eva Hesse; Four-Square (Walk Through) (bronze) by Barbara Hepworth. Malvina Hoffman dies of a heart attack in her New York studio July 10 at age 81.
New York's Whitney Museum of American Art moves September 2 into a new building designed by Marcel Breuer on upper Madison Avenue (see 1931).
Photography: Many Are Called by Walker Evans, now 62, who left Fortune magazine last year to become a professor of graphic design at Yale. Among the pictures included in his new book is his 1938 photograph Subway Riders, New York.
Theater: Wait Until Dark by Fredrick Knott 2/2 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Quincy, Mass.-born actress Lee Remick, 30, San Diego-born actor Robert Duvall, 34, 374 perfs.; The Lion in Winter by Chicago-born playwright James Goldman, 38, 3/3 at New York's Ambassador Theater, with Robert Preston as Henry II, Rosemary Harris as Eleanor of Aquitaine, 92 perfs.; Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer 3/8 at London's Old Vic Theatre, with Albert Finney, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi; A Season in the Congo (Un saison au Congo) by Aimé Césaire 3/20 at the Théâtre Vivant, Brussels; I, Too, Speak of the Rose (Yo también hablo de le rose) by Mexican playwright Emilio Carballido 4/16 at Mexico City's Teatro Jimenez; Offending the Audience (Bublikumsbeschimpfung) by Peter Hundke 6/8 at Frankurt's Theater am Turm; A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee 9/22 at New York's Martin Beck Theater, with Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, 132 perfs.; The White Geese (Au Retour des oies blanches) by Canadian playwright Marcel Dubé 10/21 at Montreal's Comédie-Canadienne; America Hurrah by Brussels-born U.S. playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie, 31, 11/7 at New York's off-Broadway Pocket Theater; Don't Drink the Water by Woody Allen 11/17 at New York's Morosco Theater (to Ethel Barrymore Theater 1/22/1968, to Belasco 3/25/1968), with Kay Medford, New York-born actor Tony Roberts, 26, Lou Jacobi, House Jameson, scenery and lighting by Jo Mielziner, 598 perfs.
Actor Herbert Marshall dies at Beverly Hills, Calif., January 22 at age 75; William Harrigan at his native New York February 1 at age 72; actress June Walker at Los Angeles February 3 at age 65; playwright Joseph Fields at Beverly Hills March 3 at age 71; comedienne Alice Pearce of cancer at Los Angeles March 3 at age 47; actress Helen Menken of a heart attack at New York March 27 at age 64; playwright Russel Crouse of pneumonia at New York April 27 at age 73; actor Wallace Ford at Woodland Hills, Calif., June 11 at age 68; playwright James Montgomery at New York June 17 at age 77 (approximate); onetime Comédie-Française star Cécile Sorel (Céline Emilie Seurre, comtesse de Segur) of a heart attack near Deauville September 3 at age 93 (approximate); playwright Elmer Harris at Washington, D.C., September 6 at age 88; playwright Anne Nichols of a heart attack at Englewood Cliffs, N.J., September 15 at age 74.
New York-born nightclub comedian Lenny Bruce (originally Leonard Alfred Schneider) is found dead of a drug overdose in his Hollywood, Calif., house August 3 at age 39. A longtime heroin addict, Bruce was imprisoned for obscenity in 1961, a Los Angeles jury found him guilty of possessing narcotics in 1963, but he had become a cult hero among alienated U.S. youths.
