January 1966

Updated on Dec 29, 2023

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The following events occurred in January 1966:

January 1, 1966 (Saturday)

Saint-Sylvestre coup d'état: A coup brought Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa into power in the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. Bokassa would name himself as President on January 4, and crown himself as Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Emperor on December 4, 1977. Captain Alexandre Banza, the co-leader of the coup, would be accused of treason and executed by Bokassa in 1969.

In college football, the #1 Michigan State Spartans were upset by the #5 UCLA Bruins, 14-12, in the Rose Bowl, and the #2 Arkansas Razorbacks were toppled, 14-7, by the unranked LSU Tigers in the Cotton Bowl, setting up that evening's Orange Bowl game between the #3 Nebraska Cornhuskers and the #4 Alabama Crimson Tide as the game that was likely to determine the unofficial national champion in the final poll of the season. Alabama won convincingly, 39-28, and would be voted #1 in the final Associated Press poll of sportswriters.

A strike of the 36,000 public transportation workers in New York City began at 5:00 in the morning, as the New York City Transit Authority's subway trains and buses halted service. It was the first time in the city's history that the commuters were without either bus or subway service at the same time, and the full effect would be felt on Monday morning, when six million people would have to find alternate transportation.

Two separate Garuda Airlines DC-3 airplanes took off from Jakarta, Indonesia, both due to make their first stop at the island of Sumatra at Palembang, but neither arrived. The wreckage of the first plane was spotted from the air in a jungle, 63 miles south of Palembang, but the other was not found. In all, 34 people died in the crashes.

In the Soviet Union, Aeroflot Flight 185, a twin-engine Ilyushin Il-14 en route from the east coast city of Magadan to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, crashed into a mountain on the Kamchatka peninsula after engine trouble and icing on the wings caused it to lose altitude.

The New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement came into force. It would be superseded in 1983 by the new Australia New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement.

Died: Vincent Auriol, 81, French politician, President of the Fourth Republic from 1947 to 1954

January 2, 1966 (Sunday)

The Green Bay Packers won the NFL Championship at home, beating the Cleveland Browns, 23-12.

Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba announced that his nation's trade agreement with the People's Republic of China, wherein Cuba imported Chinese rice, and China purchased Cuban sugar, had been terminated by the Chinese.

January 3, 1966 (Monday)

In the Republic of Upper Volta, Major General Sangoulé Lamizana, the Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, led a coup d'état that overthrew the government of President Maurice Yaméogo. General Lamizana would rule the West African nation (now called Burkina Faso for almost 25 years, until being overthrown himself in a coup on November 25, 1980.

Died: Maggie Higgins, 45, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent who had covered both World War II and the Korean War. Ms. Higgins had been hospitalized since November, because of complications from an illness caused by a parasite contracted during a trip to the war zone in South Vietnam.

January 4, 1966 (Tuesday)

India's Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistan's President Ayub Khan met in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, at the time a part of the Soviet Union, for a conference arranged by Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, aimed at arriving at an agreement to end the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.

Film and television actor Ronald Reagan announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for Governor of California in order to challenge incumbent Governor Pat Brown. Reagan purchased air time on 15 television stations throughout California in order to broadcast his half-hour taped announcement. At the time, the future President of the United States was still hosting the television show Death Valley Days.

A gas leak fire at an oil refinery in Feyzin, near Lyon, France killed 18 people and injured 84.

The Alabama Crimson Tide received the mythical national championship of college football after receiving 37 first place votes in the postseason poll of 57 sportswriters, and 537 points overall, while the Michigan State Spartans, who had been #1 until their being upset in the Rose Bowl, finished second with 18 first place votes and 479 points overall.

The St. John's University strike of 1966–67 began in New York City; it would last for over a year.

January 5, 1966 (Wednesday)

Bobby Baker, who had been a chief adviser to Lyndon Johnson when the President had been the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, was indicted by a federal grand jury for theft, tax evasion, and misappropriation of about $100,000 in contributions to Johnson's political campaigns. The U.S. Justice Department investigation of Baker had started in late 1963, when Johnson had been Vice-President, but had halted after the Kennedy assassination elevated Johnson to the presidency, and was not renewed until after Johnson's election in 1964. Baker would not be convicted until five years later, after Johnson had left office.

