June 1959

June 1, 1959 (Monday)

Four days after her flight into space, Miss Able, a rhesus monkey, died of a reaction to anesthesia during surgery to remove electrodes.

Two small groups of Nicaraguan exiles crossed invaded from Costa Rica, landing airplanes at two locations, on in an attempt to overthrow President Luis Somoza. The invasion, which Somoza believed to have been instigated by Cuba's Fidel Castro, was crushed on June 11.

Died: Sax Rohmer (pen name for Arthur Henry Ward, 76, British novelist and the creator of Fu Manchu died from complications of Asiatic flu.

June 2, 1959 (Tuesday)

The independent Dannon Milk Products Company of Long Island City, New York was purchased by Beatrice Foods from founders Joe Metzger and Dan Carazzo. Over the next decade, Beatrice developed America's taste for yogurt by introducing the Dannon Yogurt brand across the United States.

Twelve people were killed and 15 injured in Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, in the explosion of a propane truck. The truck had caught fire 30 minutes earlier after being rammed from behind, and many of the victims had been watching from a distance.

June 3, 1959 (Wednesday)

The army of Ecuador brutally suppressed rioting in Guayaquil, killing more than 500 people.

The United States Air Force Academy graduated its first class, with 207 students commissioned as officers.

The United States attempted to launch four mice into orbit aboard the satellite Discoverer III, but the mission failed when the rockets fired the vehicle downward rather than horizontally; the satellite burned up on re-entry.

June 4, 1959 (Thursday)

The 190th and final Three Stooges film short was released nationwide. Sappy Bull Fighters was released to theaters nationwide.

June 5, 1959 (Friday)

Singapore was made a self-governing state within the British Empire, with Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister, and Sir William Goode serving as Governor-General for the first six months. Singapore achieved full independence in 1965.

Nikolay Artamonov, commander of a Soviet Navy destroyer, defected to the United States, with his fiancee Eva, after escaping in a motor boat to Oland Island in Sweden. As Nicholas Shadrin, Artamonov, worked for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency until the Soviets recaptured him in 1975

June 6, 1959 (Saturday)

The first satellite communication was made when a radio message from U.S. President Eisenhower was bounced off of the Moon to Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who was dedicating the new Prince Albert Radio Laboratory (PARL).

Born: Marwan Barghouti, Jordanian-born Palestinian leader instrumental in launching the 1988 intifada; in Kobar on the West Bank

June 7, 1959 (Sunday)

The United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, also known as the New York Convention, entered into force, under terms adopted by the U.N. on June 10, 1958. The agreement encourages international arbitration of disputes, in that all nations that have accepted the 1959 agreement recognize the results of the arbitration as legally binding. The USSR ratified the treaty in 1960, the US in 1970 and Britain in 1975.

June 8, 1959 (Monday)

An experiment with "missile mail" proved successful, if not practical. At 10:10 am. the USS Barbero launched a Regulus I rocket, containing 3,000 letters, from a point 100 miles offshore from Norfolk, Virginia. The "wheeled missile" was guided to the naval air station at Mayport, Florida, a parachute deployed, and it landed 22 minutes after firing. Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield predicted that deliveries of mail by missile would become a regular practice.

June 9, 1959 (Tuesday)

The first ballistic missile submarine, USS George Washington, was launched at 12:40 pm from Groton, Connecticut. On June 28, 1960, the sub was fitted with two Polaris nuclear missiles.

The West African Customs Union, forerunner of the West African Economic Community, was established by treaty between Dahomey (now Benin), the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Upper Volta, with headquarters in Ougadougou, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).

American spy planes intercepted telemetry from a Soviet missile in flight for the first time. Flying near the Iran-USSR border, a U-2 aircraft and an RB-57 Canberra picked up 80 seconds of transmissions from the ICBM to the Tyuratam ground station.

Born: Miles O'Brien, CNN aviation reporter, in Detroit

Died: Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus, 82, winner of the 1928 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

June 10, 1959 (Wednesday)

Harold Geneen became President of International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT). Over a 28-year period, Geneen built the company into a gigantic conglomerate, increasing revenues from $765 million in 1959 to $22 billion at the time of his retirement on January 1, 1978.