Television: Batman 1/12 on ABC with Washington State-born actor Adam West (William West Anderson), 37, as Batman, Dick Grayson (later Burt Ward) as Robin (to 3/14/1968); Hollywood Squares on NBC with Peter Marshall, Cliff Arquette, Wally Cox, Morey Amsterdam, and others in a game show that will become a sitcom, move to ABC in 1976, and continue for decades; Dark Shadows 6/27 (daytime) on ABC with Joan Bennett in a gothic soap opera that will gain a cult following after vampire hero Barnabas Collins (played by Canadian actor Jonathan Frid) is introduced in April of next year (to 4/2/1971); The Newlywed Game (daytime quiz show) 7/11 on ABC with host Bob Edwards (to 12/20/1979); Star Trek 9/8 on NBC with Montreal-born actor William Shatner, 35, as Capt. James T. Kirk, Boston-born actor Leonard Nimoy, 35, as Mr. Spock in a science-fiction series that will continue for 78 episodes (to 9/2/1969), Texas-born World War II bomber pilot, airline captain, and onetime Los Angeles police sergeant Eugene Wesley "Gene" Rodenberry, 45, has developed the series; That Girl 9/8 on ABC with Detroit-born Hollywood starlet Marlo Thomas, 28 (daughter of Danny Thomas), as Ann Marie, Ted Bessell as her boyfriend Don Hollinger (to 3/19/1971); The Green Hornet 9/9 on ABC with Van Williams as crime-fighting newspaper publisher Britt Reid, San Francisco-born martial-arts expert Bruce Lee, 25, as his Filipino valet Kato in a series based on the radio series of 1936 to 1952 (to 7/14/1967); The Monkees 9/12 on NBC with Davy Jones, 25; Peter Tork, 24; Mike Dolenz, 21; and Mike Nesmith, 23 (to 3/18/1968); Family Affair 9/12 on CBS with Brian Keith, Sebastian Cabot, Nancy Walker (to 9/9/1971, 138 episodes); Mission: Impossible 9/17 on CBS with Minneapolis-born actor Peter Graves (Peter Aurness), 40, Martin Landau, 32 (to 9/8/1973); How the Grinch Stole Christmas 12/18 on CBS with animation based on Dr. Seuss drawings.
Gertrude Berg dies of heart failure at New York September 14 at age 66.
Films: Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev with Anatol Solonitzine as the 15th-century icon painter; Marco Bellochio's Fist in the Pocket with Lou Castel, Paola Pitagora; Bruce Herschensohn's documentary John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums; Fred Zinnemann's A Man for All Seasons with Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw. Also: Lewis Gilbert's Alfie with Michael Caine, Shelley Winters; Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up with Vanessa Redgrave, 29, David Hemmings, 24; James Hill's Born Free with Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers; Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight with Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud in Shakespearean roles, narration by Ralph Richardson; Richard Fleischer's Fantastic Voyage with Stephen Boyd, Chicago-born actress Raquel Welch (Raquel Tejad), 26; Silvio Narizzano's Georgy Girl with Lynn Redgrave, 23, James Mason, Alan Bates, Charlotte Rampling, 21; Pier Paolo Passolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew with Enrique Irazoqui; Alain Resnais's La Guerre Est Finie with Yves Montand, Ingrid Thulin; Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme) with Anouk Aimée (originally Françoise Sorya), 34, Jean-Louis Trintignant, 35; Karel Reisz's Morgan! with Vanessa Redgrave; Shohei Imamura's The Pornographers; John Sturges's The Satan Bug with George Maharis, Richard Basehart, Anne Francis; John Frankenheimer's Seconds with Rock Hudson, Salome Jens; Mike Nichols's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor; Bryan Forbes's The Wrong Box with Ralph Richardson, John Mills, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers, Michael Caine; Francis Ford Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now with Peter Kastner, Elizabeth Hartman.
Pioneer film comedian Buster Keaton dies of lung cancer at Hollywood February 1 at age 70; director Robert Rossen of coronary occlusion following surgery at New York February 18 at age 57; Ed Wynn at Beverly Hills June 19 at age 79; Montgomery Clift of a heart ailment at New York July 23 at age 45; Francis X. Bushman at his Pacific Palisades home August 23 at age 83; Nikolai Konstantinovich Cherkasov at Leningrad September 14 at age 63; Clifton Webb undergoes abdominal surgery and dies of a heart attack at his Beverly Hills home October 13 at age 72 (or possibly 76), having lived with his mother, Maybelle, until she died 6 years ago at age 90; actor Richard Whorf dies at Santa Monica, Calif., December 14 at age 60; Walt Disney of lung cancer at Los Angeles December 15 at age 65. He has assembled a 27,500-acre tract near Orlando, Fla., to build a Disneyland East that will be part of a Disney World vacation resort, but he has been a chain smoker for decades; actor Robert Keith dies at Los Angeles December 22 at age 68.
Broadway musicals: Sweet Charity 1/29 at the Palace Theater, with Gwen Verdon, book by Neil Simon based on the 1957 Federico Fellini film The Nights of Cabiria, music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, songs that include "Big Spender," "If My Friends Could See Me Now," 608 perfs.; It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's Superman! 3/29 at the Alvin Theater, with Bob Holliday, music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams, songs that include "You've Got Possibilities," "We Don't Matter at All," 75 perfs.; Mame 5/24 at the Winter Garden Theater, with Angela Lansbury, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, songs that include "If He Walked into My Life," "Open a New Window," "We Need a Little Christmas," 1,508 perfs.; The Apple Tree 10/18 at the Shubert Theater, with Barbara Harris, Larry Blyden, Alan Alda, music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, 463 perfs.; Cabaret 11/20 at the Broadhurst Theater, with Jill Haworth as Sally Bowles, Jack Gilford, Lotte Lenya, Joel Grey, book by Joe Masteroff based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories, music by John Kander, 39, lyrics by New York-born writer Fred Ebb, 31, songs that include "Wilkommen," "The Money Song," and the title song, 1,165 perfs.; I Do! I Do! 12/5 at the 46th Street Theater, with Mary Martin, Robert Preston, book adapted from Jan de Hartog's 1951 play The Four Poster, music by Harvey Schmidt, lyrics by Tom Jones, songs that include "My Cup Runneth Over," 584 perfs.
Entertainer Sophie Tucker dies at New York February 9 at age 81; Broadway songwriter-producer Billy Rose of lobar pneumonia at Montego Bay, Jamaica, BWI, February 10 at age 66; choreographer Helen Tamiris at her native New York August 4 at age 61; writer-lyricist-director-producer Harlan Thompson at New York October 29 at age 76.
Opera: New York's Metropolitan Opera House opens September 16 to replace the 83-year-old Met that will be razed next year. Composer-critic Deems Taylor has died at his native New York July 3 at age 80. Designed by Abby Rockefeller's brother-in-law Wallace K. Harrison, the new $45.7 million Met has 3,788 seats (the old one had 3,625) and is the largest building in Lincoln Center, but its premiere of the opera Antony and Cleopatra with Leontyne Price, music by Samuel Barber, is a disaster; Janet Baker sings the role of Hermia in the 1960 Benjamin Britten opera A Midsummer Night's Dream at Covent Garden and appears 12/2 in a song recital at New York's Town Hall.
Oratorio: Saint Luke's Passion by Krzysztof Penderecki 3/30 at Germany's Munster Cathedral.
First performances: Catena for Soprano, Tenor and 22 Instruments by Elisabeth Lutyens 6/7 in a BBC Invitation Concert (part of her cycle The Changing Seasons, the work is set to texts ranging from Japanese nō plays to Dylan Thomas poems); Six Works by Lutyens 7/8 (her 60th birthday) set to poems from The Valley of Hatsu-Se in the original Japanese since Japanese versification is based on syllables; Markings (symphonic essay dedicated to the memory of the late Dag Hammarskjold) by Ulysses Kay 8/18 at Oakland University, Rochester, Mich.; Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra No. 2 by Dmitri Shostakovich 9/25 at Moscow with Mstislav Rostropovich as soloist; Symphony No. 6 by Roger Sessions 11/19 at Newark, N.J.