Because of the poor quality of the sound recording of their August 15 concert at Shea Stadium, The Beatles went into a studio and re-recorded most of their songs for dubbing in a TV documentary; crowd noises were dubbed in as well to make the film seem like the original performance. "But what you see in the film," an author would later write, "is what happened that night, and the thrill of the event is clear."

Died: Gian Gaspare Napolitano, 58, Italian film director and screenwriter

January 6, 1966 (Thursday)

Singers Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, who had performed as "The Warlocks", appeared for the first time under their new name, the Grateful Dead. The occasion was the fifth, and largest up that time, of the "Acid Test" concerts, where over 2,000 patrons listened to music, many while under the influence of the hallucinogen LSD, and the venue was the Fillmore in San Francisco, California. Garcia and Lesh had appeared at the first of the Acid Tests on November 27, 1965.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) became the first African-American civil rights organization to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. "We are in sympathy with, and support, the men in this country who are unwilling to respond to a military draft which would compel them to contribute their lives to United States aggression in Vietnam in the name of the 'freedom' we find so false in this country," the SNCC statement read in part. "We take note of the fact that 16 percent of the draftees from this country are Negroes called on to stifle the liberation of Vietnam, to preserve a 'democracy' which does not exist for them at home. We ask, where is the draft for the freedom fight in the United States?"

Lockheed delivered its first SR-71 Blackbird, a strategic reconnaissance aircraft that could fly at speeds up to Mach 3, to the U.S. Air Force. The SR-71A prototype crashed only 19 days later.

Harold Robert Perry became the first African-American in more than 90 years to be made a Roman Catholic bishop. The Louisiana native was elevated to the position of auxiliary bishop of New Orleans.

The new government of the Central African Republic severed all ties with the People's Republic of China, which had been providing aid to the nation since 1964.

All 47 people on board the Windjammer Cruises schooner Polynesia were rescued after the ship ran aground on a reef 15 nautical miles (28 km) south of Bimini, Bahamas. Civilian and military watercraft evacuated the group, and 17 of the passengers were lifted from longboats by a United States Coast Guard helicopter. It was the second disaster for Windjammer in less than a week.

Died: James Lawrence Fly, 67, American lawyer and former administrator of the Federal Communications Commission, of cancer.

January 7, 1966 (Friday)

A weather record of 1,825 millimeters of rain (equivalent to 71.85 inches or almost six feet) was reached at the end of a 24-hour period on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion as a consequence of Tropical cyclone Denise.

The Dominica Labour Party won 10 of 11 seats in the Dominican general election with a voter turnout of 80.3%. At the time, Dominica was one of the components of the West Indies Federation.

Lou Thesz, dubbed the "Babe Ruth of Pro Wrestling", was defeated for the National Wrestling Association (NWA) championship for the last time, losing to Gene Kiniski. Thesz, whose multiple reigns as NWA champion totaled more than ten years (3,749 days), would later be elected as a charter member of the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.

The SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, which had first flown at the end of 1964, went into regular service, as part of the 4200th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in California.

The Zenit-2 spacecraft Kosmos 104 was launched by the Soviet Union, the thirty-second of 81 such satellites to be launched. The carrier rocket malfunctioned, placing the spacecraft into the wrong orbit, but it still managed to complete most of its imaging mission.

Helicopters rescued all 179 persons who had been trapped in a Canadian National Railway train by snow that had blocked them in the Fraser Canyon in British Columbia. The airlift was accomplished by three private helicopters, and a 22-seat Royal Canadian Air Force helicopter.

Born:

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, wife of John F. Kennedy, Jr. (killed in plane crash, 1999)

Jonathan Jackson, U.S. business professor, entrepreneur and social justice advocate, son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, in Chicago

Died: Herbert Sandberg, 63, Swedish conductor, librettist, and composer

January 8, 1966 (Saturday)

Vietnam War: Operation Crimp, also known as the Battle of the Ho Bo Woods, was jointly launched by U.S. and Australian forces.

The Governor-General of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) declared a state of emergency throughout the South Asian island nation, after protests by the Sinhalese minority against recent regulations that favored the Tamil language. Press censorship and curfews would stay in place for 11 months, ending on December 7, 1966.

