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January 1960

Month of 1960 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

January 1960
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The following events occurred in January 1960:

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January 23, 1960: The bathyscaphe Trieste descends seven miles to the ocean floor
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January 1, 1960: Cameroon granted independence
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January 24, 1960: French Algerians erect barricades
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January 4, 1960: Albert Camus killed in auto accident
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January 1, 1960 (Friday)

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January 2, 1960 (Saturday)

  • At the Senate Caucus room in Washington, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts formally announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. Addressing a question about whether being a Roman Catholic would affect his chances of winning, Senator Kennedy told them "I would think that there is really only one issue involved in the whole question of a candidate's religion, that is, does a candidate believe in the separation of church and state?"[11]
  • The temperature in Oodnadatta, South Australia, reached 50.7 °C (123.3 °F) in the shade, for what remains the highest temperature ever recorded in Australia.[12]
  • Born: Naoki Urasawa, Japanese manga author; in Tokyo
  • Died: Friedrich Adler, 80, Austrian assassin who had killed Austrian Prime Minister Karl von Stürgkh in 1916
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January 3, 1960 (Sunday)

January 4, 1960 (Monday)

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10 Nouveaux Francs
  • The Bank of France issued the first bills for the nouveau franc worth one hundred ancients francs, and brought back the centime coin, replacing the old franc. The new franc, at roughly five to U.S. dollar, had become legal tender on January 1. To prepare the French for the changeover, the old-style bills had been overstamped with new value and the initials "N.F."[14]
  • The EFTA Treaty was signed in Stockholm by Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, to form the European Free Trade Association, a 7-member alternative for nations that could not be, or did not want to be, in the six-nation European Economic Community. The treaty took effect on May 3, 1960.[15]
  • The steel strike of 1959 was settled, three weeks before an injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act was set to expire, as Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon mediated the dispute between the United Steelworkers Association and eleven steel manufacturers.[16]
  • Died: Albert Camus, 46, French writer, was killed in a car accident while riding in a Facel-Vega sports car driven by his publisher, Michel Gallimard. At 1:54 a.m. local time, near Villeneuve-la-Guyard, Yonne département, the car left the road and struck a tree. An unfinished, 144-page manuscript of Camus' latest novel was found near the wreckage. The First Man would finally be published 35 years later.[17]
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January 5, 1960 (Tuesday)

  • The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a trust fund, set up by Benjamin Franklin's will in 1791 to assist "young married artificers", could not be divided before its 1991 maturity date, despite the fact that there were no more artificers who would benefit. Started by Franklin with the deposit of 1,000 pounds sterling, the fund had grown to $1,578,098 by 1960.[18] By the time the monies were split between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in 1991, the Fund was worth more than $6.5 million.[19]
  • British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan began a six-week, 20,000-mile (32,000 km) tour of Britain's current and former African colonies, not returning to London until February 15.[20]
  • Le Monde broke the news of a confidential report, made to the French government by the International Red Cross, documenting the French Army's torture in Algeria.[21][22]
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January 6, 1960 (Wednesday)

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January 7, 1960 (Thursday)

  • For the first time, a Polaris missile reached its target using its own inertial guidance system, rather than being directed from a ground station. The shot from Cape Canaveral came a few hours after President Eisenhower's final State of the Union speech, describing the new era of nuclear submarines armed with the Polaris missiles. "Impossible to destroy by surprise attack," said Ike, "they will become one of our most effective sentinels for peace."[31][32]
  • The Soviet Union announced that it would be testing a long-range rocket over an area in the North Pacific Ocean, and warned other nations not to send ships through a designated 280-mile (450 km) by 160-mile (260 km) area between January 15 and February 15.[33]
  • Representatives of NASA's Engineering and Contracts Division and Flight Systems Division (FSD) met to discuss future wind tunnel test needs for advanced Mercury projects.[34]
  • Died: Prince Ferdinand Pius, Duke of Calabria, 90, pretender to throne of Kingdom of Two Sicilies
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January 8, 1960 (Friday)

  • David Cooper Nelson became the first convict to be executed in New Mexico's gas chamber, and the last. The legislature had replaced the electric chair with gas, and would later adopt lethal injection as its mode of capital punishment.[35]
  • Lee Harvey Oswald, an American defector to the Soviet Union, was personally welcomed by the Mayor of Minsk, given a free apartment, and then set up in a new job as a metal worker in the Byelorussian Radio and Television factory.[36]
  • The Los Angeles Rams sued the new American Football League and the Houston Oilers over the rights to Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon, who had signed with both teams.[37]
  • Born: Mohammed Javad Zarif, Iranian diplomat and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs (2013-2021), Vice President for Strategic Affairs, in Tehran[38]
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January 9, 1960 (Saturday)

January 10, 1960 (Sunday)

  • The United States would defend the Nationalist Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu from aggression by Communist China, U.S. Secretary of the Army Wilber M. Brucker said at a news conference in Taipei, marking a change in American policy. The U.S. treaty to defend the island of Taiwan from attack did not include the two islands in the Taiwan Strait.[42] The question of whether the United States should go to war with China over the two islands would become an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign.
  • Born: Brian Cowen, Taoiseach (Prime Minister of Ireland) and Leader of Fianna Fáil, from 2008 to 2011; in Clara, County Offaly
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January 11, 1960 (Monday)

