April 1963

April 1, 1963 (Monday)

The long-running American TV soap opera General Hospital made its début on the ABC network. On the same afternoon, the first episode of NBC's hospital soap opera, The Doctors premiered. General Hospital, set in the fictional town of Port Charles, New York, would begin its 50th year in 2012, while The Doctors, set in the fictional New England town of Madison, would end on December 31, 1982.

Died: Quinim Pholsena, 47, the Foreign Minister of Laos, was assassinated by a soldier assigned to guard him. Quinim and his wife had returned home from a reception with the King, when Lance Corporal Chy Kong fired a machine gun at the couple. Minister Quinim was hit by 18 bullets, after which the guard "finished him off with a shot through the head".

Died: St. Gaetano Catanoso, 84, Italian priest, canonized as a Roman Catholic saint in 2005

April 2, 1963 (Tuesday)

The Soviet Union launched Luna 4 at 8:04 am UT toward the Moon, using a curving path rather than a straight trajectory.

Singapore television channel Saluran 5 Television Singapura began the regular service in the Asian nation, with four hours of programming every evening.

The Beatles began their Spring 1963 UK tour in Sheffield, England.

The Navy of Argentina began a revolt against the government of President Jose Maria Guido, with the insurrection starting at Puerto Belgrano. The rebellion quietly ended the next day.

April 3, 1963 (Wednesday)

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) volunteers kicked off the Birmingham campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, against racial segregation in the United States, with a sit-in.

The Delaware Supreme Court upheld their state's law, unique in the United States, permitting the flogging of criminals. Although the penalty, dating from colonial days, had not been carried out for several years, a 20-year-old man had been given a probated sentence of 20 lashes for auto theft, then violated the probation.

April 4, 1963 (Thursday)

All 67 persons on board Aeroflot Flight 25 were killed, one hour after the Ilyushin-18 plane had taken off from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, bound for Krasnoyarsk.

Network Ten, the third television network in Australia, began with the granting of a corporate operating license to United Telecasters Sydney Limited. Broadcasting would begin on ATV-0 in Melbourne on April 1, 1964, and on Channel Ten in Sydney on April 5, 1965.

The cost of making a long distance telephone call was lowered throughout the continental United States, with a maximum charge of one dollar for three-minute "station-to-station" calls made between 9:00 pm and 4:30 a.m. The equivalent 50 years later for a 1963 dollar would be $7.50

The Henry Miller novel Tropic of Cancer went on sale legally in the United Kingdom for the first time, after having been banned for thirty years because it had been deemed obscene.

The Beatles performed at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, UK, for a fee of £100, having accepted a personal request from schoolboy David Moores, a fellow Liverpudlian (and later chairman of Liverpool F.C.).

Vasily Krestyaninov replaced Vasily Prokhorov as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Russia.

Died:

Gaetano Catanoso, 84, Italian parish priest canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005

Sonja McCaskie, 24, British skier and 1960 Olympics competitor, in a brutal murder.

April 5, 1963 (Friday)

The Soviet Union accepted an American proposal to establish a Moscow–Washington hotline so that the leaders of the two nations could communicate directly with each other in order to avoid war. Originally, the hot line was a teletype system rather than a direct voice line.

Luna 4, the first successful spacecraft of the USSR's "second generation" Luna program, misses the Moon by 8336.2 km at 13:25 UT and enters a barycentric Earth orbit.

Ferdinand Marcos became President of the Senate of the Philippines.

April 6, 1963 (Saturday)

The South African Soccer League, formed in 1961, was banned from further use of public stadiums because its teams included white, black and mixed race players, in violation of the Group Areas Act, and a game at Alberton, a suburb of Johannesburg, was cancelled on the day of the match. Fans climbed the fence surrounding the locked Natalspruit Indian Sports ground and 15,000 people watched the Moroka Swallows defeat Blackpool United, 6-1. Afterwards, the SASL was permanently denied access to playing fields, and disbanded in 1967 after years of financial losses.