January 9, 1966 (Sunday)

The foundation stone for the Aswan Dam was laid down in Egypt in a ceremony presided over by United Arab Republic President Gamel Abdel Nasser. The flooding that would follow would require the moving of 50,000 residents, mostly Nubian, from the city of Wadi Halfa.

For the first time, a radar signal was detected from the planet Venus. Astronomers at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, at the University of Manchester in England, were able to use the 76-meter diameter radio telescope, which was three times more sensitive than previous radar measuring instruments.

Vietnam War: Australian troops began breaking into the Cu Chi tunnels.

Tom Hayden, Herbert Aptheker and Staughton Lynd, returned to the United States after being the first Americans to be invited to tour North Vietnam. Despite the trip being illegal, the three were not charged nor were their American passports confiscated.

Seven sailors on board a Chinese landing craft mutinied, but in the ensuing gun battle only three people, all defectors, survived. Taiwan President Chiang Kai-shek proclaimed the three mutineers as heroes, and sent a Defense Ministry seaplane to transport them from Matsu. As the seaplane was flying back to Taiwan, Chinese MiG jets intercepted it and shot it down, killing everyone on board.

The 37th National Board of Review Awards were announced, with The Eleanor Roosevelt Story winning Best Film.

Died: Ladislav Prokeš, 81, Czech chess player

January 10, 1966 (Monday)

The Tashkent Agreement was signed in the Soviet Union at 4:00 p.m. local time, by Prime Minister Shastri of India and President Ayub Khan of Pakistan, bringing an end to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The two warring nations agreed that, by February 25, they would withdraw their armed personnel to the same locations that they had held on August 5, prior to the war's start. Prime Minister Shastri would pass away during the night in Tashkent, before his scheduled return to India.

The Georgia House of Representatives voted, 184 to 12, to bar Julian Bond from taking the 136th District seat to which he had been elected in November. Bond, the first African-American to be elected during the 20th Century, was refused on the grounds that he had written the recent statement by the SNCC opposing the Vietnam War and that, as such, he could not validly swear to support the constitutions of the United States and Georgia. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court would rule that the denial of Bond's seat was an unconstitutional denial of his right of freedom of speech.

Heavy rains began in Brazil, causing the worst flooding in the 401-year history of Rio de Janeiro, and causing landslides that swept away entire neighborhoods inhabited by the city's poorest residents. When the downpours ended after four days, at least 363 people had been killed in the Rio de Janeiro State, with 193 bodies recovered from the city slums, 100 in the nearby city of Petrópolis, and 70 others in the surrounding countryside.

After departing from Norfolk, Virginia with a shipment of grain bound for Barcelona, the Spanish cargo ship Monte Palomares sank in the Atlantic Ocean 900 nautical miles (1,700 km) north east of Bermuda, killing 31 of her 38 crew. The grain ship's cargo had shifted as it was rocked in a fierce storm, causing the ship to list and then to sink. The American freighter Steel Maker rescued four men, and the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Escanaba saved the others.

Died: Vernon Dahmer, 57, African-American civil rights leader, was murdered in his home near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the day after he had announced that he would begin a voter registration drive for black residents of Forrest County. White supremacists used gasoline bombs to burn his home; his wife and a 10-year-old daughter escaped, but Mr. Dahmer died of his injuries later in the day at the Hattiesburg Hospital. On August 21, 1998, after 32 years and four trials that ended in a mistrial, Samuel H. Bowers, who had been the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, would be convicted of ordering the murder and sentenced to life in prison.

January 11, 1966 (Tuesday)

India's Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was found dead in the dacha where he was staying in Tashkent, in the Soviet Union, the day after he had signed a peace agreement with the Prime Minister of Pakistan. His wife, Lalita, would claim that he had been poisoned, and the butler who had been attending him would be arrested, but later released. Other observers have concluded that Shastri, who had twice suffered heart attacks, had died from a cardiac arrest after calling for his personal physician, Dr. R. N. Chugh.

George Rogers was replaced by John Silkin as a Lord of the Treasury in Harold Wilson's first UK government.