A month after withdrawing a six-month ultimatum for the Western powers to withdraw from Berlin, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued a new deadline when talks broke down in Geneva. Khrushchev demanded that the U.S., Britain, and France withdraw their armies from West Berlin by June 10, 1960. The ultimatum was withdrawn on September 27 when Khrushchev met with President Eisenhower at Camp David.

Rocky Colavito of the Cleveland Indians hit four home runs in four consecutive appearances at bat for an 11–8 win over the Baltimore Orioles.

Born: Eliot Spitzer, American politician and Governor of New York for 14 months (2007 to 2008) before resigning in the wake of a scandal; in the Bronx

June 11, 1959 (Thursday)

Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence, was barred from distribution in the United States by order of the Postmaster General. Grove Press had announced, in April, publication of the "unexpurgated edition" of Lawrence's novel, and the Postmaster barred it under section 1461 of Title 18 of the United States Code as "obscene and un-mailable".

The first large hovercraft, the Saunders-Roe Nautical One SR-N1, made its maiden voyage on the English Channel.

Born: Hugh Laurie, British actor (Dr. Gregory House in House), in Oxford

June 12, 1959 (Friday)

Construction began on HMS Dreadnought (S101), the first British nuclear submarine. Prince Philip laid down the first steel at the Vickers-Armstrongs shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness. The sub was launched in 1960 and served until 1980.

Singer Billie Holiday was arrested for heroin possession while in her room at New York's Metropolitan Hospital, where she had been since collapsing on May 31. Because she couldn't be moved, NYPD detectives fingerprinted her and took mug shots while she lay in bed, to face charges upon release. She would die, without regaining consciousness, on July 17.

June 13, 1959 (Saturday)

Police in Angamaly, a city in India's Kerala state, fired into a crowd that was protesting against the elected Communist government of E. M. S. Namboodiripad, killing seven people. The incident led to the replacement of the state government, on July 31, by President's rule, under Article 356 of the Indian Constitution.

Born: Boyko Borisov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria 2009 to 2013, in Bankya

June 14, 1959 (Sunday)

Dominican exiles, aided by Fidel Castro, invaded the Dominican Republic on three fronts, with the objective of overthrowing dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. At Estero Hondo and at Maimon, the rebels rowed in from ships stationed offshore, while a smaller group landed a C-46 transport at Constanza. Alerted to the invasion by its own spies, the Dominican armed forces stopped the invasion by sea. In Constanza, where inaccurate bombing ended up killing more civilians than guerillas, most of the rebels were captured or killed by Dominican peasants in return for a cash bounty.

At Disneyland, the first passenger-carrying monorail was dedicated by U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon. When Walt Disney took the Nixon family along for a test ride before the ceremony, the Secret Service detail was inadvertently left behind and the Vice President accidentally "kidnapped".

As beachgoers in La Jolla, California, watched, 33-year-old Robert Pamperin was attacked and devoured by a 20-foot (6.1 m) great white shark, while skindiving 50 yards from shore. No trace of Pamperin was found, and it was speculated that the shark had swallowed him whole.

June 15, 1959 (Monday)

A U.S. Navy P4M Mercator patrol plane was attacked by a pair of MiG-15 fighters over the Sea of Japan, 80 miles east of Wonsan, North Korea. Tailgunner Donald E. Corder was severely wounded, and the plane landed at a U.S. base in Hiroshima, Japan.

June 16, 1959 (Tuesday)

François Tombalbaye became Prime Minister of Chad, which was scheduled to become independent of French Equatorial Africa. On August 10, 1960, Tombalbaye would become the new Republic of Chad's first President, serving until his death in a 1975 coup.

The essay "Hai Rui Scolds the Emperor" appeared in the Chinese Communist paper People's Daily (Renmin Ribao), written by historian and Beijing vice-mayor Wu Han. Ostensibly about the criticism (in 1566) of a Ming dynasty Emperor, the article, and other Hai Rui essays that followed, was viewed as a veiled criticism of Chinese leader Mao Zedong and considered a factor in the backlash from the 1966 Cultural Revolution.

