June 1963

June 1, 1963 (Saturday)

Willie Pastrano, a 6 to 1 underdog challenger, won the world light heavyweight boxing championship, defeating titleholder Harold Johnson. Although most sportswriters thought that Johnson had won the 15 round bout in Las Vegas, Pastrano was declared the winner by the judges in a 2 to 1 decision. "I'm not saying that the underworld dictated the decision," Johnson's manager told reporters afterward, "but the betting was 5-1 and 6-1 for my boy? What do you think?"

In Vietnam, President Ngô Đình Diệm's office announced the dismissal of the three major officials involved in the Huế incident— the province chief and his deputy, and the government delegate for the Central Region of Vietnam— for failing to maintain order.

Jomo Kenyatta was sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Kenya.

Died: Alfred V. Kidder, 77, American archaeologist

June 2, 1963 (Sunday)

Fred Lorenzen won the World 600 NASCAR race despite his car running out of gas on the final lap. Junior Johnson had been leading the race until suffering a blown tire with three laps left. Lorenzen's win brought his earnings to "just under $80,000 making him the biggest money winner in stock car racing history" even though the racing season was only half over.

Died: Skinnay Ennis (Edgar Ennis, Jr.), 55, American bandleader

June 3, 1963 (Monday)

Pope John XXIII died at the age of 81, leaving the papacy sede vacante. As Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, he had been the Patriarch of Venice when he was elected on October 28, 1958, to succeed Pope Pius XII as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope's death from stomach cancer, complicated by peritonitis, took place at 7:49 pm in Rome.

Northwest Airlines Flight 293, a Douglas DC-7C, crashed in the Pacific Ocean west-southwest of Annette Island, Alaska, off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, killing all 101 people on board. Chartered to carry U.S. military personnel and their families from McChord Air Force Base in Washington, to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, the plane disappeared shortly after being cleared to climb to an altitude of 18,000 feet. Forty-seven years ago, the cause of the accident remained unknown and the wreckage of the airplane remained "under more than 8,000 feet of water in the Gulf of Alaska".

Hue chemical attacks: The Army of the Republic of Vietnam poured chemicals on the heads of Buddhist protestors. The United States threatened to cut off aid to Ngo Dinh Diem's regime.

Died: Nazim Hikmet, 61, Turkish poet, of a heart attack while picking up a morning newspaper at the door at his summer house in Peredelkino, USSR.

June 4, 1963 (Tuesday)

The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, religious leader of Iran's Shi'ite Muslim community, was arrested in the city of Qom after speaking out against the emancipation of women in the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Khomeini would be imprisoned for eight months, and released in April 1964. Six months later, he would be arrested again and sent into exile in Turkey, then move the following year to Najaf, in Iraq. In 1979, Khomeini would lead the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110, delegating authority to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury to issue silver certificates under the Thomas Amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

Robert Wesley Patch, a six-year-old boy from Chevy Chase, Maryland, was awarded United States Patent No. 3,091,888 for a toy truck that could be "readily assembled and disassembled by a child".

Australian diver Max Cramer became the first person to dive to the wreckage of the ship Batavia, exactly 334 years after the Dutch vessel had sunk on June 4, 1629.

June 5, 1963 (Wednesday)

The Guinean president Sékou Touré begins a presidential visit to the Republic of the Congo, creating a political stir in the country.

Profumo Affair: John Profumo resigned as the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for War, after admitting having lied, to his fellow MPs in the House of Commons, about his extramarital affair with Christine Keeler.

Political demonstrations began in Iran, protesting the arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini by the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The uprising coincided with the 10th of Muharam, an Islamic holiday marking the start of the new year, 1383 A.H., and the worldwide mourning for the Roman Catholic Pope. The martyrdom of Islamic clerics on that day, the 15th of Khordad, 1342 on the Persian calendar, is now commemorated as a public holiday in Iran.

A U.S. District Judge Seybourn H. Lynne of Alabama issued an injunction prohibiting the state from blocking the enrollment of the first two African-American students in the history of the University of Alabama.