Died: Alberto Giacometti, 64, Swiss sculptor (heart disease and chronic bronchitis);

January 12, 1966 (Wednesday)

The television series, Batman, produced by William Dozier and starring Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin, debuted as a mid-season replacement on the ABC network in the United States. Each weekly episode was a two-part cliffhanger, following a formula of the heroes facing their demise from the villain on Wednesday evening, and the duo's escape and triumph on the Thursday installment. Written primarily by Lorenzo Semple, the show combined camp humor with the action film genre, and appealed to both adults and to children.

In his first State of the Union Address as President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson told Congress and television viewers that the nation could afford both the funding of the cost of social programs and an ongoing war, saying "I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam." Johnson also proposed the creation of a new cabinet level department, the United States Department of Transportation.

The body of India's Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was cremated in a traditional Hindu ceremony in New Delhi on the day after his death. As a crowd estimated at over 1,000,000 mourners watched, along with Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin, U.S. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, India's President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and Acting Prime Minister Gulzarilal Nanda watched as Shastri's son lit a funeral pyre. Afterward, the ashes were scattered in the Yamuna River.

January 13, 1966 (Thursday)

The strike by New York City's public transportation workers ended after twelve days of traffic jams caused by the halting of subway and bus service. During the strike New York City businesses lost an estimated $1,500,000,000 in business revenues, and the cost to the city of increased wages and benefits was $52,000,000.

Police in Beverly Hills, California foiled a plot to kidnap millionaire tire executive Leonard Firestone, but inadvertently killed the informant who had alerted them to the plot. George Skalla had tipped off police that his friend, William Calvin Bailey, was planning to invade Firestone's home, then hold the business leader for a two million dollar ransom. Firestone and his family were safely away, and four members of the police were waiting at his mansion when Bailey and Skalla, whom police said was afraid to back out of the plan, arrived. Skalla was instructed not to wear a mask and to drop to the floor as soon as he and Bailey entered the house, but when Bailey aimed a pistol at the police, they opened fire and killed both men.

In fiction, "Tabitha Stevens" was born on an episode in the second season of the popular television show Bewitched. The story arc of the pregnancy of TV character Samantha Stevens had been written to coincide with the pregnancy of actress Elizabeth Montgomery during 1965. Off screen, Montgomery and her husband, Bewitched producer William Asher, had become parents to a son, Robert Asher, born on October 5, 1965.

January 14, 1966 (Friday)

Avianca Flight 4, a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, crashed into the Caribbean Sea just after takeoff from Cartagena-Crespo Airport in Cartagena, Colombia, killing 56 of the 64 people on board. The plane made a controlled descent into waters 12 feet deep only moments after takeoff, and only eight people escaped drowning.

The French coaster Le Trégor sank 5 nautical miles (9.3 km) of Cap Gris Nez following a collision with an unnamed motor vessel.

Operation Crimp came to an end.

Died: Sergei Korolev, 59, Soviet rocket engineer who was chiefly responsible for the advances of the Soviet Union's space program in the 1950s and early 1960s. Korolev, whose importance had remained undisclosed by the Soviet press during his lifetime, died during surgery for removal of a tumor in his colon. In an editorial a week later, the New York Times eulogized him by noting that "[D]eath has finally declassified the role and identity of Academician Sergei P. Korolev, the man who provided the scientific and technical leadership of the Soviet rocket program... Korolev's rockets were powerful enough to send men into orbit and to put cameras in into position to photograph the back side of the Moon. But they were too weak to break the chains of secrecy that denied him, while he lived, the world applause he deserved...."

January 15, 1966 (Saturday)

In Nigeria, a conspiracy referred to as "The Majors' Coup" because of the military rank of the coup leaders was carried out. Nigerian Prime Minister Abubakar Balewa, and the Northern State premier Ahmadu Bello and the Western State premier, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, were all murdered, along with Balewa's Finance Minister, Festus Okotie-Eboh. Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna led his officers into Balewa's residence in Lagos. Balewa had surrendered to the officers after being assured of his safety. When the coup attempt collapsed, Balewa was shot to death. President Nnamdi Azikiwe was out of the country at the time, taking a vacation on a cruise ship.