  • U.S. Senator Theodore F. Green of Rhode Island, at 92, the oldest person to ever serve in either house of Congress up to that time, announced that he would not run in 1960 for a fifth term.[43] Green served from 1935 to 1961 and would die at age 98 in 1966. U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond would surpass Green's record in 1995, serving until his death in 2003 at 100 years old.
  • Henry Lee Lucas, who would confess to more than 600 murders in 1985, then recant, took his first life, stabbing his 74-year-old mother, Viola, at her home in Tecumseh, Michigan. Sentenced to 40 years in prison, but released in 1970, Lucas then resumed killing, and was ultimately convicted of 11 homicides.[44][45]
  • NASA and the Western Electric Company signed a contract in the amount of $33,058,690 for construction and engineering of the Mercury tracking network.[29]
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January 12, 1960 (Tuesday)

January 13, 1960 (Wednesday)

  • The first discussions were held in the White House to discuss covert action to overthrow Cuba's new revolutionary socialist government led by prime minister Fidel Castro. A special group, created by the National Security Council's order #5412, approved "Operation Zapata".[47]
  • The Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) was abolished, and replaced by separate agencies in the 15 republics.[48]
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January 14, 1960 (Thursday)

January 15, 1960 (Friday)

  • The day after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev asked the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to formally approve his proposal to reduce the Soviet armed forces by nearly one-third, the 1,300 members in both houses gave their unanimous assent. The reduction, from 3,623,000 men to 2,423,000 men, had been announced by Khrushchev the day before in a speech to the joint session, with a plan to shift defense expenditures to nuclear weapons and missiles. "Should any madman launch an attack on our state or on other socialist states," Khrushchev said, "we would literally be able to wipe the country or countries that attack us off the face of the Earth."[53][54]
  • Eight Chicago policemen were arrested in early morning raids on their homes, and charged with burglary, and several carloads of stolen merchandise were seized from the homes. By the end of the month, 15 city cops had been indicted for what Mayor Daley called "the most disgraceful and shocking scandal in the police department's history." The arrests followed a revelation, by a 23-year-old burglar, that several members of the Chicago PD had assisted him in burglarizing businesses in areas they had been assigned to patrol.[55]
  • The U.S. Navy issued an operation plan for the Project Mercury recovery force, providing for procedures according to specified areas and for space recovery methods. Procedures for Mercury-Redstone and Mercury-Atlas missions were covered.[29]

January 16, 1960 (Saturday)

  • Nobusuke Kishi, the Prime Minister of Japan, departed from Tokyo's Haneda Airport at 8:09 a.m., in order to sign an unpopular treaty with the United States on American soil, but not before avoiding a rioting crowd of at least 500 Zengakuren, leftist students who had occupied the airport in protest. Several thousand police were required to disperse the gathering.[56]
  • The village of Willowbrook, Illinois, was incorporated.

January 17, 1960 (Sunday)

January 18, 1960 (Monday)

  • In the U.S., all 50 people on Capital Airlines Flight 20 were killed when the Vickers Viscount crashed near Holdcroft, Virginia, while en route from Washington to Norfolk. The 46 passengers and four crew were apparently killed on impact. The first persons on the scene heard no cries, and the aircraft was soon consumed by a fire that burned for five hours.[58][59]
  • Walter C. Williams, NASA's Associate Director of Project Mercury Operations, proposed the establishment of the "Mercury-Redstone Coordination Committee", with representatives from the Space Task Group, Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, Convair Astronautics, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, and the Atlantic Missile Range to monitoring and coordinating activities related to Mercury program activities that used the PGM-11 Redstone missile as a launch vehicle. Williams also proposed that the Mercury-Atlas flight test group (which oversaw NASA use of the SM-65 Atlas missile for Mercury program activities) should serve as the official and standing coordination body.
  • Major General Jacques Massu, the commander of the French Army in Algeria, criticized his boss in an interview with Hans Ulrich Kempski of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. President Charles De Gaulle, who came into power with the Army's support in 1958, was outraged by Massu's statement that "Perhaps the Army made a mistake."[60]

January 19, 1960 (Tuesday)

January 20, 1960 (Wednesday)

  • The Soviet Union successfully test-fired the first ICBM, the R-7 Semyorka, demonstrating a range of at least 7,760 miles (12,490 km) when it reached a target area in the Pacific Ocean. The explosion on impact, at 8:05 p.m. Moscow time (1705 GMT, 12:05 p.m. EST), was observed by the crew of a Qantas aircraft.[63]
  • Born:

January 21, 1960 (Thursday)