The first annual NHL draft was held in Montreal, Quebec.

President John F. Kennedy announced during a speech at the United States Air Force Academy that the United States government would team with private industry to quickly develop "the prototype of a commercially successful supersonic transport superior to that being built in any other country," a reference to the British-French Concorde and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144. His statement would give rise to the Boeing 2707 ("SST") project.

Afterwards, President Kennedy flew to El Paso, Texas, where he met U.S. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and Governor John B. Connally, to discuss a presidential tour of Texas to take place in late November 1963, with stops in Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston.

Died: William Baziotes, 50, American abstract painter

June 6, 1963 (Thursday)

Chairman Mao Zedong of the People's Republic of China Communist Party sent a letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, stating that "The Chinese people will never accept the privileged position of one or two superpowers" with a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and then gave the go ahead for China to accelerate its own nuclear program. China would explode its first atomic bomb on October 16, 1964.

A spokesman for General Dynamics Corporation told scientists in Denver that a manned space mission to the planet Mars could be launched in 1975. Andrew Kalitinsky was a speaker at a two-day symposium by the American Astronautical Society, called "The Exploration of Mars", and envisioned that "a convoy of four multi-ton spaceships" would make the journey. The day before, NASA announced plans to send two satellites to Mars in November 1964 as the first step toward a mission.

Born: Jason Isaacs, English actor, in Liverpool

June 7, 1963 (Friday)

The Rolling Stones' first single, "Come On", was released in the UK, by Decca Records. The cover of "an obscure Chuck Berry ditty" would reach #21 on the British chart.

Died: ZaSu Pitts, 69, American actress

June 8, 1963 (Saturday)

The U.S. National Museum of Naval Aviation opened at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Pensacola, Florida.

Emile Griffith defeated Luis Manuel Rodríguez at Madison Square Garden to regain his welterweight boxing title for a third time. Rodriguez had defeated Griffith in a bout on March 31.

The first Titan II nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles became operational, with the activation by the United States of a group at the Davis–Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona.

The Army of Egypt, intervening in the North Yemen Civil War, made the first use of poison gas in warfare since World War II, dropping chemical weapons, believed to be phosgene, on the village of Al Kawma.

June 9, 1963 (Sunday)

Fernando Belaúnde Terry was elected President of Peru in a repeat of the June 10, 1962 election that had been annulled by the military five weeks later. Belaúnde and the other two major candidates from 1962 ran again, receiving 708,931 votes, 39% of those cast and more than the one-third required under the Peruvian Constitution. Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, who had won a plurality in 1962, got only 34.3% (623,532) and Manuel A. Odría 25.5% (463,325).

In elections for Mongolia's parliament, the Mongolian People's Republic Party, sole legal political party in the Communist nation, won 216 of the 270 seats. The remaining 54 seats went to non-party candidates.

Jim Clark won the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix.

Born: Johnny Depp, American actor, in Owensboro, Kentucky

Died: Jacques Villon, 87, French Cubist painter

June 10, 1963 (Monday)

American University speech: U.S. President Kennedy chose to announce his decision to suspend nuclear testing and work towards a nuclear test-ban treaty with the other atomic powers, as part of the commencement address at American University in Washington.

The University of Central Florida was established by the signing into law of a Senate Bill 125 by Governor Farris Bryant. On January 24, the Board of Controls would select land near the Orange County town of Alafaya, Florida, for the construction of the new campus, and the university would begin classes, under the name Florida Technological University (FTU) on November 1, 1968.

Died: Anita King, 78, American silent film actress who, in 1916, became the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States.