Air-to-air combat in Vietnam took on a new dimension, when a U.S. Navy RF-8 reconnaissance airplane spotted a MiG-21 jet fighter with North Vietnamese insignia. Previously, the North Vietnam Air Force had had little success with MiG-17 fighters, which were slower and had fewer missiles than the American F-105 jets.

Slightly less than a month after Britain had started an oil embargo, Rhodesia's supply of gasoline ran out as the storage facilities at the Feruka Refinery ran dry.

The 1966 Five Nations Championship in rugby union began with a 3-3 tie between Scotland and France at Edinburgh, and an 11-6 win by Wales over England at London. Each of the national teams (the other was Ireland) would play each other once during the competition.

January 16, 1966 (Sunday)

One day after the military coup that killed many of the leaders in Nigeria during the absence of President Nnamdi Azikiwe, Acting President Nwafor Orizu announced to the nation that "I have tonight been advised by the Council of Ministers that they had come to the unanimous decision voluntarily to hand over the administration of the country to the Armed Forces of the Republic, with immediate effect." In that most of the government ministers had been hiding out of fear of assassination, there were few Council members present, but Orizu passed along the military statement that "All Ministers are assured of their personal safety by the new administration." Orizu finished by announcing that he would surrender the presidency to Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi.

The BBC began broadcasting a television adaptation of David Copperfield, which starred Ian McKellen as David and Flora Robson as Betsey Trotwood.

The Quindío Department was created as a separate province within the Republic of Colombia.

Died:

General Courtney Hodges, 79, American military commander who commanded the U.S. First Army during World War II, and the first U.S. soldiers to invade Germany

Clarice Mayne, 79, English actress, singer and performer

Sadhu T. L. Vaswani, 86, Indian scholar and educator

January 17, 1966 (Monday)

1966 Palomares B-52 crash: Three hydrogen bombs were dropped on Spain near the coastal town of Palomares, and fourth one fell into the deep ocean, after the B-52 bomber carrying them collided with a KC-135 refueling airplane. Each of the four Mark 28 thermonuclear warheads had a 70-kiloton yield. At 10:22 a.m. local time, the B-52 was flying at 31,000 feet and preparing for a refueling in midair, but accidentally pitched upward and rammed the tanker plane, spilling jet fuel that ignited on both aircraft. One of the H-bombs parachuted to the ground unscathed; two more fell at high speed, and the conventional explosives in their casing scattered radioactive plutonium over 558 acres (almost one square mile) of countryside; but the fourth could not be H-bomb could not be located (a search would eventually discover it at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea in waters 2,250 feet deep). Fortunately, no nuclear explosion was triggered (a 70 kiloton bomb would have collapsed most houses within a one-mile radius) and the missing bomb did not fall under the control of hostile forces. All of the men on board the tanker were killed, and only four of the men on the B-52 were able to parachute to safety. Initial reports released to the press did not mention that the B-52 had been carrying thermonuclear bombs.

In Nigeria, the new Federal Military Government issued the Constitution Suspension and Modification Decree, replacing the elected local leaders and representatives with military governors who could issue edicts or enforce decrees.

Born:

Shabba Ranks, Jamaican singer, in Sturgetown, St. Ann, as Rexton Rawlston Fernando Gordon

Gary "Big Daddy" Goodridge, Trinidadian kickboxer, mixed martial arts athlete and world arm wrestling champion, in Saint James.

Died:

Georges Figon, French "barbouze", shot himself on the eve of his second trial for the kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka

Newcomb Mott, 27, American book salesman who had been arrested on September 4, 1965, when he sneaked across the border between Norway and the Soviet Union. Mott had been convicted on November 24 of illegal entry into country, and sentenced to 18 months in prison, and was being transferred by train to a forced labor camp in Murmansk. Soviet authorities said five days later that Mott had committed suicide while on the trip.

January 18, 1966 (Tuesday)

Robert C. Weaver became the first African American to serve as a member of the U.S. president's cabinet, as well as the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, hours after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Weaver had already the Director of the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency when the HHFA was elevated to Cabinet-level status.

For the first time in the history of the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke the 1,000 point barrier, reaching a high of 1,000.50 before closing the day at 994.20. It would not close at over 1,000 until November 14, 1972.

