August 1963

January – February – March – April – May – June  – July – August – September – October – November – December

The following events occurred in August, 1963.

August 1, 1963 (Thursday)

• The Banque du Liban is established in Lebanon.
• The 11th World Scout Jamboree begins, in Marathon, Greece.
• George Harrison and Paul McCartney duet on a Beatles tape recording of the Goffin-King song "Don't Ever Change" for later broadcasting on BBC radio.
• The US Navy destroyer USS Tingey is involved in a collision with the NRT ship USS Vammen (DE-644) off southern California, suffering no significant damage.
• Died: Theodore Roethke, 55, American Pulitzer-winning poet (heart attack)

August 2, 1963 (Friday)

• José de Jesús García Ayala is consecrated as Auxiliary Bishop of Campeche; he goes on to become the oldest bishop in the Mexican church, living to beyond his hundredth birthday.
• A tropical storm off Bermuda intensifies and is classified as Hurricane Arlene; it degenerates into a tropical depression the following day.

August 3, 1963 (Saturday)

• The Beatles perform at The Cavern Club in Liverpool for the final time.
• Born: Tasmin Archer, English singer, in Bradford, Yorkshire
• Died: Stephen Ward, 50, English osteopath and a central figure in the Profumo Affair (suicide)

August 5, 1963 (Monday)

• The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign a nuclear test ban treaty.
• The trial of Stephen Ward is formally closed with no sentence pronounced, following the defendant's suicide two days earlier.
• Died: Salvador Bacarisse, 64, Spanish composer

August 6, 1963 (Tuesday)

• Died: Sophus Nielsen, 75, Danish soccer player and manager

August 7, 1963 (Wednesday)

• Born: Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, by emergency caesarean section, five and a half weeks early, at the Otis Air Force Base Hospital in Bourne, Massachusetts. He is quickly transferred to the Children's Hospital Boston.

August 8, 1963 (Thursday)

• The Great Train Robbery of 1963 takes place in Buckinghamshire, England.

August 9, 1963 (Friday)

• Hurricane Arlene passes directly over Bermuda with winds of 85 mph (140 km/h). The storm continues to intensify after passing the island, with reconnaissance recording a minimum pressure of 969 mbar (hPa; 28.61 inHg) and maximum winds reached 105 mph (160 km/h). The hurricane began to weaken hours later, with winds decreasing below 100 mph (155 km/h) by the afternoon of August 10. Shortly afterwards, Arlene transitions into an extratropical cyclone, while maintaining hurricane-force winds, over the north Atlantic.
• Died: Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, two-day-old son of President John F. Kennedy, of infant respiratory distress syndrome.

August 10, 1963 (Saturday)

• A funeral mass for Patrick Bouvier Kennedy is held in the private chapel of Cardinal Richard Cushing in Boston.
• Giovanni Colombo becomes Archbishop of Milan, replacing Pope Paul VI, who had been elected to the papacy two months earlier.
• Born: Phoolan Devi, Indian bandit and politician, in Ghura Ka Purwa, Uttar Pradesh (died 2001)

August 11, 1963 (Sunday)

• Benoni Beheyt wins the 1963 UCI Road World Championships cycle race at Renaix, Belgium.
• Jim Clark wins the 1963 Kanonloppet motor race at Karlskoga Circuit in Sweden.
• Died: Clem Bevans, 83, American vaudeville star and film actor; Charles Seymour, 78, American academic

August 12, 1963 (Monday)

• The pilot and five passengers of a twin-engine Beechcraft plane on a charter flight to Fort Erie, Ontario, are injured when their plane crashes at the Toronto Island Airport. One engine of the plane fails at an altitude of 200 feet (61 m) during take-off over Lake Ontario. The pilot turns the plane back to the airport and lands on the Island, clipping a tree. Most of the plane's starboard wing is torn off.
• Born: Kōji Kitao, Japanese sumo wrestler, in Mie

August 13, 1963 (Tuesday)

• Born: Édouard Michelin, managing partner and co-chief executive of the Michelin Group from 1999, in Clermont-Ferrand (died 2006)

August 14, 1963 (Wednesday)

• The 1962–63 DFB-Pokal, the second-most important national competition in German football, ends in victory for Hamburger SV.

