July 1963

The following events occurred in July 1963:

July 1, 1963 (Monday)

* ZIP Codes were introduced in the United States, as the U.S. Department of the Post Office kicked off a massive advertising campaign that included the cartoon character "Mr. ZIP", and the mailing that day of more than 72,000,000 postcards to every mailing address in the United States, in order to inform the addressees of their new five digit postal code. Postal zones had been used since 1943 in large cities, but the ZIP code was nationwide. Use became mandatory in 1967 for bulk mailers.
*Kim Philby was named by the Government of the United Kingdom as the 'Third Man' in the Burgess and Maclean Soviet spy ring.
*The crash of a Varig DC-3 airliner in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state killed 15 of the 18 people on board. The flight was approaching the airport at Passo Fundo on the second-leg of a scheduled trip from Porto Alegre when it impacted trees.
*Died: Abdullah bin Khalifa, 53, Sultan of Zanzibar since 1960, died two days after undergoing emergency surgery. He was succeeded by his son, Jamshid bin Abdullah, the last to hold the title.

July 2, 1963 (Tuesday)

*In a speech while visiting East Berlin, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev endorsed the idea for the first time of a treaty to ban atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Khrushchev criticized the idea of sending inspectors to verify compliance, but said that "Since the Western powers obstruct the conclusion of an agreement banning all nuclear tests, the Soviet Government expresses its willingness to conclude an agreement banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water."
*Mohawk Airlines Flight 121, a Martin 4-0-4, crashed on takeoff at Rochester, New York, in the United States, killing 7 of the 43 people on board and injuring all 36 survivors. The plane was flying to White Plains, New York and, according to a witness "just as the craft began roaring down the runway for a take-off torrents of rain and hail pummeled it."
*Brian Sternberg, the world record holder for the pole vault, broke his neck after falling from a trampoline, and was left a quadriplegic.
*Baseball pitchers Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants, and Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves faced off against each other in a National League baseball game that one author would later call "the greatest game ever pitched". Tied 0-0 after nine innings, the game was won in the 16th by the Giants on a home run by Willie Mays.
*Liberace and Barbra Streisand opened a run of shows at the Riviera in Las Vegas, Nevada.
*The 13th Berlin International Film Festival concluded. The Golden Bear was jointly awarded to '' Il diavolo'' by Gian Luigi Polidoro and '' Bushidô zankoku monogatari'' by Tadashi Imai.
*Died: Alicia Patterson, 56, American editor and publisher who founded the newspaper '' Newsday'' in 1940 for New York's Long Island, died of complications following surgery for an ulcer.

July 3, 1963 (Wednesday)

* National Airways Corporation Flight 441, a Douglas DC-3C, flew into a vertical rock face in New Zealand's Kaimai Ranges near Mount Ngatamahinerua, killing all 23 people on board.
*The 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, turning point of the American Civil War, was celebrated with a re-enactment of Pickett's charge.
*Died: Povl Baumann, 74, Danish architect

July 4, 1963 (Thursday)

*The Constitution of Austria was amended to ease the 1919 act that had declared that "In the interest of the security of the Republic the former holders of the Crown and other members of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen are banished from the country", providing an exception for descendants of the former monarchs if they elected to "expressly renounce their membership of this House".
*Born:
** Christopher G. Kennedy, U.S. businessman; in Boston, to Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the eighth of their eleven children
**Ute Lemper, German singer and actress; in Münster, West Germany
**Jan Mølby, Danish footballer; in Kolding
*Died: Bernard Freyberg, 74, Governor-General of New Zealand 1946–1952

July 5, 1963 (Friday)

*A delegation from the People's Republic of China, led by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, departed from Beijing on a train bound for Moscow, to attend talks in an effort to repair the poor relations between the Chinese Communists and Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The talks, intended to mend the Sino-Soviet split, would break down on July 14 when the Soviets published a rebuttal to Chinese charges that the Soviets had departed from the Communist ideology.
*Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Leone received a vote of confidence in the Italian Senate, 133–110.
*The U.S. Senate set a new record for briefest session by meeting at 9:00 am, and then adjourning three seconds later. There were only two Senators present for the meeting. The previous record for brevity had been a five-second meeting on September 4, 1951.
*McDonnell Aircraft Corporation began the first phase of Spacecraft Systems Tests (SST) on the instrumentation pallets to be installed in Gemini spacecraft No. 1. The first engineering prototype Gemini inertial guidance system computer underwent integration and compatibility testing with a complete guidance and control system at McDonnell. All spacecraft wiring was found to be compatible with the computer, and the component operated with complete accuracy.
*The sale of liquor, by the drink, was legal in the U.S. state of Iowa for the first time in more than 40 years, with "a restaurant in the lakes resort area in northwest Iowa" becoming the site of the first legal drink.