About 8,500 additional U.S. soldiers arrived in South Vietnam in a single day, as 4,500 members of the 1st U.S. Marine Regiment made an amphibious landing at Chu Lai, and more than 4,000 members of the 2nd Brigade of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division came ashore at Vũng Tàu. The number of U.S. troops in South Vietnam now topped 200,000.

January 19, 1966 (Wednesday)

A quorum of 526 of the 551 members of the Congress Party members of the Indian Parliament met to select a new leader after the recent death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, and thus to fill the vacant office of Prime Minister of India. Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, won 355 votes, and her challenger, Morarji Desai, received 169, while two were declared invalid.

The boundary between Argentina and Uruguay along the Uruguay River was fixed after the ratification of the treaty signed between the two South American nations on April 7, 1961.

Born: Stefan Edberg, Swedish tennis player who was ranked number one in the world among male players during 1990 and 1991;, in Västervik

Died: Kathleen Norris, 85, bestselling American novelist and newspaper columnist.

January 20, 1966 (Thursday)

Robert Menzies, the Prime Minister of Australia, announced in a nationally broadcast address to the nation that he would resign, effective on Australia Day (January 26), and that Treasurer Harold Holt would become the new head of the government.

Radio Caroline, the "pirate radio" station that had been broadcasting rock music to the United Kingdom from a ship anchored outside of British territorial waters, went off the air after a storm wrecked the MV Mi Amigo. The eight members of the station were rescued after the boat was run aground at Frinton-on-Sea.

Demonstrations took place against high food prices in Hungary.

The West German cargo ship Kremsertor foundered in heavy weather off Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom. All 27 crew were rescued by the German tug Atlantic or by a helicopter from 845 Naval Air Squadron based at RNAS Culdrose, Cornwall.

January 21, 1966 (Friday)

Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro and his coalition government resigned after the defeat in the Chamber of Deputies of a bill to establish government-funded nursery schools. When Deputies from the various coalition parties joined with Liberals, Fascists and Communists in voting against the measure, the Cabinet ministers viewed it as a vote of no confidence. Observers speculated that former Foreign Minister Amintore Fanfani had worked with different legislators in bringing about the vote, after having been forced to resign a month earlier.

General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi proclaimed himself as the new President of Nigeria at the head of the new Federal Executive Council, and the new commander of the Supreme Military Council.

The corpse of Sir Abubakar Balewa, the Prime Minister of Nigeria who had been kidnapped five days earlier, was found on a roadside about 27 miles from Lagos. Balewa would be buried the following day.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation discontinued further electronic eavesdropping of Martin Luther King. Associate Director Clyde Tolson reviewed a report from a listening device planted at the Americana Hotel, and wrote on it "Remove this surveillance at once," and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover seconded the recommendation. David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From "Solo" to Memphis (Open Road Media, 2015)

Died: Sir Shane Dunne Paltridge, 55, Senator for Western Australia and leader of the opposition Liberal Party, of cancer. Paltridge had resigned his leadership of the Liberal Party two days before his death.

January 22, 1966 (Saturday)

The U.S. Air Force completed Operation Blue Light, the largest airlift of troops and equipment into a combat zone in history. Since the operation began on December 27, 1965, the Air Force had flown 4,600 short tons (4,173 metric tons) of equipment and over 3,000 troops from Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, to Pleiku, South Vietnam.

Elections were held for the first time on the island of Nauru as voting was conducted for the nine elected members of the 14-member Legislative Council. Only 900 of the 6,057 inhabitants of Nauru were eligible to vote, but there was a large turnout for a choice among the 25 candidates for the nine vacancies.

President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Chairman Edgar Kaiser, Sr of Kaiser Aluminum dedicated the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River.

All six crewmen and 22 of the 27 passengers on board a DC-3 airliner operated by the Haiti airline COHATA (Compagnie Haitienne de Transports Aeriens) were killed when the plane crashed in the mountains, 25 minutes after taking off from Les Cayes on the last leg of a trip from Port-au-Prince to Jérémie. The American aircraft carrier USS Saratoga sent helicopters to rescue the five survivors.

