March 1960

The following events occurred in March 1960:

March 1, 1960 (Tuesday)

* NASA established an Office of Life Sciences to work on exobiology, based on Dr. Joshua Lederberg's ideas that space vehicles should be sterilized before and after their missions in order to prevent the possibility of contamination of outer space or of the Earth by microbes.

March 2, 1960 (Wednesday)

*During a visit to Montevideo, the President of the United States was among the people who fell victim to tear gas, used by the Uruguayan police to disperse rioting university students. Dwight D. Eisenhower and his host, newly inaugurated Uruguayan President Benito Nardone, could be seen rubbing their eyes as their motorcade passed shortly after the gas was used.
*Lufthansa, the German national airline, entered the jet age with the flight of its first .
*Born: Hector Calma, Filipino basketball player; in Manila
*Died: Stanisław Taczak, 85, Polish General

March 3, 1960 (Thursday)

* Pope John XXIII elevated seven bishops to the College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, bringing the number of members to a record high of 85. Laurean Rugambwa of Tanganyika became the first Black cardinal, while Peter Tatsuo Doi and Rufino Santos were the first cardinals from Japan and the Philippines, respectively.
* Lucille Ball filed for a divorce from Desi Arnaz. Television's Lucy and Ricky had filmed their last show together three weeks earlier. While ''I Love Lucy'' had ended in 1957, the couple had appeared later in 13 one-hour specials airing under the title ''The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour''. The final episode would air on April 1.
*After 28 years as a nationally known radio political commentator, Walter Winchell left the airwaves, making his final broadcast on the Mutual network.

March 4, 1960 (Friday)

*Opera singer Leonard Warren died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage while performing before a live audience at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Warren, who was only 48, was singing the role of Don Carlo in a presentation of Giuseppe Verdi's ''La Forza del Destino'' and had just finished the last line of the aria "Urna fatale del mio destino" ("Fatal pages ruling my destiny"), then fell to his knees.
*The explosion of the French cargo ship ''La Coubre'' in Havana Harbor in Cuba killed 76 people, all but six of whom were bystanders. At 3:10 p.m., the ship, carrying 70 tons of munitions from Belgium, was being unloaded when the blast happened.
*Born: John Mugabi, Ugandan boxer, and WBC World Junior Middleweight champion from 1989 to 1990; in Kampala

March 5, 1960 (Saturday)

*The iconic image of Che Guevara (seen above) was taken by photographer Alberto Korda, who was on assignment from the Cuban government newspaper ''Revolucion'' to cover a protest rally the day after the explosion of the freighter ''La Coubre''. The photo attained worldwide popularity in 1968 after Korda gave a copy to Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.
*Staff Sergeant Elvis Presley was honorably discharged from active service in the United States Army, nearly two years after being drafted into the service on March 24, 1958. After departing from Fort Dix in New Jersey, Presley remained in the U.S. Army reserve for four additional years until completing his military obligations.
*The Gao-Guenie meteorite, weighing more than one ton, landed near the village of Gao in the African nation of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). The sound of the impact was heard away.

March 6, 1960 (Sunday)

*The Food Additives Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act took effect. Prior to the amendment, there was no requirement for government approval of additives to food sold in the United States.
*President Sukarno of Indonesia dissolved that nation's elected parliament. The legislature would be replaced later that month by a body appointed by Sukarno himself.
*President Eisenhower announced that 3,500 American troops would be posted to South Vietnam.

March 7, 1960 (Monday)

*The first simulation of weightlessness for the Mercury astronauts, using reduced-gravity aircraft flying, was made in three days of an indoctrination for at the Wright Air Development Center in Dayton, Ohio. In order to create an environment of free-floating during weightless flight, a modified C-131B Samaritan aircraft repeatedly flew a parabolic course, during which the astronauts were floating each time from 12 to 15 seconds. In all, 90 parabolic flights were made, during which the practiced using tools and moving weights while in a weightless condition.

* Four Russian soldiers who had been adrift in the Pacific Ocean since January 17 were rescued after a 49-day drift in the ocean. The American aircraft carrier USS ''Kearsarge'' picked up the four — Sgt. Askhat 'Victor' Ziganshin and his men, Filipp Poplavsky, Anatoly Kryuchkovsky, and Ivan Fedotov — who had survived seven weeks.
*The 14,000-member Screen Actors Guild called a strike for the first time in its history, bringing to a halt the filming of eight major motion pictures and several minor ones.
*The first 20 Soviet cosmonauts were selected in preparation for crewed spaceflight.
*Born:
** Ivan Lendl, Czech pro tennis player (French, U.S. and Australian open champion); in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia
** Joe Carter, American MLB outfielder; in Oklahoma City

March 8, 1960 (Tuesday)

*The New Hampshire primary, first of the nominating primary elections, saw U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy win the state's Democratic Party delegates, and U.S. Vice-President Richard M. Nixon win on the Republican ticket, each with a record number of registered voters from their parties. Other major candidates had declined to participate in New Hampshire. Kennedy defeated Chicago businessman Paul Fisher, 42,969 to 6,784 and Nixon's 65,077 votes were matched by write-ins for four candidates, including 8,428 for New Hampshire Governor Wesley Powell.

