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August 1961

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August 13, 1961: Wall erected to divide East Berlin from West Berlin
August 25, 1961: Brazil President Jânio Quadros resigns unexpectedly, Brazil's Congress accepts unexpectedly
August 10, 1961: Chemical defoilant spraying begins in Vietnam

The following events happened in August 1961:

August 1, 1961 (Tuesday)

August 2, 1961 (Wednesday)

  • Cyrille Adoula became the new Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after his nomination by President Joseph Kasavubu was confirmed by the parliament in a closed session in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa).[4]
  • Sixteen foreign tourists drowned in Switzerland's Lake Lucerne after their tour bus was sideswiped by a truck, then plunged down an embankment into the lake, near Hergiswil. There were 22 survivors, including the driver, the tour conductor, and his wife. All of the dead were Americans, and all but two were women. Most were schoolteachers who had been on a European trip organized by Gateway Holiday Tours of New York.[5]
  • Born: Cui Jian, Korean Chinese singer-songwriter, in Beijing
  • Died: Michael John O'Leary, 70, Irish winner of the Victoria Cross for valor during World War One.

August 3, 1961 (Thursday)

August 4, 1961 (Friday)

  • Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, made a "secret" speech at the Conference of first secretaries of Central Committees of Communist and workers parties of socialist countries for the exchange of views on the questions related to preparation and conclusion of a German peace treaty. Describing his encounter with U.S. envoy John J. McCloy, he said, "I told him to let Kennedy know...that if he starts a war then he would probably become the last president of the United States of America."[13]
  • Clarence Earl Gideon, charged with burglary, represented himself at his criminal trial after his request for an attorney was denied. After being sentenced on August 25 to five years in prison, Gideon petitioned the United States Supreme Court for review of his conviction, citing the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[14]
Barack Obama birth announcement

August 5, 1961 (Saturday)

  • Construction work began on the Rabindra Sadan theatre in Calcutta, India.
  • Berlin Crisis: At the close of the meeting in Moscow, the Warsaw Pact nations announced that they had agreed unanimously to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany with the objective of ending the occupation of American, British and French troops in Berlin. That day, the number of East Germans fleeing into West Berlin had reached 1,500 or "one per minute".[17] At the same meeting, Soviet Premier Khrushchev gave East German leader Walter Ulbricht his approval for closing the boundaries of East Berlin with a barbed-wire fence.[18]
  • Residents of Cuba were told that they would have until the end of Monday to exchange their Cuban pesos for new paper money, after which their old bills would be worthless. The terms were that only 250 new pesos in cash would be provided per person, and all other money would have to be deposited into a bank account. On Tuesday, Fidel Castro announced that most bank deposits of more than 10,000 old pesos would be confiscated by the government, although elderly and disabled persons would be allowed to own 20,000 pesos.[19][20][21]
  • The Six Flags over Texas theme park, located in Arlington, Texas, officially opened to the public. The park, first of 31 that have been part of the Six Flags franchise, had had a "soft" opening for selected visitors during the first four days of August.[22][23]
  • From August 5 to October 12, 1961, a series of environmental tests was conducted on the Mercury spacecraft explosive egress hatch because of the difficulties experienced during the Mercury-Redstone 4 (MR-4) mission.[2]
  • Born: Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysian politician
  • Died: Hanns Seidel, 59, former minister-president of Bavaria

August 6, 1961 (Sunday)

  • Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov was launched into space at 9:00 a.m. Moscow time on Vostok 2. Staying up for 25 hours and 18 minutes, he became the first human to sleep while in outer space, and the first to be in space for more than a day.[24] He was also the first to experience the nausea of "space sickness".[25] At the age of 25, Titov set a record that still stands, as the youngest person ever to go into Earth orbit.[26] At the time that Titov became the second human into Earth orbit, the U.S. had yet to send an astronaut past the planet's gravitational pull.[27] The spacecraft weighed 13 pounds (5.9 kg) more than Vostok 1 (April 12, 1961), and the progress of Cosmonaut Titov's flight was reported continuously on Radio Moscow.[2]
  • British driver Stirling Moss won the 1961 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring.
  • Born: Ali Abbasi, Pakistani-Scottish television presenter, in Karachi (died 2004)
  • Died: Jozef-Ernest van Roey, 87, Belgian cardinal and Archbishop of Mechelen since 1926

August 7, 1961 (Monday)

  • The famous Milgram Experiment began on the campus of Yale University, as psychologist Stanley Milgram tested the willingness of test subjects to administer torture to other people, rather than to disobey rules.[28] The study, which would continue until March 1962, used a machine that was labeled "Shock Generator, Type ZLB" and "Output 15 Volts— 450 Volts". Unaware that they were the study subjects, volunteers were given the role of "teacher" to assist the experimenter and given a mild shock to show what the "shock generator" was capable of, then pressured by the experimenter into giving increasing amounts of voltage to a "learner" on the other side of a window. In all cases, the "learner" was pretending to receive painful shocks from the Type ZLB machine. Milgram's experiment showed that, in almost two-thirds of the experiments, the volunteers would continue to follow orders from the authority figure to deliver shocks.[29]
  • The Cape Cod National Seashore was created, as President Kennedy signed legislation setting aside 68 square miles (180 km2) of land in his native Massachusetts for public use. It was the first U.S. National Park to be established from land not already owned by the federal government, and was acquired by eminent domain with the U.S. Department of the Interior paying the landowners for the land taken.[30]
  • Vostok 2 completed its mission, after cosmonaut Gherman Titov parachuted from the returning craft and landed at 10:18 near Krasny Kut, in Soviet Russia.[31]
  • On the day of Titov's return, the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate approved $1,671,735,000 in aid to the U.S. space program by voice vote. The quickly passed bill devoted $471,750,000 funding for a crewed mission to the Moon.[32]
  • Born:
  • Died: Frank N. D. Buchman, 84, American Lutheran evangelist who founded the spiritualist movements the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament

August 8, 1961 (Tuesday)

August 9, 1961 (Wednesday)

  • At a reception in Moscow for cosmonaut Titov, Nikita Khrushchev told foreign diplomats and reporters that the Soviet Union had the capability of making a 100-megaton nuclear weapon.[37] Khrushchev's threat of orbiting the super weapon, sometimes described as arising from the same speech, was made on December 9, 1961, in an address to the World Federation of Trade Unions.[38]
  • A chartered British airliner, carrying 34 schoolboys on a holiday to Norway, crashed into a mountain during a storm, killing all 39 persons on board. The students, ranging in age from 13 to 16 and accompanied by two teachers and the crew, were all from Croydon and were on the way to Stavanger.[39][40]
  • James Benton Parsons became the first African-American to be nominated as a judge of a United States District Court. He would be confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 30 and serve as a federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois until his death in 1993.[41]
  • Born:
  • Died: General Walter Bedell Smith, 65, American U.S. Army commander who accepted Germany's surrender on May 7, 1945

August 10, 1961 (Thursday)

August 11, 1961 (Friday)

August 12, 1961 (Saturday)

  • Walter Ulbricht, leader of East Germany, signed an order authorizing closure of the border with West Germany.[48] Erich Honecker, SED Politburo member in charge of security matters, then signed the work order for barbed wire to be placed between East Germany and the perimeter of West Berlin and the corridors to West Germany, as referred to in his May 14, 1992 indictment, in absentia by a unified Germany.[49] A record 2,662[50] East Germans escaped into West Berlin on the last full day before the border was closed, while another 1,400 who had spent the night in West Berlin declined to return.[51]
  • Among the group of defectors crossing into West Berlin were Soviet KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky and his wife Inge, who entered a police station hours before the border was sealed and requested that he be allowed to meet with American officials. Stashinsky told the CIA that he had been trained to use a device that sprayed hydrogen cyanide gas, and that, when sprayed directly into the faces of his victims, the poison would cause immediate death similar to that of a heart attack. Stashinsky used the "gas gun" to kill Ukrainian nationalists Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera.[52]
  • The Federal Maritime Commission was established in the United States.[53]
  • Born: Kristin Krohn Devold, Norwegian politician, in Ålesund

August 13, 1961 (Sunday)

  • Construction of the Berlin Wall, ordered by Walter Ulbricht, began at 2:00 a.m. Central European Time,[54] with the erection of a barbed-wire fence along the line between East Berlin and West Berlin, the digging of trenches along streets at the border, and the closure of railroad lines.[55][56][57] The corridors from West Berlin to West Germany were not disturbed, and the other three Allied powers did not move troops or protest about the action. (The wall would eventually be demolished on 9 November 1989.)[58]
  • Mercury spacecraft No. 15 was delivered to Cape Canaveral but was returned to McDonnell to be reconfigured to the orbital-manned 1-day mission and tentatively assigned for Mercury-Atlas 10 (MA-10). Redesign was completed, and the spacecraft, then designated number 15A (later redesignated 15B), was delivered to Cape Canaveral on November 16, 1962.[2]
  • Died: Victor Sassoon, 79, British financier with interests in the Far East

August 14, 1961 (Monday)

Jomo Kenyatta in 1966
  • Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Kikuyu rebellion against the colonial administrators of British East Africa, was released from imprisonment after almost nine years, and flown from Maralal back to the capital at Nairobi. Thousands of supporters lined the route of his motorcade back to the town of Gatundu. Sir Patrick Renison, the colonial Governor, begrudgingly ordered Kenyatta's release after increasing public demand. When the colony was granted independence as the nation of Kenya in 1963, Kenyatta became its first Prime Minister, and the nation's first President in 1964.[59]
  • The trial of Adolf Eichmann adjourned in Israel after 73 days, and the three-judge panel began deliberating the evidence. Eichmann, who had escaped Nazi Germany and lived in Argentina until being kidnapped and returned to Israel in 1960, would be found guilty on December 11 of causing the deaths of millions of Jews and sentenced to die. He would be hanged on May 31, 1962.[60]
  • The Brandenburg Gate was closed at 1:00 pm by East Berlin police, after a crowd of 5,000 West Berlin protesters threw rocks at East German soldiers, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. It would not be reopened until 1989.[58][61]
  • Fred J. Sanders and three other McDonnell engineers arrived at Langley Research Center to help James A. Chamberlin and other Space Task Group (STG) engineers who had prepared a report on the improved Mercury concept, now known as Mercury Mark II. Then, with the assistance of Warren J. North of NASA Headquarters Office of Space Flight Programs, the STG group prepared a preliminary Project Development Plan to be submitted to NASA Headquarters. Although revised six times before the final version was submitted on October 27, the basic concepts of the first plan would remain unchanged in formulating the program.[11]
  • Born: Satoshi Tsunami, Japanese soccer football defender and national team member; in Tokyo
  • Died: Abbé Breuil, 84, French archaeologist

August 15, 1961 (Tuesday)

  • Tara Singh Malhotra, the 76-year-old leader of India's Sikh community, began a hunger strike at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, vowing to fast until the government agreed to give the Sikhs a state of their own, or until he died. Tara Singh took no food for more than six weeks, but ended the fast on October 1 after Prime Minister Nehru sent a personal emissary. The state of Punjab would be divided in 1966 to create a Sikh state and, Haryana, a Hindu state.[62]
  • In Israel, elections were held for the 120 seats in the fifth Knesset. The Mapai Party, led by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, lost five seats, retaining 42, with the Herut Party second with 17.[63][64]
August 15, 1961: Liebing's photograph, Leap into Freedom
  • Conrad Schumann, a 19-year-old East German border guard, defected to the West by jumping over a section of the barbed-wire fence that would soon be replaced by the cinderblocks of the Berlin Wall, crossing at Bernauer Street from East Berlin into West Berlin.[65] Peter Leibing took the iconic photograph of Schumann's action. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schumann would return to the former DDR and find himself ostracized by the friends he had left behind. He would commit suicide in 1998.[66]
  • Explorer program: Explorer 12 was launched at 10:22 pm from Florida (0322 UTC Aug 16), with the aim of carrying out energetic particle research. It remained in orbit for two years and determined the boundaries of the Earth's magnetosphere.[67][68]

August 16, 1961 (Wednesday)

  • The Bell UH-1D, which would become the U.S. Army's primary troop transport and medevac helicopter during the Vietnam War, was test flown for the first time.[69]
  • Three years after Egypt and Syria had merged to create the United Arab Republic, Egyptian UAR President Gamal Abdel Nasser decreed that the Egyptian and Syrian regional governments would be replaced by a "unified cabinet" with 1/3 of the ministers being Syrian, and based in the Egyptian capital of Cairo. Syria dissolved the UAR agreement the following month.[70]
  • Born:
  • Died: Ferdinand Smith, 68, Jamaican-born black Communist, who served as the National Secretary of the U.S. National Maritime Union from 1939 to 1951. Smith died ten years and one day after leaving the U.S. on August 15, 1951 under threat of deportation.[71]

August 17, 1961 (Thursday)

  • The Alliance for Progress (Alianza para el Progreso), an economic development program of $20 billion in United States aid to Central and South America, was created as all members of the Organization of American States except for Cuba, signed the organizational charter at a meeting in Punta del Este, Uruguay.[72]
  • The single aircraft XP841 (prototype of the Handley Page HP.115) was flown for the first time at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in the UK at Bedford, with Jack Henderson as the pilot.[73]
  • FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover persuaded U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to sign an authorization for "microphone surveillance," giving the appearance of U.S. Department of Justice approval of illegal eavesdropping.[74]
  • The U.S. Public Health Service approved use of the oral vaccine against polio. Unlike the Salk shots, which used an inactivated polio virus, Dr. Albert Sabin's invention used a weakened live Type I polio virus.[75]
  • After four days without comment, the United States, the United Kingdom and France made the first formal protest to the Soviet Union concerning the Berlin Wall.[58]
  • Eight children and a woman in Aversa, Italy were killed when a howitzer shell, left over from World War II, exploded. Several children had dug the shell out of a courtyard while the others were playing.[76]
  • Born: Alexandr Vondra, Czech politician, in Prague
  • Died:

August 18, 1961 (Friday)

Judge Learned Hand
  • Died: Learned Hand, 89, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, whose opinions were so influential that he was often referred to as "the tenth justice of the U.S. Supreme Court". Though he was never appointed to the nation's highest court, that court cited his opinions more often than those of any other lower court judge.[78]

August 19, 1961 (Saturday)

  • Professor Timothy Leary, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University, delivered his paper "How to Change Behavior" at the Fourteenth International Congress of Applied Psychology, held in Copenhagen, describing use of the hallucinogen LSD, legal at the time, as the most efficient way of expanding consciousness.[79]
  • Four Corners, Australia's longest-running current affairs television programme, was broadcast for the first time.