Died: Herbert Marshall, 75, English film actor known for portraying "the urbane, well-educated British gentleman".

January 23, 1966 (Sunday)

Bob Knievel of Montana and his group of motorcycle riders put on his first public show under his new name, performing for two hours at the National Date Festival in Indio, California, as "Evel Knievel and the Motorcycle Daredevils". Beginning a successful career of driving his motorcycle up a ramp and jumping great distances to another ramp, Knievel impressed the Festival crowd by leaping over two trucks that had been parked end to end.

The British tanker Chelwood Beacon ran aground in New York Bay, 1.5 nautical miles (2.8 km) east of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, United States. Thirty-nine crew were taken off by the pilot boat New Jersey. Thirteen crew and a pilot were taken off the next day by a coastguard vessel. The ship would later be refloated, repaired and returned to service.

January 24, 1966 (Monday)

Air India Flight 101, a Boeing 707-437 named for the Himalayan mountain Kanchenjunga, crashed into a ridge of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the French Alps at 8:25 a.m. local time. All 106 passengers and 11 crew on board were killed. On November 3, 1950, Air India Flight 245 had crashed in almost exactly the same spot. The jet, en route from Mumbai to New York City, had been at an altitude of 15,000 feet as it approached for a landing at Geneva, when a violent snow storm on the 15,771 foot high Mont Blanc pulled the plane into the mountainside. Mountain climbers would find remains of the airplane as late as 2012, when a bag of diplomatic mail from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs was found by a rescue worker.

Indira Gandhi was sworn in to office as Prime Minister of India. President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan administered the oath at the Ashoka Room of the presidential palace.

Thirteen men were rescued from the disabled British tanker Chelwood Beacon about 15 miles south of Manhattan, 1 1/2 miles east of Sandy Hook, NJ, where the 665-foot tanker had run aground during a snowstorm.

Died: Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, 56, Indian nuclear physicist and chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, in the crash of Air India Flight 101.

January 25, 1966 (Tuesday)

The first crash of a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest airplane up to that time, occurred when pilot Bill Weaver and co-pilot Jim Zwyer were making a turn while flying Mach 3.18 at an altitude of 78,800 feet. The jet disintegrated around them, but the pilots' pressure suits and parachutes initiated automatically and both landed on a cattle ranch in New Mexico. Weaver survived unharmed, but Zwyer had sustained a broken neck when the plane broke apart.

The satellite Kosmos 106 was launched by the Soviet Union as a radar target for anti-ballistic missile tests.

Born: Donal MacIntyre, Irish investigative journalist, in Dublin

January 26, 1966 (Wednesday)

Harold Holt became Prime Minister of Australia when Robert Menzies retired.

Beaumont children disappearance: Three children— 9-year old Jane Beaumont, 7-year old Arnna Beaumont and 4-year old Grant Beaumont disappeared after visiting the beach at Glenelg, South Australia, near Adelaide. No trace of the children was ever found, nor were any suspects charged with the crime. Fifty years later, the crime remained unsolved despite a half century of investigations.

January 27, 1966 (Thursday)

Hull North by-election, 1966: Britain's Labour Party unexpectedly retained the parliamentary seat of Hull North in a by-election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Henry Solomons on November 7. The by-election took on special importance because Labour had only a 316-313 majority over the opposition Conservative and Liberal parties. Labour made an all-out fight for the seat, including a promise by the Minister of Transport to build the Humber Bridge to shorten travel time within Hull. To make matters worse, Conservative M.P. Edith Pitt died on the same day, leaving them with only 312 seats. Prime Minister Harold Wilson would call for a nationwide election soon after seeing the strength of the Labour win.

The British government promised the U.S. that British troops in Malaysia would stay until more peaceful conditions occurred in the region.

Died: Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, 72, known as "America's Most Notorious Draft Dodger" after fleeing the United States rather than responding to a draft board notice during World War One. After returning to the United States in 1939, Bergdoll served a prison sentence until 1944, and lived his final years in Richmond, Virginia.