In a White House meeting, President Eisenhower expressed his reservations about the placement of American medium range nuclear missiles in Turkey, noting that "if Mexico or Cuba had been penetrated by the Communists, and then began getting arms and missiles from them ... it would be imperative for us to take positive action, even offensive military action." The presence of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey was later believed to be one of the factors in the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba, which precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Died: Actor George Reeves, who played the title role on the television program The Adventures of Superman, was found dead, in his Beverly Hills home, from a single gunshot to his head. Because the gun was wiped clean of fingerprints, and there were no powder burns on his hand, the conclusion that he had killed himself has been disputed.

June 17, 1959 (Wednesday)

Éamon de Valera, the long time Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, was elected to the largely ceremonial post of President of Ireland, defeating challenger Sean MacEoin by a margin of 538,000 to 418,000.

A jury in London awarded Liberace $22,400 in his libel suit against the London Daily Mirror. The Mirror's columnist, William Connor, had described the flamboyant pianist as homosexual.

The Laguna San Rafael National Park, with an area of 17,420 km², was created by the government of Chile.

Died: Joseph Barbara, 53, owner of the estate in Apalachin, New York, where the Apalachin Meeting of Mafia bosses had taken place, died of a heart attack.

June 18, 1959 (Thursday)

Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Newfoundland to begin a 45-day tour of the Dominion of Canada. In the longest stay ever by a Canadian monarch, she traveled 15,000 miles and was seen by more than a million people.

William Shea and Branch Rickey announced plans for a third major baseball league that was tentatively named the Continental League, to be made up of eight cities not represented in either the American or National Leagues.

Died: Ethel Barrymore, 79, American stage and screen actress

June 19, 1959 (Friday)

U.S. Defense Secretary Neil H. McElroy approved the DOD's air defense master plan, providing for procurement of KC-135 tankers, and B-52G, B-58, and B-70 bombers, and increased deployment of Atlas, Tian and Minuteman missiles.

June 20, 1959 (Saturday)

The Soviet Union reversed plans to provide China with a prototype atomic bomb, and secretly informed the Beijing government that it would not supply technical data for constructing more nuclear weapons, unilaterally cancelling an accord reached on October 15, 1957. Nikita Khrushchev noted later in his memoirs that the working bomb and its blueprints had been packed and ready for shipment, but that the Soviets then decided against sharing their secrets.

June 21, 1959 (Sunday)

Winnipeg, Manitoba, became the first city in North America to adopt the 999 number for emergency services. The first 9-1-1 service in the United States did not occur until February 16, 1968, when inaugurated in Haleyville, Alabama.

Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs in his major league baseball career, but had only one game with more than two home runs. He hit three home runs, for six RBIs, in the Braves' win over the Giants in San Francisco.

Minnesota's Lake of the Woods, which bills itself as the "Walleye Capital of the World", erected its 40-foot-long (12 m) statue of "Willie Walleye".

Born: Kathy Mattea, American country singer, in South Charleston, West Virginia

June 22, 1959 (Monday)

The first multinational treaty on nuclear security came into force. The OECD Convention on the Establishment of a Security Control in the Field of Nuclear Energy had been signed by the nations of Western Europe, along with the United States and Canada, on December 20, 1957.

Born: Ed Viesturs, American mountaineer, in Rockford, Illinois

June 23, 1959 (Tuesday)

Seán Lemass took office as Taoiseach of Ireland following elections to replace Éamon de Valera, and began a course of pursuing peaceful cooperation, rather than unification, with Northern Ireland.

The Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville) and Gabon signed a treaty in Brazzaville to create the Union Douaniere Equatorial (UDE) to establish a customs union.

Died: French author Boris Vian died suddenly while watching a film adaptation of his novel I Spit on Your Graves.

June 24, 1959 (Wednesday)

Klaus Fuchs, who had given America's atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb secrets to the Soviet Union, was quietly released from a British prison after serving nine years of a 14-year sentence for espionage. He traveled as "Mr. Strauss" on a LOT Airlines flight from London to East Berlin, where he lived until his death in 1988.