July 6, 1963 (Saturday)

*The Roman Catholic Church relaxed the ban on cremation as a funeral practice, when Pope Paul VI issued the Instruction that "the burning of the body, after all, has no effect on the soul, nor does it inhibit Almighty God from re-establishing the body", although the decision would not be revealed until May 2, 1964.
*The Vanoise National Park, located in the department of Savoie in the French Alps, was designated France's first National Park.
* Elections were held in Jordan for the 80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies of the National Assembly. All of the candidates were independent, in that political parties were banned at the time, and the results, as with most of the elections in Jordan to that time, were "poorly documented" and not officially published.
*A partial lunar eclipse took place.
*Died: George, Duke of Mecklenburg, 63, head of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz since 1934. He was succeeded by his son Georg Alexander.

July 7, 1963 (Sunday)

*In the first round of Argentina's presidential election, Dr. Arturo Illia won a 25 percent plurality of the popular votes (2,441,064) and 169 of the 476 Electoral College votes, seventy short of a majority. Another physician, Dr. Oscar Alende, finished with 16.4%, and former General Pedro Aramburu was third. On July 31, electors for several of the other parties would vote for Illia, giving him 270 electoral votes. Dr. Illia's Radical Civic Union (UCR) Party (UCR) won only 72 of the 192 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and Illia did not try to forge a coalition with the other parties.
*Seven people, including four children, were killed, and 17 injured, when a pilotless FJ-4 Fury jet fighter crashed into gatherers at a family reunion at the Green Hills Day Camp in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The pilot had ejected after plane malfunctioned while he was attempting to land at the nearby Willow Grove Naval Air Station, and the jet crashed into a baseball field, killing one man, then skidded into a bathhouse where 50 people had been swimming or standing around the pool.
*In a fight between South Vietnamese government police and U.S. reporters, secret police loyal to Ngô Đình Nhu, brother of President Ngô Đình Diệm, attacked American journalists including Peter Arnett and David Halberstam at a demonstration during the Buddhist crisis.
*Died: Frank P. Lahm, 85, U.S. aviation pioneer who became, in 1909, the first military aviator after being selected by the U.S. Army to receive instruction on the Wright Flyer by Wilbur Wright

July 8, 1963 (Monday)

*Three crewmen of the British cargo ship ''Patrician'' were killed after it collided with the U.S. ship ''Santa Emilia'' and sank off Gibraltar. Thirty-four of the 37 crew were rescued by ''Santa Emilia''.
*The British comic strip '' Fred Basset'' was introduced, starting with its first appearance in the '' Daily Mail''. Created by Scottish cartoonist Alex Graham, the strip, about the adventures of a basset hound, is syndicated worldwide.
*Members of the 1963 American Everest Expedition team were awarded the Hubbard Medal by U.S. President John F. Kennedy for their achievement.
*McDonnell warned Gemini Project Office that the capacity of the Gemini Guidance Computer was in danger of being exceeded. The original function of the computer had been limited to providing rendezvous and reentry guidance. Other functions were subsequently added, and the computer's spare capacity no longer appeared adequate to handle all of them. McDonnell requested an immediate review of computer requirements. In the meantime, it advised International Business Machines to delete one of the added functions, orbital navigation, from computers for spacecraft Nos. 2 and 3.

July 9, 1963 (Tuesday)

*The "20-point agreement" to create the Federation of Malaysia, effective September 16, was signed in London by the UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and representatives of four of the five intended members of Malaysia: the Federation of Malaya, the Crown Colony of North Borneo (which became the state of Sabah), State of Sarawak and the state of Singapore. The fifth member, the British protectorate over the Sultanate of Brunei, declined to join the Federation. The state of Singapore would be expelled from the Federation of Malaysia on August 9, 1965 and would become an independent republic.
*Gemini astronaut candidates began testing of the " human centrifuge" equipped to simulate the command pilot's position in the spacecraft. The testing was for evaluation of pilot controls and displays required for launch and reentry of a Gemini mission, along with the seat and pressure suit operation under acceleration, and the restraint system. The participating astronauts were generally satisfied but recommended minor changes.
*The G2C Gemini pressure suit made by David Clark Company proved unsatisfactory because the torso could be stretched out of shape and a visor guard had made the helmet too large to wear during use of the escape hatch.

