June 1965

1965

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The following events occurred in June 1965:

June 1, 1965 (Tuesday)

• An explosion at the Yamano Colliery coal mine explosion in Fukuoka, Japan, killed 237 people. Another 280 miners were able to get out uninjured, while 36 were brought alive to the surface.
• Florida International University was founded in Miami.
• Elliott Roosevelt, the son of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won his first, and only, political office, defeating incumbent Melvin J. Richard for the office of Mayor of Miami Beach, Florida.
• Marina Oswald, the widow of accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, remarried a little more than 18 months after her husband's slaying. Eluding reporters who had learned of their engagement, she and an electronics worker, Kenneth Porter, got a license in the Dallas suburb of Sherman, Texas, drove to Durant, Oklahoma, to get a blood test, then were wed by a justice of the peace in Fate, Texas.

June 2, 1965 (Wednesday)

• The first contingent of Australian combat troops to fight in the Vietnam War arrived in South Vietnam.
• Born: Steve and Mark Waugh, Australian cricketers, in Canterbury, New South Wales

June 3, 1965 (Thursday)

• Gemini 4 was launched from Cape Kennedy at 11:16 in the morning, with Ed White and James McDivitt on board. At 3:45 p.m., when the craft was making its third orbit and passing at an altitude of 135 miles above the southern United States, White became the first U.S. astronaut (and only the second person, after Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov had ventured outside of Voshkod 2 on March 18) to walk in space. White stayed outside the capsule for 20 minutes as the ship moved at 17,500 miles per hour over the nation.
• In Japan, the Farmland Reward Bill took effect as 1965 Law 121, to compensate former landowners who had lost their property in the land reforms that had followed World War II. The bill authorized the a fund of ¥145.6 billion Japanese yen ($400,000,000 US Dollars) for payments over a ten year period to 1,670,000 people who had owned land prior to 1945, or to their heirs.

June 4, 1965 (Friday)

• Duane Earl Pope, a 22-year old man who had graduated from McPherson College only a week earlier, committed what was called "the modern era's bloodiest bank robbery", murdering three people and critically wounding another. Pope, a resident of Salina, Kansas, drove to Big Springs, Nebraska, and walked into the Farmers State Bank at noon. There were no customers in the bank, but one of the four employees, a teller, pressed the button for the bank alarm. Pope then ordered the bank president, the teller, a bookkeeper, and another employee to lie face down on the floor, then shot all four in the back before escaping with $1,500. After a nationwide search that lasted a week, Pope called police in Kansas City, Missouri, and surrendered because he was "tired of running". "DUANE POPE GIVES UP HERE", Kansas City Times, June 12, 1965, p1
• The British ocean liner Pendennis Castle ran aground in Southampton Water, but was refloated undamaged after 4+1⁄2 hours.

June 5, 1965 (Saturday)

• Joseph F. Shea, NASA's manager of the Apollo program, told reporters that the ongoing Gemini 4 mission had resolved five important issues for a manned mission to the Moon, and that "If everything goes as well as the Gemini-4 shot today, then we can get everything done for the Moon shot by mid-1968," at least one and a half years ahead of the projected 1970 date.
• The Italian tanker SS Luisa exploded and caught fire at Bandar-e Mahshahr, Iran, killing 30 of her 41 crew, and two others onshore.
• The U.S. Navy began full-time staffing of Dixie Station off South Vietnam by one aircraft carrier. Its aircraft carrier presence in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam thus reached five ships.
• Born: Sandrine Piau, French operatic soprano, at Issy-les-Moulineaux
• Died:
  • Thornton W. Burgess, 91, American children's book author who wrote 70 books and 15,000 short stories in his career.
  • Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland, 80, second son of King Gustav V of Sweden

June 6, 1965 (Sunday)

• A centuries old tradition, of no business on Sundays on the Isle of Skye, came to an end as British Rail began operating its ferry from mainland Scotland seven days a week. A group from Kyleakin's Free Church of Scotland, commonly called the "Wee Frees", organized a campaign of non-violent resistance. When the first car drove off of the ferry, the Reverend Angus Smith sat down in the road to block traffic. After he was arrested, 11 other members of his congregation stepped forward, one-by-one, to block taffic and get arrested. The last person to block the road was Alan MacDonald, a 6'6", 280 pound farmer, and after six policemen were unable to move him, reinforcements came in and hauled him to jail. Afterward, Chuck Sheldon, an American tourist visiting from Denver, became the first Sabbath day visitor to Skye.

June 7, 1965 (Monday)

• A methane gas explosion in the Yugoslavia city of Kakanj, Bosnia and Herzegovina, killed 128 coal miners.
• Gemini 4 made a safe return to Earth at 1:13 p.m., after completing 62 orbits and four days in outer space. The crew decided to handle re-entry manually because of problems with the on-board computer, and fired a re-entry rocket one second too soon, causing the capsule to land short of the target area in the Atlantic Ocean, 40 miles from the USS Wasp.
• Born:
  • Jean-Pierre François, French singer and footballer;
  • Damien Hirst, English actress, in Bristol;
  • Mick Foley, American professional wrestler
• Died: Judy Holliday, 43, American actress, from breast cancer

June 8, 1965 (Tuesday)

• Physicists at Johns Hopkins University reported that the mythical "four corners of the Earth" actually existed, in the form of giant bulges on the Earth's surface, confirmed by satellite radar measurements of the pull of gravity. The locations of the four sites where the pull of gravity was 0.002% greater than expected were in an area centered on Ireland; one centered in the Pacific Ocean between New Guinea and Japan; an area between Africa and Antarctica; and a fourth corner of of the coast of Peru.
• A U.S. State Department spokesman, Robert J. McCloskey told a press conference "more or less offhandedly", that General William C. Westmoreland had been given presidential authorization to commit American ground troops to combat in support of South Vietnamese army missions. McCloskey specifically said that "I'm sure it's been made clear... that American forces would be available for combat support together with Vietnamese forces as and when necessary." The White House issued a carefully-worded denial the next day, but American troops would be used in offensive combat later in the summer.

June 9, 1965 (Wednesday)

• The Dhofar Rebellion from a state of unrest to a civil war against the oil-rich Sultanate of Muscat and Oman began as the Dhofar Liberation Front attacked a set of trucks belonging to an oil company, ramping up general arrest that had existed since 1962. The Sultan dispatched the national army to permanently occupy the Dhofar province.
• About 1,500 Viet Cong guerillas mounted a mortar attack on the village of Dong Xoai, overrunning its military headquarters and the adjoining militia compound.
• Muhammad Ahmad Mahgoub was elected Prime Minister of the Sudan by the Sudanese parliament.
• The Soviet lunar probe Luna 6 failed after the control to its engine jammed after ground control transmitted a signal for a mid-course correction to guide it to a planned landing on the Moon. Rather than shutting off, the rockets continued to burn and "by accidentally expending all of its fuel, Luna 6 literally leaped off course like a jack rabbit and missed the moon" by 160,935 kilometres (100,000 mi)
• Born: Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Issa, Saudi politician, in Riyadh

June 10, 1965 (Thursday)

• British European Airways Flight 343 became the first civilian jetliner to make an almost completely automatic landing. Technically, the landing was auto-flare, because the pilot continued to control the yaw and the roll of the Trident 1C jet, while the a computer guided the pitch during the descent to London's Heathrow Airport.
• Ismail al-Azhari, a member of the Presidential Council that had guided Sudan since the overthrow of President Ibrahim Abboud on November 15, 1964, was named as the President of Sudan upon his election to Chairman of the Council. Abboud would rule until his overthrow by General Gaafar Nimeiry on May 25, 1969.
• Pope Paul VI praised astronomer Galileo Galilei during a visit to Pisa, almost 350 years after Pope Paul V had ordered an inquisition that rejected that Galileo's idea that the Earth moves around the Sun. Although Galileo was not rehabilitated from charges of heresy (which still had not happened as of 2016), the Pontiff's praise of the "great mind" of Galileo was the first from the Roman Catholic Church since Galileo's death in 1642.
• The Finance Ministers of Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya announced that they were giving up the East African shilling, the common monetary unit that had been established by the East African Currency Board nearly 50 years earlier, in favor of issuing their own currency. These would be replaced in the three nations by the Tanzanian shilling, the Ugandan shilling and the Kenyan shilling, issued by the national banks set up by the three nations to replace the ECAB.
• Born: Elizabeth Hurley, English actress, in Basingstoke

June 11, 1965 (Friday)

• A flash flood drowned 24 people in the small town of Sanderson, Texas, as a 15-foot high wall of water poured through the town, built inside a canyon. At 7:05 in the morning, the wave from Sanderson Creek and Three Mile Draw swept through the town at about 10 miles an hour (14.7 feet per second) and peaked within 15 minutes.
• Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Harry Fainlight, Gregory Corso and Andrei Voznesensky were among the readers at the International Poetry Incarnation (billed as "Poets of the World, Poets of Our Time"), a one-off event held in the Royal Albert Hall, London, in front of 7,000 people.
• The government of Prime Minister Suat Hayri Ürgüplü of Turkey promulgated Law Number 633 to establish the Presidency of Religious Affairs, an agency of the Diyanet, which regulated religious practice in Turkey. Under the new law, anyone wishing to be employed full-time as a Muslim clergyman had to be a graduate of one of the state-operated İmam Hatip schools. Previously, an applicant only had to pass an examination given by the Diyanet.
• President Johnson declared that the promotion of learning the English language should be a major policy in American foreign aid, and directed the Peace Corps, the United States Agency for International Development and other organizations to encourage the such study, in what was viewed as elevating "the status of English as an international language."
• A gang of robbers in Canada seized five gold bars worth $164,000 in a raid on a railroad station in Virginiatown, Ontario.
• Died: Vernon Johns, 73, American civil rights leader and predecessor of Martin Luther King, Jr., as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

June 12, 1965 (Saturday)

• South Vietnam's President Phan Khac Suu and Prime Minister Phan Huy Quat announced their resignations, less than eight months after they had formed a civilian government that worked within the oversight of the military leaders. Major General Nguyen Van Thieu was named as the President, chairing the "Supreme Military Council", and Vice Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky became Prime Minister.
• Battle of Sungei Koemba: An Australian patrol ambushed an Indonesian force on the Sungei Koemba river in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). At the end of the 20-minute action, the Australians had suffered no casualties, while eight Indonesians had been killed and one seriously wounded.
• The Beatles were appointed Members of the British Empire (MBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours. The honour among the 1,800 nominations made by Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Since it was unusual for popular musicians to be appointed as MBEs, a number of previous recipients complained and protested: MP Hector Dupuis commented, "British royalty has put me on the same level as a bunch of vulgar numbskulls". In the list of thousands of honorees, they were listed as "John W. Lennon", "James P. McCartney", George Harrison and "Richard Starkey". A columnist for the Daily Mail wrote that the award "sets the state's most formal stamp of approval on the mindless ephemeral rubbish with the Beatles' music is."
• In the Soviet Union, six members of the "Kolokol Group" were arrested in the Soviet Union for their criticism of the Communist government and their unauthorized publications. Most were alumni of the Leningrad Technological Institute. The leaders, Valery Ronkin and Sergei Khakhaev would be sentenced to seven years of corrective labor and a three year exile, while Vladimir Gaenko, Valery Smolkin, Sergei Moshkov and Veniamin Iofe would receive three year sentences. All would be sent to the Dubravlag Labor Camp in the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

June 13, 1965 (Sunday)

• On the final day that the Berlin Wall was open to visitors traveling from West Berlin to East Berlin, 70,000 people came over from West Germany to see their relatives. For two weeks, under an agreement between East Germany and West Germany on September 24, 1964, West Berliners were allowed to travel passes to come through five checkpoints at the wall, and there were but the agreement expired at midnight. During the pass period, 600,000 people obtained passes. "The wall technically closed at midnight," a UPI reporter noted, "but actually guards kept crossing points open for stragglers,"
• American airplanes bombed and strafed a leprosarium (hospital for persons with leprosy) at Quỳnh Lập in Hoàng Mai, North Vietnam. Over the next eight days, the buildings were destroyed and 140 patients were killed.
• Huge crowds turned out at Drumcliffe Churchyard, County Sligo, Ireland, to celebrate the centenary of the birth of poet W.B. Yeats.
• The 1965 Belgian Grand Prix was held at Spa-Francorchamps and was won by Jim Clark.
• Died: Martin Buber, 87, Austrian-born Israeli philosopher

June 14, 1965 (Monday)

• The 24-hour clock was introduced in all British Rail timetables.
• For the first time, a facsimile machine (fax) was used to transmit an electrocardiogram from a heart patient to a treating physician, in a test planned jointly by physicians and communications experts in both France and the United States. A passenger on the ocean liner SS France was in the Atlantic Ocean, and the image of the EKG was sent to the Boucicaut Hospital in Paris, by way of Cornell University Hospital, RCA Communications, the Intelsat satellite, and D'Liasons Radiotelephotographiques de France, and proved to be of sufficient diagnostic quality to lead to further use of the technique.
• A partial lunar eclipse took place.

June 15, 1965 (Tuesday)

• United States Air Force Lt. Colonel Charles D. Tubbs was killed and two other crewmen injured when their B-58 Hustler bomber crashed at the Paris Air Show. The plane landed short of the runway, striking the "instrument approach beacons", and burst into flames in front of thousands of spectators at Le Bourget air field. Ninety minutes earlier, the Soviet Union unveiled its new transport airplane, the turboprop Antonov An-22, which they named Antaeus, which remains the largest turboprop airplane ever built.
• The collision of two U.S. Army Bell UH-1 Iroquois variants#UH-1B "Huey" helicopters over Fort Benning in Georgia killed everyone on board both aircraft, with 18 servicemen dying when the vehicles crashed and burst into flames on impact. The two helicopters were ferrying members of the 38th U.S. Infantry on a training exercise and were at low altitude when their rotors struck each other while flying in close formation.
• Lady Clementine Churchill, the widow of Sir Winston Churchill, became a member of the British Parliament for the first time, at the age of 80, when she took a seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Spencer-Churchill of Chartwell. While her husband, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had served strictly in the House of Commons, he had turned down offers to be made a member of the nobility. After his death, Queen Elizabeth II asked Lady Churchill to accept a peerage and conferred the title of Baroness upon her.
• The Law Commissions Act 1965 took effect in the United Kingdom, creating two independent bodies to review laws and recommend reforms. Two commissions of five members each were created, the Law Commission (England and Wales) and the Scottish Law Commission.
• In the United Kingdom, the Hughes-Parry Committee submitted its report on the legal status of the Welsh language.

June 16, 1965 (Wednesday)

• A planned anti-war protest at the Pentagon became a teach-in, with demonstrators distributing 50,000 leaflets in and around the building.
• U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced in Washington that 22,000 additional American troops to South Vietnam, while conceding that the war was going unfavorably for the United States. The additional deployment would raise the number of U.S. soldiers and officers in South Vietnam to 72,000.
• The U.S. Senate voted, 72 to 5, to approve the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, which would require the warning label on all packs of cigarettes, with the statement "Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health".
• Gemini astronaut James McDivitt, who was touring the nation following his successful manned space mission, became the first and only celebrity to be awarded a "gold windshield wiper" for his service to the nation. The gift, presented in Jackson, Michigan where he was in a parade before 150,000 people, was based on a joking remark that he made while Edward White was on his spacewalk, when he accused White of smearing the window of the Gemini capsule.
• The U.S. House of Representatives voted 217-104 to create a cabinet level U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
• Died: Henry J. Hemingway, 60, former President of the American Marietta Corporation before its 1961 merger to create Martin Marietta, accidentally fell 47 floors to his death while leaning against his office window in Chicago. Hemingway, "who often relaxed by watching the demolition of the old Morrison Hotel.... apparently leaned against a cracked window vent, which gave way" and lost his footing on the waxed floor of his office."

June 17, 1965 (Thursday)

• Commander Louis C. Page and Lieutenant John C. Smith, of the USS Midway and the VF-21 Freelancers fighter squadron, became the first U.S. Navy pilots to down an enemy plane in the Vietnam War, when they shot down a North Vietnamese MiG-17 while flying in an F-4B Phantom. In all, four MiG planes were downed on that day by the U.S.
• The 1965 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference opened in London, hosted by British Prime Minister Harold Wilson who invited the premiers of 20 other nations within the British Commonwealth to 10 Downing Street.
• Born: José Oscar Herrera, Uruguayan footballer, in Tala

June 18, 1965 (Friday)

• The most powerful rocket in history, the U.S. Air Force's Titan-3C, made its debut and set a new record by lifting a 21,000 pound payload into orbit around the Earth. "[P]roving its ability to establish trailer-size military bases in space", the 127 foot tall, 30 feet wide rocket was praised for "advancing America's military capability."
• Operation Arc Light began as 27 B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers took off from Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam to begin regular bombing of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong strongholds. The distance traveled in each direction was 4,000 kilomters or a little less than 2,500 miles, as the planes flew their missions, then returned to base. By the end of 1965, 1,500 missions would be flown, with 20,000 overall during the war.
• The last of the "Garabandal apparitions" was witnessed in the rural village of San Sebastián de Garabandal in Spain, bringing an end to a reported series of messages that had started exactly four years earlier, on June 18, 1961. Conchita González, a 16-year old girl, said that she had been provided a message from the archangel Saint Michael, who passed along a warning from the Virgin Mary in the form of prophecies that could be avoided if believers asked "forgiveness with sincere hearts". According to Conchita, she was told that "As my message of October 18, 1961, has not been complied with and has not been made known to the world, I am advising you that this is the last one. Before, the cup was filling up. Now it is flowing over. Many cardinals, many bishops, and many priests are on the road to perdition and are taking many souls with them."
• Boxer Nino Benvenuti of Italy, who already had a professional boxing record of 65 wins and 0 losses (after an amateur tally of 119-1) became the new world light middleweight champion when he knocked out Sandro Mazzinghi in the sixth round of a bout in Milan.
• The original scheduled launch date of the "station that never was", WDV-11 in Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia, came and went. The city government had decreed in November 1963 that television could never be introduced in Warrnambool.
• Twenty-four spectators were wounded at a rodeo in Gladewater, Texas when a rodeo clown fired into the stands as part of the entertainment. The shotgun that he used had inadvertently been loaded with birdshot rather than the usual blank cartridge shells. Eleven of the 24 were hospitalized, including in three with eye injuries, but none were critically injured. On July 14, a grand jury would decline to indict the gunman, a 41-year old Baptist minister who supplemented his income with the clown act, concluding that "there was no evidence of guilt" and that the mixup was an unfortunate accident.
• Born: Uday Hussein, Iraqi politician, son of Saddam Hussein and his first wife, Sajida Talfah, in Tikrit (killed 2003)

June 19, 1965 (Saturday)

• President Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by a military group led his Minister of Defense, Houari Boumédienne, who replaced the president with a Revolutionary Council. The move came ten days before Ben Bella was scheduled to host a summit conference of 50 non-aligned African and Asian nations in Algiers.
• An Italian Fiat G.91 jet crashed into the Le Bourget Airport parking lot during the Paris Air Show, killing at least 10 people who were preparing to depart early. The jet reportedly stalled as it was approaching a landing strip after performing stunts, then spun down into the parking lot, bouncing six times as it rolled over automobiles and their occupants. The pilot safely ejected from the plane, but fell onto a parked truck and died.
• Sandown Racecourse, in Melbourne, Australia, was officially opened.
• Following the 44th annual Laconia Motorcycle Race, an estimated 2,000 fans participated in a riot in the resort town of Laconia, New Hampshire, throwing rocks and setting fire to buildings, after members of the Hell's Angels began fighting with opposing motorcycle gangs. A group of 600 state troopers, policemen, and members of the New Hampshire National Guard converged on the scene after having been called up in anticipation of trouble, and 80 people were injured. One-hundred people were arrested.

June 20, 1965 (Sunday)

• Police in Algiers broke up demonstrations by people who had taken to the streets chanting slogans in support of deposed President Ben Bella.
• The 1965 24 Hours of Le Mans was won by the North American Racing Team (NART), consisting of Masten Gregory, Ed Hugus and Jochen Rindt.
• Died: Bernard Baruch, 94, American financier and adviser to eight U.S. Presidents

June 21, 1965 (Monday)

• The Premier of Tasmania, Eric Reece, announced that the Gordon Power scheme would "result in some modification to the Lake Pedder National Park"; no further details were revealed.
• Born: Yang Liwei, first Chinese astronaut, in Suizhong

June 22, 1965 (Tuesday)

• The Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea was signed in Tokyo.
• Died: David O. Selznick, 63, American film producer (heart attack)

June 23, 1965 (Wednesday)

• The seventh Inter-Cities Fairs Cup Final was played at the Stadio Comunale, Turin, Italy, and was won by Ferencvárosi TC of Hungary.

June 24, 1965 (Thursday)

• The Canberra Theatre Centre, Canberra, Australia, opened with a gala performance by The Australian Ballet.
• Born: Mum Jokmok, Thai comedian, actor and film director, in Yasothon Province

June 25, 1965 (Friday)

• A U.S. Air Force Boeing C-135 Stratolifter bound for Okinawa crashed just after takeoff at MCAS El Toro in Orange County, California, killing all 85 on board.
• In Poland, the Fourth Cabinet of Józef Cyrankiewicz took office. Its members included future prime minister Piotr Jaroszewicz.
• Two bombs went off in Saigon; over 30 people were killed, and a total of 42 injured.

June 27, 1965 (Sunday)

• The Vietnam War's largest airmobile operation up to that point took place as 150 helicopters airlifted the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade and two South Vietnamese Army airborne battalions to attack a Viet Cong stronghold just north of Biên Hòa, South Vietnam.
• The 1965 French Grand Prix was held at Clermont-Ferrand and was won by Jim Clark.
• Watch Mr. Wizard, the first American science television show for children, ended a 14 year run on NBC. Donald Herbert Kemske, billed as Don Herbert, had been demonstrating and explaining science experiments on Sunday mornings since March 3, 1951.
• Born: S. Manikavasagam, Malaysian politician, in Penang

June 28, 1965 (Monday)

• The Indonesian newspaper Kompas was launched
• Born: Belayneh Densamo, Ethiopian long-distance runner, in Diramo Afarrara
• Died: Red Nichols, 60, American jazz musician (heart attack)

June 29, 1965 (Tuesday)

• A new lighthouse was towed out to the Kish Bank, off the coast of Dublin, Ireland, where it replaced the existing lightship; it would go into full operation in November of the same year.
• Pad Abort Test 2 of the Apollo spacecraft was carried out at Launch Complex 36, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
• Born: Ignacio Provencio, German-born American scientist, in Bitburg, Germany

June 30, 1965 (Wednesday)

• "Empty Chair Crisis": President Charles de Gaulle withdrew France's representatives from the European Council of Ministers after a failure to agree on the financing of the Common Agricultural Policy and the use of qualified majority voting in the European Community. The situation would eventually be resolved with the Luxembourg Compromise six months later.
• Boris Podtserob replaced Viktor Avilov as the Soviet Union's ambassador to Austria.
• Born: Sylvie Lucas, Luxembourgish diplomat; Zurmang Gharwang Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist teacher, in Sikkim