Home > 1960's: Overview > World Events: Selected Occurrences Outside the United States

World Events: Selected Occurrences Outside the United States

1960

  • Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita premieres.
  • Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is published.
  • Harold Pinter's play The Caretaker premieres.
  • Alain Resnais's film Last Year at Marienbad premieres.
l jan.
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev indicates in a New Year's toast that the Soviet Union might disarm unilaterally if it fails to reach an arms agreement with the West.
3 Jan.
The Moscow State Symphony becomes the first Soviet orchestra to play in the United States.
4 Jan.
Albert Camus dies in an automobile accident near Paris.
8 Jan.
West Berlin students hold mass demonstrations against recent outbreaks of neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism.
12 Jan.
Soviet police expose a black-market rock 'n' roll ring that produces phonograph records on X-ray plates.
19 Jan.
The United States and Japan sign a treaty of mutual cooperation and security.
24 Jan.
Pope John XXIII presides over the first diocesan ecclesiastical council held in Rome.
l Feb.
In Algeria a revolt by European immigrants collapses.
5 Feb.
The Soviet Exhibition in Havana is disrupted by anti-Communist demonstrators, who are fired upon by Cuban police.
7 Feb.
Ancient biblical scrolls are discovered in a cave one thousand feet above the Dead Sea.
8 Feb.
After successfully detonating an atomic bomb in the Sahara, France becomes the world's fourth nuclear power.
18 Feb.
The Winter Olympics begin in Squaw Valley, California.
19 Feb.
Despite appeals by anti-U.S. leftist Chileans, several hundred thousand turn out to welcome President Dwight Eisenhower to Santiago.
1 Mar.
The Moroccan resort city of Agadir is leveled by earthquakes, a tidal wave, and fires, killing nearly twelve thousand and leaving almost all of the city's population homeless.
14 Mar.
In New York, Israeli premier David Ben-Gurion and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer meet for the first time and discuss German-Israeli relations.
18 Mar.
Accused of leading Chinese priests in espionage against Communist China, Roman Catholic bishop James Edward Walsh, a U.S. citizen, is sentenced by the Shanghai People's Court to twenty years in prison.
21 Mar.
Cuban soldiers shoot down an American private plane and capture its pilot and copilot, who are suspected of attempting to rescue Cuban political prisoners.
21 Mar.
South African police open fire on twenty thousand antiapartheid demonstrators, killing fifty-six.
9 Apr.
South African white supremacist prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd is shot and wounded by a white man in Johannesburg.
16 Apr.
Major American publishing houses Alfred A. Knopf and Random House announce their merger.
26 Apr.
Prompted by a student uprising against government election policies, South Korea's National Assembly demands the immediate resignation of President Syngman Rhee,
5 May
Soviet premier Khrushchev presents evidence to the Supreme Soviet that an American U-2 plane had been shot down over the Soviet Union and that its pilot Gary Powers had been captured.
6 May
Princess Margaret Rose of the British royal family marries Antony Armstrong-Jones, a commoner.
7 May
Twenty-three-year-old Mikhail Tol of Soviet Latvia becomes the youngest world chess champion in the twentieth century after defeating Mikhail Botvinnick in a two-month series held in Moscow.
7 May
The Paris summit meeting between Khrushchev and Eisenhower breaks down, with each side blaming the other for its collapse.
11 May
The SS France, the world's longest passenger liner, is launched at Saint Nazaire, France.
20 May
La Dolce Vita, by Italian director Federico Fellini, wins the award for best film at the Cannes Film Festival.
23 May
The Israeli government announces that it is holding former Nazi SS colonel Adolf Eichmann, accused of war crimes, to stand trial.
27 May
Turkish dictator Adnan Menderes is overthrown in a military coup.
30 May
Boris Pasternak diqs at age seventy in his villa outside Moscow.
1 June
Benjamin Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream premieres at Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh, England.
9 June
Typhoon Mary, packing 135-MPH winds, hits Hong Kong, leaving many dead and 120,000 homeless.
13 June
A Rome court announces the annulment of Ingrid Bergman's marriage to Roberto Rossellini.
16 June
At the request of Japanese officials President Eisenhower agrees to postpone his visit to Japan due to anti-American rioting.
20 June
U.S. boxer Floyd Patterson defeats Ingemar Johansson of Sweden to reclaim the world heavyweight boxing title.
20 June
Algerian rebels agree to take part in Paris peace talks after nearly six years of war.
30 June
The Republic of Congo is born after Belgian king Baudouin I proclaims the country's independence.
1 july
The Republic of Somalia is formed after merging the former British Somaliland with the former UN trust territory of Somalia.
11 July
Kremlin officials announce that the Soviet Union has shot down an American RB-47 reconnaissance jet after it violated Soviet airspace. Of the six crewmen two survived and are held in the Soviet Union.
14 July
The UN Security Council authorizes Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold to send UN troops to the Republic of Congo to restore peace to the emerging nation plagued by civil war.
21 July
Fifty-nine-year-old Francis Chichester wins the transatlantic solo race aboard his sloop Gypsy Moth in a record time of forty days.
24 July
Marshal Andrei A. Grechko succeeds Ivan S. Konev as supreme commander of Warsaw Pact forces.
27 July
At the Geneva test-ban talks the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union agree in principle to bar atmospheric tests as well as all underground detonations registering at more than 4.75 on the Richter scale.
29 July
Dr. Andre Danjon, director of the Paris Observatory, reports that the day has been lengthened one-tenth of a second because of three solar eruptions in July 1959 that slowed the earth's rotation.
3 Aug.
An English translation of'TheLast Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazan tzakis, is published in New York.
6 Aug.
Bangu of Brazil defeats Kilmarnock of Scotland 2-0 in New York to win the American Challenge Cup in the International Soccer League's first title playoff.
11 Sept.
The Rome summer Olympics end, the Soviet athletes having won the most medals.
19 Sept.
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro arrive in New York under heavy police security for the convening of the UN General Assembly.
5 Oct.
Jean Anouilh's play Becket opens in New York.
10 Oct.
The coast of East Pakistan along the Bay of Bengal is struck by a cyclone and a tidal wave, killing five thousand people.
12 Oct.
At the United Nations, Soviet premier Khrushchev pounds his desk with his shoe in protest over a speech by a Philippine delegate condemning Soviet colonialism in Eastern Europe.
21 Oct.
Britain announces its first nuclear submarine, the Dreadnought.
28 Oct.
For the seventeenth time since 1901 the Nobel Peace Prize Committee announces that no prize will be given.
2 Nov.
In the first major test of Great Britain's new obscenity laws, a London court rules that D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterleys Lover is not obscene.
7 Nov.
The Soviet team wins the Olympic chess tournament in Leipzig, East Germany, with the United States placing second.
1 Dec.
Accused by his political enemies of inciting rebellion, Congolese premier Patrice Lumumba is arrested by Congolese troops.
13 Dec.
A new Congolese government is proclaimed by Antoine Gizenga, former deputy premier in the Lumumba government.

1961

  • Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head is published.
  • Shelagh Delaney's play A Taste of Honey premieres.
  • Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung dies.
  • Goya's portrait of the duke of Wellington is stolen from the National Gallery in London.
  • Francois Truffaut's film Ju/es et Jim premieres.
  • Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is published.
Jan.
British physicist Sir John Cockcroft wins the 1961 Atoms for Peace Award.
Jan.
French voters endorse plan for Algerian self-determination.
2 Jan.
Soviets begin exchanging old rubles for new, revalued ones at a rate of ten to one.
3 Jan.
The United States announces it has severed diplomatic ties with Cuba.
17 Jan.
Deposed Congolese premier Patrice Lumumba is murdered.
31 Jan.
Israeli premier David Ben-Gurion resigns.
Mar.
The Soviet Union places a spacecraft carrying a dog in orbit around the earth.
12 Apr.
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to orbit the earth.
17-20 Apr.
At Cuba's Bay of Pigs, Castro's forces repulse an invasion of Cuban exiles backed by the United States.
26 Apr.
The French army puts down a dissidents' revolt in Algiers.
30 May
Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo is assassinated.
June
Arthur Ramsey becomes the one hundredth archbishop of Canterbury.
June
France breaks peace negotiations with Algerian nationalists.
June
Kuwait becomes independent.
30 June
The U.S. government abandons its efforts to exchange U.S. bulldozers for Cuban exiles captured during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
July
British troops are sent to Kuwait to counter an Iraqi threat of invasion.
July
His forces having curbed all political freedoms, Gen. Park Chung Hee becomes chairman of South Korea's military junta.
13 Aug.
The Soviet Union closes the border between East and West Berlin.
15-17 Aug.
East Germany constructs the Berlin Wall.
18 Sept.
UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold dies in a plane crash in Africa.
23 Oct.
The Soviet Union detonates a bomb of between thirty and fifty megatons, creating the largest explosion in history to date.
26-28 Oct.
U.S. and Soviet tanks face off at the border between East and West Berlin.
3 Nov.
U Thant of Burma is elected secretary-general of the United Nations.
12 Nov.
West Germany announces that it will pay up to ten thousand dollars to each of the seventy-three Polish women used in Nazi experiments.
11 Dec.
Adolf Eichmann is convicted in Israel for his role in the deaths of six million Jews during World War II.

1962

  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is published.
  • Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange is published.
  • Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook is published.
  • Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo is released.
  • Shoot the Piano Player, directed by Francois Truffaut, is released.
  • Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly is released.
  • David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia is released.
  • U.S. and Soviet tank forces back down from a confrontation at the border between East and West Berlin.
4 Jan.
The first International Gimbel Award is given to Begum Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistani ambassador to Italy, for her role in the emancipation of Pakistani women.
7 Jan.
Indonesian president Bung Sukarno escapes an assassination attempt when a grenade explodes behind his car, killing three bystanders.
18 Jan.
North Vietnam announces that Communist-held territory in the south will be governed by the Vietnam People's Revolutionary party.
3 Feb.
The United States places an embargo on virtually all U.S.-Cuba trade.
10 Feb.
U-2 pilot Gary Powers and Soviet spy Rudolf Abel are secretly exchanged at the border between East and West Germany.
20 Feb.
The Israeli Knesset votes to maintain military rule over the Arabs in Israeli-occupied lands.
27 Feb.
The presidential palace in Saigon, South Vietnam, is bombed by dissident South Vietnamese air force officers flying U.S. planes; President Diem escapes injury.
7 Mar.
The British Royal College of Physicians concludes that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer.
12 Mar.
The British Ministries of Health and Education launch an information program to warn the public about the dangers of smoking.
14 Mar.
The seventeen-nation Geneva disarmament talks begin; both superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—are represented.
18 Mar.
France and the Algerian provisional government announce the signing of a truce ending the nearly seven-year-long Muslim rebellion against French rule in Algeria.
22 Mar.
British anthropologist Louis Leakey announces his 1961 discovery of the remains of a humanlike creature estimated to have lived fourteen million years ago.
28 Mar.
Argentine president Arturo Frondizi is ousted by a bloodless military coup.
7 Apr.
A military court in Havana, Cuba, sentences to thirty years in prison 1,179 prisoners captured in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion; the Cuban government offers to suspend the sentences in exchange for $62 million.
8 Apr.
In a national referendum French voters overwhelmingly approve the Algerian peace agreement.
10 Apr.
A two-sided Pablo Picasso painting (Death of a Harlequin and Woman Sitting in a Garden) is purchased in London for $224,000, a record sum paid for a painting by a living artist.
17 May
Ingemar Johansson knocks out Wales fighter Dick Richardson in Goteburg, Sweden, in the eighth round to win the European heavyweight boxing championship.
31 May
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann is executed by hanging in Israel.
3 June
A New York-bound Air France jet chartered by members of the Atlanta Art Association crashes shortly after takeoff from Orly International Air Field in Paris; 130 of the 132 passengers are killed in the worst single aviation disaster to date.
3 June
In Venezuela three thousand government troops crush an uprising by five hundred marines at Venezuelan naval headquarters in Puerto Cabello.
7 June
In Algeria the Secret Army Organization steps up its terrorist bombing campaign against the Muslim-led Algerian provisional government.
17 June
In Santiago, Chile, Brazil defeats Czechoslovakia 3-1 to defend its World Cup soccer title.
30 June
The Vatican censures Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, a book in which the late French priest attempts to reconcile church teachings and evolution.
1 july
In Saskatchewan, Canada, nearly all of the doctors go on strike to protest the new health-care plan modeled after the British National Health Service.
4 July
British yachtsman Francis Chichester sets a transatlantic solo voyage record of thirty-three days aboard the Gypsy Moth III.
10 July
The first privately owned satellite, a Telstar built by American Telephone and Telegraph, successfully relays television images from the United States to Europe.
18 July
A military junta overthrows the Peruvian government in a bloodless coup.
30 July
Eastern and Western European countries continue their dispute over Berlin air rights; Western planes flying over East Berlin are harassed by Soviet fighter jets.
9 Aug.
German-born Swiss writer and 1946 Nobel Prize laureate Hermann Hesse dies at age eighty-five in Montagnola, Switzerland.
14 Aug.
Violence between East and West Berliners continues along the Berlin Wall as an East German patrolman is killed in an exchange of gunfire.
21 Aug.
Soviet cosmonauts contradict Western reports that their two spaceships docked when they tell reporters that the spaceships had not come within three miles of each other.
28 Sept.
A Canadian satellite, the first satellite designed and built by a country other than the United States or the Soviet Union, is launched into orbit from California.
8 Oct.
The U.S. Defense Department reports that forty-six American soldiers have died in Vietnam since U.S. large-scale intervention in the Vietnamese war began in 1961.
20 Oct.
India-Tibet border conflict erupts as Indian and Communist China army troops engage in full-scale fighting.
22 Oct.
U.S. president John F. Kennedy announces the imposition of a naval blockade against Cuba in response to evidence that the Soviets are constructing missile installations on the island and shipping military weapons there.
23 Oct.
Dick Tiger of Nigeria scores a fifteen-round decision over Gene Fullmer in San Francisco to win boxing's world middleweight championship.
24 Oct.
The U.S. quarantine on arms shipments to Cuba officially begins.
28 Oct.
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev announces that he has ordered the withdrawal of all Soviet missiles from Cuba in response to Kennedy's 27 October pledge not to invade Cuba.
20 Nov.
The United States ends its quarantine of Cuba after the Soviets agree to remove all their jet bombers from the island.
21 Nov.
The Soviet Union cancels its special military alert that had been ordered during the Cuban missile crisis.
25 Nov.
Candidates loyal to President Charles de Gaulle are victorious in National Assembly elections, marking the first time in modern French history that a single unified party has won control of Parliament.
30 Nov.
At the United Nations U Thant is elected to a four-year term as secretary-general of the organization.
Dec.
A team of English surgeons successfully transplants a dead man's kidney into a living patient at the Leeds General Infirmary.
20 Dec.
In the Dominican Republic's first free elections in thirty-eight years, Juan Bosch of the Dominican Revolutionary party is elected president.
24 Dec.
The Cuban government exchanges 1,113 prisoners captured in the Bay of Pigs invasion for $53 million worth of medicine and baby food offered by the U.S.-based Cuban Families Committee.
31 Dec.
North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh vows to outlast American aid to South Vietnam and wage guerrilla war for ten years if necessary.

1963

  • Federico Fellini's 81/2 is released.
  • Tony Richardson's Tom Jones is released.
  • Ingmar Bergman's The Silence is released.
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is published in the West.
25 Jan.
North and South Korea announce that they have agreed to field a joint team for the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
29 Jan.
France blocks Great Britain's application to join the European Economic Community.
5 Feb.
The conservative Canadian government headed by John Diefenbaker is over-thrown by a no-confidence vote concerning Canadian defense policies.
7 Feb.
Likely in response to Indonesia's refusal to allow Israeli and Nationalist Chinese participation in the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee bars Indonesia from the Olympics.
9 Feb.
Having been overthrown the previous day by anti-Communist air force officers, Iraqi premier Abdul Karim Dassim is executed by his captors.
22 Feb.
Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad reports the discovery of Nordic artifacts in Newfoundland; dating about A.D. 1000, the artifacts, Ingstad argues, are proof of a Viking settlement in America five hundred years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
9 Mar.
Accused by Communist China of using poison chemicals to kill civilians and crops in Vietnam, U.S. officials explain that the chemicals are defoliants and are harmless to human and animal life.
21 Mar.
An eruption of the Agung volcano on the island of Bali kills an estimated fifteen hundred persons.
27 Mar.
Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko is denounced by delegates to the Union of Writers Conference in Moscow for having allowed Western publication of his Precocious Autobiography.
2 Apr.
A Soviet fighter plane fires on a private twin-engine plane flying an air corridor to West Berlin.
15 Apr.
Tens of thousands protest nuclear weapons at a peace rally in Hyde Park, London.
17 Apr.
Canadian prime minister Diefenbaker resigns after the opposition Liberal party gains a majority in Parliament.
22 Apr.
Liberal party leader Lester Pearson becomes Canada's new prime minister.
1 May
Soviet premier Khrushchev salutes Cuban premier Castro at a May Day celebration in Moscow.
22 May
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization approves plans for a NATO nuclear alliance.
27 May
Jomo Kenyatta is elected the first African prime minister of Kenya.
31 May
Pope John XXIII receives last rites.
3 June
Pope John XXIII dies at age eighty-one.
5 June
British war secretary John Profumo resigns after admitting that he lied to Parliament about his relationship with Christine Keeler, who had ties to the Soviet Union.
16 June
Valentina V. Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut, becomes the first woman in space.
16 June
Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion resigns.
21 June
Giovanni Battista Cardinal Montoni is elected as Pope Paul VI.
26 June
During a visit to West Germany in which he pledges U.S. support in resisting communism, President Kennedy proclaims, "Ich bin ein Berliner."
27 June
Henry Cabot Lodge is appointed U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam.
20 July
U.S., British, and Soviet negotiators draft a nuclear test-ban treaty.
24 July
Cuba takes over the U.S. embassy building in Havana after Cuban accounts in U.S. banks are frozen.
30 July
After disappearing in Beirut, British journalist H. A. R. Philby is given asylum by the Soviet Union.
8 Aug.
A masked gang escapes with more than $5 million taken from a mail train near London; after being caught, the twelve are sentenced to a total of 307 years in prison.
30 Aug.
An emergency hot line between Washington and Moscow is opened.
15 Sept.
Malaysia is officially created.
7 Oct.
A hurricane kills five thousand people in Haiti and leaves one hundred thousand homeless.
10 Oct.
British prime minister Harold Macmillan announces his retirement.
12-16 Nov.
Prof. Frederick C. Barghoorn, chair of the Soviet studies department at Yale University, is arrested in the Soviet Union and charged with espionage; at President Kennedy's request he is released four days later.
22 Nov.
President Kennedy is shot and killed in Dallas.
9 Dec.
Zanzibar and Pemba become independent of Britain.
11 Dec.
Kenya becomes independent of Britain.

1964

  • Rene Magritte's artwork The Man in the Bowler Hat is shown.
4 Jan.
Pope Paul VI tours the Holy Land and meets with Patriarch Benedictos of Jerusalem; it is the first meeting of the heads of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches in five hundred years.
26 Mar.
Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara claims that U.S. forces will remain in Vietnam until the possibility of a Communist takeover is no longer a threat.
27 May
Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India since its independence in 1948, dies at age seventy-four.
29 May
Quebecois members of the Canadian Parliament accept Prime Minister Lester Pearson's proposal for a new flag with a maple-leaf design; they reject his recommendation to keep the Union Jack.
12 June
Eight South African antiapartheid leaders, including Nelson Mandela, are sentenced to life imprisonment.
7 Aug.
Congress's Tonkin Gulf Resolution authorizes President Lyndon B. Johnson to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."
14 Sept.
Pope Paul VI opens the third session of the Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
5 Oct.
Fifty-seven East Germans escape to West Berlin by tunnel.
9 Oct.
The Summer Olympics begin in Tokyo.
12 Oct.
The Soviet Union launches the first successful space flight with more than one cosmonaut.
15 Oct.
Nikita Khrushchev is replaced as premier of the Soviet Union by Leonid Brezhnev.
15 Oct.
Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour party, becomes prime minister of Britain.
16 Oct.
China conducts its first nuclear test explosion.
23 Oct.
The republic of Zambia, formerly the British protectorate Northern Rhodesia, becomes an independent nation.
2 Nov.
Saudi Arabian religious and political authorities dethrone the sick King Saud and crown his half brother, Crown Prince Faisal.