June 11, 1963 (Tuesday)

Alabama Governor George C. Wallace stood in the door of the University of Alabama to protest against integration, and blocked James Hood and Vivian Malone from enrolling as the first African American students at the University. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered that the Alabama National Guard be placed under the command of the federal government, and directed the 31st Infantry Division of the Guard to proceed to Tuscaloosa. Assistant U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach approached Wallace and cited the U.S. District Court order of June 5, requiring that the students be allowed to register, and Wallace replied, "We don't need a speech here," and then read aloud a statement that he did "hereby proclaim and demand and forbid this illegal and unwarranted action by the central government." Governor Wallace stepped aside at 3:40 that afternoon, after the Alabama National Guard commander, Brigadier General Henry Graham, told Wallace that the Guard would enforce the President's order and Wallace, who elected not to be arrested for contempt of federal court, stepped aside.

South Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức, 65, committed suicide by self-immolation, burning himself to death at a major intersection in Saigon to protest the oppression of Buddhists by the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Associated Press photographer Malcolm Browne was the only journalist "to heed Buddhist advance notices", and his photographs brought worldwide attention the next day as well as winning him a Pulitzer Prize; "Many point to the self-immolation," one historian would later note, "as the single event that turned the U.S. government against Ngo Dinh Diem, though a series of events and personality clashes made the situation inevitable."

The first lung transplant on a human being was performed at the University of Mississippi, by Dr. James Hardy. The patient, identified twelve days later as John Richard Russell, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence for a 1957 killing, was given a full pardon Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, in recognition of Russell's volunteering for the operation, which Barnett said would "alleviate human misery and suffering in years to come". The donor, never identified, had arrived at the hospital emergency room in the evening after having a massive heart attack, and the family permitted the donation of the left lung for transplant; Russell survived for 18 more days after the surgery.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered a historic Civil Rights Address, in which he promised a Civil Rights Bill, and asked for "the kind of equality of treatment that we would want for ourselves."

Died:

Syed Abdul Rahim, 53, Indian footballer and first manager of the Indian national team

Shen Junru, 88, Chinese lawyer and first President of the Supreme People's Court of China

June 12, 1963 (Wednesday)

Medgar Evers, a 37-year-old African-American civil rights activist, was shot and killed while standing in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi. Byron De La Beckwith was arrested within two weeks After two trials in 1964 that would both end without the jurors being able to reach a verdict, Beckwith would elude conviction for thirty years before being retried. He would be convicted of the murder on February 5, 1994 and spend the rest of his life in prison, dying in 2001. The Evers home, at 2332 Margaret Walker Alexander Drive in Jackson, Mississippi, is not designated as a historic landmark.

The long-awaited film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, had its worldwide premiere, in New York City.

NASA Administrator James E. Webb announced to the U.S. Senate Space Committee that there would be no further spaceflights for Project Mercury, with the next manned missions being with two astronauts each for on the Gemini program.

Died: Andrew Browne Cunningham, 80, British Admiral who commanded the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet, and the then the Allied Expeditionary Force, during World War II. Nicknamed "ABC", he became the First Sea Lord in 1943.

June 13, 1963 (Thursday)

U.S. Representative Thomas F. Johnson of Maryland, and former U.S. Representative Frank W. Boykin of Alabama, were both convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States government and accepting bribes. Boykin would later be pardoned, while Johnson, after appealing his conviction all the way to the United States Supreme Court, would serve six months in prison.

The Panamanian cargo vessel Carmen sank after colliding with the Turkish ship Sadikzade in the Strait of Dover, and two of its crew drowned; Sadikzade then collided with a Greek ship, MV Leandros, which in turn collided with another British ship MV Clyde Sergeant. These three ships reached port safely.

June 14, 1963 (Friday)

Valery Bykovsky was launched into orbit by the Soviet Union on board Vostok 5. Bykovsky would spend almost five days in space, breaking the record recently set by American astronaut Gordon Cooper, and making 82 orbits before returning on June 19, at the same time as Vostok 6 and Valentina Tereshkova.

Born: Daniel Podrzycki, Polish politician, in Siemianowice Śląskie (died 2005)

Died: Carl Skottsberg, 82, Swedish Antarctic explorer

June 15, 1963 (Saturday)

The French retailing chain Carrefour opened the first hypermarket in Europe. With 2,500 square meters of floor space for a grocery store and department store, parking space for 350 cars, and its own gasoline station, the first Carrefour hypermarket was opened at the Paris suburb of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, Essonne.