March 9, 1960 (Wednesday)

*The Scribner shunt, a flexible Teflon tube that could be permanently implanted to connect an artery to a vein, was first implanted into a human patient. For the first time, persons with kidney failure could receive dialysis on a regular basis. Prior to the shunt's invention by Dr. Belding H. Scribner, glass tubes had to be inserted into blood vessels every time that dialysis was given. As one observer noted, "Scribner took something that was 100% fatal and overnight turned it into a condition with a 90% survival." The historic operation took place at the University of Washington hospital, and 39-year-old machinist Clyde Shields was the first beneficiary. At the same time, a new issue in bioethics was created, since decisions had to be made about which patients would be selected to receive the lifesaving treatment.
*The journal ''Physical Review Letters'' received the paper "Apparent Weight of Photons" from physicists Robert V. Pound and Glen A. Rebka, Jr., reporting the first successful laboratory measurement of the gravitational redshift of light, described later as a key event in proving the theory of general relativity.
*Position titles for Project Mercury operational flights were issued. During the flights, 15 major positions were assigned to Mercury Control Center, 15 in the blockhouse and 2 at the launch pad area. The document also specified the duties and responsibilities of each position.
*Died:
**U.S. Senator Richard L. Neuberger, 47, a Democrat representing Oregon, died of a cerebral hemorrhage one day after having a stroke at his home. On the day of his fatal stroke, a newspaper columnist had noted that he apparently had no challenger for the upcoming general election and "may get a virtually free pass for another six-year term." His widow, Maurine Neuberger, had only two days to file as a candidate in the Democratic primary, and would be elected as U.S. Senator in 1960, serving until 1967.
** Jack Beattie, 75, Northern Ireland Labour Party leader, 1929–1933 and 1942–2943

March 10, 1960 (Thursday)

*The first mitral valve replacement was performed on a 16-year-old girl, who had implanted in her a prosthesis, made of polyurethane and Dacron, and designed by Drs. Nina Braunwald and Andrew Morrow. The girl survived the operation, but died 60 hours later. The next day, a 44-year-old woman received the valve and made a full recovery eight weeks later.
*The first implantation of the caged ball heart valve, developed by Drs. Dwight E. Harken and William C. Birtwell, was made on Mary Richardson, who survived for 30 years after the surgery.
*Eight people were pulled alive from the rubble of Agadir, ten days after the deadly earthquake that had killed 12,000 people in Morocco.

March 11, 1960 (Friday)

*At five seconds after 8:00 a.m., EST, Pioneer V was launched from Cape Canaveral as the third man-made object to become a "planetoid" in solar orbit. Unlike the Soviet and American probes launched previously, Pioneer V would orbit between the Earth and Venus. The probe began to provide invaluable information on solar flare effects, particle energies and distributions and magnetic phenomena. Pioneer V continued to transmit such data until on June 26, 1960, when at a distance of 22.5 million miles from Earth, it established a new communications record.
*The initial payment was made to the Australian Government by the Chase National Bank, New York City, on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for support of the Mercury network.
*Died: Roy Chapman Andrews, 76, American explorer, adventurer and naturalist

March 12, 1960 (Saturday)

*At the age of 21, Prince Constantine Bereng Seeiso of Basutoland (later Lesotho) formally became the Paramount Chief, and, upon the African nation's independence from the United Kingdom in 1966, King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho. He reigned until his death in an auto accident in 1996.

March 13, 1960 (Sunday)

*Author Ian Fleming was a dinner guest at the home of future American President John F. Kennedy, and described to the assemblage some humorous suggestions for how James Bond would get rid of Fidel Castro, including causing Castro's beard to fall out. CIA official John Bross, another dinner guest, called agency director Allen Dulles afterward and reported Fleming's "ideas", some of which were tried later.
*A total lunar eclipse afforded astrophysicist Richard W. Shorthill the opportunity to make the first infrared pyrometric scans of the lunar surface and led to his discovery of the first lunar "hot spot" observed from Earth. Shorthill found that the temperature of the floor of the Tycho crater was 216° Kelvin (—57 °C), significantly higher than the 160K (—113 °C) in the area around the crater.
*Maurizio Pollini won the VI International Chopin Piano competition, marking the first time that the prize had gone to an Italian pianist.
*Born:
** Joe Ranft, American animator and voice actor; in Pasadena (killed in auto accident, 2005)
** Adam Clayton, Irish rock bassist for U2; in Chinnor, Oxfordshire, England
** Luciano Ligabue, Italian singer-songwriter and film director; in Correggio

March 14, 1960 (Monday)

* USAF Col. William Burke, aide to Richard M. Bissell Jr., who oversaw the CIA's U-2 spy plane program, warned Bissell that the Soviets had developed the missile capability to shoot down the high-altitude () U-2. Nevertheless, the spy flights continued, and on May 1, 1960, a U-2 would be downed in Soviet territory.
*West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer met with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, the first time a German leader had conferred with a leader of the Jewish state. Two weeks earlier, the two countries had secretly negotiated German financial and military aid to Israel.
*Born: Kirby Puckett, Minnesota Twins outfielder and Hall of Famer; in Chicago (d. 2006)

March 15, 1960 (Tuesday)

*Government forces in Masan, South Korea, arrested students protesting against rigged elections. Although President Syngman Rhee's re-election to a fourth term had been ensured when his opponent died of an illness, separate elections for Vice-President would determine the 85-year-old Rhee's successor. With the aid of government measures, including the stuffing of ballot boxes, Rhee's running mate, Lee Ki Poong, officially received 79.2% of the votes in what was expected to be a close race against opponent Chang Myun. Over the next weeks, students in other cities followed the example of Masan, and Rhee was forced to resign.
*Police in Orangeburg, South Carolina arrested 389 African-American protesters who had converged upon the town's lunch counters at the noon hour. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, 77 students were arrested after beginning sit-ins at government offices.
*West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer met at the White House with U.S. President Eisenhower to discuss the Berlin crisis.
*In Geneva, the first session of the Ten Nation Committee on Disarmament was held.

March 16, 1960 (Wednesday)

*At a cave in Starved Rock State Park near Ottawa, Illinois, the bodies of three women were found. All three, residents of Riverside, Illinois, and the wealthy wives of Chicago business executives, had been beaten to death two days before, during an afternoon of birdwatching. A dishwasher at the park later confessed to killing the women after attempting to rob them. Chester Weger, convicted of the murder, was sentenced to life imprisonment, and would remain incarcerated until being paroled in 2020.
* Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan Africanist Congress, gave advance notice to South Africa's police commissioner that, beginning on March 21, the PAC would stage five days of non-violent protests against national laws that required all black South Africans to carry passes. What was intended as a peaceful demonstration would become the Sharpeville Massacre.
*In Argentina, due to a wave of terrorism (330 attacks and 21 victims in five months), President Arturo Frondizi took severe measures against the Peronist opposition. Hundreds of Peronist militants were arrested (including former Foreign Minister Ildefonso Cavagna Martinez), and martial law was decreed against the terrorists.
*Jean-Luc Godard's ''Breathless'' was released in four Paris cinemas. The movie, the directorial debut for Goddard and starring actor Jean-Paul Belmondo in his first lead role, reached the top of the box-office in France in the first week. Belmondo would repeat the public success the following week, with '' The Big Risk''.
*Born:
** Rick Nowels, American songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist and arranger; in San Francisco, California
**John Hemming, British Liberal Democrat politician and businessman; in Birmingham
**Jenny Eclair, British comedian; in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
*Died: Gérard Saint, 24, French cyclist; in a car accident in Le Mans

March 17, 1960 (Thursday)

*Northwest Airlines Flight 710 crashed, killing all 63 people on board. The wings fell off the Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop airplane at an altitude of while the flight was ''en route'' from Chicago to Miami, and crashed into a soybean field near Cannelton, Indiana at , leaving a crater.
*Following a 2:30 meeting at the White House with Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell of the CIA, U.S. President Eisenhower authorized the agency to train and equip Cuban exiles to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro, an operation which would become, in 1961, the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
*Sculptor Jean Tinguely introduced the first piece of "autodestructive art" at New York's Museum of Modern Art. ''Homage to New York'', composed of bicycle wheels and motors, was activated at and destroyed itself within an hour.
* Gina Lollobrigida declared to the press that she and her husband Milko Skofic would leave Italy for Canada. They meant to solve the legal situation of their son Andrea Milko, considered stateless by the Italian bureaucracy.
*Born: Pietro Scalia, Italian-born American film editor and Academy Award winner known for ''JFK'' and '' Black Hawk Down''; in Catania