January 28, 1966 (Friday)

Lufthansa Flight 005, a Convair CV-440 Metropolitan, aborted its landing in heavy rain at Bremen Airport in Bremen, West Germany, but crashed doing a subsequent go around maneuver, killing all 42 passengers and four crew on board. Among the dead were seven members of the Italian Olympic swimming team and their trainer, and actress Ada Chekhova, daughter of Olga Chekhova and mother of Vera Tschechowa.

In Vietnam, Operation Masher, the largest "search and destroy" mission in the history of the war, and Operation Double Eagle, the largest amphibious landing of the war, both began on the same day, with the American and South Vietnamese (ARVN) armies fighting in an allied operation. Masher (later renamed Operation White Wing) was carried out in the Binh Dinh province under the lead of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, along with the 22nd Division of the ARVN and an infantry division of the South Korea Army, but "produced only minor contacts with the enemy" and left thousands of civilians as homeless refugees U.S. losses were 288 killed and 990 wounded In Double Eagle, thousands of U.S. and South Vietnamese Marines came ashore in the neighboring Quang Ngai province. Both operations would last six weeks, ending on March 6.

The U.S. Selective Service System announced that it would change its guidelines for conscription of college students and college-bound high school graduates, by barring "Class 2-S" draft deferments for students whose grades were in the lower half of their freshman class, the lower one-third of their sophomore class or the lower one-fourth of their junior class.

Died: Mike Quill, 60, American union leader who had called the successful New York transportation workers' strike earlier in the month.

January 29, 1966 (Saturday)

The "Luxembourg compromise" was reached between the six members of the European Economic Community (commonly called the "Common Market"), bringing France back into the EEC. Ultimately, the other members (West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) agreed to a French proposal that any one of the six nations would have the right of a veto over "decisions affecting the essential interests of one of the Member States." The formal agreement was signed the next day and, because there was no definition of what would constitute "essential" interests, the EEC Council would not vote on any matters for the next three years.

North American blizzard of 1966: Heavy rains west of the Rocky Mountains turned into heavy snows toward the east, as record low temperatures, high winds and heavy snowfall struck from the United States and Canada from the Rockies to the East Coast. By the time the storm eased, over 200 people had been killed in the U.S., half of them in the southeastern United States. Deaths attributable to the storm came from being frozen to death, dying in fires started while people were trying to heat their homes, from heart attacks while shoveling snow or pushing cars, or in traffic accidents caused by slick roads.

A collision near Chandpur Port on the Padma River of East Pakistan, between a passenger ship and a steamship, killed 80 people and injured 38; almost 100 other people on the passenger launch, which had been traveling down the river from Faridpur.

The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opened at the Palace Theatre in New York City.

Born: Romário (Romário de Souza Faria), Brazilian footballer, football manager and politician, in Rio de Janeiro

January 30, 1966 (Sunday)

The United Kingdom announced that, effective February 3, it was halting nearly all trade with the southern African nation of Rhodesia, whose white minority government had unilaterally declared itself independent in November. The British Board of Trade placed a ban on all new imports from Rhodesia, and a ban of all exports except for those for humanitarian purposes, such as food or medical aid.

January 31, 1966 (Monday)

After a 37-day moratorium that had started on December 24, 1965, the United States resumed the bombing of North Vietnam and launched Operation Rolling Thunder. Among the first targets destroyed were a bridge at Đồng Hới, a highway ferry complex in Thanh Hóa Province, and barges near the city of Vinh. In all, there were 58 air strikes that day, though only 10 were considered effective.

Luna 9 was launched by the Soviet Union from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 5:42 p.m. local time as a lunar probe that would deliver a capsule to a controlled landing on the Moon. The probe would transmit photographs back to Earth after descending into the Oceanus Procellarum on February 3.

Born: Umar Alisha, Indian spiritual leader, 9th peetadhipathi of Sri Viswa Viznana Vidya Adhyatmika Peetham, at Pithapuram

Died: Carolyn Mitchell (Barbara Rooney), 29, American actress and fifth wife of actor Mickey Rooney, was found dead at the Rooneys' home in Brentwood, California, only ten days after the two had legally separated. She had been the victim of a murder-suicide, shot by her boyfriend, Serbian film actor Milos Milosevic, who then committed suicide. The day before, Mrs. Rooney had visited her husband in the hospital and had discussed a reconciliation.

References

January 1966 Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA

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