Popular songs: "Yellow Submarine," "Nowhere Man," and "Eleanor Rigby" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles (who give their last public concert August 29 in San Francisco's Candlestick Park); "Sunshine Superman" and "Mellow Yellow" by Scottish rock singer Donovan Leitch; Aftermath (album) by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones includes the single "Paint It Black"; "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" by the British rock group the Yardbirds (Keith Reif, 33; Eric Clapton [originally Eric Patrick Clapp], 31; Chris Dreja, 29; Jim McCarty, 33; Jeff Beck, 32; and Jimmy Page, 32); "If I Were a Carpenter" by Tim Hardin; "Scarborough Fair—Canticle" by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel; "Alice's Restaurant" by folksinger Arlo Guthrie, 20, who has written the song of social protest to promote a Stockbridge, Mass., eating establishment/commune run by Alice and Ray Brock, two of his former schoolteachers, in an abandoned church; "Monday, Monday" and "California Dreamin'" by South Carolina-born singer-songwriter John E. A. Phillips, 30, of The Mamas and The Papas (Phillips, Arlington, Va.-born Cass Elliott [originally Ellen Naomi Cohen], 22, Dennis Doherty, 24, Holly Michelle Gilham, 22); Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (album) by the Jefferson Airplane (Chicago-born singer Grace Slick [née Wing], 22, guitarist-banjoist Paul Kantner, 24, bass guitarist Jack Casady, 22, guitarist Jorma Kankonen 25, drummer Spencer Dryden, 23), a rock group that has been playing at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium; "Summer in the City" by New York-born rock-folk singer-songwriter John B. Sebastian, 22, Mark Sebastian, and Joe Butler of the Lovin' Spoonful; "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Oklahoma-born songwriter Lee Hazelwood, 36, who has written it for Nancy Sinatra; "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" by Italian composer Pietro Donaggio, English lyrics by British TV producer Vicki Wickham (who has adapted the Italian lyrics of Vittorio Pollavigini); "Guantanamero" by Pete Seeger and Hector Angulo, lyrics from a poem by the 19th-century Cuban patriot José Martí; Reflections in a Crystal Wind (album) by Richard and Mimi Fariña; "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Carlsbad, N.M.-born singer-songwriter Barry Sadler, 26, who has served as a U.S. Special Forces medic in Vietnam; "Winchester Cathedral" by English songwriter Geoffrey Stephen; "Alfie" by Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David (title song for film); "Georgy Girl" by Tom Springfield, lyrics by English actor-singer Jim Dale, 31 (title song for film); "Born Free" by John Barry, lyrics by Don Black (title song for film); "Strangers in the Night" by Bert Kaempfert, lyrics by Eddie Snyder (for the film A Man Could Get Killed); "Happy Together" by Alan Lee Gordon and Garry Bonner; "Good Vibrations" by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys; "Society's Child" by New York songwriter-singer Janis Ian (Janis Eddy Fink), 15, is about a white girl and a black boy; More than a New Discovery (album) by New York singer-songwriter Laura Nyro (originally Nigro), 19, includes "Wedding Bell Blues," "When I Die," and "Stoney End" that will be hits for The Fifth Dimension and Blood Sweat and Tears (both rock groups) and for Barbra Streisand; "Don't Come Home a-Drinkin'" by Loretta Lynn; "If Teardrops Were Silver" by Jean Shepard; North Dakota country singer Lynn Anderson, 18, records "Ride, Ride, Ride" by her mother, Liz, 36, and joins Lawrence Welk's weekly TV show that will keep her on the air until 1968.
The electric guitar gains prominence in England, where Seattle-born rock musician Johnny Allen "Jimi" Hendrix, 23, begins to exploit the full potential of the relatively new instrument. Hendrix uses imagination, virtuosity, invention, and sexual pantomime in his stage appearances.
Puerto Rican-born salsa singer Hector Lavoe (Hector Perez), 19, forms a band with trombonist Willie Colon and attracts audiences with his emotional, high-pitched voice.
Texas Western defeats the University of Kentucky 72 to 65 March 19 in the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball finals at the University of Maryland's Cole Field House—the first NCAA victory for an all-black team over an all-white team (most Southern schools do not allow black players or have strict quotas). The Texas players use slam dunks (the NCAA Rules Committee will outlaw the shot next year and the ban will continue for 10 years); Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp calls the Texas team "a bunch of crooks."
Ontario-born hockey player Robert Gordon "Bobby" Orr turns 18 March 20 and joins the Boston Bruins, with whom he will play for 10 seasons, helping the team win eight consecutive playoffs and two Stanley Cup championships.
Jockey Johnny Longden retires at age 59 after riding George Royal to victory by a nose March 12 in the San Juan Capistrano Handicap before a crowd of 60,792 at California's Santa Anita track. Longden has ridden 6,032 winners. Veteran racehorse trainer James E. "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons has died at Miami March 11 at age 91; he trained two Triple Crown winners in his 78-year career.
Matador Carlos Arruza dies at his native Mexico City May 20 at age 46, having retired in 1953 to raise bulls on his ranch outside of town.
Golfer Jack Nicklaus wins his third Masters Tournament and his first British Open title.
Manuel Santana wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Billie Jean King (née Moffitt), 22, U.S., in women's singles; Fred Stolle, 27, (Australia) wins in men's singles at Forest Hills, Maria Bueno in women's singles.
Louisiana voters approve a constitutional amendment that would permit construction of a New Orleans stadium estimated to cost $35 million, but by the time the 72,675-seat New Orleans SuperDome opens in 1975 it will have cost upwards of $175 million.
The Milwaukee Braves become the Atlanta Braves but retain Hank Aaron (see 1954; Brewers, 1970).
The Baltimore Orioles win the World Series, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 0.
England wins her first World Cup in football (soccer) by defeating West Germany 4 to 2 at Wembley Stadium in the first victory for a home team since World Cup play began in 1930.
Harlem Globetrotters founder and owner Abe Saperstein dies of a heart attack at Chicago March 15 at age 63.
The Uniform Time Act signed into law by President Johnson April 12 makes daylight saving time official nationwide (see 1942). Various states and municipalities have imposed daylight saving since 1945, some 100 million Americans have been observing it under local law and custom, farmers have opposed it, but the lack of uniformity has created confusion in the broadcasting and transportation industries (a bus driver and his passengers have had to go through seven time changes in just one 35-mile stretch of highway between Moundsville, W. Va., and Steuvenville, Ohio), Congress has voted to have it begin on the last Sunday in April each year and continue until the last Sunday in October, Congress will amend the code in 1986 to have it begin on the first Sunday in April, and it will be credited with saving hundreds of thousands of barrels of petroleum per year, saving lives and money by preventing traffic accidents, and lowering crime rates.
Pampers disposable diaper pads are test marketed at Sacramento, Calif., by Procter & Gamble, whose 6¢ pad begins a revolution in baby diapering (see 1961). By the end of the decade few households will still be using cloth diapers and diaper services.
Cosmetics queen Elizabeth Arden dies of a heart attack at New York October 18 at age 81.
The Black & White Ball given by millionaire author Truman Capote at New York's Plaza Hotel November 28 ("a little masked ball for [Washington Post publisher] Kay Graham and all my friends," Capote calls it) brings out 540 prominent actors, business moguls, entertainers, film producers, painters, politicians, publishers, scientists, socialites, and writers. Capote has asked that the men wear dinner jackets and black masks, the women white dresses and white masks.
Greek-born U.S. gambler Nicholas Andrea "Nick the Greek" Dandolos dies at Los Angeles December 25 at age 80. He is said to have won and lost $500 million in his career.
Kwanza (or Kwanzaa) is celebrated for the first time beginning December 26. Maryland-born civil-rights activist Maulana Karenga (originally Ronald McKinley Everett), 25, has created the 7-day holiday as a nonreligious celebration of family and social values, culminating in a feast (the karamu) held December 31. Within 25 years more than 5 million Americans will be celebrating Kwanza, patterned after various African harvest festivals (the word is Swahili for first fruits).
Washington, D.C., law clerk John Banzhaf III, 26, of the U.S. District Court writes a letter to WCBS-TV, New York, citing commercials that present smoking as "socially acceptable and desirable, manly, and a necessary part of a rich full life." He requests free time roughly equal to the time spent promoting "the virtues and values of smoking" to "present contrasting views on the issue of the benefits and advisability of smoking" (see 1967).
Some 13 million Americans will give up smoking in the next 4 years. The percentage of male smokers will drop from 52 percent to 42, of female smokers from 34 percent to 31.
Congress approves a plan to send millions of pounds of tobacco to famine-stricken India under terms of the 1954 law P.L. 480 at the recommendation of Rep. Harold D. (Dunbar) Cooley, 69 (D. N.C.). Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Cooley says the tobacco will ease the tension of starving people, enabling them to eat and assimilate their food better (his remark will be stricken from the Congressional Record and he loses his bid for reelection).
Former mobster companion Virginia Hill dies of a sleeping-pill overdose at Salzburg, Austria, March 24 at age 49.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 8 to 1 June 6 in the case of Sheppard v. Maxwell, Warden that alleged wife murderer Samuel H. Sheppard was unjustly convicted in 1954 because of excessive pre-trial publicity. Boston lawyer F. Lee Bailey, 34, has argued in his behalf, and a Cleveland jury acquits him November 16. Now 42, he has spent 9 years in prison, but his medical career has been shattered, his legal bills have impoverished him, he will work briefly as a professional wrestler in 1969 under the name "Killer Sheppard," and he will die in 1970 at age 46 of liver disease (the coroner will find 100 mg. of Librium, six phenobarbitols, and two quarts of vodka in his stomach); doubts about his guilt will persist for half a century.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 June 13 in the case of Miranda v. Arizona that the privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment invalidates confessions by persons in police custody unless careful steps are taken to protect the rights of suspects (seeMapp v. Ohio, 1961). The decision overturns the conviction of Phoenix warehouse worker Ernesto Miranda, 26, who confessed to rape and kidnapping after being arrested in April 1963. His request for a lawyer was denied, and Alva Moore, the lawyer who was finally appointed by the court, was a 73-year-old attorney who had practiced little criminal law for 16 years and advised Miranda to plead guilty. Miranda refused but later pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. "No statement obtained [in the atmosphere of the police station] can truly be the product of [the defendant's] free choice," says the majority decision, handed down by Chief Justice Warren. Police officers taking anyone into custody must say, "You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to the presence of an attorney to assist you prior to questioning, and to be with you during questioning if you so desire. If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to have an attorney appointed to you prior to questioning." Justice Harlan denounces the decision as "dangerous experimentation" at a time of a "high crime rate that is a matter of growing concern" (see 1971).
Eight student nurses in a Chicago dormitory die July 13 at the hands of Richard F. Speck, 24, who has served time in Texas for theft, forgery, and parole violations that included threatening a woman with a knife. A Peoria jury will find Speck guilty on all eight counts of murder next year and recommend execution. A psychiatrist who examined Speck for 100 hours will tell newsmen that brain damage in conjunction with drugs and alcohol had left Speck irresponsible for his acts. The Supreme Court will overrule the death sentence in 1971, and in 1972 a judge will impose eight sentences of 50 to 150 years each.
University of Texas undergraduate Charles Whitman, 25, barricades himself on the observation deck of the 27-story, 307-foot-tall clock tower of the university's Main Building at Austin August 1 and begins firing a rifle at passersby. A former Marine who killed his wife and mother the night before, Whitman kills 14 people and wounds 32 before police can break through and kill him.
Chicago's Civic Center is completed to designs by Jacques Brownson of C. F. Murphy Associates.
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi champions the ambiguity and paradox of great architecture, insists that great buildings have a "messy vitality" that transcends the clean functionality of the International Style, and calls for an eclectic approach to design, with a receptivity to pop art as well as to historical tradition and ordinary commercial architecture.