Born: Helen Hunt, American film actress, in Culver City, California

June 16, 1963 (Sunday)

Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union became the first woman in history to travel into outer space, when she was launched as a cosmonaut on Vostok 6. Tereshkova was also the twelfth person to be sent into orbit. A woman would not travel into outer space again for twenty years, with U.S. astronaut Sally Ride being launched on June 18, 1983, as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Challenger. Tereshkova, who would retire from the Soviet Air Force as a colonel, would marry her fellow cosmonaut, Andriyan Nikolayev, and go into politics, becoming a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, and a member of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.

David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel since it had become independent in 1948, resigned for what he described as "personal reasons". Ben-Gurion also quit his post as Israel's Defense Minister, which he had held since 1955. He would be replaced by Levi Eshkol.

June 17, 1963 (Monday)

Abington School District v. Schempp: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 8-1, that state-mandated Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional. The case had been consolidated with Murray v. Curlett, brought by Madalyn Murray, who in 1965 would marry to become Madalyn Murray O'Hair, and would become the founder of American Atheists. The Schempp case was not the decision that banned prayer in American public schools, which had been rendered in Engel v. Vitale on June 25, 1962.

ASCII (United States of America Standard Code for Information Interchange) was approved by the American Standards Association, providing a seven-bit code of up to 128 character positions that could be used for communication between computer information processing systems.

Died:

John Cowper Powys, 90, British novelist

Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, 79, British field marshal and Chief of the Imperial General Staff during World War II

June 18, 1963 (Tuesday)

Stanoje Akšić became President of the Assembly of Kosovo.

Born:

Bruce Smith, American NFL defensive end and member of Pro Football Hall of Fame, in Norfolk, Virginia

Christian Vadim, French film actor, son of Catherine Deneuve and Roger Vadim, in Boulogne-Billancourt

Died: Pedro Armendariz, 51, Mexican actor, shot himself to death

June 19, 1963 (Wednesday)

What would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was sent by President Kennedy to the United States Congress, and was introduced the next day in the House Judiciary Committee by U.S. Representative Emanuel Celler. The most comprehensive civil rights legislation in United States history, the legislation would be passed after Kennedy's assassination, with President Lyndon B. Johnson signing it into law on July 2, 1964.

On the same day, President Kennedy secretly approved a CIA program of renewed sabotage of the infrastructure of Cuba, though abiding by his pledge to never invade the Communist island nation.

The papal conclave began its meeting in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, to elect a successor to Pope John XXIII. Voting began the next day.

Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space, returned to Earth, in Vostok 6, as did cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky

The Soviet Union's Mars 1 spacecraft came within 193,000 kilometers (120,000 miles) of the planet Mars, the first man-made object to reach the Red Planet, but was unable to return any data to Earth because of a malfunction in its antenna on March 21.

June 20, 1963 (Thursday)

The Moscow–Washington hotline (officially, the Direct Communications Link or DCL) was authorized by the signing of a "Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Line" in Geneva, Switzerland, by representatives of the Soviet Union and the United States. Though depicted in fiction as a red telephone, the hotline consisted of one teleprinter each in both nations, linked by a two cable circuits routed between Washington, D.C. and Moscow by way of London, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki and two backup radio circuits routed that used Tangier (in Morocco) as a midpoint. Initially, the American DCL teleprinter was located inside the Pentagon, and could transmit at 65 words per minute. The first announced use of the line was in 1967 during the Six-Day War involving Israel and its Arab neighbors.

The United States team won the first ever Federation Cup (tennis), defeating Australia in the finals.

Phil Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, entered Chestnut Lodge, a psychiatric hospital in Rockville, Maryland, for the second time. Two weeks later, he would shoot himself.

The U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board refused to allow the proposed merger of American Airlines and Eastern Airlines.