Boots Randolph, better-known as an accompanyist for many performers in rock, pop, and country music, had his only U.S. hit, reaching no 1 on the Billboard chart with "Yakety Sax".

The Germany national rugby union team played a friendly international against a France XV at Frankfurt, losing 9-15.

Born: Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador since 2007, in Guayaquil

Died:

Otto Struve, 65, Russian astronomer

Allen Whipple, 81, pioneering American cancer surgeon

April 7, 1963 (Sunday)

Yugoslavia was proclaimed to be a "socialist federative republic", and Josip Broz Tito was named President for Life. Tito would remain President until his death in 1980.

At Augusta National Golf Club, the 27th Masters Tournament was won by 23-year-old Jack Nicklaus to become the youngest player to win the Masters. Nicklaus finished one stroke ahead of Tony Lema, 286 to 287.

At more than 700 pages, the first full Sunday edition of the New York Times since the end of the printer's strike set a record for the size of a newspaper. The Times edition weighed seven and a half pounds.

Harold Holt, at that time the Treasurer of Australia, announced that Australia would introduce decimal currency in February, 1966. The Australian pound, worth 20 shillings and 240 pence, would be replaced by the Australian dollar, worth 100 cents, on February 14, 1966.

April 8, 1963 (Monday)

Canadian federal election, 1963: The Liberal Party, led by Lester B. Pearson, won 128 of the 265 seats in Canada's House of Commons, with Pearson replacing John Diefenbaker as Prime Minister.

At the 35th Academy Awards ceremony, Lawrence of Arabia won the Best Picture Oscar. Gregory Peck won Best Actor for To Kill a Mockingbird, while Anne Bancroft won Best Actress for portraying Helen Keller's teacher in The Miracle Worker.

Born: Julian Lennon, British musician, songwriter, actor, and photographer, son of John and Cynthia Lennon, in Liverpool

April 9, 1963 (Tuesday)

Sir Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, became the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States by act of the U.S. Congress, with President Kennedy signing the legislation for the 88-year-old statesman, whose mother had been a United States native. The House of Representatives had approved the legislation on March 12 by a 377-21 vote, and the U.S. Senate approved on April 2 by voice vote. Churchill was unable to travel from the U.K. to the U.S., and his son, Randolph Churchill, accepted in his place in ceremonies that were televised.

Despite his party's loss in the elections for the House of Commons, Canada's Prime Minister Diefenbaker said that he would not resign until the new Parliament was called into session.

April 10, 1963 (Wednesday)

The U.S. nuclear submarine Thresher sank during sea trials 220 miles (350 km) east of Cape Cod, killing the 112 U.S. Navy personnel and 17 civilians. The wreckage of Thresher would be located on September 6.

Frol Kozlov, the 54-year-old Second Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and Deputy Prime Minister, and considered the likely successor to Nikita Khrushchev, suffered a stroke and was forced to retire. Kozlov would die on January 30, 1965.

An unknown gunman narrowly missed killing former U.S. Army General Edwin A. Walker, who had been working on his taxes at his home in Dallas, Texas. The would-be killer would later turn out to have been Lee Harvey Oswald, who would use the same rifle to assassinate U.S. President John F. Kennedy in November.

The owners and passengers of the yacht Cythera became the first modern victims of piracy (under Australian law) when their boat was stolen by two crew members. The yacht was salvaged over a month later, and the incident would result in various legal complications, including prosecution of the pirates under an act of 1858.

April 11, 1963 (Thursday)

Buddy Rogers became the first WWF Champion, defeating Antonino Rocca at the finals of the first World Wrestling Federation tournament, held in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.

Pope John XXIII issued his final encyclical, Pacem in terris, entitled On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty, the first papal encyclical addressed to "all men of good will", rather than to Roman Catholics only.

Mohammed Khemisti, the 33-year-old Minister of Foreign Affairs of Algeria, was mortally wounded by a gunman who shot him outside the National Assembly.

The U.S. Chief of Naval Operations went before the press corps at the Pentagon to announce that the nuclear submarine USS Thresher had been lost with all hands.