August 15, 1963 (Thursday)

• President Fulbert Youlou is overthrown in the Republic of Congo, after a three-day uprising in the capital.

August 16, 1963 (Friday)

• Two people walking in Dorking Woods discover a briefcase, a holdall and a camel-skin bag, all containing money. The evidence led to the arrest of Brian Field, a member of the gang who had carried out the Great Train Robbery a few days earlier.

August 17, 1963 (Saturday)

• Died: Ed Gardner, 62, American comic actor, writer and director (liver disease)

August 18, 1963 (Sunday)

• American civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
• The last match in the third round of the 1963 CONCACAF Champions' Cup is played at the Estadio Nacional in Costa Rica. The final, scheduled to be played the following month, is eventually scratched, with Racing Club Haïtien being eventually declared champions.
• Died: Clifford Odets, American playwright, 57 (colon cancer)

August 19, 1963 (Monday)

• Died: Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan, 74, Pakistani politician, President (speaker) of Pakistan's first Constituent Assembly

August 20, 1963 (Tuesday)

• In the Bristol South East by-election, Tony Benn regains the seat he had been forced to give up in 1961 when he inherited a peerage on his father's death. Benn receives 79.7% of the vote.

August 21, 1963 (Wednesday)

• Xa Loi Pagoda raids: The Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, vandalise Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.
• An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-124 with 52 people on board ditches in the Neva River at Leningrad in the Soviet Union without a single injury or fatality.
• Born: King Mohammed VI of Morocco, son of King Hassan II of Morocco and Lalla Latifa Hammou

August 22, 1963 (Thursday)

• American test pilot Joe Walker again achieves a sub-orbital spaceflight according to international standards, this time by piloting the X-15 to an altutude of 67.0 miles (107.8 kilometers).

August 23, 1963 (Friday)

• Geurie crossing loop collision: The Sydney-bound Bourke Mail train, with 110 passengers on board, collides with a goods train, hauled by a 265-tonne Beyer-Garratt AD60 class locomotive 6003. There are 19 injuries but no fatalities.
• Born: Stephanie Biddle, Canadian jazz musician, in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec; Glória Pires, Brazilian actress, in Rio de Janeiro

August 24, 1963 (Saturday)

• Cable 243: In the wake of the Xa Loi Pagoda raids, the Kennedy administration orders the US Embassy, Saigon to explore alternative leadership in South Vietnam, opening the way towards a coup against Diem.

August 26, 1963 (Monday)

• Born: Cristina Favre-Moretti and Isabella Crettenand-Moretti, Swiss ski mountaineers

August 27, 1963 (Tuesday)

• Died: Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, 75, Indian mathematician, logician, political theorist, Islamic scholar and the founder of the Khaksar movement; Garrett Morgan, 86, African-American inventor

August 28, 1963 (Wednesday)

• Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his I Have A Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of at least 250,000, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
• Two U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotankers collide over the Atlantic Ocean and crash.

August 29, 1963 (Thursday)

• The Policlínico Bancario bank in Argentina is attacked by members of Tacuara Nationalist Movement, who steal 14 million pesos (equivalent to 100,000 US dollars), killing two bank employees in the process.
• Gulzarilal Nanda replaces Lal Bahadur Shastri as India's Minister for Home Affairs.
• The 47th General Assembly of Nova Scotia ends its term.

August 30, 1963 (Friday)

• Died: Guy Burgess, 52, British spy (alcohol-related)

August 31, 1963 (Saturday)

• The National Museum of Malaysia opens, on the sixth anniversary of the country's independence.
• Winston P. Wilson becomes chief of the US National Guard Bureau.
• John Dalgleish Donaldson and his first wife, Henrietta Clark Horne, marry at Port Seton, Scotland. They later become the parents of Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark.
• Died: Georges Braque, 81, French painter and sculptor