June 21, 1963 (Friday)

Giovanni Battista Montini, the Archbishop of Milan was elected as the 262nd pope, succeeding the late Pope John XXIII. Cardinal Montini would take the regnal name Pope Paul VI, the first pontiff with that name since Paul V (who reigned 1606-1621) and would lead the Roman Catholic Church until his death in 1978. Theologian Hans Küng would later write in his memoirs that "Montini got 57 votes, only two more than the two-thirds majority required," on the sixth ballot, with Cardinals Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna, Leo Joseph Suenens of Belgium and Augustin Bea of Germany having been under consideration as well.

Leonid Brezhnev, the ceremonial President of the Presidium of the Soviet Union, was appointed to a position in the Secretariat of the Soviet Communist Party, and viewed as "the dominant contender for succession to Premier Khrushchev as party chief and possibly as head of the government". The predictions proved to be correct, as Brezhnev would be named the Communist Party First Secretary upon the removal of Nikita Khrushchev on October 14, 1964.

The 13th Berlin International Film Festival opened.

June 22, 1963 (Saturday)

The French magazine Salut les copains organised a concert on the Place de la Nation in Paris, featuring singers such as Johnny Hallyday, Richard Anthony, Eddy Mitchell and Frank Alamo. The concert attracted an audience of over 150,000.

Born: Randy Couture, three-time UFC Heavyweight Champion, in Everett, Washington

Died: Maria Tănase, 49, Romanian folk singer, of cancer

June 23, 1963 (Sunday)

Israel's ruling MAPAI party selected Finance Minister Levi Eshkol to be the new party leader and Prime Minister of Israel.

New York Mets centerfielder Jimmy Piersall hit the 100th home run of his major league career, and his first with the Mets, and celebrated by running backwards around the bases. The Mets beat the Phillies 5-0. Piersall was dropped by the Mets soon after and finished out his 1,734 game career with the Los Angeles Angels in 1967.

Byron De La Beckwith was arrested by the FBI on suspicion of the murder of Medgar Evers, and delivered to the police in Jackson, Mississippi, to be charged with violating the civil rights of Evers, rather than with his murder.

Jim Clark won the 1963 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.

The 1963 Tour de France began with 130 cyclists, representing 13 teams.

Born: Colin Montgomerie, Scottish golfer, in Glasgow

June 24, 1963 (Monday)

The Telcan, the first system designed to be used at home for recording programs from a television set, was given its first demonstration. The system, shown in Nottingham, England, was seen to record programs onto a reel of videotape and then to play them back with "very fair video quality" on a 17-inch TV, could hold 30 minutes of programming, and had a suggested retail price of £60 ($175).

Zanzibar was granted self-rule, with full independence being granted on December 10.

Landslides on South Korea's Geoje Island killed all 94 people in a village near Changsungpo. Another 22 people were killed in other landslides.

Born:

Sükhbaataryn Batbold, Prime Minister of Mongolia 2009-2012, in Choibalsan

Ángel Azteca, Mexican professional wrestler ("luchador"), in Gómez Palacio, Durango (died 2007)

Died: Prince Ferdinando, Duke of Genoa, 79

June 25, 1963 (Tuesday)

Veselin Đuranović replaced Đorđije Pajković as President of the Executive Council of Montenegro. Montenegro was, at that time, one of the six constituent republics that made up the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Born:

George Michael, British singer-songwriter, as Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, in East Finchley, London (d. 2016)

Yann Martel, Canadian writer, in Salamanca, Spain

Kent Austin, NFL and CFL quarterback, college football and Canadian football coach; in Natick, Massachusetts

June 26, 1963 (Wednesday)

U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in front of the Berlin Wall in West Berlin. After climbing a specially built reviewing stand at the Brandenburg Gate so that he could look into East Berlin, Kennedy was driven to the West Berlin city hall, where he addressed a crowd of 150,000 people. Kennedy began his speech by saying that "2,000 years ago, the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum [Latin, "I am a Roman"]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner [German, "I am a Berliner"]".

The Soviet Union's penal system was reformed to provide for "colony-settlements" (kolonii-poselenya) for prisoners who "displayed evidence of their aptitude for reintegration into society".

Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote their hit song She Loves You, while staying at the Turk's Hotel in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Paul would later recall that when he played the recording for his father, the elder McCartney suggested (unsuccessfully) that "yeah, yeah, yeah" should be replaced with "Yes! Yes! Yes!".

The Canadian circus ship Fleurus caught fire and sank at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. All people and animals were saved except for some zebras.

Born: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian oil company owner and the wealthiest man in post-Soviet Russia, imprisoned since 2003 after opposing the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin; in Moscow

June 27, 1963 (Thursday)

The state of Minnesota enacted the first law in the United States requiring modifications of buildings to provide accessibility for handicapped persons, with Governor Karl Rolvaag signing the bill.

In a visit to Ireland, U.S. President Kennedy visited Dunganstown, which his great-grandfather Patrick Kennedy had left in 1843 to emigrate to the United States. "If he hadn't left," Kennedy joked, "I'd be working at the Albatross Company", a local fertilizer factory. Kennedy was hosted by his third cousin, widow Mary Ann Ryan.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who had been the losing Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1960, was nominated by the winner of that election, President Kennedy, to be the new U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam.

A baronetcy was created for UK politician Ian Orr-Ewing.

June 28, 1963 (Friday)

Two days after U.S. President Kennedy had delivered his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech on the western side of the Berlin Wall, Soviet Premier Khrushchev gave a speech to workers at an East Berlin toolmaking factory and gave his response. According to reports, the English translation of the German translation of Khrushchev's Russian language speech, "I am told the President of the United States looked at the Wall with great indignation. "Apparently, he didn't like it the least little bit. But I like it very much indeed. The working class of the German Democratic Republic has put up a wall and plugged the hole so that no more wolves can break in. Is that bad? It's good."

Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma, pretender to the thrones of Parma and Spain, was officially renamed Charles Hugues, by judgment of the court of appeal of la Seine, France.

Born: Babatunde Fashola, Nigerian politician, in Lagos State

Died: Home Run Baker (John Franklin Baker), 77, U.S. baseball player

June 29, 1963 (Saturday)

The University of East Africa was established by the University of London, with campuses in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. In 1970, the university was split into three independent institutions, the University of Nairobi, Makerere University, and the University of Dar es Salaam.

The New York Journal American newspaper published a story headlined "High U.S. Aide Implicated in V-girl Scandal". Included in the article, by investigative reporters James D. Horan and Dom Frasca, was mention that call-girl Suzy Chang was a "former paramour" of "one of the biggest names in American politics— a man who holds a very high elective office". U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, aware of the sexual encounters between President John F. Kennedy and Chang, summoned Horan and Frasca to Washington for an interrogation and confirmed that the reporters "were indeed referring to his brother", then pressured them to halt further investigation.

The Saab 105 aircraft made its first flight.

Died:

Ahmed Hilmi Pasha, 84, Palestinian leader and one time Prime Minister of the All-Palestine Government (1948);

Frank Paul, 79, American science fiction illustrator

June 30, 1963 (Sunday)

Ciaculli massacre: A car bomb exploded in Ciaculli, an outlying suburb of Palermo, Sicily, killing five police officers and two military engineers. A bomb that was visible on the backseat of the car had been defused, but when a police officer opened the trunk of the Alfa Romeo, a second bomb exploded. The event was the culmination of the First Mafia War, breaking the unofficial peace pact between the police and the Mafia; over the next month, 10,000 police were sent from the Italian mainland and 250 mafiosi were arrested, suspending the activities of the Cosa Nostra.

The Alfred-Brehm-Haus, at the time the largest enclosed zoo building in the world (5,300 m² or 1.3 acres) was opened at Tierpark Berlin with enclosures for the larger felines (including lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and pumas), and a large aviary.

Jim Clark won the 1963 French Grand Prix at Reims-Gueux.