Born:

June Gibbons and Jennifer Gibbons (died 1993), the "Silent Twins", criminals and writers, in Barbados

Saif al-Adel, Egyptian-born al-Qaeda terrorist

April 12, 1963 (Friday)

Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth and others were arrested in a Birmingham, Alabama, protest for "parading without a permit".

The Soviet nuclear powered submarine K-33 collided with the Finnish merchant vessel M/S Finnclipper in the Danish Straits. Although severely damaged, both vessels made it to port.

Died:

Herbie Nichols, 44, American jazz pianist and composer, of leukemia

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, 72, Polish philosopher and logician

April 13, 1963 (Saturday)

United States Marine Corps UH-34 Seahorse transport helicopters based at Da Nang, South Vietnam, airlifted 435 South Vietnamese troops to attack a suspected Viet Cong stronghold in mountains along the Thu Bồn River. For the first time, Marine Corps helicopters received an attack helicopter escort, in the form of United States Army UH-1B gunships.

The wreckage of the Dutch ship Vergulde Draeck was discovered almost 307 years after it sank off of the coast of Australia. The vessel, carrying 193 people, had gone down on April 28, 1656, with 118 drowning. Three centuries later, it was found by a group of skindivers seven miles from Ledge Point, Western Australia.

Kosmos 14 was launched by the USSR, from pad 2 of the Mayak Launch Complex at Kapustin Yar, aboard a Kosmos-2I 63S1 carrier rocket.

Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds got the first of a record 4,256 hits in a Major League Baseball game, hitting a triple off of a pitch by Bob Friend of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Reds lost, 12-4.

The UK's Independent Labour Party held its 71st Annual Conference, at Bradford.

Born: Garry Kasparov, Russian/Soviet chess grandmaster, and world champion 1985-1993; as Garik Kimovich Weinstein in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR

Died: Babu Gulabrai, 75, Indian Hindi writer

April 14, 1963 (Sunday)

The Institute of Mental Health (Belgrade) was established.

Born: Cynthia Cooper, American women's basketball player, MVP of the WNBA for 1996-97 and 1997-98 for the Houston Comets; in Chicago

April 15, 1963 (Monday)

Seventy thousand marchers arrived in London from Aldermaston, to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. The breakaway group Spies for Peace set up a picket at RSG-6.

The 1963 Glover Trophy motor race was held at Goodwood Circuit and won by Innes Ireland.

The 1963 Pau Grand Prix motor race was held at Pau Circuit and won by Jim Clark.

A White House press release announced that First Lady Jackie Kennedy was pregnant and that her baby would be delivered by Caesarean section in September. Mrs. Kennedy, who had a history of miscarriages, had delayed announcement of her pregnancy. She had been delivered of stillborn children in 1955 and 1956, and had two living children, Caroline (born 1957) and John, Jr. (b. 1960). The child, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, would be born prematurely on August 7, and would survive for only two days.

An unidentified 58-year-old man, suffering from lung cancer, was admitted to the University of Mississippi hospital. On June 11, 1963, he would become the first person to receive a lung transplant.

Died: "Colossus", the largest snake ever kept in captivity, at the Highland Park Zoo in Pittsburgh. A reticulated Python, she measured 28 1/2 feet long (8.68 meters) and at one time weighed 320 pounds (145 kg).

April 16, 1963 (Tuesday)

Martin Luther King, Jr. issued his Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Born:

Saleem Malik, Pakistani cricketer and national team captain, in Lahore

"Little" Jimmy Osmond, American singer, actor, and businessman, in Canoga Park, California

April 17, 1963 (Wednesday)

Grigori Nelyubov, Ivan Anikeyev and Valentin Filatyev were all dismissed from the USSR's cosmonaut corps, after their March 27 arrest for drunk and disorderly conduct.

NFL players Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers and Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions were ordered suspended indefinitely by Commissioner Pete Rozelle for betting on league games. Five other Lions players (John Gordy, Gary Lowe, Joe Schmidt, Wayne Walker and Sam Williams) were each fined $2,000 each for betting on the Packers to win the 1962 NFL Championship Game. Hornung and Karras would be reinstated by Rozelle eleven months later after being barred from playing during the 1963 NFL season.

