April 1960

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April 1, 1960: TIROS I opens era of satellite weather images
April 21, 1960: The new city of Brasilia is dedicated
April 8, 1960: Radio telescope picks up signals from Epsilon Eridani

The following events occurred in April 1960:

April 1, 1960 (Friday)
  • The United States launched the first weather satellite, the 270 pound TIROS-1, from Cape Canaveral at 6:40 a.m. EST. The name was an acronym for Television Infra-Red Observation Satellite.[1][2] The same evening, satellite weather photos were introduced to the world, on television, for the first time. Taken from an altitude of 450 miles, the pictures of cloud cover confirmed the spiral pattern of winds in a storm.[3]
  • The 1960 United States Census began. Officially, there were 179,323,175 United States residents on that day.[4]
  • R Griggs & Co. began the production of Dr. Martens boots under licence in the UK. Known as style 1460, the original product is still in production today.[5]
  • Died: Abdul Rahman of Negeri Sembilan, 64, the first Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia, died in office.

April 2, 1960 (Saturday)

April 3, 1960 (Sunday)
  • The Charismatic Movement, also referred to as the "Charismatic Renewal", began when Episcopal Priest Dennis Bennett told his congregation at St. Mark's in Van Nuys, California, that he had experienced Spirit baptism accompanied by speaking in tongues. The media soon covered the event as the intrusion of Pentecostalism into a main line church.[10]
  • Born: Marie Denise Pelletier, Canadian singer, in Montreal
  • Died: Norodom Suramarit, 64, King of Cambodia since 1955. He had been preceded by, and was succeeded by, his son Norodom Sihanouk.

April 4, 1960 (Monday)
  • Senegal signed a transfer of power agreement with France, leading up to the country's independence.
  • Elections in Burma resulted in victory for U Nu, who began his third non-consecutive term as prime minister.
  • Sweden's first three female priests were ordained.
  • At the 32nd Academy Awards ceremony, Ben-Hur won a record eleven Oscars, including Best Picture.
  • Born: Hugo Weaving, Nigerian-born Australian actor, in Ibadan

April 5, 1960 (Tuesday)
  • Choosing between two U.S. Senators, voters in Wisconsin overwhelmingly favored John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts over Hubert Humphrey from neighboring Minnesota, by a margin of 478,118 to 372,034 in the first major primary for the Democratic nomination. Vice-President Nixon was unopposed for the Republican nomination.[11]
  • The name for Oakland, California's new pro football team was announced. The Oakland Señors were renamed the "Raiders" nine days later.[12]
  • Died: Peter Llewelyn Davies, 63, by suicide. His childhood friend, J.M. Barrie, had identified Davies as the inspiration for the name of Peter Pan.

April 6, 1960 (Wednesday)
  • The Short SC.1 VTOL aircraft made its first transition from vertical to horizontal flight and back.
  • Alberto Lleras Camargo, the President of Colombia, addressed a joint session of Congress as part of a 13-day state visit to the United States. Lleras was given a ticker-tape parade in New York on April 11.[1]

April 7, 1960 (Thursday)
  • In an event described as "unique in world postal history", the governments of 70 nations simultaneously issued stamps to commemorate World Refugee Year.[13]
  • Under the Unlawful Organisations Act No 34, the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress parties were banned in South Africa.[14] This resulted in the formation of "Umkonto we Sizwe" ("Spear of the Nation"), the guerrilla wing of the ANC, by Nelson Mandela and others.

April 8, 1960 (Friday)
  • Project Ozma, under the direction of astronomer Frank Drake at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in Green Bank, West Virginia, began a search for extraterrestrial life. After detecting nothing from Tau Ceti, Drake steered the telescope toward Epsilon Eridani and picked up signals at precisely eight times per second. As rumors spread that the Project had picked up signs of intelligent life, Drake was forced to say that he had no comment. The source was later traced to an airplane.[15]
  • In West Germany and the Netherlands signed a border agreement to restore land taken during the Dutch annexation of German territory after World War II. Germany agreed to pay DM 280,000,000 for the return of Elten, Selfkant (Zelfkant), and Suderwick (Zuiderwijk) and as reparations (Wiedergutmachung).[16]

April 9, 1960 (Saturday)

April 10, 1960 (Sunday)
  • The last successful American U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union took place, as a pilot passed near the missile range at Tyuratam. The S-75 Dvina missile batteries that could have downed the plane had not been alerted in time of the intrusion, and several Soviet senior commanders were fired. On May 1, a U-2 plane flown by Francis Gary Powers would be downed.[19]

April 11, 1960 (Monday)
  • A fisherman in Masan, South Korea, discovered the mutilated body of Kim Chu Yol, a high school student who had been killed during March protests against the fraudulent presidential election. A police tear gas shell was visible in Kim's eye socket, and the outrage against the government's brutality triggered a riot. The violence in Masan was then followed by rioting in other South Korean cities.[20]
  • Born: Jeremy Clarkson, English television presenter, in Doncaster
  • Died: Archibald McIndoe, 59, New Zealand plastic surgeon

April 12, 1960 (Tuesday)
  • Eric Peugeot, the four-year-old grandson of French automotive tycoon Jean-Pierre Peugeot of Peugeot, was kidnapped from a playground at Saint-Cloud, near Paris.[21] Eric was released three days later, in exchange for a ransom of $300,000.[22]
  • Candlestick Park, described by one source as "the windiest, coldest, and the most hated baseball stadium in the history of the game" [23] opened at San Francisco, and began a 40-season run as the home of the San Francisco Giants. U.S. Vice-President Richard Nixon (and Republican presidential candidate) threw out the first pitch.
  • The International Court of Justice, more popularly known as the World Court, resolved a dispute between Portugal and India after more than four years, in Portugal's favor, ruling 11–4 that Portuguese officials could cross over India's territory to reach its colonies in Goa, Daman and Diu. The victory was short-lived, as India annexed all three territories the following year.[24]
  • Nine miners were killed in a mining accident at Tower Colliery, Hirwaun, Wales.

April 13, 1960 (Wednesday)

April 14, 1960 (Thursday)

April 15, 1960 (Friday)

April 16, 1960 (Saturday)
  • The "New Realism" artistic movement was founded by art critic Pierre Restany with the publication of his Manifeste des Nouveaux Réalistes.[32]
  • The Sino-Soviet split widened as the Chinese Communist Party journal Red Flag published the editorial Long Live Leninism, an assertion that began with the premise that the Soviet Union had, by pursuing peaceful change, deviated from Lenin's thesis that "so long as imperialism exists, war is inevitable".[33]
  • Born:

April 17, 1960 (Sunday)

April 18, 1960 (Monday)

April 19, 1960 (Tuesday)
Seoul protesters
  • More than 100,000 students in South Korea marched in Seoul in protest over election fraud committed by President Syngman Rhee in the voting of March 15, beginning the "April Revolution". Police fired into the crowds, killing 140 protesters.[37]
  • The People's Republic of China struck oil, five days after workers began drilling at Taching (Daqing).[38]
  • The South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) was formed, with Sam Nujoma as its first president, eventually securing independence for Namibia.[39]
SWAPO flag

April 20, 1960 (Wednesday)
  • Elvis Presley returned to Hollywood for the first time since his return from military service in Germany, to begin filming G.I. Blues.
  • Rebels led by General Jose Maria Castro León seized control of the Venezuelan state of Táchira and its capital, San Cristóbal, and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade other military garrisons to revolt against the government of President Rómulo Betancourt. The uprising was quickly put down.[44]

April 21, 1960 (Thursday)
  • The city of Brasilia was dedicated by President Juscelino Kubitschek, three years after he had directed construction to begin on a new capital city for Brazil. Located 600 miles inland, the city was designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer and urban planner Lucio Costa at a cost of ten billion dollars.[45]
  • After a week in which 6,000 East Germans fled to West Berlin, several DDR police crossed the border and began searching luggage at railroad stations. West Berlin police arrested two of the DDR police, while others fled. The exodus of thousands came after the East German government "collectivized" private farms and businesses and directed landowners and shopkeepers to become employees of state-owned cooperatives.[46]

April 22, 1960 (Friday)
  • The crash of a Belgian DC-4 airliner into a mountainside in Congo killed all 28 passengers and seven crew.[47] The flight had originated in Brussels the night before, with a final destination of Lubumbashi (at the time, called Elisabethville) with stops at Rome, Cairo and Bunia. The plane descended for its approach to Bunia through low clouds and impacted a peak in the Virunga Mountains.
  • France's President Charles De Gaulle was given an enthusiastic welcome by 200,000 people upon his arrival in Washington, D.C., on the fifth day of his tour of the Western Hemisphere. President De Gaulle spoke to a joint session of Congress on April 25, urging nuclear disarmament, and was cheered by more than a million people the next day at a ticker-tape parade in New York.[1]
  • Born:

April 23, 1960 (Saturday)

April 24, 1960 (Sunday)
  • One of the first widely publicized stories of hysterical strength happened in Tampa, Florida, when Mrs. Florence Rogers, a 123-pound woman, lifted one end of a 3,600 pound car that had fallen off of a jack and onto her 16-year-old son, Charles Trotter. Mrs. Rogers, an LPN, fractured several vertebrae in the process.[49]
  • When more than 100 black protesters marched on to a "whites only" beach in Biloxi, Mississippi, for a "wade-in" to force desegregation, they were attacked by several hundred white people, while Harrison County sheriff's deputies at the scene stood by. The violence then spilled over into the most violent riot in Mississippi history. A U.S. Department of Justice suit ended beach segregation the following month.[50]
  • A fraudulent parliamentary election in Laos resulted in a landslide victory for the ruling CDNI Party.[51]
  • Died: Max von Laue, 80, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, 16 days after his car was struck by a motorcyclist.[52]

April 25, 1960 (Monday)
  • The USS Triton (SSRN-586) completed the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.[53]
  • Died: Amānullāh Khān, 67, King of Afghanistan from 1919 to 1929, died 31 years after his forced abdication

April 26, 1960 (Tuesday)
President Rhee
  • Syngman Rhee resigned as President of South Korea after 12 years of dictatorial rule, after a week-long uprising in which 145 students had died.[54] Rhee and his wife were flown out of the country by the United States, and he lived in exile in Hawaii until his death in 1965. Until a new President could be elected, Rhee was replaced in the interim by a former Mayor of Seoul Heo Jeong.[55]
  • The "Manifesto of the Eighteen" was published in Saigon.[56]
  • Born: Affectionately, thoroughbred racehorse and one of only two female horses to earn more than half a million dollars in prize winnings. Between 1962 and 1965, she would win 18 major stakes races, and would later be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame (d. 1979)

April 27, 1960 (Wednesday)
Togo
  • The West African country of French Togoland, a UN trust territory, became independent, as the Togolese Republic was proclaimed at 12:10 a.m. local (and GMT) in Lomé. Sylvanus Olympio became the new nation's first President. The symbolic first raising of the new flag was confounded by tangled ropes and the problem was not resolved until later in the hour.[57]
  • USS Tullibee (SSN-597), the first nuclear-powered electric-drive submarine, was launched from Groton, Connecticut.[58]
  • The Ghanaian constitutional referendum resulted in a vote in favour of replacing the constitutional monarchy with a republic led by a president.

April 28, 1960 (Thursday)
  • The construction of what would become Shea Stadium, at Flushing, Queens, was approved by New York City's Board of Estimate, 20–2, giving the proposed Continental League the chance to launch. The Continental League never played, but the stadium gave the National League the impetus to return to the city, with the New York Mets.
  • Born:
  • Died: Lee Ki-poong, former Vice-President of South Korea, died along with his wife and two sons as part of a suicide pact. Lee, and President Syngman Rhee, had resigned two days earlier in the wake of the April Revolution.

April 29, 1960 (Friday)
  • Italy's new government, led by Fernando Tambroni of the Christian Democrats, narrowly won a vote of confidence, 128–110, in the Italian Senate. Tambroni had quit on April 11, shortly after taking office.[1]

April 30, 1960 (Saturday)
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References
  1. "Chronology—April 1960", The World Almanac and book of fact 1961 pp164–168
  2. "U.S. Puts Weather Satellite in Orbit", Oakland Tribune, April 1, 1960, p1
  3. "Space TV Spots Storm in Midwest—Scores Fabulous 'First'", The Independent (Long Beach, CA), April 2, 1960, p1
  4. census results
  5. Margo DeMello, Feet and Footwear: A Cultural Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2009), p98; Hutchinson Encyclopedia
  6. Britannica Online
  7. Steve Roper, Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber (Mountaineers, 1994), p108
  8. "Police Halt March on Cape Town", Oakland Tribune, April 2, 1960, p1
  9. "Awujale of Ijebuland", KingdomsOfNigeria.com
  10. Ben Lunis, Get Out of the Box (Xulon Press, 2003), p153
  11. "Victory Adds Power To Kennedy Campaign", Oakland Tribune, April 6, 1960, p1
  12. "Grid Team Named 'Oakland Senors'", Oakland Tribune, April 5, 1960, p1; "Now It's Hi, Raiders! (Bye, Senors)", Tribune, April 14, 1960, p1
  13. "70 Nations Issue Stamps Today to Mark 'World Refugee Year'", "The Green Sheet", Milwaukee Journal, April 7, 1960.
  14. African History Archived 2011-08-07 at the Wayback Machine (Most sources give the date as April 8, 1960) -- Hein Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change: The Political Economy of Transition (University of Cape Town Press, 2001), p25
  15. Fred Kaplan, 1959: The Year Everything Changed (J. Wiley & Sons, 2009), pp154–155
  16. Strange Maps
  17. "South Africa Prime Minister Shot Down by White Assassin", Oakland Tribune, April 9, 1960, p1
  18. "1960 NBA Finals: Boston 4, St. Louis 3" Archived 2012-02-21 at WebCite, NBA Encyclopedia: Playoff Edition www.nba.com
  19. Steve Zaloga, Red SAM: The SA-2 Guideline Anti-aircraft Missile (Osprey Publishing, 2007), p9
  20. John Kie-chiang Oh, Korean Politics: The Quest for Democratization and Economic Development (Cornell University Press, 1999), p41
  21. "Grandson of Auto Tycoon Kidnapped", Oakland Tribune, April 13, 1960, p1
  22. "Huge Manhunt in Peugeot Kidnap-- Child Safe", Oakland Tribune, April 15, 1960, p1
  23. Gene Elston, A Stitch in Time: A Baseball Chronology (Halcyon Press, 2006), p84
  24. Terry D. Gill, Rosenne's The World Court: What it is and How it Works (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2003), pp152–154
  25. "U.S. Navigation Satellite in Orbit", Oakland Tribune, April 13, 1960, p1
  26. Jan Van Sickle, GPS for Land Surveyors (CRC Press, 2001) p88
  27. Robert McKenna, The Dictionary of Nautical Literacy (McGraw-Hill, 2001), p287
  28. Arvid Nelson, Cold War Ecology: Forests, Farms, & People in the East German Landscape, 1945–1989 (Yale University Press, 2005), p111
  29. BroadwayMusicalHome.com
  30. Arthur M. Woodford, This Is Detroit, 1701–2001 (Wayne State University Press, 2001), p198
  31. Klaus P. Fischer, America in White, Black, and Gray: The Stormy 1960s (Continuum International, 2006), pp108–109
  32. "Neo-Dada Performance Art", by Gunter Berghaus, in Neo-avant-garde (Rodopi, 2006), p84
  33. K. R. Sharma, China: Revolution to Revolution (Mittal Publications, 1989), p34
  34. Richard Crouse, Big Bang, Baby: Rock Trivia (Hounslow Press, 2000), 79–80
  35. Edward Lawson, Encyclopedia of Human Rights (2d. Ed., Taylor & Francis, 1996), p488
  36. Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (PublicAffairs, 2003) p112
  37. "Korean Rioters Defy Rhee", Oakland Tribune, April 19, 1960, p1
  38. Edward Vernoff and Peter J. Seybolt, Through Chinese Eyes: Tradition, Revolution, and Transformation (CITE Books, 2007), p131
  39. Alan Rake, African Leaders: Guiding the New Millennium (Scarecrow Press, 2001) p176
  40. Safety Network
  41. "Boston Athletic Association". Archived from the original on 2002-03-29. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
  42. R. J. Bray, et al. Plasma Loops in the Solar Corona (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p17
  43. Shri Ram Sharma, India-China relations: 1972–1991, p32
  44. Robert J. Alexander, Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela (Transaction Books, 1982), pp478–80
  45. E. Bradford Burns, A History of Brazil (Columbia University Press, 1993), p404
  46. "German Reds Try To Stop Exodus", Oakland Tribune, April 21, 1960, p1
  47. Aviation Safety Database
  48. UnknownExploers.com
  49. "Mother Lifts 3,600-Lb. Car", Pacific Stars and Stripes, April 27, 1960, p3; "My Mother Saved My Life", by Charles Trotter as told to John M. Ross, Family Weekly Magazine, August 28, 1960, pp12–13; David S. Goldstein, M.D., Adrenaline and the Inner World: An Introduction to Scientific Integrative Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) p71
  50. "Swim Attempts Trigger Race Brawl", Tucson Daily Citizen, April 25, 1960, p1; Walter Rucker and James Nathaniel Upton, Encyclopedia of American Race Riots (Greenwood Press, 2007), Vol. 1, p32
  51. Arthur J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Indiana University Press, 2001), p386
  52. Bergt Samuelsson and Michael Sohlman, eds, Nobel Lectures: Physics 1901–1921 (World Scientific, 1998), p359
  53. Naval Historical Foundation Archived April 17, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  54. "Korean Mobs Riot, Celebrate As Rhee Agrees to Resign", Oakland Tribune, April 26, 1960, p1
  55. "Rhee Retires; Aide In Family Suicide", Oakland Tribune, April 28, 1960, p1
  56. Seth Jacobs, Cold war mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the origins of America's war in Vietnam (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
  57. "Togoland Proclaims Freedom", Pacific Stars and Stripes, April 28, 1960, p1; U.S. Department of State
  58. USS Tullibee home page; "Navy's First Killer A-Sub Launched", Oakland Tribune, April 27, 1960, p1
  59. "Paraguay Battles Invasion Forces", Oakland Tribune, April 30, 1960, p1
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