July 10, 1963 (Wednesday)

*Project Emily, the deployment of American-built PGM-17 Thor Intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the United Kingdom, was disbanded.
*The brief partnership of "Rodgers and Lerner" was dissolved, and production of the first Rodgers-Lerner musical, ''I Picked a Daisy'', was halted permanently. Composer Richard Rodgers had successfully collaborated with lyricist Lorenz Hart (''Babes in Arms''), and then with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (''The Sound of Music''), while lyricist Alan Jay Lerner had a successful team with composer Frederick Loewe (''My Fair Lady''). The two were unable to work together successfully beyond "half a dozen" songs for ''Daisy''.
*The all-white University of South Carolina was ordered to admit its first African-American student, Henri Monteith, by order of U.S. District Judge J. Robert Martin. On the same day, Judge Martin ordered the desegregation of all 26 of South Carolina's state parks.
*A Vostok-2 rocket launched by the USSR failed shortly after take-off.
*Coordination between NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in crewed space station studies was reported by a panel to be inadequate, especially at the technical level.

July 11, 1963 (Thursday)

*A military coup ousted Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy, President of Ecuador, who was succeeded by naval commander Ramón Castro Jijón. After surrendering the presidential palace, Arosemena was placed on an Ecuadorian Air Force plane and flown to Panama. The "final straw" for the coup leaders had been a state dinner the night before, "when the obviously inebriated president made disparaging remarks about the United States" while talking to the American ambassador.
*The sinking of the Argentine ferry ''Ciudad de Asunción'' killed 53 of the 420 people on board after the boat caught fire and went down in the River Plate between Buenos Aires in Argentina and Montevideo in Uruguay.
*In South Africa, 19 ANC and MK leaders, including Arthur Goldreich and Walter Sisulu, were arrested at Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, the headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
*The Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) informed the Defense Department of unresolved range safety problems concerning a catastrophic failure of the Gemini launch vehicle because of a tank rupture and recommended use of a hypergolic propellant rather than cryogenic fuel.
*Born: Al MacInnis, Canadian NHL and Olympic champion ice hockey defenceman who played in 1,416 games from 1982 to 2003; in Port Hood, Municipality of the County of Inverness, Nova Scotia

July 12, 1963 (Friday)

*The Congress of the Philippines approved a land reform program that had been proposed by President Diosdado Macapagal. Among other things, the law outlawed sharecropping and provided for a means of large estates to be gradually turned over to the people who farmed them.
*Pauline Reade, 16, was abducted and murdered by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady in Manchester, England, in the first of the "Moors murders". Reade's remains would not be discovered until July 1, 1987.
*The first "Gambit" military reconnaissance satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:44 p.m., and the film recovered proved it to be a major advancement in observation. The new system had "exceptional pointing accuracy" in aiming its cameras, and the pictures obtained had a resolution of .
*Gemini Project Office completed its high-gravity human centrifuge testing.
*NASA approved backing up the first Gemini flight payload with a boilerplate reentry module and a production adapter, at an additional cost of $1,500,000.
*Died: Slatan Dudow, 60, Bulgarian film director and screenwriter

July 13, 1963 (Saturday)

*The Legislative Assembly of the Cook Islands voted unanimously to reject an offer by New Zealand to be granted independence, and chose instead to become a self-governing Associated State with its residents to remain New Zealand citizens.
*The Pulau Senang prison riot took place at the experimental offshore penal colony in Singapore. Superintendent Daniel Dutton and several prison officers were murdered by inmates and the prison was burned to the ground.
*In the Soviet Union, 33 of the 35 persons on Aeroflot Flight 012 were killed when the plane crashed as it was approaching a landing at the Irkutsk Airport in Siberia. The Tupolev Tu-104 had departed Beijing in China, bound for Moscow, with one scheduled stop in Irkutsk.
* Bob Charles defeated Phil Rodgers in a 36-hole playoff to win the British Open. Charles became the first left-handed golfer to win one of golf's major championships.
*The Roman Catholic Diocese of Santiago de Veraguas was erected.
*Died: Blessed Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago, 44, first layperson in the history of the United States to be beatified. (cancer)

July 14, 1963 (Sunday)

*U.S. Undersecretary of State W. Averell Harriman arrived in Moscow in order to negotiate the nuclear test ban treaty, and brought with him three tons of American telephone and telex equipment to set up the Moscow–Washington hotline agreed upon by the Americans and Soviets on June 20.
*France's Jacques Anquetil won the 50th Tour de France.
*Died: Sivananda Saraswati, 75, Hindu spiritual leader

July 15, 1963 (Monday)