Representatives of Egypt, Syria and Iraq signed a declaration in Cairo to merge their three nations into a new United Arab Republic. Egypt and Syria had been merged as the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961 before Syria withdrew, and Egypt and retained the UAR name. Demonstrations followed in Jordan, where citizens of the Kingdom wanted to join the federation, which was never ratified.

April 18, 1963 (Thursday)

The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-1 in Toronto, to win the NHL Stanley Cup, four games to one.

Died:

Hemendra Kumar Roy, 74, Bengali children's writer

Yetta Grotofent, 42, tightrope walker who had been part of The Flying Wallendas high wire act under the stage name "Miss Rietta". The sister-in-law of Karl Wallenda fell 65 feet to her death while performing at the Shrine Circus in the Civic Auditorium in Omaha, Nebraska. Two other members of the circus troupe had been killed after falling from the high wire in Detroit on January 30, 1962.

April 19, 1963 (Friday)

Under pressure from the United States, South Korea's President Park Chung Hee returned to his pledge to return to civilian rule, and announced that multiparty elections for the presidency and the National Assembly would take place before the end of the year. Park had promised a return to democracy in 1963 when he had taken power in a coup on August 12, 1961, but on March 16, 1963, proposed to extend military rule for another four years. The voting (in which Park would be elected President) would be held on October 15.

A new dam was inaugurated on the Chubut River 120 km west of Trelew, removing the risk of flooding in the Lower Chubut Valley.

Born: Valerie Plame, American CIA Operations Officer who was identified after a leak from a U.S. State Department official; in Anchorage, Alaska.

April 20, 1963 (Saturday)

The caves at Lascaux were closed to the general public after fifteen years, in order to protect cave paintings dating from more than 17,000 years ago. The paintings had been rediscovered on September 12, 1940, in the caverns in southwestern France. After the complex was opened to the public in 1948, the works began to erode from carbonic acid produced by the exhaling of the visitors. The Department of Dordogne would create a replica of the paintings in another cave hall, opened as "Lascaux II" in 1983.

In Montreal, the terrorist campaign of the Front de libération du Québec claimed its first fatality. William Vincent O'Neill, a 65-year-old night watchman and janitor, died in the explosion of a bomb at a Canadian Army recruitment center. O'Neill, who was planning to retire at the end of May, had been scheduled to start his shift at midnight, but had arrived at 11:30 to allow a co-worker to go home, and was killed when the bomb exploded at 11:45 pm.

The 1963 Pan American Games opened in São Paulo, Brazil.

Italy created its first space agency, the Istituto Nazionale per le Richerche Spaziali (IRS) (National Institute for Space Research).

Died: Julián Grimau, 41, Spanish Communist leader, was executed by a firing squad despite pleas to Spanish dictator Francisco Franco for clemency.

April 21, 1963 (Sunday)

The first elections for the Supreme Institution of the Bahá'í Faith (known as the Universal House of Justice, whose seat is at the Bahá'í World Centre on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel) was held, with voting open until April 23.

Hussein ibn Nasser replaced Samir al-Rifai as Prime Minister of Jordan.

The 1963 Imola Grand Prix was won by Jim Clark.

A. J. Foyt won the USAC Championship Car event at Trenton Speedway.

Born: "Towser the Mouser", Scottish cat who earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for catching 28,899 mice over more than 23 years (d. 1987)

April 22, 1963 (Monday)

Lester Bowles Pearson became the 14th Prime Minister of Canada. The oath was administered by Governor-General Georges Vanier in Ottawa at Vanier's office, where Pearson presented the names of his 25-member cabinet.

Robert Taschereau took office as the 11th Chief Justice of Canada, replacing Patrick Kerwin, who had died on February 2.

Cuba released its last American prisoners, 27 men who had been incarcerated by the Castro government. Twenty-one were flown from Havana to Miami after New York lawyer James Donovan had negotiated their freedom. Another six elected to go to other nations rather than returning to the U.S.

President Kennedy started the one-year countdown for the opening of the 1964 New York World's Fair by keying "1964" on a touch-tone telephone in the Oval Office, starting "a contraption which will count off the seconds until the opening". Kennedy then spoke over the line to a crowd of about 1,000 people at Flushing Meadow Park, and said "Three hundred sixty-six days from today, I plan to attend your opening". President Kennedy would be killed, however, five months before the Fair's opening on April 22, 1964.

April 23, 1963 (Tuesday)

Ludwig Erhard was chosen as the successor for retiring West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, despite Adenauer's recommendations that the Christian Democratic Party and the Christian Socialist Union Bundestag members choose another person. Erhard, who had been the nation's Economic Minister since 1950, was approved by a vote of 159 to 47.

The Ukrainian football club FC Karpaty Lviv played its first official match, defeating Lokomotiv Gomel 1-0.

Died: Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, 78, second and longest-serving (1952-1963) President of Israel. Speaker Kadish Luz became acting President until Zalman Shazar was selected by the Knesset.

April 24, 1963 (Wednesday)

1963 NBA Finals: The Boston Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, 112-109, to win their fifth consecutive NBA championship, four games to two.

The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations was signed, and would enter into force on March 19, 1967.

Died: Leonid Lukov, 53, Soviet film director and screenwriter

April 25, 1963 (Thursday)

The United States removed the last of its Jupiter missiles from Turkey, completing an agreement that had been reached with the Soviet Union after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

The 12th Syracuse Grand Prix took place in Sicily and was won by Jo Siffert.

April 26, 1963 (Friday)

Israel signed an agreement with Dassault Aviation to acquire MD-620 short-range missiles, which Israel would give the name Jericho-1.

The third and final launch of the US's expendable launch system Scout X-2M ended in a failure, without reaching orbit.

Basil Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough, became Lord Lieutenant of Fermanagh.

Born: Jet Li, Chinese film actor, film producer, martial artist and wushu champion, as Li Lianjie in Beijing

April 27, 1963 (Saturday)

The U.S. Marine Corps lost its first aircraft to enemy action in Vietnam, when a UH-34D transport helicopter was shot down by Viet Cong ground fire near Do Xa, South Vietnam.

Bob Hayes became the first person to run the 100 meter dash in less than ten seconds, in 9.9 seconds at a meet in Los Angeles. However, the accomplishment could not be recognized as a world record because the wind was faster than 5 meters per second (18 km/h or 11.2 mph); the record would be broken on October 14, 1968, by Jim Hines with 9.95 seconds.

Born: Russell T Davies, Welsh television producer and screenwriter, in Swansea

April 28, 1963 (Sunday)

Italian general election, 1963: Voting was held for all 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 315 of the 321 seats in the Senate of the Republic. Democrazia Cristiana (DC), the Christian Democratic party won 260 (38.3%) of the Deputies' and 129 (36.6%) of the Senate seats, and the Italian Communist Party placed second.

The 17th Tony Awards ceremony took place in New York City.

April 29, 1963 (Monday)

Andrew Loog Oldham, 19, signed a contract with The Rolling Stones, becoming their manager. Oldham had seen the band in concert the previous day at the Crawdaddy Club in London.

Five Latin American nations— Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador— announced that their agreement to a proposal by Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos to prohibit the placement of nuclear weapons in their territory.

April 30, 1963 (Tuesday)

New Hampshire became the first of the United States to legalize a state lottery in the 20th century. The first drawing in the New Hampshire Sweepstakes would take place on March 12, 1964.

The Lebanese cargo ship Aghios Georgios caught fire off Eastbourne, East Sussex, United Kingdom. The crew were safely rescued and the ship was beached at Norman's Bay.

Born: Michael Waltrip, American race car driver, winner of Daytona 500 in 2001 and 2003; in Owensboro, Kentucky

Died: Giovanni Grasso, Italian film actor, 74