The Robert and Rosalie Gwathmey house is completed at Amagansett, Long Island, to designs by North Carolina-born New York architect Charles Gwathmey, 28, who studied at the University of Pennsylvania under Louis I. Kahn and Robert Venturi before studying at Yale under Paul Rudolph and James Stirling (Robert Gwathmey is a painter, Rosalie a photographer).
Atlanta's Hyatt Regency Hotel opens in Peachtree Center with a dramatic 22-story atrium of rough poured concrete filled with hanging plants and fountains. Local architect John Portman, 42, has designed the 23-story 1,000-room hotel, lighted glass-walled elevators fly up and down within its atrium, and it sets a new pattern of hotel construction.
The 1924 U.S. Oil Pollution Act is emasculated by a revision requiring that government prosecutors prove gross and willful negligence.
California legislators respond to complaints about smog by imposing limitations on the amounts of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons that may be emitted from automobile exhausts. The new standards are to take effect on 1969 model cars and to raise prices by no more than $45 per vehicle.
The first rare and endangered species list is issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior and contains 78 species. The number will increase in 3 years to 89.
Guadelupe Mountains National Park is authorized by act of Congress but not opened to the public. It embraces 77,518 acres of Permian limestone mountain rising from the Texas desert.
An earthquake at Varto, Turkey, August 19 registers 7.1 on the Richter scale and leaves 2,520 dead.
Arizona's new Glen Canyon Dam impounds water for Lake Powell (it will become a vast marine recreation area), and water to irrigate desert golf courses, but environmentalists warn that the mighty Colorado broke through much bigger lava dams in eons past and that the new concrete dam will eventually be swept away. Environmentalists have opposed the project (see Arches National Park, 1971).
A Welsh landslide October 21 at Landsfford Aberfan kills 116 children and 28 adults as water-soaked coal-mine wastes plow into the Pantglas Junior School and 16 homes. Slurry from the Merthyr Vale mine has been "tipped" onto Aberfan's hillsides since 1870 and a subterranean spring under coal tip No. 7 has soaked the waste rock, precipitating the slide.
Italy's Arno River overflows its banks without warning in November (see 1679); the flood at Florence reaches its high-water mark November 4, submerging the city in 18 billion gallons of water, mud, and filth that leave 39 dead, 10,000 motorcars destroyed, the 14th-century Ponte Vecchio in ruins, 20,000 residents homeless, and some 1,500 works of art—including 320 panel paintings, 629 canvases, 495 sculptures, and 124 frescoes—disfigured or destroyed. Nearly 1.5 million volumes at the Biblioteca Nazionale are soaked. Volunteers who include actor Richard Burton and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy come from around the world to help save the city's treasures. High tides at Venice flood that city November 4, creating havoc as the water rises six feet and submerges the Piazza San Marco under four feet of seawater.
The Vatican rescinds the rule forbidding U.S. Catholics to eat meat on Friday, but fish sales drop only briefly.
Congress yields to pressure from commercial fishermen and extends the U.S. offshore fishery limit to 12 miles (see Santiago Declaration, 1952). The United States has been the last major nation to maintain the three-mile limit and will extend the limit to 200 miles in 1976.
The Hudson River shad catch falls to 116,000 pounds; the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in the Department of the Interior stops keeping records of Hudson River shad, whose flesh is in any case generally tainted with oil and other pollutants.
Kazakhstan in the Soviet Union harvests a record 25.5 million tons of grain (see 1963).
The Rockefeller Foundation and Mexican government establish the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) under the direction of Norman Borlaug (see 1944; 1970).
An 8-year-old North Miami schoolboy introduces the giant African snail Achatina fulica into Florida. The snail reaches eight inches in length and a weight of one pound, has 80,000 teeth, can devour a head of lettuce overnight, and by 1969 will be menacing the state's food crops.
India suffers her worst famine in more than 20 years as Bihar has a severe crop shortfall. The nation imports more than 8 million tons of U.S. wheat and other foodstuffs, thereby averting catastrophic losses of life, but rice-eaters in Karala State riot in protest against eating wheat flour (see 1944).
The world food crisis reaches new intensity as total food production falls 2 percent below last year's output. Food production in Africa, Latin America, and the Far East falls well below prewar levels.
Drought begins in the Sahel—the 2,600-mile semidesert strip south of Africa's Sahara Desert. The Sahel embraces Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, Chad, northern Nigeria, Cameroon, and parts of Ethiopia, the drought will kill thousands of head of cattle by 1975, and it will bring famine.
The U.S. Fair Packaging and Labeling Act signed into law by President Johnson November 3 calls for clear labeling of the net weight of every package, bans phony "cents off" labels and phony "economy size" packages, and imposes controls over the confusing proliferation of package sizes (see Kennedy, 1962), but despite the new "Truth in Packaging" law food will continue to be sold in packages that make it hard for supermarket customers to know how much they are paying per pound. The President's Commission on Food Marketing estimates that U.S. consumers pay up to 20 percent more buying nationally-advertised brands rather than high-quality local brands.
Consumers boycott supermarkets at Denver and other cities, protesting high prices. A food chain in New York puts up signs claiming that "Grand Union Earns Less Than 1½ Pennies on Each Dollar of Sales . . . Not Much Is It?" But the National Commission on Food Marketing concludes that food store profits are generally higher than for comparable industries and that in 20 years the grocery chains' returns on investment have averaged 12.5 percent and never been lower than for other industries; food prices are higher in poor neighborhoods of U.S. cities than in better neighborhoods according to a study. Ghetto food merchants charge more to compensate for "shrinkage" (meaning theft).
General Mills introduces Bac*Os—bits of soy protein isolate flavored to taste like bacon (see 1957; Boyer, 1949).
Kellogg introduces Product 19 breakfast food (see 1969).
U.S. per-capita consumption of processed potatoes reaches 44.2 pounds per year, up from 6.3 pounds in 1950.
Cola drink bottlers and canners receive FDA dispensation not to list caffeine as an ingredient. Cola drinks generally have four milligrams of caffeine per fluid ounce, coffee 12 to 16.
Nestlé introduces Taster's Choice freeze-dried instant coffee to compete with the Maxim coffee introduced by General Foods in 1964. It will soon overtake Maxim in sales.
New York assemblymen introduce a bill calling for reform of New York State's 19th-century abortion law, responding to an appeal by Manhattan borough president Percy Sutton, who has seen the costs of illegal abortions in lives and maimings in the New York ghettos (see 1970; Colorado, 1967).
The Food and Drug Administration studies The Pill and reports "no adequate scientific data at this time proving these compounds unsafe for human use" (see 1962). But most U.S. women are reluctant to use oral contraceptives because of their reported side effects (see 1969). Coitus interruptus remains the most widely employed form of birth control in France, Czechoslovakia, and some other countries.
Birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger dies at Tucson, Ariz., September 6 at age 82.
Romania outlaws abortion following the release of statistics showing that the nation has four times as many abortions as live births, but women will find ways to circumvent the law.
Tunisia legalizes abortion. No other Islamic nation will do so in this century, but President Habib Bourguiba has seen the perils of overpopulation, outlawed polygamy, raised the minimum marriage age for women from 16 to 17 and for men from 18 to 20, established family-planning clinics, and persuaded religious leaders to loosen their interpretation of the Koran. Tunisia's fertility rate (the number of children per woman) has been 7.2 but will plunge in the next 35 years to 2.08; her economy will thrive while those of her neighbors will remain lackluster.
Japan's birthrate drops to 14 per thousand in the Year of the Fiery Horse. It is said that girls born this year will destroy their husbands; many woman have abortions or otherwise avoid giving birth this year lest they have daughters who may be unmarriagable. The birthrate will climb back up to 19.3 per thousand next year (but see 1980).
China's birthrate is estimated at between 38 and 43 per thousand. Mao Zedong's (Mao Tse-tung's) Cultural Revolution has interrupted the nation's widespread birth-control campaign.
Australia removes its ban on non-white immigrants, opening the country to a new diversity of population that will energize all aspects of society.
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