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Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar.
[edit] Events of 1966
[edit] January
- January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts President David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic.
- January 2 - A strike of public transportation workers in New York City begins (it will end January 13).
- January 3 - The first Acid Test is conducted at the Fillmore, San Francisco.
- January 4
- January 10
- January 11
- January 12 - Lyndon Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.
- January 13 - Robert C. Weaver becomes the first African American Cabinet member, by being appointed United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
- January 15 - A violent military coup is staged in Nigeria.
- January 17 - The Nigerian coup is overturned.
- January 17 - A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares, and 1 into the sea, in the Palomares hydrogen bombs incident.
- January 17 - Carl Brashear, the first African American United States Navy diver, is involved in an accident during the recovery of a lost h-bomb which results in the amputation of his leg.
- January 18 - French police announce that Georges Figon committed suicide, prior to his arrest in the kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka.
- January 18 - About 8,000 U.S. soldiers land in South Vietnam; U.S. troops now total 190,000.
- January 19 - Indira Gandhi is elected Prime Minister of India; she is sworn in January 24.
- January 19 - Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies resigns.
- January 20 - Demonstrations occur against high food prices in Hungary.
- January 21 - Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro resigns due to a power struggle in his party.
- January 22 - The military government of Nigeria announces that ex-prime minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was killed during the coup.
- January 22 - The Chadian Muslim insurgent group FROLINAT is founded in Sudan, starting the Chadian Civil War.
- January 26 - Harold Holt becomes Prime Minister of Australia when Robert Menzies retires.
- January 26 - Beaumont children disappearance: Three children disappear on their way to Glenelg Beach, South Australia, never to be seen again.
- January 27 - The British government promises the U.S. that British troops in Malaysia will stay until more peaceful conditions occur in the region.
- January 29 - The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opens at the Palace Theatre in New York City.
- January 31 - The United Kingdom ceases all trade with Rhodesia.
[edit] February
- March 1 - Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashes on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.
- March 1 - The Ba'ath Party takes power in Syria.
- March 2 - Kwame Nkrumah arrives in Guinea and is granted asylum.
- March 4 - The Beatles: In an interview published in The London Evening Standard, John Lennon comments, "We're more popular than Jesus now," eventually sparking a controversy in the United States.
- March 5 - A massive theft of nuclear materials is revealed in Brazil.
- March 5 - Merci Chérie by Udo Jürgens (music by Udo Jürgens, text by Udo Jürgens and Thomas Hörbiger) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1966 for Austria.
- March 7 - Charles De Gaulle asks U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson for negotiations about the state of NATO equipment in France.
- March 8 - Anti-communist demonstrations occur at the Indonesian Foreign Ministry.
- March 8 - Ronald Kray, one of the Kray twins, shoots rival gangster George Cornell; the incident leads to the brother's incarceration.[citation needed]
- March 8 - Vietnam War: Australia announces it will substantially increase its number of troops in Vietnam.
- March 8 - An Irish Republican Army bomb destroys Nelson's Pillar in Dublin.
- March 9 - Ronnie Kray murders George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub.[citation needed]
- March 10 - Crown Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands marries Claus von Amsberg. Some spectators demonstrate against the groom because he is German.
- March 11 - Indonesian President Sukarno gives all executive powers to General Suharto.
- March 11 - French President Charles De Gaulle states that French troops will be taken out of NATO and that all French NATO bases and HQ's must be closed within a year.
- March 12 - Bobby Hull of the Chicago Blackhawks sets the NHL single season scoring record against the New York Rangers with his 51st goal.
- March 13 - The 1956 film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, adapted from their stage musical, is shown on network TV for the first time by ABC-TV. It will be repeated just three months later.
- March 16 - Gemini 8 (David Scott, Neil Armstrong) docks with an Agena target satellite.
- March 17 - More anti-communist demonstrations occur in Indonesia.
- March 17 - Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the DSV Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.
- March 19 - The Texas Western Miners defeat the Kentucky Wildcats with 5 black starters, ushering in desegregation in athletic recruiting.
- March 22 - In Washington, DC, General Motors President James M. Roche appears before a Senate subcommittee, and apologizes to consumer advocate Ralph Nader for the company's intimidation and harassment campaign against him.
- March 23 - Pope Paul VI and Arthur Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, meet in Rome.
- March 26 - Demonstrations are held across the United States against the Vietnam War.
- March 27 - In South Vietnam, 20,000 Buddhists march in demonstrations against the policies of the military government.
- March 28 - Indira Gandhi visits Washington, DC.
- March 29 - The 23rd Communist Party Conference is held in the Soviet Union; Leonid Brezhnev demands that U.S. troops leave Vietnam, and announces that Chinese-Soviet relations are not satisfying.
- March 31 The Labour Party under Harold Wilson wins the British General Election.
- March 31 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
- May 1 - Floods occur on the Finnish coast.
- May 3 - Swinging Radio England and Britain Radio commence broadcasting on AM, with a combined potential 100,000 watts, from the same ship anchored off the south coast of England in international waters.
- May 3 - Richard Chams Local Resident
- June 1 - The final new episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show airs (the first episode aired on October 3, 1961).
- June 2 - Éamon de Valera is re-elected as Irish president.
- June 2 - Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first spacecraft to soft land on another world.
- June 2 - Four former cabinet ministers are executed in Zaire, for alleged involvement in a plot to kill Mobutu Sese Seko.
- June 3 - Joaquín Balaguer is elected president of the Dominican Republic.
- June 5 - Gemini 9: Gene Cernan completes the second U.S. spacewalk (2 hours, 7 minutes).
- June 6 - Civil rights activist James Meredith is shot while trying to march across Mississippi.
- June 8 - An XB-70 Valkyrie prototype is destroyed in a mid-air collision with a F-104 Starfighter chase plane during a photo shoot. NASA pilot Joseph A. Walker and USAF test pilot Carl Cross are both killed.
- June 8 - Topeka, Kansas is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita Scale: the first to exceed US $100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed. [1]
- June 13 - Miranda v. Arizona: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
- June 14 - The Vatican abolishes the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (index of banned books).
- June 17 - An Air France personnel strike begins.
- June 18 - CIA chief William Raborn resigns - Richard Helms becomes his successor. (2)- Phyllis and Joe Miele are Married.
- June 20-July 1 - French President Charles De Gaulle visits the Soviet Union.
- June 21 - Opposition leader Arthur Calwell is shot after attending a political meeting in Mosman, Sydney, Australia.
- June 28 - In Argentina, a junta deposes president Arturo Umberto Illia in a coup, and appoints General Juan Carlos Ongania to lead.
- June 29 - A sailors' strike, organised by the National Union of Seamen, ends in the United Kingdom.
- June 29 - Vietnam War: U.S. planes begin bombing Hanoi and Haiphong.
- June 30 - France formally leaves NATO.
- June 30 - The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded in Washington, DC.
- July 1 - Joaquin Balaguer becomes president of the Dominican Republic.
- July 3 - Rene Barrientos is elected president of Bolivia.
- July 4 - North Vietnam declares general mobilization.
- July 4 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act, which goes into effect the following year.
- July 4 - Romania's premier Nicolae Ceausescu proposes dissolution of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact alliance in a meeting of Warsaw Pact powers at Bucharest.
- July 6 - Malawi becomes a republic.
- July 7 - A Warsaw Pact conference ends with a promise to support North Vietnam.
- July 9 - Dr Stephen Wilson is born.
- July 11 - The 1966 FIFA World Cup begins in England.
- July 12 - Indira Gandhi visits Moscow.
- July 12 - Zambia threatens to leave the Commonwealth of Nations because of British peace overtures to Rhodesia.
- July 12 - U.S. Lieutenant Major W.H. Whalen is arrested for spying.
- July 14 - Israeli and Syrian jet fighters clash over the Jordan River.
- July 14 - Richard Speck murders 8 student nurses in their Chicago dormitory.
- July 14 - Gwynfor Evans becomes member of Parliament for Carmarthen, the first Plaid Cymru MP in the UK.
- July 16 - British Prime Minister Harold Wilson flies to Moscow to try to start peace negotiations about the Vietnam War (the Soviet government refutes his ideas).
- July 17 - Richard Speck is arrested; he tries to commit suicide but fails.
- July 17 - Shawn Whalen is born in Baltimore,Maryland
- July 18 - Gemini 10 (John Young, Michael Collins) launched. After docking with an Agena rocket stage, they then set a world altitude record of 474 miles (763 km).
- July 18 - The Hough Riots break out in Cleveland, Ohio, the city's first race riot.
- July 19 - A Chinese delegate in the Netherlands, Liu en-Tsiu, is declared persona non grata because of the death of a Chinese engineer in unclear circumstances; there are claims that he was kidnapped and taken to the delegate's office.
- July 22 - The Chinese government declares Dutch delegate G. J. Jongejans persona non grata, but tells him not to leave the country before a group of Chinese engineers has left the Netherlands.
- July 23 - Katangese troops in Stanleyville, Congo, revolt for several weeks in support of the exiled minister Moise Tshombe.
- July 24 - U.N. Secretary General U Thant visits Moscow.
- July 26 - Lord Gardiner issues the Practice Statement in the House of Lords, stating that the House is not bound to follow its own previous precedent.
- July 28 - The U.S. announces that a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance plane has disappeared over Cuba.
- July 29 - The Nigerian army rebels and executes head of state General Aguiyi-Ironsi.
- July 29 - Bob Dylan breaks his neck and nearly dies in a motorcycle accident near Woodstock, New York. He isn't seen in public for over a year.
- July 30 - England beats West Germany 4-2 to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup at Wembley after extra time.
[edit] August
- August 1 - Sniper Charles Whitman kills 13 from the University of Texas at Austin Main Building.
- August 1 - A military coup occurs in Nigeria; General Yakubu Gowon takes over.
- August 2 - The Spanish government forbids overflights of British military aircraft.
- August 5 - Martin Luther King Jr. leads a civil rights march in Chicago, during which he is struck by a rock thrown from an angry white mob.
- August 5 - The Beatles release the legendary Revolver album in the United Kingdom.[2]
- August 5 - Mao Zedong launches a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to purge and reorganize China's Communist Party.
- August 6 - Braniff Airlines Flight 250 crashes in Falls City, Nebraska, killing all 42 on board.
- August 6 - Rene Barrientos takes office as the president of Bolivia.
- August 6 - The Tagus River Bridge opens in Lisbon, Portugal.
- August 7 - Race riots occur in Lansing, Michigan.
- August 10 - An East German court sentences Günter Laudahn to life imprisonment for spying for the United States.
- August 10 - Lunar Orbiter 1, the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit another world, is launched.
- August 11 - The Beatles hold a press conference in Chicago, during which John Lennon apologizes for his "more popular than Jesus" remark, saying, "I didn't mean it as a lousy anti-religious thing."
- August 12 - Massacre of Braybrook Street: Harry Roberts, John Duddy and Jack Witney shoot dead 3 plain clothes policemen in London; they are later sentenced to life imprisonment.
- August 13 - In the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong begins the Cultural Revolution.
- August 13 An earthquake in Turkey kills 2,394 and injures 10,000.
- August 15 - Syrian and Israeli troops clash over Lake Genesaret for 3 hours.
- August 15 - It is announced that the New York Herald Tribune will not resume publication.
- August 16 - Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee starts investigating Americans who have aided the Viet Cong, with the intent to make these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 are arrested.
- August 17 - Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Republic begin negotiations in Kuwait to end the war in Yemen.
- August 18 - Vietnam War: D Company, 6th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, meets and defeats a Viet Cong force estimated to be 4 times larger, at the Battle of Long Tan in Phuoc Tuy Province, Republic of Vietnam.
- August 19 - An earthquake in eastern Turkey destroys whole cities.
- August 21 - Seven men are sentenced to death in Egypt, for anti-Nasser agitation.
- August 22 - The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), predecessor of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), is formed.
- August 26 - Riots occur in French Somaliland.
- August 29 - The Beatles play their very last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California.
- August 30 - France offers independence to French Somaliland.
[edit] September
- September 1 - United Nations Secretary-General U Thant declares that he will not seek re-election, because U.N. efforts in Vietnam have failed.
- September 1 - 98 British tourists die in an air crash in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia.
- September 6 - In Cape Town, the South African architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death by Dimitri Tsafendas during a parliamentary meeting.
- September 8 - Star Trek, the classic science fiction television series, debuts with its first episode, titled "The Man Trap."
- September 9 - NATO decides to move SHAPE headquarters to Belgium.
- September 12 - September 15 - Gemini 11 (Richard Gordon, Pete Conrad) docks with an Agena target vehicle.
- September 12 - Five Star General Omar Bradley marries actress Esther "Kitty" Buhler in San Diego, California.
- September 13 - Balthazar Johannes Vorster becomes the new South African Prime Minister.
- September 13 - TASS reports on clashes between the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Guards.
- September 16 - In South Vietnam, Thich Tri Quang begins a 100-day hunger strike.
- September 16 - The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City to the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera, Antony and Cleopatra.
- September 18 - Valerie Percy, the 21-year-old daughter of Senator Charles H. Percy, is stabbed and bludgeoned to death in the family mansion on Chicago's North Shore.
- September 19 - Scotland Yard arrests Ronald Edwards, suspected of involvement in the Great Train Robbery.
- September 30-October 1 (midnight) - Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer are released from Spandau Prison.
- September 30 - Botswana achieves independence.
[edit] October
- October - Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton found the Black Panther Party.
- October 3 - Tunisia severs diplomatic relations with the United Arab Republic.
- October 4 - Israel applies for the outer membership of the EEC.
- October 4 - Basutoland becomes independent and takes the name Lesotho.
- October 5 - UNESCO signs the Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers. This event is now celebrated as World Teachers' Day.
- October 7 - The Soviet Union declares that all Chinese students must leave the country before the end of October.
- October 11 - France and the Soviet Union sign a treaty for cooperation in nuclear research.
- October 14 - The city of Montreal inaugurates its metro system (see Montreal Metro).
- October 15 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill creating the United States Department of Transportation.
- October 15 - U.S. Congress passes a bill for the creation of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to be created.
- October 15 - ABC-TV telecasts a highly-acclaimed ninety-minute television adaptation of the musical Brigadoon, starring Robert Goulet, Peter Falk, and Sally Ann Howes. It wins many Emmy Awards, is repeated just five months later, and inaugurates a short-lived series of special television adaptations of famous Broadway musicals on ABC. The other television adaptations are Carousel, Kismet, and Kiss Me Kate. Goulet stars in all but one of these specials.
- October 16 - Grace Slick performs live for the first time with Jefferson Airplane.
- October 17 - Lesotho and Botswana are admitted to the United Nations.
- October 21 - The Aberfan disaster occurs in South Wales, United Kingdom.
- October 22 - British spy George Blake escapes from Wormwood Scrubs prison; he is next seen in Moscow.
- October 22 - Spain demands that the United Kingdom stop military flights to Gibraltar; Britain refuses the next day.
- October 24 - Negotiations about the Vietnam War begin in Manila, Philippines.
- October 25 - A military court in Jakarta sentences ex-foreign minister Subandrio to death.
- October 25 - Spain closes its Gibraltar border to non-pedestrian traffic.
- October 26 - NATO moves its HQ from Paris to Brussels.
- October 27 - The United Nations takes Namibia from South Africa.
- October 29 - The Guinean delegation to the OAU meeting in Ethiopia, become hostages of the Ghanaian government in Accra.
[edit] November
- November 2 - The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
- November 4 - The Arno river floods Florence, damaging many art treasures.
- November 5 - Thirty-eight African states demand that the United Kingdom use force against the Rhodesian government.
- November 6 - Lunar Orbiter 2 is launched.
- November 8 - Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
- November 8 - Actor Ronald Reagan, a Republican, is elected Governor of California.
- November 11 - A mine kills 3 Israeli paratroopers on the West Bank border.
- November 11 - Spain declares general amnesty for crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War (effective only for the Falangists' side).
- November 15 - Gemini 12 (James A. Lovell, Buzz Aldrin), splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean, 600 km east of the Bahamas.
- November 15 - Harry Maurice Roberts, who killed 3 policemen in August, is caught near London.
- November 15 - A Boeing 727 carrying Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Berlin, Germany, killing all three people on board.
- November 16 - U.S. doctor Sam Sheppard is acquitted in his second trial for the murder of his pregnant wife in 1954.
- November 17 - The U.N. General Assembly decides to found the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.
- November 17 - A spectacular Leonid meteor shower passes over Arizona, at the rate of 2,300 a minute for 20 minutes.
- November 21 - The army crushes an attempted coup in Togo.
- November 28 - Truman Capote's Black and White Ball ('The Party of the Century') is held in New York City.
- November 30 - Barbados achieves independence.
[edit] December