Porgy and Bess, the widescreen Technicolor film of the classic Gershwin opera, was released to mixed reviews and poor box office. Its two leads, Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge, as well as Diahann Carroll, had their singing voices dubbed by others, while Sammy Davis, Jr., Pearl Bailey, and Brock Peters did their own singing. The work was changed from being a full-fledged opera to an operetta simply by removing about a third of the music, and having the words to many of the operatic portions spoken instead of sung. A more critically acclaimed, more faithful, and more complete version of Porgy and Bess was telecast by PBS in 1993.

June 25, 1959 (Thursday)

Spree killer Charles Starkweather, who had murdered 11 people in 1958, was executed in the electric chair at the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

Taking advantage of a clause in the new U.S. copyright law, cartoonist Max Fleischer exercised an exclusive right to renew the soon-to-expire copyright on Betty Boop. Max's son Richard would later recount that attorney Stanley Handman had happened to read, in the Wall Street Journal, "the article that would change our lives forever", with merchandising rights to the popular 1940s cartoon.

June 26, 1959 (Friday)

Queen Elizabeth II, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower officially opened the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

Ingemar Johansson of Sweden became the world heavyweight boxing champion when he knocked out champ Floyd Patterson in a bout at Yankee Stadium. The two met for a rematch on June 20, 1960, with Patterson reclaiming his crown in the fifth round.

TWA Flight 891,a Lockheed Starliner, exploded in mid air and then crashed near the Italian town of Marnate, 15 minutes after taking off from Milan toward Paris. All 68 persons on board were killed. Subsequent investigation concluded that the plane had been struck by lightning, which then ignited vapors in a fuel tank.

Japan's Emperor Hirohito became the first Japanese monarch to attend a baseball game. Nagashima Shigeo, the most popular player at that time, led the Yomiuri Giants to a win over the Hanshin Tigers with a dramatic ninth-inning home run.

Born: Mark McKinney, Canadian-born comedian (The Kids in the Hall and Saturday Night Live), in Ottawa

June 27, 1959 (Saturday)

Voters in Hawaii went to the polls on the question of whether to become the 50th state of the United States of America. The result was 132,938 in favor, and 7,854 not. Only one of the 240 precincts went against statehood, with voters on the island of Niihau 70–18 against.

June 28, 1959 (Sunday)

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church was created as a separate entity from Egypt's Coptic Christian church. Egypt's Pope Cyril VI appointed Bishop Abuna Basilios as the patriarch of the church, with authority to consecrate his bishops within the Ethiopian church.

At Meldrim, Georgia, seventeen people were burned to death while swimming in the Ogeechee River. The beach area was beneath a 30-foot (9.1 m) railroad trestle, and as the train moved over the bridge, two tanker cars exploded, sending a blanket of flames onto a crowd of 175 people below.

June 29, 1959 (Monday)

Pope John XXIII issued his first encyclical, Ad Petri Cathedram, prior to the opening of the Second Vatican Council. The papal letter emphasized that a renewal of the Roman Catholic Church would precede a reunion with other Christian denominations.

June 30, 1959 (Tuesday)

Twenty-one students were killed and more than 100 were injured when an American F-100 plane crashed into Miamori Elementary School at Ishikawa, Japan, on the island of Okinawa. The pilot had ejected after the plane malfunctioned and struck the school.

One of the oddest incidents in MLB history happened when two baseballs were in play at the same time during the Cardinals-Cubs game. Umpire Vic Delmore had handed a new baseball to Cubs' pitcher Bob Anderson while Cubs' third baseman Alvin Dark had retrieved a ball that was still in play. As the Cards' Stan Musial reached second base, both Anderson and Dark threw a baseball his way. Musial ran for third when he saw Anderson's throw sail past him, and was tagged out by Ernie Banks, who had caught the ball thrown by Dark. After ten minutes, the umpires ruled that Musial was out. The Cardinals won anyway, 4–1, so no protest was lodged.

Born: Vincent D'Onofrio, American actor, in Brooklyn