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"Miss Sam" being placed in flight container in December 1959
  • "Miss Sam", a rhesus monkey, was launched on board the rocket Little Joe 1B from Wallops Island, reaching an altitude of 48,900 feet (14,900 m) and a maximum speed of 2,021.6 miles per hour (3,253.4 km/h) before returning safely to Earth, clearing the way for human astronauts.[29][64][65]
  • In the third worst mine disaster in history, 437 coal miners were killed at the Coalbrook North Colliery at Coalbrook, South Africa, when a 3-square-kilometre (1.2 sq mi) section collapsed, filling the mine shaft with methane.[66][67][68]
  • Avianca Flight 671 from New York to Montego Bay, Jamaica, crashed and burned when its landing gear collapsed on landing, killing 37 of the 46 persons on board.[69]
  • At a meeting to draft fiscal year 1962 funding estimates for Project Mercury, the total purchase of Atlas launch vehicles was listed as 15, and the total purchase of Mercury spacecraft was listed as 26.[29]
  • Died: Wu Lien-teh, 80, Chinese physician who halted the pneumonic plague epidemic of 1910 in China

January 22, 1960 (Friday)

  • France's President de Gaulle fired Major General Massu from his post as commander of the troops in French Algeria, following Massu's critical interview. European Algerians were outraged by the firing, precipitating the "week of the barricades".[70]
  • At the Boston Garden, Sugar Ray Robinson lost his world middleweight boxing title in an upset to Paul Pender, a 29-year-old firefighter from Brookline, Massachusetts. Pender outpointed Robinson in fifteen rounds.[71]
  • Born: Michael Hutchence, Australian rock musician for INXS; in Sydney (d. 1997)

January 23, 1960 (Saturday)

January 24, 1960 (Sunday)

January 25, 1960 (Monday)

  • Wilt Chamberlain set an NBA record that still stands, for "Most points, rookie, game", with 58 points for the Philadelphia Warriors against the Detroit Pistons, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The record was tied, by Chamberlain, on February 21 of his rookie year.[77]
  • Belgium agreed to grant its African colony, in the Belgian Congo, independence, setting a date of June 30, 1960, and elections to be held in May.[78]
  • McDonnell Aircraft delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft to the Space Task Group at Langley Research Center in less than one year from the signing of the formal contract. This spacecraft was a structural shell and did not contain most of the internal systems that would be required for human spaceflight. After receipt, the Space Task Group instrumented the spacecraft and designated it for the uncrewed Mercury-Atlas 1 (MA-1) flight that would be launched on July 29, 1960.[29]
  • Died: Beno Gutenberg, 70, German-American seismologist who developed the Richter scale, died from cancer.[79]

January 26, 1960 (Tuesday)

January 27, 1960 (Wednesday)

  • A river of lava from the Kilauea Volcano spilled over the last earthen dike that had protected the village of Kapoho, Hawai'i, and began the destruction of the town, whose 300 residents had been evacuated. By Saturday, Kapoho was gone.[84]
  • Following Japan's signing of the new security treaty with the United States, the Soviet Union announced that it was cancelling plans to return the islands of Habomai and Shikotan, captured during World War II, to Japan.[85]
  • Construction began on the Baitul Mukarram mosque in Dhaka, East Pakistan. The structure, designed by Abdul Hussain Thariani, is now the National Mosque of Bangladesh.
  • Thirty-one people were trampled to death in Seoul, South Korea, when a crowd surged forward to catch a train.[40]

January 28, 1960 (Thursday)

  • The 12-team NFL expanded for the first time since 1949, awarding the franchise for the Dallas Cowboys for 1960, and for the Minnesota Vikings for 1961.[86]
  • China and Burma (now Myanmar) signed an agreement specifying the boundary between the two nations.[87]
  • Died: Zora Neale Hurston, 69, African-American author who would attain posthumous fame in the 1970s

January 29, 1960 (Friday)

  • Facing a challenge from rebelling European settlers in French Algeria, France's President Charles de Gaulle went on television in his Army uniform, in order, he said, "to stress that I am speaking as General de Gaulle as well as chief of state". Having announced before that the future of French territory in Algeria would be left to the Algerian Arab majority, de Gaulle emphasized that he would not yield to Europeans "who dream of being usurpers". Following the speech, the French Army ended speculation about whether they would side with the Algerian Europeans against the Paris government, and ordered all home guardsmen, inside the barricades, to report to their headquarters. When the order was disobeyed, the Army moved in to end the rebellion.[88]
  • Born:

January 30, 1960 (Saturday)

January 31, 1960 (Sunday)

  • Joseph McNeill, a 17-year-old college freshman, was turned away by a waitress with the words, "We don't serve Negroes," when he tried to get something to eat at the bus terminal in Greensboro, North Carolina. When he talked about it with three friends at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, the four African-American students decided that they would take a stand against segregation. The next day, the four would sit down at the Woolworth's Department Store lunch counter and refuse to get up until they were served, and the "sit-in" was created as a form of civil disobedience.[91]
  • At Tawfiq, a skirmish between soldiers from Israel and Syria (at that time, part of the United Arab Republic with Egypt) left 12 Syrians and 7 Israelis dead. UAR President Gamal Abdel Nasser sent Egyptian troops back into the Sinai in response.[92]
  • Six chimpanzees were certified as being trained and ready to be launched on Project Mercury space missions. At the same time, other chimpanzees were being shipped from Africa to enter NASA's animal training program.[29]

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