1965

  • Goya's portrait of the duke of Wellington, which was stolen in 1961, is returned to London's National Gallery.
  • Architect Le Corbusier dies.
  • David Lean's movie Dr. Zhivago is released.
  • Federico Fellini's film Juliet of the Spirits premieres.
4 Jan.
In his State of the Union address President Lyndon Johnson invites an exchange of Soviet and U.S. television broadcasts.
4 Jan.
T. S. Eliot dies at seventy-six in London.
14 Jan.
The two Irish prime ministers meet for the first time since 1922, when Ireland was partitioned.
19 Jan.
The United States claims that a recent Soviet underground nuclear test is likely in violation of the test-ban treaty.
21 Jan.
Indonesia formally withdraws from the United Nations.
23 Jan.
Winston Churchill dies in London at age ninety.
24 Jan.
Fashion reports indicate that European designers have turned to plastics in creating new household items.
30 Jan.
The United States agrees to widen cultural ties with the Soviet Union.
l Feb.
Troops loyal to the Laos government repel an attempted coup by army officers.
8 Feb.
The Soviet Union pledges air-defense aid to North Vietnam following U.S. air attacks.
12 Feb.
Twenty-one protesters die in language riots in southern India.
19 Feb.
UN secretary-general U Thant says that the severe financial crisis at the United Nations will force the organization to seek additional funds for 1965.
20 Feb.
It is announced that the UN will try to help India lower its birth rate.
23 Feb.
Syria hangs Farhan Attassi, a naturalized U.S. citizen, for alleged spying.
24 Feb.
U.S. officials admit that U.S. military advisers have taken a more active role in the Vietnam War.
24 Feb.
UN secretary-general U Thant calls for negotiations that would lead to the United States pulling out of Vietnam.
26 Feb.
Indonesia seizes rubber estates belonging to U.S. concerns.
27 Feb.
It is reported that Communist China has opened its borders to visits by Japanese private citizens.
I Mar.
The Russian film The Overcoat opens in New York City.
3 Mar.
Great Britain announces massive cuts in defense spending.
4 Mar.
Two thousand students attack the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
14 Mar.
Israel and West Germany agree to talks aimed at establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries.
17 Mar.
Jean-Paul Sartre cancels a U.S. lecture tour in protest over American involvement in the Vietnam War.
18 Mar.
Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonev takes a ten-minute walk in space.
29 Mar.
A bomb explosion at the U.S. embassy in Saigon kills six.
3 Apr.
The United States launches a satellite powered by a nuclear reactor.
3 Apr.
The United States accuses the Soviet Union of harassing U.S. ships at sea.
4 Apr.
East German guards prohibit West Berlin mayor Willy Brandt from driving into Berlin from West Germany.
8 Apr.
The Vatican names Cardinal Konig as its envoy to atheists.
25 Apr.
For the first time U.S. officials confirm that North Vietnamese troops are fighting in the south of Vietnam.
25 Apr.
The U.S.-supported ruling junta in the Dominican Republic is overthrown.
28 Apr.
President Johnson announces that 405 U.S. Marines have landed in the Dominican Republic to protect and evacuate American citizens.
13 May
Israel and West Germany establish diplomatic relations.
22 May
A cease-fire begins in the Dominican Republic.
24 May
Art buyers in New York and London are linked by satellite television.
5 June
U.S. officials acknowledge that U.S. troops are engaged in active combat in Vietnam.
7 June
U.S. consul Allison Wanamaker is murdered by guerrillas in Argentina.
13 June
Israeli philosopher Martin Buber dies at age eighty-seven in Jerusalem.
18 June
Nguyen Cao Ky becomes South Vietnamese premier.
28 June
Six nations join in opening the Comsat telephone system.
6 July
France withdraws its delegate from the Common Market.
I5 July
U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4 sends back to Earth the first photos of Mars taken from space.
19 July
Former South Korean president Syngman Rhee dies in Honolulu at age ninety.
20 July
The British House of Lords approves a ban on the death penalty for murder,
5 Aug.
Greek premier George Athansiadas-Novas resigns as thousands of backers of former prime minister George Papandreou continue to protest.
1 Sept.
Fighting between India and Pakistan over Kashmir begins to escalate.
5 Sept.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer dies in Gabon at age ninety.
10 Sept.
In a draft declaration issued by the Vatican, the Catholic church exonerates the Jews of collective responsibility in the killing of Christ.
17 Sept.
Stephanos Stephanopoulos becomes Greek prime minister.
21-22
Sept. India and Pakistan agree to a UN-sponsored cease-fire in Kashmir.
14 Oct.
Paul Cezanne's Maisons a PEstaque sets a new world's auction record for impressionist art.
15 Oct.
Soviet writer Mikhail Sholokhov wins the Nobel Prize for literature.
25 Oct.
The United Nations Children's Fund wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
12 Nov.
Philippine senator Ferdinand Marcos wins his country's presidential election,
24 Nov.
Soviet officials sentence U.S. tourist Newcomb Mott to eighteen months in prison for crossing the Soviet border without authorization.
27 Nov.
The Vatican recovers stolen manuscripts by Italian poets Petrarch and Torquato Tasso.
30 Nov.
France calls on the United States to pull out of Vietnam.
10 Dec.
It is reported that the role of the South Vietnamese army in its war with the North has diminished greatly as the U.S. troop buildup continues.
15 Dec.
British author W. Somerset Maugham dies in Nice, France, at age ninety-one.
19 Dec.
Five international teams of scientists report having identified indications of the primordial flash that occurred when the universe was born.
19 Dec.
President Charles de Gaulle wins 54.7 percent of the vote in the French presidential elections.
20 Dec.
U.S. field commanders are given permission to pursue enemy troops into Cambodia.
21 Dec.
The Soviet Union pledges to increase aid to North Vietnam.
25 Dec.
Mexico begins a televised literacy program.
27 Dec.
A gas rig collapses in the North Sea, killing thirteen.
30 Dec.
Ferdinand Marcos begins his presidential term in the Philippines.

1966

  • Book of quotations of Chairman Mao is published.
  • Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up is released.
19 Jan.
Indira Gandhi, daughter of former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, is elected prime minister of India.
3 Feb.
An unmanned Soviet craft, Luna 9, makes the first soft landing on the moon.
17 Feb.
France launches its first satellite into orbit.
I Mar.
In the first physical contact with another planet, a Soviet spacecraft crashes onto the surface of Venus.
12 Mar.
France announces that it plans to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
23 Mar.
The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Arthur Michael Ramsey, meets in Rome with Pope Paul VI.
3 Apr.
The Soviet Union's Luna 10 becomes the first man-made object to orbit the moon.
10 Apr.
British novelist Evelyn Waugh dies at age sixty-two in Taunton, Somerset, England.
21 Apr.
The world's third heart-transplant operation is performed in Houston, Texas.
10 May
In a runoff election the Guatemalan Congress elects Mendez Montenegro as president.
13 May
China accuses the United States of violating its airspace and shooting down a Chinese military training plane.
30 May
Two Buddhist monks burn themselves to death in protest over government policies in South Vietnam.
3 June
It is reported that in May a widespread purge called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution took place in Communist China.
6 June
For the first time in the history of Communist China an army official, Lo Juiching, is publicly criticized in the government press.
15 June
The Syrians and Israelis engage in a three-hour sea and air battle in and over the Sea of Galilee.
19 June
South Vietnamese troops end Buddhist resistance in Hue.
28 June
Argentine president Arturo Illia is ousted by a three-man military junta led by Lt. Gen. Juan Carlos Ongania.
29 June
British prime minister Harold Wilson publicly criticizes recent U.S. bombing missions in Vietnam.
30 June
The United States begins to withdraw its military forces from France.
1 July
The United States begins to withdraw troops from the Dominican Republic.
1 July
Congolese president Joseph Mobutu orders that the European names of his country's cities be changed to African names.
4 July
In Belfast, Northern Ireland, a thirty-pound concrete block is dropped on the roof of a car containing Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip; no one is injured.
9 July
Egyptian president Gamal Nasser declares that the Arab countries will never accept Israel as their neighbor.
11 July
In protest over U.S. policy in Vietnam the Soviet Union announces that its athletes will not participate in the eighth annual U.S.-Soviet track meet.
14 July
Welsh nationalists for the first time win a seat in the British House of Commons.
16 July
Communist Chinese officials report that Chairman Mao recently swam fifteen kilometers in an hour and five minutes in the Yangtze River.
18 July
A lawsuit challenging South Africa's right to govern South-West Africa is dismissed by the International Court of Justice.
19 July
Argentina and Great Britain open talks on the future of the Falkland Islands.
12 Aug.
North Korea asserts its independence from both Communist Chinese and Soviet influence and declares that it will follow its own path.
13 Aug.
A parade often thousand East German soldiers marks the fifth anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall.
17 Aug.
North Korea aligns itself with the Soviet Union after accusing Communist China of "Trotskyism."
20 Aug.
It is reported that a majority of Roman Catholics use some form of artificial birth control.
24 Aug.
Pro-Mao Chinese youths called Red Guards continue to carry out the Cultural Revolution by breaking into private homes to destroy all items deemed Western.
30 Aug.
North Vietnam and Communist China sign an aid agreement.
1 Sept.
In a speech delivered in Cambodia, French president Charles de Gaulle urges the United States to withdraw from Vietnam.
6 Sept.
South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd is stabbed to death by an assassin during a session of Parliament.
6 Sept.
Syria announces that a coup attempt organized by Baath party founder Michel Aflak has been crushed.
14 Sept.
New South African prime minister B. J. Vorster pledges to continue his country's apartheid policy.
19 Sept.
The last American troops leave the Dominican Republic.
20 Oct.
Israeli writer Shmuel Agnon wins the Nobel Prize for literature.
22 Oct.
At the United Nations the U.S. delegation opposes sanctions against South Africa on the grounds that they would be counterproductive.
23 Oct.
The International Cancer Congress convenes in Tokyo.
I Nov.
Eight U.S. soldiers are killed by North Koreans in the demilitarized zone.
24 Nov.
U.S. scientists ask Pope Paul VI to reconsider the church's anti—birth control policy.
29 Nov.
In a fifty-seven to forty-seven vote the United Nations refuses Communist China entry into the organization.
Dec.
Dr. Audouin Dollfus of France's Meudon Observatory discovers a tenth satellite of the planet Saturn.
I Dec.
The West German Parliament elects Kurt-Georg Kiesinger as chancellor.
2 Dec.
An agreement on the first international treaty governing the exploration of space is reached at the United Nations.
21 Dec.
An American tourist is sentenced by a Soviet court to three years in a labor camp for having exchanged money on the black market.
26 Dec.
The European Economic Community rejects Spain's application for membership on the grounds that it is not a democracy.

1967

  • Tom Stoppard's play Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead premieres.
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel Cien aiios de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) is published.
  • French painter Rene Magritte dies.
  • The Cultural Revolution in China leads to virtual civil war as anti-Mao peasants repeatedly clash with pro-Mao Red Guards.
4 Jan.
Pope Paul VI bans unorthodox liturgies such as jazz masses.
5 Jan.
Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming opens in New York.
16 Jan.
Lynden Oscar Pindling becomes the first black prime minister of the Bahama Islands.
20 Jan.
Cuba executes Enrique Gonzalez Rodriguez for allegedly acting as an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency.
20 Jan.
In the first meeting between a Roman Catholic pontiff and a Communist head of state, Pope Paul VI confers with Soviet president Nikolai Podgorny.
31 Jan.
Romania becomes the first Eastern Bloc country to recognize West Germany.
3 Feb.
Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson announces the creation of a government commission on the status of women in Canadian society.
13 Feb.
Canada denies entry to LSD proponent Timothy Leary.
21 Feb.
Mao Tse-tung orders Red Guards to cease political activity.
I Mar.
Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is the Message is published.
5 Mar.
Col. Fidel Sanchez Hernandez wins presidential elections in El Salvador.
5 Mar.
Mohammed Mossadegh, prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, dies in Teheran at age eighty-six.
6 Mar.
Svetlana Stalina, only daughter of the late Joseph Stalin, asks for U.S. asylum at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi.
15 Mar.
Artur Da Costa e Silva becomes president of Brazil.
15 Apr.
The Soviets announce that they will introduce a profit system in 390 state farms.
19 Apr.
Konrad Adenauer, former chancellor of West Germany, dies in Rhondorf, West Germany, at age ninety-one.
20 Apr.
Rene Ribiere and Gaston Deferre, two French politicians, fight a duel after a heated argument in the French Assembly; neither man is hurt.
21 Apr.
The interim government of Premier Panayotis Kanellopoulos of Greece is overthrown in a military coup.
24 Apr.
Miniskirts for girls and long hair for boys are banned in Greece.
25 Apr.
Swaziland, a former British colony, becomes a self-governing British protectorate.
26 Apr.
Eugene Blake, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, calls on the United States to stop the bombing in North Vietnam.
19 May
U.S. planes bomb downtown Hanoi.
5 June
The Six Day War between Israel and Syria, Jordan, and the United Arab Republic begins; Israel expands its borders as a result.
17 June
China detonates its first hydrogen bomb.
23-25 Jun
President Johnson and Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin meet in Glassboro, New Jersey, about arms control, Vietnam, and the Middle East.
26 June
U.S. and Panamanian officials meet to discuss passing U.S. control of the Panama Canal to Panama.
28 June
Jerusalem is reunited with Israel.
4 July
Britain's House of Commons passes a bill that eliminates criminal charges for private homosexual acts between consenting adults.
24 July
French president de Gaulle, during a visit to Canada, proclaims "Long live free Quebec" in Montreal; Canadian prime minister Lester B. Pearson condemns the statement.
25 July
During a visit to Turkey, Pope Paul VI becomes the first Roman Catholic pontiff to enter an Eastern Orthodox church.
3 Aug.
President Johnson announces that the United States will send forty-five thousand to fifty thousand more men to Vietnam.
6-7 Aug.
A Colombian plane is hijacked by five supporters of Fidel Castro and forced to land in Cuba.
27 Aug.
India sets up camps for nearly five hundred Tibetans who left their country due to persecution from China's Red Guards.
17 Sept.
In Kayseri, Turkey, forty-two people are killed and more than six hundred wounded during riots at a soccer game.
20 Sept.
The British luxury liner the Queen Elizabeth II is launched.
23 Sept.
North Vietnam and the Soviet Union agree that the Soviet Union will continue to provide North Vietnam with military and economic assistance.
24 Sept.
The Organization of American States agrees to fight Cuban-promoted revolutionary activities in the Western Hemisphere.
9 Oct.
Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara is executed by Bolivian troops.
18 Oct.
The Soviet Union lands a spacecraft on the surface of Venus, revealing that the atmosphere consists largely of carbon dioxide and that temperatures range from 104° to 536° Fahrenheit.
21 Oct.
The discovery of a new Dead Sea scroll is announced.
26 Oct.
The shah of Iran proclaims himself king of kings and makes his wife his country's first crowned queen.
31 Oct.
Queen Elizabeth II announces that membership in the House of Lords by heredity will be eliminated.
3 Dec.
Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the world's first successful heart transplant on Louis Washkansky in Cape Town, South Africa.
11 Dec.
The first supersonic airliner, the Concorde, is unveiled by Britain and France.
17 Dec.
Australian prime minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming and is assumed dead.
21 Dec.
Heart-transplant recipient Louis Washkansky dies of pneumonia.

1968

  • Britain's Theatres Act ends the lord chamberlain's censorship powers.
  • The Aswan Dam in Egypt is completed.
  • The gross national product of Japan climbs 12 percent, making the country second only to the United States economically.
  • The West German Volkswagen accounts for 57 percent of automobiles imported into the United States and outsells many domestic models.
1 Jan.
C. Day Lewis becomes Great Britain's poet laureate.
5 Jan.
The Czechoslovak Communist party elects Alexander Dubcek as its first secretary, indicating a movement toward political liberalization in Czechoslovakia.
12 Jan.
Martin Bubers A Be/ieving Humanism is published by Simon and Schuster.
21 Jan.
The North Vietnamese launch a massive attack against a U.S. marine base at Kesanh.
23 Jan.
The U.S. intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo is captured by North Korean patrol boats.
30 Jan.
A major Tet offensive is launched as North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces attack numerous cities in South Vietnam.
31 Jan.
The U.S. embassy in Saigon is overrun and held for six hours by Viet Cong.
6 Feb.
Six American soldiers opposed to U.S. involvement in Vietnam are granted asylum by the Swedish government.
6 Feb.
The scheduled publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Cancer Ward in a Soviet literary magazine is canceled by Soviet officials.
8-11 Mar.
Thousands of students in Poland fight police in protests against Communist party involvement in cultural matters.
16 Mar.
Hundreds of men, women, and children in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai are massacred by U.S. soldiers under orders from Lt. William L. Calley, Jr.; the news is suppressed for more than a year.
27 Mar.
Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, dies in a plane crash.
6 Apr.
Pierre Trudeau is elected leader of Canada's Liberal party; he becomes the new prime minister on 20 April.
21 Apr.
The International Olympic Committee recommends that South Africa be excluded from the 1968 games.
23 Apr.
In shifting to a decimal monetary system, Britain issues its first five- and ten-pence coins.
27 Apr.
Britain legalizes most abortions.
26 June
I wo Jima is returned to Japan after more than twenty-three years of U.S. administration.
29 July
In an encyclical letter Pope Paul VI says that Roman Catholics should limit the sizes of their families only by abstinence or the rhythm method.
20-22 Aug.
Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia.
22 Aug.
In a visit to Colombia, Pope Paul VI becomes the first Roman Catholic pontiff to visit South America.
24 Aug.
France becomes the fifth nation to possess nuclear weapons.
29 Sept.
Greek voters support a new constitution that limits their rights and strips the king of most of his power.
9 Oct.
Five Soviet citizens are arrested for protesting the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
16 Dec.
The Spanish government reverses a 1492 order expelling Jews from the country.
27 Dec.
The United States announces that it will sell fifty fighter jets to Israel.

1969

  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is removed from the Soviet Writers' Union.
  • Samuel Beckett receives the Nobel Prize for literature.
  • The Museum of Modern Art in New York purchases the art collection of the late expatriate writer Gertrude Stein for $6 million.
  • Federico Fellini's film Satyricon is released.
  • Ken Russell's movie Women in Love is released.
  • Yasser Arafat is elected chair of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
12 Jan.
Approximately five thousand people march in London to protest discrimination against nonwhites; hundreds clash with police.
17 Mar.
Golda Meir is sworn in as premier of Israel.
28 Apr.
Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France after voters reject his proposed constitutional reforms.
1 July
Queen Elizabeth II makes her son Charles Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.
7 July
Canada's House of Commons approves a bill making French the second official language.
14 July
El Salvadoran troops invade Honduran territory.
20 July
U.S. astronauts make the first manned landing on the moon.
22 July
Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain names Prince Juan Carlos as his successor to lead the country.
31 July
Pope Paul VI is the first Roman Catholic pontiff to visit Africa.
3 Sept.
North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh dies at age seventy-nine.
17 Oct.
A subsidiary of the Gulf Oil Corporation, the Bolivia Gulf Company, is taken over by the Bolivian government.
31 Oct.
A U.S. Marine hijacks a jet from California to Rome in the first transatlantic hijacking.
3 Nov.
President Richard M. Nixon appeals to "the great silent majority of my fellow Americans" to support his policies on Vietnam and his social policies.