*The Kingdom of Tonga issued the first round postage stamps in history. The stamps (which were also the first to be made of gold foil rather than paper) were designed to commemorate the first gold coins in Polynesia.
*Born: Brigitte Nielsen, Danish model and actress, known for ''Rocky IV'' and ''Beverly Hills Cop II''; in Rødovre
*Died: Rear Admiral Gilbert Jonathan Rowcliff, 81, U.S. Navy officer and former Judge Advocate General of the Navy

July 16, 1963 (Tuesday)

*The Peerage Act 1963 was approved by the House of Lords, 105 to 25. The change of rules, which received royal assent on July 31, cleared the way for hereditary peers within the House of Lords to disclaim their peerages in order to be allowed to run for and take a seat in the elected House of Commons. Tony Benn, who lost his seat in Commons in 1960 when he inherited the title of Viscount Stansgate and automatically became a member of the House of Lords, disqualified himself under the new law and successfully ran for office under in a by-election.
*At Seattle, five men began a 30-day engineering test of life support systems for a crewed space station in The Boeing Company space chamber. Designed and built for NASA's Office of Advanced Research and Technology, the chamber was first in the U.S. to include all life-support equipment for a multi-person, long-duration space mission (including environmental control, waste disposal, and crew hygiene and food techniques). In addition to the life support equipment, a number of crew tests simulated specific problems of spaceflight. Five days into the 30-day test, however, the simulated mission was halted because of a faulty reactor tank.
*Born:
**Phoebe Cates, American actress; in New York City
** Fatboy Slim (stage name for Norman Quentin Cook), English musician and record producer; in Bromley, Kent
**Paul Hipp, American actor and musician; in Philadelphia
** Srečko Katanec, Slovenian soccer football midfielder with 31 games for the Yugoslav national team, later manager who coached the national teams of five different countries (Slovenia, Macedonia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Uzbekistan); in Ljubljana, SR Slovenia, Yugoslavia

July 17, 1963 (Wednesday)

*For the first time in history, a U.S. federal court issued ordered a change in the size of the legislature of a U.S. state, decreasing the number of seats in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 120 to 100. The court also ordered a reapportionment of both the House and the state Senate on a strict population basis. The decision was the first to rely on the U.S. Supreme Court case of ''Baker v. Carr'', decided on March 26, 1962, holding that federal courts could review state legislative apportionment.
*Born: King Letsie III of Lesotho; as David Mohato Bereng Seeiso in Morija, Basutoland colony

July 18, 1963 (Thursday)

*Colonel Jassem Alwan of the Syrian army, backed by financing from President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, led an attempt to overthrow the government of Syria in order to establish a pro-Nasser government that would reunite with the United Arab Republic. The coup attempt came only 30 minutes after President Lu'ay al-Atassi had departed from Damascus on an invitation from President Nasser for a meeting in Egypt. After Alwan seized the Damascus radio station and the Syrian Army headquarters, Interior Minister Amin al-Hafiz, "sub-machinegun in hand", directed the Ba'ath Party National Guard on a counterattack and regained control. Hundreds of people were killed in the battle; Alwan was able to escape, but 27 officers who had participated in the coup were executed by firing squad, marking an end of "the time-honoured tradition whereby losers were banished to embassies abroad". President Atassi would resign on July 27 in protest over the brutal treatment of the coup leaders.
*Olympiacos F.C. won the final of the Greek Cup football competition, 3 to 0 over Pierikos.
*Born: Marc Girardelli, Austrian Olympic alpine ski racer; in Lustenau

July 19, 1963 (Friday)

*American test pilot Joseph A. Walker, flying the X-15, reached an altitude of , achieving a sub-orbital spaceflight by recognized international standards (which define outer space as beginning above the Earth).
*An artificial heart pump was placed inside a human being for the first time, at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas University of Houston by a team led by Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. The unidentified patient survived for four days before dying of complications from pneumonia.
*A bomb was dropped on downtown San Francisco, inadvertently, by a U.S. Navy Reserve pilot on a routine exercise flight. The unarmed bomb fell at the intersection of Market Street and Front Street, bounced over the eight-story tall IBM building and damaged another building three blocks away, but nobody was injured.
*Died: Guy Scholefield, 86, New Zealand archivist who compiled the ''Dictionary of New Zealand Biography''

July 20, 1963 (Saturday)

*An attempt to reconcile the differences between the Soviet Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party ended in failure, after more than a week of conferences in Moscow.
*The first Yaoundé Convention was signed in the capital of Cameroon by 18 African nations that had gained independence relatively recently. It would take effect on June 1, 1964, and be operative for five years. Parties to the agreement were Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), the Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville), Dahomey, Gabon, the Ivory Coast, the Malagasy Republic, Mali, Mauritania, Niger

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases