1963 | Political Events
Political Events
The White House issues an order February 8 prohibiting travel to Cuba and making it illegal for U.S. citizens to have commercial or financial transactions with Cuba (see 1962; 1977).
President Kennedy broadens eligibility for the Medal of Freedom established by former president Truman in 1945. Executive Order 11085 issued February 22 permits a president to award the civilian decoration to 1) any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, or 2) world peace, or 3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.
The nuclear-powered submarine U.S.S. Thresher sinks April 10 in 8,400 feet of water 220 miles off Cape Cod, killing all 129 men aboard in the worst submarine disaster of all time. The ship has put to sea with no sure way of blowing water out of her ballast tanks in an emergency at low depths; the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has failed to test silver-brazed joints with sound waves.
"Ich bin ein Berliner," President Kennedy says June 26 in a speech at West Berlin during a 4-day visit to West Germany. Kennedy pledges support for efforts to defend West Berlin from communist encroachment, reunify Germany, and work toward European unity (but while his statement is intended to convey the idea that he shares the troubles of Berliners it literally means, "I am a jelly doughnut"). West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer resigns October 16 at age 87 and is succeeded by Ludwig Erhard, now 66.
British journalist H. A. R. Philby disappears from Beirut; the Soviet Union gives him asylum July 30.
The Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty signed at Moscow August 5 by Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union bans all above-ground nuclear testing. Michigan-born scientist Jerome (Bert) Wiesner, 51, has helped to draft the treaty, whose terms also ban testing in outer space and underwater. More than 100 other governments sign the treaty within a few months, but not France or the People's Republic of China (see Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1968). Senate minority leader Everett M. Dirksen, now 67, (R. Ill.) plays a crucial role in securing ratification of the treaty.
President Kennedy answers questions about Vietnam on CBS television September 2 and 9: "I don't think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there," he says. "In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it—the people of Vietnam—against the communists."
Admiral Alan G. Kirk, U.S. Navy (ret.), dies at New York September 15 at age 74; congressman Francis E. Walter (D. Pa.) has died at Washington, D.C., May 31 at age 69.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22 ends a 34-month administration that has initiated domestic social programs that Kennedy's successor will carry out. The 46-year-old president slumps in the seat of his open Lincoln Continental as his motorcade approaches the Dallas World Trade Center for a scheduled speech, the rifle bullets that killed him are believed to have come from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Elm Street, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, now 55, is sworn in as president on Air Force One en route to Washington by a judge who reads the oath of office from a copy of the World Almanac. Jacqueline Kennedy, now 34, impresses the world with her stoicism following her husband's assassination. She required two units of blood after giving birth by Cesarean section in August to a third child, who was premature and died after 1½ days. Having planned and conducted the restoration of the White House during JFK's brief 1,000 days in office, the first lady stands beside President Johnson as he takes the oath of office and then plans the state funeral for her late husband, whose body she cradled after he was shot. President Kennedy's alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, is a Marine Corps veteran who has spent some time in the USSR, married the daughter of a KGB colonel, and handed out literature for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee at his native New Orleans. He has used a $20 mail-order rifle to pick off the president, and Dallas police arrest him 80 minutes after the assassination on charges of having killed patrolman J. D. Tippit. Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby, 52, shoots Oswald to death with a handgun November 24 in the basement of the Dallas city jail as police are moving the suspect to safer quarters, and millions watch the shooting on television (see Warren Commission, 1964).
British Labour Party leader Hugh (Todd Naylor) Gaitskell dies of kidney complications related to pleurisy and pericarditis at London January 18 at age 56, having persuaded his party to reverse its stand favoring unilateral disarmament. Politicians who include Richard (Howard Stafford) Crossman, 55, push to make economist (James) Harold Wilson, 46, the party leader.
British statesman Herbert L. Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel (of Carmel and of Toxeth), dies at London February 5 at age 92; former general Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough at his native London March 18 at age 92, having outlived most of his critics; World War II commander-in-chief of New Zealand forces (and governor-general of New Zealand from 1946 to 1952) Bernard C. Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg, dies at Windsor July 4 at age 74.
Britain's Profumo-Christine Keeler scandal makes world headlines. The war minister Lord John Dennis Profumo, 48, is charged with having been intimate with call girl Christine Keeler, 21, to whom he was introduced by Viscount Astor's osteopath friend Stephen Ward who has his own cottage at Astor's Cliveden estate and whose mistress, model Marilyn "Mandy" Rice-Davies, 18, is Keeler's flatmate (she has previously been mistress to the notorious London slumlord Peter Rachman, and when told in court that Lord Astor has denied knowing her, she replies, "He would, wouldn't he?"). Facing charges that he lived off immoral earnings, Ward claims that Profumo has used his flat to meet Keeler. Profumo is married to actress Valerie Hobson, 46, but the real scandal arises from the fact that Keeler is sleeping with Soviet naval attaché Evgeny "Honeybear" Ivanov, a known spy attached to the Russian embassy, who has asked Keeler to find out from Profumo when nuclear warheads will be delivered to West Germany. Profumo confesses to the affair and resigns in early June; Keeler draws a 9-month sentence in December for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Britain's prime minister Harold Macmillan, now 69, resigns for reasons of health October 18. Queen Elizabeth asks Sir Alexander Douglas Home, 60, earl of Home, to form a new cabinet; he resigns his peerages, calls himself Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and is the first prime minister to have a seat neither in the House of Lords nor the Commons.
Three-time French premier Camille Chautemps dies at Washington, D.C., July 1 at age 88; former French premier Robert Schuman of 1950 Schuman Plan fame of a cerebral blood clot near Metz September 4 at age 77; former French governor general of Indochina Jean Decoux at Paris October 21 at age 79.
Former Italian minister of justice Aldo Moro heads a Christian Democratic Party-led government that takes office December 4. Still only 47, Moro has served in cabinets since 1954, put through sweeping reforms in the country's prison system, and will remain prime minister until June 1968.
Turkey's premier Inönü survives repeated assassination attempts and a constitutional crisis but finds it impossible to govern with only minority support (see 1961). The Justice Party formed 2 years ago makes broad gains in the country's elections, the ruling coalition breaks up, and Inönü forms a new minority government from his own Republican Peasants' National Party with support from the New Turkey Party (see 1965).
A military coup d'état at Baghdad February 9 overthrows the government of Iraq's prime minister Abdul al-Karim Quasim, who is killed at age 48 (see 1959). The Kurdish revolt that began nearly 2 years ago has kept the army bogged down, Quasim has depended on the army's support, but military purges have driven many officers into open opposition to the Kassem regime. Abd ar-Rahman Arif returns from exile, and his Baath Party takes power briefly with help from Saddam Hussein, now 25, who resumes his studies at Baghdad. Arif and his Baathist thugs torture and kill thousands of communists and left-wing sympathizers, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, 48, becomes prime minister for 10 months, but the Baathists are then overthrown and Hussein is among those imprisoned by the new regime of President Arif, who will head the government until his death in a helicopter crash in 1966 (Arif's brother will then take over and rule until 1968).
Israel's Ukrainian-born president Itzhak Ben-Zvissak (Itzhak Shinsheglevitz) dies of stomach cancer at Jerusalem April 23 at age 78; Premier David Ben Gurion resigns June 16 at age 76 and is succeeded by Ukrainian-born former finance minister Levi Eshkol (Levi Shkolnik), 67. Israeli and Syrian forces clash August 20 along the demilitarized zone north of the Sea of Galilee, but UN truce observers persuade both sides to accept a cease-fire August 25.
"Learn from Comrade Lei Feng," says China's Chairman Mao March 5. A soldier in the Red Army, Lei Feng stepped out of his truck on a rainy day last year and was killed accidentally when the truck driven by a fellow soldier slipped and knocked down a telephone pole that struck him. Lei Feng's diary was "discovered" after the incident, and an October 20, 1961, entry said, "A person's life is limited, but to serve the people is unlimited." Lei will be hailed for decades as the ultimate, altruistic "model worker," especially when government propagandists need to inspire people in the face of hardships.
Singapore gains independence August 31 and the Federation of Malaysia established formally September 16 joins Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and North Borneo (see 1957; Singapore, 1959). Malayan prime minister Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj, now 60, serves as prime minister of the new federation and will remain such until 1970, but Lee Kuan Yew remains Singapore's PM (see Singapore, 1965; riots, 1969).
The South Vietnam government of Ngo Dinh Diem falls the night of November 1 in a coup engineered by Gen. Duong Van Minh, Nguyen Khanh, and other anticommunist officers. Diem has been president since the republic was proclaimed in 1955, but he has alienated Buddhists by having hundreds of them killed or imprisoned while showing preference toward fellow Roman Catholics (who represent a small minority of the population), has never fulfilled his promises of land reform, and has used heavy-handed and ineffective military tactics to oppose communist insurgents, losing U.S. support; his opponents kill Diem along with his security chief as civil war continues in Vietnam (see Tonkin Gulf, 1964).
Thailand's dictator Sarit Thanarat dies at his native Bangkok December 8 at age 55 after an oppressive 5-year rule in which he has suspended constitutional rights, jailed dissenters without trial on charges of subversion, banned political parties, suppressed opposition newspapers, but encouraged new economic policies that favored private investment, foreign and domestic. He is succeeded as prime minister by Gen. Thanom Kittikachorn, but it will turn out that Sarit was lining his own pocket, and revelations of his corruption will taint the regimes of his successors.
Post-colonial Africa has its first military coup: Togo Army sergeant Etienne Eyadéma, 26, assassinates the country's 60-year-old president Sylvanus Epiphenio Olympio, who has held office since 1960; Eyadéma will seize the presidency for himself early in 1967, Africanize his name to Gnassingbe, and retain office until his death in 2005 despite more than seven attempts on his life.
Moroccan nationalist leader Abd el-Krim dies at Cairo February 6 at age 81 after 37 years in exile.
Zanzibar's sultan dies in July and is succeeded by his son, who will reign briefly as Sayyid Jamshid ibn Abdullah; Zanzibar gains independence December 10 and becomes a member of the British commonwealth (see Tanzania, 1964).
Dahomey (later Benin) has a military coup d'état in October; Col. Christophe Soglo overthrows the government of Hubert Maga, who was elected president in December 1960 and will return to power as part of a triumvirate in 1970 (see 1972).
Kenya achieves independence December 12 after 43 years as a British crown colony. Kikuyu leader Jomo Kenyatta is president of the new republic.
Peru's Popular Action Party candidate Fernando Belaunde Terry wins the June presidential election with 40 percent of the popular vote (see 1956). Now 50, he puts together a reformist coalition, and undertakes a program of land reform and road construction to open the Amazon Valley to settlement, but opposition elements control the Congress and will thwart his efforts (see 1968).
Haiti's president François "Papa Doc" Duvalier moves further toward absolutism late in the year, promoting himself as the semidivine embodiment of the nation (see 1961; 1964).