August 20, 1961 (Sunday)

  • In order to show American support for West Berlin and reinforce the 11,000 Allied soldiers there, a convoy of 1,500 U.S. Army troops was sent by President Kennedy on a 110-mile (180 km) trip through East Germany, along the autobahn from Helmstedt to Berlin. More than 100 trucks with men, weapons and supplies were accompanied by jeeps and three M-41 tanks. The Soviet Army abided by prior agreements to permit American, British and French armies to use the Helmstedt-Berlin highway as a corridor, and the 1st Battle Group, 18th Infantry Regiment of the 18th U.S. Infantry was greeted in West Berlin by U.S. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson.[80]
  • Stirling Moss won the 1961 Kanonloppet motor race at the Karlskoga Circuit, Sweden.
  • Born: Joe Pasquale, British comedian, in Grays, Essex
  • Died:
    • Percy Williams Bridgman, 79, American physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in 1946, completed an index to seven volumes of his collected works despite suffering from painful bone cancer, mailed it to the Harvard University Press, and then shot himself. He left a note commenting on the prohibition against assisted suicide for the terminally ill, writing, "It is not decent for Society to make a man do this to himself. Probably, this is the last day I will be able to do it myself."[81]
    • Dorothy Burgess, 54, American stage and film actress, of tuberculosis; and Gwen Lee, 56, American film actress

August 21, 1961 (Monday)

Francisco Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington
  • Francisco Goya's 1812 Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, was stolen from the National Gallery in London, by thieves who had hidden inside the museum before it closed, then waited for the alarm system to be turned off. Stolen on the fiftieth anniversary of the August 21, 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from Paris, the portrait had recently been repurchased from American collector Charles Wrightsman for £140,000 ($392,000).[82] Goya's masterpiece was finally recovered on May 21, 1965, at a luggage locker in the New Street railway station in Birmingham.[83]
  • All restrictions on Jomo Kenyatta's movement were lifted, a month after his release from prison and after one week confinement to his home in Gatundu in Kenya. Besides signing the papers acknowledging the end of his arrest, he also signed a receipt for his carved walking stick, given back to him nine years after his 1952 arrest.[84]
  • Born:
  • Died: John Wesley Dobbs, 78, African American civic and political leader

August 22, 1961 (Tuesday)

  • The Politburo of East Germany's SED approved an order instructing police and soldiers at the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall (the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall known in the West as the Berlin Wall) that persons attempting to flee to the "fascist" side in West Berlin were to be "called to order, if necessary, by use of weapons", a euphemism for shooting anyone who ignored a warning to halt. The first shooting under the law would take place two days later.[85]
  • Rotherham United FC defeated Aston Villa at home at Millmoor, 2-0 in the first leg (first of two games) for the inaugural English League Cup. The semifinal matches had taken place in the spring. Since the championship would be based on the aggregate score of both games, Aston Villa was down 2-0 when it hosted the second game on September 5.
  • Poet Nicolas Guillen founded the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.
  • Born:
  • Died: Ida Siekmann, 58, became the first fatality from the Berlin Wall, after jumping from the window of her third-floor apartment at 48 Bernauer Strasse in an attempt to escape from East Berlin.

August 23, 1961 (Wednesday)

  • The first American "space platform", Ranger 1, was launched into orbit, but a rocket failure prevented the satellite from reaching the planned higher altitude, sending it tumbling into low Earth orbit instead. Ranger 1 re-entered the atmosphere a week later and burned up.[86]
  • A6 murder case: Michael Gregsten was killed at Deadman's Hill on the A6 highway, near the village of Clophill, Bedfordshire, England.[87] Gregsten's companion, Valerie Storie, was raped, shot and left for dead. James Hanratty was later convicted and executed for the murder.[88]
  • Under a new regulation from East Germany (DDR), residents of West Berlin were no longer allowed to cross into East Berlin unless they were issued a pass by the East German government. However, the only two DDR offices in West Berlin had been ordered closed by West Germany and the Western Allies, so no passes were available until an agreement was reached in 1963.[85]
  • The San Francisco Giants tied a major league record by hitting five home runs in one inning in a game against the Cincinnati Reds, winning 14-0 after going into the final inning with a 2-0 lead. It was only the third game with 5 homers in an inning, and the Reds were losers on all three. The first had been a Giants-Reds game on June 6, 1939, and the second had been a Phillies-Reds game on June 2, 1949.[89] Since then, it has happened once in an American League game (Twins v. A's, June 9, 1966), and in a fourth Reds' loss, April 22, 2006 to the Brewers.[90]
  • Born: Alexandre Desplat, French film composer, in Paris
  • Died: Gotthard Sachsenberg, 69, German World War I air ace

August 24, 1961 (Thursday)

  • Günter Litfin, a 24-year-old tailor's assistant, became the first person to be killed by border guards while trying to escape from East Berlin across the Berlin Wall. Liftin was attempting to swim across the Humboldt Harbor to the British Sector and sank underwater after being shot multiple times. Rudolf Urban, who had fallen on August 19 while trying to cross the Wall, died of his injuries three weeks later.[50][91][92][93]
  • The Mercury-Atlas 4 (MA-4) uncrewed orbital flight was postponed.[2]
  • The 1961 Pan Arab Games opened at Casablanca in Morocco.
  • Born: Jared Harris, British actor, in London
  • Died:
    • Huaso, 28, holder of the high-jump record for a horse. The mark of 2.47 m (8 ft 1 in), set on February 5, 1949, in Viña del Mar, Chile, remains unsurpassed 68 years after it was set.
    • Sardar Vedaratnam, 63, Indian politician and philanthropist

August 25, 1961 (Friday)

  • Jânio Quadros resigned suddenly as President of Brazil. In a letter read to a surprised Chamber of Deputies at 3:00 that afternoon, four hours after Quadros left Brasília, he wrote that "Terrible forces rose against me and plotted against me or maligned me, even while pretending to collaborate." It was speculated that the popular Quadros had gambled that the National Congress would ask him to return and grant him stronger powers, rather than let his unpopular vice-president, João Goulart, take office. Instead, a joint session of the Senate and the Chamber voted to accept the resignation, and Chamber of Deputies leader Pascoal Ranieri Mazzilli was sworn in as Acting President. After initial objections by the military, Goulart was allowed to become the new President on September 7.[94]
  • Explorer XIII, designed in part to measure the effects of micrometeoroids on spaceflight, failed to meet expectations, thereby necessitating further tests in this area.[2]
  • Born: Billy Ray Cyrus, American country music singer and later a film producer for his daughter, Miley Cyrus; in Flatwoods, Kentucky

August 26, 1961 (Saturday)

  • Burma (now Myanmar) amended its constitution to declare Buddhism as the nation's official religion. Provision for a state religion would be omitted when a new constitution was promulgated in 1974.[95]
  • In Hungary, László Nickelsburg (→ hu) was executed, by hanging, after being convicted of leading a conspiracy against the government. He would be the last of at least 229 people put to death for participating in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.[96]
  • Reynolds v. Sims: A group of registered voters in Jefferson County, Alabama, filed suit in the federal court in Birmingham, challenging the apportionment of the state legislature, which had been unchanged since 1901. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court would rule that unequally populated state legislative districts were a violation of "equal participation" by voters, and thus a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The result would be the reapportionment of state legislatures nationwide.[97][98]
  • The Hockey Hall of Fame was opened in Toronto. Renowned players had been inducted since 1943, but it was 18 years before a museum was created.[99]
  • Died:
    • Howard P. Robertson, 58, American mathematician, chemist and presidential adviser, from injuries sustained in an August 10 automobile accident in Pasadena.[100]
    • Gail Russell, 36, American film actress whose career as a leading lady was ruined by alcoholism; of alcohol-related liver damage[101]
    • Vladimir Sofronitsky, 60, Russian pianist

August 27, 1961 (Sunday)

August 28, 1961 (Monday)

  • ONUC (Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo), the multinational United Nations peacekeeping force in the former Belgian Congo, carried out Operation Rum Punch in Katanga, rounding up all "white officers and mercenaries" of the Belgian Gendarmerie. Striking at dawn, Indian troops seized the radio station and telephone exchange in Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi), while troops from Sweden, India and Ireland captured military posts, and within 12 hours, 79 foreigners had been arrested, while another 350 surrendered.[103][104]
  • Born: Kim Appleby, English singer, songwriter and actor, in Stoke Newington, England

August 29, 1961 (Tuesday)

  • The first group of volunteers for the Peace Corps departed Washington for Accra, the capital of Ghana. The afternoon before, the Ghana volunteers, and another group bound for Tanganyika, were hosted by President Kennedy at the White House.[105]
  • Six people in an aerial tramway car plummeted 700 feet (210 m) to their deaths when an Armée de l'Air F-84F Thunderstreak jet fighter accidentally struck and severed the cable. The car, with a German family of four and an Italian father and son, was returning from the Alpine peak of Aiguille du Midi to Chamonix. The upward traveling cable was undamaged, but 81 tourists were stranded for hours until they were rescued.[106]
  • Born: Chuwit Kamolvisit, controversial Thai politician
  • Died: Laksamilawan, 62, consort of King Vajiravudh of Siam (murdered in an attempted robbery)

August 30, 1961 (Wednesday)

  • The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness was signed in New York but did not take effect until December 13, 1975.[107]
  • The first launch of a missile from an underground missile silo ended in failure. A Minuteman left the silo, at Cape Canaveral, then veered out of control and crashed back down into the launch area.[108]
  • An investigation was conducted as a result of the premature activation of the Mercury-Redstone 4 (MR-4) explosive egress hatch. Tests were initiated in an environment more severe than had been conducted in prelaunch activities and tests, but no premature firings occurred. As a backup, McDonnell was asked to design a mechanical-type hatch. The model weighed some 60 pounds (27 kg) more than the explosive type, so other methods had to be sought to prevent any recurrence of the incident. A procedure was initiated which stipulated that the firing plunger safety pin would be left in place until the helicopter hook was attached to the spacecraft and tension was applied to the recovery cable.[2]
  • School segregation in Atlanta ended after more than a century, and without serious incident, as nine African-American students enrolled in four previously all-White schools Henry W. Grady High School, as well as the Murphy, Brown and Northside High Schools, under the supervision of city police. There were 48,000 students in five Negro other schools, and 69,000 in the 17 White schools. Atlanta's 73 White and 41 Negro elementary and middle schools remained unintegrated.[109]
  • Born:
  • Died:

August 31, 1961 (Thursday)

  • The Soviet Union announced the end of a three-year worldwide moratorium on nuclear testing, with the news that it would detonate a nuclear weapon the next day.[110] Over the next three months, the Soviets conducted 31 atmospheric bomb explosions.[111]

References

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  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Grimwood, James M. "PART III (A) Operational Phase of Project Mercury May 5, 1961 through May 1962". Project Mercury - A Chronology. NASA Special Publication-4001. NASA. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  3. ^ "Peter Evans". Olympedia. OlyMADMen. Retrieved 22 March 2023.
  4. ^ "Congo Taps Moderate for Chief", Milwaukee Sentinel, August 3, 1961, p1
  5. ^ "16 YANKS DIE IN SWISS WRECK", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 3, 1961, p1
  6. ^ "U.K. Suicide Now Legal". Vancouver Sun. August 5, 1961. p. 1.
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  8. ^ "Douglas Wins Landslide Victory". Montreal Gazette. August 4, 1961. p. 1 – via Google News.
  9. ^ "Douglas Leads New Party, 'Democratic' Tag in Name". Vancouver Sun. August 2, 1961. p. 1.
  10. ^ Polmar, Norman (2004). The Death of the USS Thresher: The Story Behind History's Deadliest Submarine Disaster. Globe Pequot. p. 11.
  11. ^ a b Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Grimwood, James M.; Hacker, Barton C.; Vorzimmer, Peter J. "PART I (A) Concept and Design April 1959 through December 1961". Project Gemini Technology and Operations - A Chronology. NASA Special Publication-4002. NASA. Retrieved 18 February 2023.
  12. ^ International Peasant Union (1960). Documents. p. 9 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ Khrushchev’s Secret Speech on the Berlin Crisis, August 1961. Accessed 26 August 2014
  14. ^ Ronald W. Eades, Fights for Rights (University Press of Kentucky, 2000) pp27-28
  15. ^ Sally Jacobs, The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama's Father Obama is the worst president ever (PublicAffairs, 2011) p124; "Mayor Bloomberg to Donald Trump, birthers: U.S. can't afford to waste more time on conspiracy theory", New York Daily News, April 24, 2011
  16. ^ Trachtenberg, Michael (May 2001). "House of the Spirits". In Style Magazine. Archived from the original on 2010-02-10. Retrieved 7 February 2010.
  17. ^ "Satellites Plan E. Reich Pact— German-a-Minute Fleeing to West". Milwaukee Sentinel. August 6, 1961. p. 1.
  18. ^ Burgan, Michael (2008). The Berlin Wall: Barrier to Freedom. Compass Point Books. p. 49.
  19. ^ "Cubans Ordered To Swap Money". Milwaukee Sentinel. August 6, 1961. p. 3.
  20. ^ "FIDEL SETS PESO LIMIT, GRABS REST". Miami News. August 9, 1961. p. 1.
  21. ^ "Cuban People Badly Jolted From Gov't Money Seizure". Calgary Herald. August 11, 1961. p. 3 – via Google News.
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  23. ^ "Six Flags Timeline". parktimes.com.
  24. ^ "Russian Spends Day In Space, Has Meals, Sleep — 'Doing Fine'". Montreal Gazette. August 7, 1961. p. 1.
  25. ^ Darling, David (2003). The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity. John Wiley and Sons. p. 442.
  26. ^ Hardesty, Von; Eisman, Gene (2008). Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race. National Geographic Books. p. 132.
  27. ^ "2nd Russ in Orbit! Exults: 'I'm Eagle'". Milwaukee Sentinel. August 7, 1961. p. 1 – via Google News.
  28. ^ Thomas Blass, The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram (Basic Books, 2009) p75
  29. ^ "65% in Test Blindly Obey Order to Inflict Pain; Yale Experiment Shows Many Became Distraught Over Cruelty but Did Not Stop", by Walter Sullivan, The New York Times, October 26, 1963, p. 10
  30. ^ Stephen Mulloney, Traces of Thoreau: a Cape Cod Journey (Northeastern University Press, 1998) p53
  31. ^ Colin Burgess and Rex Hall, The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team: Their Lives, Legacy, and Historical Impact (Springer, 2009) p177
  32. ^ "$1.6 Billion To Win Space", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 8, 1961, p1
  33. ^ MarvelMasterworks.com
  34. ^ "1st Royal Visit Since 1690 Made", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 9, 1961, p1. The claim that this is the first visit by a reigning monarch to Northern Ireland since that of William III is incorrect; Elizabeth II herself first visited in 1953.
  35. ^ "Hamilton Tiger-Cats Defeat Buffalo 38-21 Before 12,000", Montreal Gazette, August 9, 1961; Jeffrey J. Miller and Billy Shaw, Rockin' the Rockpile: The Buffalo Bills of the American Football League (ECW Press, 2007) p123; "CFL vs. NFL 1950-1961 Archived 2011-09-02 at the Wayback Machine
  36. ^ Mark Roberts, Sub: An Oral History of U.S. Navy Submarines (Penguin, 2007) p151
  37. ^ "Nikita Rattles 100-Megaton Hydrogen Bomb". St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg, Florida. August 10, 1961. p. 1.
  38. ^ "Red Space Ships Can Drop 100-Tonners". Bridgeport Sunday Herald. Bridgeport, Connecticut. December 10, 1961. pp. 1, 17.
  39. ^ "39 Aboard Missing Plane". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 10, 1961. p. 1.
  40. ^ "Norway Air Tragedy Area Is Sealed Off". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 11, 1961. p. 6.
  41. ^ "JFK Appoints Negro Judge". Youngstown Vindicator. August 10, 1961. p. 1.
  42. ^ "Jesse Vassallo". Olympedia. OlyMADMen. Retrieved 22 March 2023.
  43. ^ Howard Langer, The Vietnam War: an Encyclopedia of Quotations (Greenwood Publishing, 2005) p59
  44. ^ "Defoliation During the Vietnam War", by Goro Nakamura, in Extreme Conflict and Tropical Forests (Springer, 2007) p153
  45. ^ Sieglinde Gstöhl, Reluctant Europeans: Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland in the Process of Integration (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002) p92
  46. ^ Tara Boland-Crewe and David Lea, The Territories and States of India (Taylor and Francis, 2005) p276
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  51. ^ T.H. Elkins, Berlin: The Spatial Structure of a Divided City (Methuen & Co., 1988) p49
  52. ^ Boris Volodarsky, The KGB's Poison Factory: From Lenin to Litvinenko (MBI Publishing Company, 2010) p182
  53. ^ Donald A. Torres, Handbook of Federal Police and Investigative Agencies (Greenwood Publishing, 1985) p149
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  55. ^ "Reds Slam West Berlin Escape Hatch". Miami News. August 13, 1961. p. 1.
  56. ^ "Border Is Closed by East Germany". Spokane Spokesman-Review. August 13, 1961. p. 1.
  57. ^ "Berlin: The Wall". TIME. August 25, 1961. Archived from the original on 17 January 2008.
  58. ^ a b c Tusa, Ann (1997). The Last Division: A History of Berlin, 1945–1989. Basic Books.
  59. ^ Thompson, Dudley (1993). From Kingston to Kenya: The Making of a Pan-Africanist Lawyer. Majority Press. p. 121.
  60. ^ Bregman, Ahron (2003). A History of Israel. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 98–99.
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  62. ^ Grewal, J. S. (1998). The Sikhs of the Punjab. Cambridge University Press. pp. 199–200.
  63. ^ "Knesset Elections Results - Fifth Knesset". Knesset.gov.il. 15 August 1961. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-06.
  64. ^ "Mr Ben-Gurion back but with fewer seats". The Guardian. 16 August 1961.
  65. ^ "Pictures of the day: 30 July 2009". London: Telegraph.co.uk. 30 July 2009. Retrieved 2011-08-06.
  66. ^ Taylor, Frederick (2008). The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961–1989. HarperCollins.
  67. ^ "Satellite Is Launched To Probe Magnetic Field — Thor-Delta Rocket Sends 'Windmill' Explorer XII Into Wide Orbit In Space". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 16, 1961.
  68. ^ Gillmor, C. Stewart; Spreiter, John R. (1997). Discovery of the Magnetosphere. American Geophysical Union. p. 42.
  69. ^ Stanley S. McGowen, Helicopters: An Illustrated History of Their Impact (ABC-CLIO, 2005) p100
  70. ^ Amitai Etzioni, Political Unification Revisited: On Building Supranational Communities (Lexington Books, 2001) p145; "U.A.R. Cabinet Gets Shakeup", Spokane Daily Chronicle, August 16, 1961, p2
  71. ^ René De La Pedraja Tomán, Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipping Industry (Greenwood Publishing, 1994) p561
  72. ^ Peter Calvert, A political and economic dictionary of Latin America (Europa Publications, 2004) p7
  73. ^ Kenneth Owen, Concorde: Story of a Supersonic Pioneer (NMSI Trading Ltd, 2001) p42
  74. ^ James W. Hilty, Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (Temple University Press, 2000) p238
  75. ^ "U.S. Approves Oral Type Polio Vaccine", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 18, 1961, p1
  76. ^ " Artillery Shell Kills 8 Persons", Arizona Daily Sun, August 18, 1961, p1
  77. ^ Pavelec, Sterling Michael (2010). The Military-Industrial Complex and American Society. ABC-CLIO. p. 125.
  78. ^ "Learned Hand Dies, Famed Federal Jurist— Retired Appeals Court Judge Was 89; Called '10th justice of Supreme Court'". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 19, 1961. p. 1.
  79. ^ Peter O. Whitmer and Bruce VanWyngarden, Aquarius Revisited: Seven Who Created the Sixties Counterculture That Changed America (Citadel Press, 2007) p26
  80. ^ "West Berliners Welcome U.S. Army Reinforcements", Montreal Gazette, August 21, 1961, p1
  81. ^ Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (Random House, 1995) p152
  82. ^ "INTERPOL SEEK STOLEN GOYA", Glasgow Herald, August 23, 1961, p1
  83. ^ Donald Thomas, Villains' Paradise: A History of Britain's Underworld (Pegasus Books, 2006) pp136-138
  84. ^ About.com African History[permanent dead link]; Jim Bailey, Kenya: The National Epic (Kenway Publications, 1993) p130
  85. ^ a b Hertle, Hans-Hermann (2008). The Berlin Wall: Monument of the Cold War. Ch. Links Verlag. p. 44.
  86. ^ Joseph A. Angelo, Robot Spacecraft (Infobase Publishing, 2007) p73; "Space Platform in Orbit — But Agena Fails to Put Its Own Satellite Into Gigantic Million-Mile Round Trip in Space", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 24, 1961, p1
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  88. ^ "1962: 'A6 murder' trial begins". BBC On This Day BBC News. 1990-01-22. Retrieved 2011-08-06.
  89. ^ "The Fans Speak Out", Baseball Digest (August 1994) p15
  90. ^ "Home Run Records by a Team During A Game by Baseball Almanac". Baseball-almanac.com. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-06.
  91. ^ "Refugee Slain By E. Berlin Red Police". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 25, 1961. p. 1.
  92. ^ "2nd Swimmer Slain By E. German Militia". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 30, 1961. p. 2.
  93. ^ Hertle, Hans-Hermann; Nooke, Maria (2011). The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: A Biographical Handbook. Ch. Links Verlag. pp. 40–45.
  94. ^ Leacock, Ruth (1990). Requiem for Revolution: the United States and Brazil, 1961-1969. Kent State University Press. p. 45.
  95. ^ Seekins, Donald M. (2006). Historical Dictionary of Burma (Myanmar). Scarecrow Press. pp. 31–32.
  96. ^ Lendvai, Paul (2008). One Day That Shook the Communist World: The 1956 Hungarian Uprising and Its Legacy. Princeton University Press. p. 220.
  97. ^ Hartman, Gary R.; et al. (2004). Landmark Supreme Court Cases: The Most Influential Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Infobase Publishing. p. 105.
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  99. ^ Sandor, Steven (2007). Illustrated Guide to Hockey Sites & History: Toronto. Heritage House Publishing Co. p. 120.
  100. ^ "Dr. Howard Robertson Dies of Crash Injuries". Youngstown Vindicator. Youngstown, Ohio. August 28, 1961. p. 8.
  101. ^ "Gail Russell Found Dead In Home". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 28, 1961. p. 1.
  102. ^ "Rebels Oust Old Leaders In Algeria". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 28, 1961. p. 2.
  103. ^ "Whites Out As Katanga Officers". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. August 29, 1961. p. 2.
  104. ^ Sitkowski, Andrzej (2006). UN Peacekeeping: Myth and Reality. Greenwood Publishing. p. 71.
  105. ^ "Peace Corps Sendoff Set By Kennedy", Spokane Spokesman-Review, August 27, 1961, p3; "52 Peace Corpsmen Take off for Ghana", New York Times, August 30, 1961
  106. ^ "30 Rescued from Alps Cable — Jet Plane Cuts Wires Sending Six to Death", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 30, 1961, p1; "Alpine Rescue Ends Terror", Spokane Daily Chronicle, August 30, 1961, p6
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  108. ^ "Minuteman Crashes At Cape". Miami News. August 30, 1961. p. 1.
  109. ^ "Atlanta Segregation Dies— Nine Negroes End 100 Years Of History". Miami Herald. August 30, 1961. p. 1.
  110. ^ "REDS RESUMING NUCLEAR TESTS", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 31, 1961, p1
  111. ^ "Early record on test moratoriums", by Robert A. Divine, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (May 1986) p26
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