March 18, 1960 (Friday)

*The " Snark missile" began its brief service as a nuclear-tipped American ICBM. Designed by Northrop and named after the Lewis Carroll poem, " The Hunting of the Snark", the 30 missiles were deployed at Presque Isle Air Force Base in Maine as part of the 702d Strategic Missile Wing. Fifteen months later, the Snarks were declared to be obsolete, and deactivated by order of President Kennedy.
*The Soviet Academy of Science gave names for the first time to craters discovered on the far side of the Moon by Luna 3. A list was published in '' Pravda'', the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, of 12 landmarks not visible from the Earth. The persons honored, only four (Dmitri Mendeleev, Igor Kurchatov, Nikolai Lobachevsky, and Alexander Popov) of whom were Russian, included Louis Pasteur, Marie Sklodowska-Curie (honored with the crater Sklodowska), James C. Maxwell, Heinrich Hertz, Tsu Chung-Chi, Giordano Bruno, inventor Thomas Edison and science fiction writer Jules Verne.
*In France, President Charles De Gaulle refused to summon an extraordinary session of the National Assembly about the agricultural crisis, as requested by 287 MPs. De Gaulle's authoritarian move was harshly criticized by the press and almost all the political parties.

March 19, 1960 (Saturday)

*A portion of the Great Wall of China was opened for visitors after repairs that had first been suggested in 1952 by Guo Moruo, an official in the Communist Chinese government. The section near Badaling was originally set aside for visits by foreign diplomats, and its first guest was Nepal's Foreign Minister. In 1972, television viewers in the West would see the wall at Badaling during a visit by President Nixon of the United States, and the area is now open to tourists.
* Dallas Rangers general manager Tex Schramm announced that the new NFL team was going to change its name to avoid a conflict with the minor league baseball team of the same name. "It seems Dallas is becoming big league in baseball as well as in football", Schram said, "and since both 'Rangers' will be around here for a long time, and since the baseball club had the name first, we're changing ours." The new name selected was the Dallas Cowboys.
*In La Paz, Bolivia, the far-right movement Bolivian Socialist Falange attempted an insurrection, led by the colonel of the carabineers Hermogenes Rio Ledezma. The Bolivian president Hermàn Siles Zuazo reacted firmly; at sunset, the riot was quelled, and Rio Ledezma was forced to flee.
*In parliamentary elections in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the Ceylon Democratic Party headed by Prime Minister Wijayananda Dahanayake was voted out of its majority. The United National Party of Ceylon formed a new government, and Dudley Senanayake became the new Premier.
*The University of Denver won the 1960 NCAA ice hockey championship, 5–3 over Michigan Tech, after John MacMillan scored two goals in the final 63 seconds of the game.
* Ohio State University won the NCAA basketball championship by upsetting the defending champion, the University of California, 75–55.
*An agreement between the United States and Spain on the Project Mercury tracking station in the Canary Islands was announced.

March 20, 1960 (Sunday)

* LeRoy Collins, the Governor of Florida, surprised the state and the rest of the world in a televised speech. Though he had been a defender of Florida's segregation laws, Governor Collins endorsed the goal of sit-in demonstrations to allow African-Americans to eat at lunch counters. "People have told me that our racial strife could be eliminated if the colored people would just stay in their place," said the Governor, "but friends, we can never stop Americans from struggling to be free."
*The Soviet Union's Council of Ministers adopted Resolution 241, directing urgent government funding for the oil exploration in western Siberia.
*Born: Norm Magnusson, American artist, founder of "funism"

March 21, 1960 (Monday)

*The Sharpeville Massacre began at 1:20 p.m. when white police at the South African township of Sharpeville fired their guns into a crowd of unarmed black protesters, killing 69 people and wounding 180. Subsequent investigations would determine that two policemen had fired their guns, and that 50 others then began shooting into the crowd as they fled. Within 40 seconds, 705 rounds were fired. Of 155 bullets extracted from the dead and wounded, only 30 were frontal entry wounds. Most of the victims had been shot in the back as they ran. Of the dead, 31 were women, and 19 were children. Since the end of white minority rule, South Africa observes Human Rights Day annually on March 21.
*In Buenos Aires, Ricardo Klement brought a bouquet of flowers to his wife at their home at 16 Garibaldi Street, confirming to Mossad agents that the Argentine businessman was, as they suspected, Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann