September 1961

The following events occurred in September 1961:

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September 1, 1961 (Friday)

• The Soviet Union resumed nuclear testing after a moratorium of three years. Neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. had exploded a nuclear bomb since 1958.^[1] The Soviets exploded 45 bombs over 65 days.^[2]
• The Eritrean War of Independence began. The first shot was fired by an Eritrean Liberation Front member Hamid Idris Awate, leader of a group of 11 fighters, against Ethiopian government forces at the Barka district. Awate would be killed in 1962, but the ELF would continue to gather members.^[3]
• TWA Flight 529 crashed at 2:05 am local time shortly after taking off from Chicago's Midway Airport. The Constellation airplane impacted in a cornfield near Hinsdale, Illinois, killing all 78 persons on board. At the time, it was the worst single plane disaster in American history.^[4] A later investigation concluded that the accident happened after a bolt fell off of the elevator boost system, causing the plane to suddenly pitch upward and stall.^[5]
• The first meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement took place in Belgrade as the leaders of 24 nations, aligned to neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R., gathered for a five-day conference hosted by Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito.^[6]
• The Jülich radio transmitter was handed over to the Deutsche Bundespost (German Federal Post) to establish the German foreign broadcasting service, "Deutsche Welle".
• The Federation of Malaya signed an agreement giving Singapore the right to draw up to 86 million gallons of water per day collectively from the Tebrau River, the Scudai River, the Pontian Reservoir, and the Gunung Pulai Reservoir, until 2011.
• Born: Dee Dee Myers, first woman to serve as the White House Press Secretary (1993–94), in Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and Kateryna Yushchenko, American-born First Lady of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010 as wife of Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko, in Chicago
• Born: Jody Chiang, Taiwanese singer, in Chiayi
• Died: William Z. Foster, 80, former General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1924 to 1957. In the 1932 U.S. presidential election, Foster received 103,307 votes. Foster had been hospitalized in Moscow at the time of his death.^[7]
• Died: Eero Saarinen, 51, Finnish architect and designer

September 2, 1961 (Saturday)

• Meeting in Brasília, Brazil's Chamber of Deputies voted 233-55 to amend that nation's constitution to create a parliamentary system of government, to provide for a Prime Minister of Brazil, and to weaken the powers of the President to no more than a figurehead. The vote took place after an all-night debate, in that the ruling military junta refused to allow Vice-President João Goulart, believed to be a leftist, to succeed recently resigned President Jânio Quadros.^[8] The parliamentary system of Brazilian government, unique in South America, lasted for 16 months until abolished in a plebiscite in 1963.^[9]
• Bangladesh Agricultural University was formally created as East Pakistan Agricultural University, with a College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry at Mymensingh.^[10]

September 3, 1961 (Sunday)

• The minimum wage in the United States was raised to $1.15 an hour. All covered persons hired on or after that date would still receive the previous minimum of $1.00 an hour.^[11] Minimum wage 50 years later would be $7.25 an hour.
• United Kingdom Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and United States President John F. Kennedy issued a joint proposal to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, "that their three governments agree, effective immediately, not to conduct nuclear tests which take place in the atmosphere and produce radioactive fall-out", and dropping previous requests for inspection.^[12] Khrushchev rejected the proposal, but the U.S.A., U.S.S.R. and the U.K. would later sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.^[13]
• The Vencedor, a boat carrying more than 200 persons on a Sunday excursion to a festival in La Bocana, Colombia, sank off of the coast of Buenaventura, drowning an estimated 150 people.^[14]
• The 1961 Australian Touring Car Championship was held at the Lowood circuit in Queensland.
• Died: Robert Gross, 64, founder of Lockheed Corporation
• Died: Richard Mason, 26, a British explorer who had been leading the 10-man Iriri River Expedition in Central Brazil. While returning to the base camp in the Amazon jungle, 20 miles from Cachimbo, Mason was ambushed by a hunting party of at least 15 members of the Panará tribe, who had had no previous contact with the outside world. In accordance with their customs, the Panará laid their weapons next to Mason's body— 15 clubs, and 40 "seven foot long bamboo arrows".^[15]

September 4, 1961 (Monday)

• The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was authorized by the signing into law of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which authorized the spending of $4,253,500,000 for economic development and non-military aid to foreign nations.^[16] USAID itself was established on November 3.^[17]
• Richard M. Nixon, former U.S. Vice-President and future President of the United States, made a hole-in-one while playing golf at the Bel-Air Country Club, on the 155-yard third hole. Nixon remarked "It's the greatest thrill of my life. Even better than being elected."^[18] The only other U.S. President to accomplish the rare feat was Gerald R. Ford, who, like Nixon, aced within a year after losing a presidential election, on June 8, 1977.^[19]
• Born: Cédric Klapisch, French film director, in Neuilly-sur-Seine
• Died: Charles D.B. King, 85, President of Liberia from 1920 to 1930; and Fanny Brin, 76, American activist for women's rights and world peace

September 5, 1961 (Tuesday)

• President Kennedy announced that the United States would end its own moratorium on nuclear testing after three years, stating "We have no other choice." The announcement followed the third atomic test in the Soviet Union in one week.^[20]
• Skyjacking, the act of hijacking an airplane, was made a federal crime by the United States, punishable by 20 years to life in prison, and, in some cases, execution. The law also provided a penalty of $1,000 for illegally carrying a concealed weapon onto an aircraft, and up to five years in prison for giving false information to investigators.^[21]
• Marxist Cheddi Jagan was sworn in as the first Premier of British Guiana (now Guyana), after his Progressive Peoples Party won the nation's first general elections since Britain had allowed the colony internal self-government.^[22]
• Phalsbourg-Bourscheid Air Base was reactivated by the United States in response to the Berlin Crisis.
• Born: Marc-André Hamelin, Canadian pianist and composer, in Montreal

September 6, 1961 (Wednesday)

Original sign with seal from the CIA's first building - 2430 E Street, Washington, DC

• Afghanistan broke off diplomatic relations with Pakistan.^[23] With the border closed at the time that the Afghans were preparing to ship their two major export crops (grapes and pomegranates) through Pakistan to India, the Soviet Union offered to ship the perishables by air. Relations were restored in May 1963, but Afghanistan had become dependent on the Soviets for aid.^[24]
• The National Reconnaissance Office began operations in Chantilly, Virginia as a secret U.S. intelligence agency, jointly operated by the CIA and the U.S. Air Force to coordinate satellite surveillance. The existence of the NRO was not publicly revealed until 1992, after the end of the Cold War.^[25]
• The Soviet Union began high-altitude nuclear tests, by launching two missiles from Kapustin Yar. A 10.5-kiloton weapon was exploded at an altitude of 14 miles, and a 40 kiloton weapon at 26 miles above the Earth. The United States had done similar testing in 1958.^[26]
• A secured telephone line between the White House in Washington DC, and the Admiralty House in London, was set up in order for the U.S. President and the British Prime Minister to communicate directly, in real time, with their conversations scrambled. President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan used the line for the first time in October.^[27]
• Born: Simon Reeve, Australian television presenter

September 7, 1961 (Thursday)

• American comedian Jack Paar, host of The Tonight Show on NBC television, taped part of his show in front of the Berlin Wall, bringing with him seven U.S. Army officers and another 50 soldiers, along with jeeps and guns. The incident outraged members of Congress and prompted an investigation by the U.S. Department of Defense. A lieutenant colonel was removed from command, and another colonel admonished, but both were cleared three weeks later after a later investigation "showed the two had done nothing wrong".^[28] The Tonight show broadcast on September 12, using the footage, was called by one critic "as dreary and dull as the Berlin weather".^[29]
• Born: Lois-Ann Yamanaka, American poet who writes much of her poetry in Hawaiian Pidgin; in Ho'olehua, Hawaii
• Died: Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, 76, Dutch politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands 1940–45

September 8, 1961 (Friday)

• The first adventure of the space opera series Perry Rhodan was introduced, as German authors K.H. Scheer and Walter Ernstein published Perry Rhodan, der Erbe des Universums (Perry Rhodan, the Heir of the Universe). By the end of the 20th Century, Rhodan had appeared in more than 2000 novels.^[30]
• France's President Charles de Gaulle escaped an assassination attempt as his limousine took him from Paris to his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. A bomb with eight pounds of plastique had been placed on the President's route between the cities of Nogent-sur-Seine and Romilly-sur-Seine, and an inflammable mixture exploded in flames as the car passed over. The plastique failed to detonate.^[31] There were as many as 30 attempts to kill de Gaulle, of which this attempt and an August 22, 1962, machine gunning of his limousine, came closest to success. After the 1962 attempt, de Gaulle pushed through major constitutional reforms to increase his power.^[32]
• Cutervo National Park was established as the first protected area in Peru, by Law #13964.

September 9, 1961 (Saturday)

• Helen North, with 8 children, and U.S. Navy CPO Frank Beardsley, with 10 children, were married in Carmel, California.^[33] The Beardsleys then had two more children, and Mrs. Beardsley later wrote about the large family in the book Who Gets the Drumstick?, which was adapted into the 1968 film Yours, Mine and Ours, starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda as Mr. and Mrs. Beardsley.^[34]
• USS Long Beach, a guided missile cruiser and the first nuclear-powered surface warship, was commissioned.^[35]
• Iraq's Premier Abd al-Karim Qasim commenced aerial bombardment of Kurdish territory in the northern part of the nation.^[36]
• During a visit to Lenin's Tomb in Moscow, a woman identified only as L.A. Smirnova broke the protective glass around Vladimir Lenin's sarcophagus, spat on his corpse, and yelled "Take that, you bastard!". The incident was not reported at the time, but found later in a declassified pretrial investigation by the KGB.^[37]
• Steam locomotives were fully withdrawn from London Underground passenger services when British Railways took over operations of the Metropolitan line. Steam locomotives were used for freight until 1971.
• Died: Jesse Barnes, 69, American baseball pitcher

September 10, 1961 (Sunday)

• While driving a Ferrari during the F1 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Germany's Wolfgang von Trips, 33, crashed into the infield, killing 18 spectators and himself. Eleven bystanders died at the scene, while 7 more of the 26 injured died later. The crash happened on the second lap, when Von Trips was struck from behind by Jimmy Clark's Lotus. The race continued for the next two hours, with the bodies of the dead covered with newspapers, not moved until after the race's end. Prior to the final race of the season, Von Trips had been in the lead for the World Driving Championship. The race win, and the title, went instead to Phil Hill.^[38]
• The crash of a chartered Presidential Airlines DC-6 killed all 83 persons on board, shortly after the plane took off from Shannon Airport in Ireland. The passengers were mostly women and children of U.S. Army personnel, on their way back to the United States.^[39]
• Bob Hayward, considered at the time the world's foremost hydroplane racer, was killed at the age of 33 while racing at the Silver Cup Regatta on the Detroit River. Piloting the boat Miss Supertest II, Hayward was attempting to pass two other competitors as they approached a curve in the river, ran out of room, and turned hard right to avoid a collision. The hydroplane, going at 135 miles per hour, went out of control. Hayward, who had won the Harmsworth Cup for Canada the month before, died instantly of a broken neck.^[40]
• The Sainik School, Korukonda opened at the former Alak Appala Kondayamba Vijayaram Palace.
• Born: Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Galician politician, in Os Peares, Ourense, Spain

September 11, 1961 (Monday)

• The World Wildlife Fund (now referred to as the World Wide Fund for Nature) was founded, with the opening of an office in Morges, Switzerland, and with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands serving as its first President.^[41]
• Hurricane Carla struck Texas at 2:00 pm, with winds of 173 miles per hour (278 km/h).^[42] Coming as a Category 5 storm, Carla weakened just before landfall at Port O'Connor and Port Lavaca, Texas, the largest on record in the Atlantic basin at the time.^[43][44] Between 300,000 and 500,000 residents of Texas and Louisiana had fled the area in what was described at the time as "the greatest evacuation in U.S. history".^[45]
• Norwegian parliamentary election, 1961: In quadrennial voting for the 150 seats in the Storting, the Arbeiderpartiet (Labor Party) lost four seats and its majority, finishing with 74, but Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen was able to retain his office.^[46]
• The Austrian television channel ORF2 was launched under the name Versuchsprogramm, as a technical test programme.
• In the Yukon general election, seven members of the Yukon Territorial Council were elected to fulfil an advisory role to the federally appointed Commissioner.
• Born: Virginia Madsen, American actress and film producer, in Chicago
• Died: Leo Carrillo, 80, American actor best known for his role as Pancho on the television show The Cisco Kid

September 12, 1961 (Tuesday)

• Arriving from Paris, Air France Flight 2005 crashed in fog on the approach to Rabat in Morocco. All 77 people on board were killed.^[47]
• The African and Malagasy Union, consisting of 12 French-speaking African nations that had signed an agreement at Brazzaville on December 19, 1960, came into existence. The initial members were Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo ("Congo-Brazzaville"), Dahomey (now Benin), Gabon, the Côte d'Ivoire, Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).^[48]
• János Kádár, General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party since 1956, became Prime Minister of Hungary for the second time in his career, replacing the elderly Ferenc Münnich.^[49] Kádár would serve as Prime Minister until 1965, retaining the more powerful post as the Party General Secretary until 1988.
• Frederick College, located in Portsmouth, Virginia, became a four-year college, three years after starting in 1958 as a two-year school.^[50] The college closed its doors at the end of the 1967-68 academic year.^[51]
• Five days before they were to report to Pensacola, Florida for training to become the first women astronauts, the twelve candidates who had been selected from all applicants received a telegram stating "Regret to advise you that arrangements at Pensacola cancelled. Probably will not be possible to carry out this part of the program." It would be another 22 years before an American woman, Sally Ride would go into outer space, although the Soviets would send two women cosmonauts into orbit before then (Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982).^[52]

September 13, 1961 (Wednesday)

• SIOP-62, the American options for nuclear war, was presented to President Kennedy in a top secret briefing from General Lyman Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The operational plan, drawn up on April 15, provided 14 options for responding to a nuclear attack, and the 14th option, recommended by General Lemnitzer, was to explode 3,267 nuclear bombs on targets in the Soviet Union, as well as the Warsaw Pact nations and Communist China. Kennedy was reportedly furious about the lack of flexibility in the plan, which contemplated obliteration of the enemy with the expectation that the United States and its allies would sustain massive destruction as well.^[53]
• The unmanned (but containing a "dummy astronaut") Mercury-Atlas 4 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During a mission of 01:49:40 in duration, it orbited the earth once. At the time, the United States had not yet put a man into orbit.^[54]
• Operation Morthor was launched at 4:00 am local time in the Congo, with United Nations troops attacking the secessionist province of Katanga.^[55]
• In the final of the DFB-Pokal 1960–61 soccer tournament, SV Werder Bremen defeated 1. FC Kaiserslautern 2–0.^[56]
• Born: Dave Mustaine, American heavy metal guitarist for Metallica, and later for Megadeth; in La Mesa, California
• Died: Fritz Mühlenweg, 62, German artist and writer

September 14, 1961 (Thursday)

September 17, 1961: Former Turkish Prime Minister Menderes executed

• The new military government of Turkey sentenced 15 members of the previous government to death, including former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and former President Celâl Bayar.^[57] Menderes was hanged 3 days later, while Bayar's sentence was commuted.
• The asteroid 2642 Vésale was discovered by Sylvain Julien Victor Arend.
• Born: Freeman Mbowe, Tanzanian politician

September 15, 1961 (Friday)

• Operation Nougat: Two weeks after the Soviet Union resumed nuclear testing, the United States exploded a nuclear bomb for the first time since October 30, 1958. While the Soviet tests were atmospheric, the American tests were conducted underground at the Nevada Test Site.^[58]
• Citing U.S. Congressman Chet Holifield of California as their source, Miami News columnists Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott, broke the frightening story that the Soviet Union planned to nuke the Moon. Firing nuclear-tipped rockets at Earth's satellite in 1961 and 1962, the Soviets would use the explosions on the lunar surface for scientific purposes, with the goal of landing a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon by 1965.^[59]
• In Ireland, the Government of the 16th Dáil left office, as Ireland's parliament adjourned for the last time prior to the October 4 election.
• Born: Dan Marino, American NFL quarterback, in Pittsburgh

September 16, 1961 (Saturday)

• Typhoon Nancy struck Osaka and the island of Honshu in Japan (where it was referred to as the Muroto II Typhoon), with winds of 135 miles per hour. The typhoon killed 203 people and caused $500,000,000 in damage.^[60]
• A U.S. Navy aircraft attempted a weather control experiment by dropping eight canisters of silver iodide around the eyewall of Hurricane Esther, testing the hypothesis that a storm could be weakened by cloud seeding. The size of the hurricane's eye was observed to increase with an accompanying decrease in wind speed, and Project Stormfury was commenced the following year. Data was collected on four hurricanes between 1963 and 1971, ultimately showing that observed decreases in wind speed had been the result of natural changes rather than seeding.^[61]
• Born: Andrey Illarionov, Russian economist, in Saint Petersburg
• Died: Percy Chapman, 61, English cricketer
• Died: Hasan Polatkan, 46, former Turkish Finance Minister, and Fatin Rüştü Zorlu, 51, former Turkish Foreign Minister, were executed by hanging. Former Premier Adnan Menderes was in a coma after swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills the night before.

September 17, 1961 (Sunday)

• In the West German federal election, the CDU/CSU coalition led by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer lost 28 seats and its absolute majority in the Bundestag, finishing with 242 of the 499 seats, while the Social Democratic Party and Free Democratic Party had 190 and 67 seats respectively. The Bundestag re-elected Adenauer as Chancellor on November 7 after he forged a deal with the FDP.^[62]
• Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706 crashed shortly after taking off from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, killing all 37 people on board.^[63]
• The Minnesota Vikings played their first regular season NFL game, and beat the Chicago Bears in an upset, 37-13. The Bears' coach George Halas would later describe losing to an expansion team as "the most embarrassing defeat of his life".^[64]
• Died: Adnan Menderes, 62, who had been the first Prime Minister of Turkey to be democratically elected, serving until his overthrow in 1960, was executed for treason. Menderes had attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills at his prison cell on Yassiada Island. A team of physicians saved his life, then brought him back to consciousness long enough to be transported to the gallows on the island of İmralı.^[65]

September 18, 1961 (Monday)

• Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary-General of the United Nations was killed when his plane crashed while flying from Leopoldville in the Congo, to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).^[66] He was on his way to negotiate a cease-fire with Moise Tshombe in the Katanga Province, which had seceded from the Congo. At 12:12 am local time, the DC6-B, operated by Swedish Trans Air, was cleared for a landing at Ndola. Fifteen others died in the crash of the DC6-B, operated by Swedish Trans Air, which happened after the midnight. The wreckage was found 15 hours later on the Northern Rhodesia side of the border, ten miles south of Mufulira. The sole survivor, U.N. Sgt. Harold Julien, was able to tell investigators that Hammarskjold ordered the pilot not to land at Ndola, and that there had been a series of explosions.^[67] Badly burned, Sgt. Julien, an American from Miami, died on September 23. Speculation that the crash was not accidental began almost immediately.^[68]
• Christopher Newport College began its first classes, opening in Newport News, Virginia, with 8 full-time professors and 170 students.^[69] Now, Christopher Newport University, the college has 4,800 students.^[70]
• Georgia Tech integrated peacefully, as classes began with three African-American freshmen among the new students.^[71]
• For the first time, troops from North Vietnam seized control of a provincial capital in South Vietnam, capturing Phuoc Vinh in a predawn attack, only 55 miles from Saigon. The ARVN recaptured the city the next day, but not before the Governor of the Phuoc Thanh province was publicly beheaded, along with the top military officers, and the government buildings burned.^[72]
• Born: Lori and George Schappell, American conjoined twins, in Reading, Pennsylvania

September 19, 1961 (Tuesday)

• Voters in Jamaica elected to withdraw from the West Indies Federation by a margin of 251,776 to 216,371.^[73] With Jamaicans comprising more than half (56%) of population and a majority of its income, the result was the end of the Federation, and, eventually, 12 independent nations. Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago summed up the situation as "One from ten leaves nought."^[74]
• NASA Administrator James E. Webb announced that the new Manned Spacecraft Center would be built near Houston, Texas on 1,000 acres of land donated by Rice University. Later renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, the site would serve the Apollo space program as Mission Control, with astronauts referring to it by its location (as in "Houston, we've had a problem" spoken during the Apollo 13 mission.^[75]
• Babi Yar, the controversial poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, was published in the official Soviet literary magazine Literaturnaya Gazeta, marking the first time that the Holocaust was officially acknowledged in the U.S.S.R.^[76]
• Betty and Barney Hill abduction: In one of the first reported cases of an "alien abduction", Betty Hill and Barney Hill were returning from a vacation in Canada, to their home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. on U.S. Route 3. South of Lancaster, the Hills would later report, they encountered a U.F.O., and had no immediate memory of what happened later until the details were brought out with the aid of hypnotism. In 1966, author John Fuller turned their story into a best selling book called The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours "Aboard a Flying Saucer".^[77] The Hill's story would become the first of many tales of abduction by extraterrestrials. In 1975, Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones would portray the Hills in a TV movie. Barney would die in 1969, while Betty survived until 2004.^[78]

September 20, 1961 (Wednesday)

• McCloy–Zorin Accords: Even as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were escalating, the two nations issued a "Joint Statement of Agreed Principles for Disarmament Negotiations" with eight points that would be followed in subsequent discussions. U.S. Presidential Adviser John J. McCloy and Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Valerian Zorin led the delegations from the two countries, promising to the United Nations to work toward the eventual elimination of all weapons of mass destruction.^[79]
• Konstantinos Karamanlis resigned as Prime Minister of Greece as elections for parliament were scheduled for October 29. King Paul appointed retired General Konstantinos Dovas to serve as the new Premier until December 4.^[80]
• In the 154th game of the 1961 Major League Baseball season, Roger Maris hit his 59th home run of the year in the 3rd inning of the New York Yankees game at the Baltimore Orioles. Maris made two more hits into the stands in the 4th and 7th innings, but each was a foul ball. Maris failed to tie or break Babe Ruth's 1927 record of 60 home runs in 154 games, but had eight games remaining to play.^[81]
• The Central Intelligence Agency began moving into its new headquarters in Langley, Virginia, after having been housed in 33 buildings scattered throughout Washington D.C. (the DCI having been at 2430 E Street N.W.).^[82]
• East Germany enacted its first conscription law, making military service mandatory for all men between the ages of 18 and 50 years old. The National People's Army (Nationalen Volksarmee) had formerly been an all-volunteer force.^[83]
• Born: Sharon Lopatka, American Internet entrepreneur, as Sharon Denburg in Baltimore, Maryland (died 1996)
• Died: Andrzej Munk, 39, Polish director, in a car crash on his way home from the Auschwitz concentration camp where he was shooting the film Passenger
• Died: Karl Farr, 52, American guitarist and founder of the country and western group The Sons of the Pioneers. Farr was performing solo at the Eastern States Exhibition in Springfield, Massachusetts when a string broke on his guitar, and suffered a heart attack while trying to change it. As part of the induction of his group, he entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980.^[84]

September 21, 1961 (Thursday)

• In French Algeria, the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) knocked Algiers television off the air, toppling the transmission tower with bombs moments before it was to broadcast a message from President Charles de Gaulle. OAS leader Raoul Salan then transmitted a speech on the same frequency, taunting de Gaulle and calling for demonstrations against the separation of Algeria from French rule.^[85]
• Died: Earle Dickson, 68, American inventor best known for creating (in 1920) the Band-Aid.^[86]

September 22, 1961 (Friday)

• The ICC ruled that, effective November 1, all interstate buses in the United States were required to display signs that provided "Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin, by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission." In the same order, the ICC prohibited interstate buses from using "any terminal facilities which are so operated, arranged, or maintained as to involve any separation of any portion thereof, or in the use thereof on the basis of race, color, creed, or national origin." The order was a victory for the Freedom Riders, who suspended further plans to challenge racial segregation on buses and bus terminals.^[87]
• President Kennedy signed legislation permanently funding the Peace Corps, one week after the House of Representatives had approved the bill 287-97. The Senate had previously approved the legislation by voice vote.^[88]
• At 3:45 am, Antonio Abertondo arrived in Dover and became the first person to swim across the English Channel and right back again, resting for only ten minutes between crossings. Abertondo had departed England on September 20 at 8:35 am, arriving nearly 19 hours later in Wissant on the coast of France. After his brief break, Abertondo began his swim back to England.^[89]
• Dominic Abata was elected leader of the breakaway cab drivers and mechanics' union in Chicago.^[90]
• Born: Scott Baio, American actor, in Brooklyn
• Died: Marion Davies, 64, American socialite and film actress

September 23, 1961 (Saturday)

• NBC Saturday Night at the Movies broke the long-standing feud between the American movie and television industries, showing semi-recent hit films, after coming to an agreement with 20th Century Fox. Beginning in 1956, motion pictures made before 1948 had been shown on TV without the need to compensate the actors. The first offering was the 1953 comedy How to Marry a Millionaire. ABC introduced a Sunday night movie in 1962, NBC had movie nights Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday over the next four years, and CBS started a Thursday night film in 1965.^[91]
• Mickey Mantle hit his 54th home run of the season, while Yankees teammate Roger Maris remained stuck at 59 homers, with six games left in the baseball season.^[92] The homer would prove to be Mantle's last that year, as Mantle would suffer a hip infection and be hospitalized five days later.^[93]
• Stirling Moss wins the International Gold Cup motor race at Oulton Park.

September 24, 1961 (Sunday)

• Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color premiered on NBC, with "An Adventure in Color", introduced by Walt Disney himself, who in turn introduced Professor Ludwig Von Drake, the first Disney character created for television. The show was credited with doubling the sale of color television sets within its first year, as well as presenting educational and informative programming. The New York Herald Tribune wrote in its review, "Newton Minow can relax," referring to the FCC Commissioner who, on May 9, 1961, had described American television as a "vast wasteland".^[94]
• The Deutsche Opernhaus, which had been destroyed during a World War II bombing raid on November 23, 1943, was reopened at its former location on Bismarckstrasse in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg, as the Deutsche Oper Berlin. The first presentation was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1787 opera Don Giovanni.^[95]

September 25, 1961 (Monday)

• Department of the Army Message 578636 designated the green beret as the exclusive headgear of the U.S. Army Special Forces, giving the group their nickname of the "Green Berets".^[96]
• Wisconsin became the first state in the United States to require the installation of seat belts as standard equipment in motor vehicles, as Governor Gaylord Nelson signed into law a bill directing that all 1962 and later model cars and trucks were required to include the safety belts before they could be sold.^[97] In the first six months that the law was in effect, all but one belt wearer had died in a car accident in the state.^[98]
• By a margin of almost 80%, voters in Rwanda said "no" to continuing the monarchy in a referendum conducted in advance of the African nation's scheduled independence. The Parmehutu (Parti du Mouvement de l' Emancipation Hutu) political party, composed of the majority Hutu tribe, won 35 of the 44 seats in the first Parliament.^[99]
• The Hustler, a film about pool players, starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason, was released by 20th Century Fox. "The movie transformed American culture in an instant," noted one historian. "Pool halls, pool playing, pool players— all of it, very suddenly, very unexpectedly— became hip."^[100]
• President Kennedy addressed the United Nations about the need for nuclear disarmament, declaring that "Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate that day when this planet may no longer be inhabitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."^[101]
• In Tacoma, Washington, KBTC-TV went on the air for the first time, as KTPS-TV.
• Born: Heather Locklear, American TV actress, in Los Angeles, California; Frankie Randall, American boxer, world light welterweight champion 1994-1997; in Birmingham, Alabama; and Mario Diaz-Balart, U.S. Congressman (R-Florida) and son of exiled Cuban Interior Minister Rafael Diaz-Balart; in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

September 26, 1961 (Tuesday)

• The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was^[102]
• In London, at its annual conference, the Executive Committee of FIFA suspended the Football Association of South Africa from international soccer football competition. At the 1960 meeting in Rome, FIFA had given South Africa one year to adopt a non-discriminatory racial policy.^[103]
• Roger Maris hit his 60th home run in a 3-2 win for the Yankees over the Orioles, tying the record set by Babe Ruth in 1927 for most homers in a season. Maris's teammate, Mickey Mantle finished with 54 homers after two competed against each other all season.^[104]
• Born: Will Self, English writer and broadcaster, in London, son of Professor Peter Self
• Died: Charles Wilson, 71, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and former CEO of General Motors; Bulbul (Murtuza Rza oglu Mammadov), 64, Azerbaijani and Soviet opera and folk singer; Robert L. Eichelberger, 75, American general who commanded the U.S. 8th Army in the war against Japan.

September 27, 1961 (Wednesday)

• Sierra Leone became the 100th member of the United Nations, following unanimous approval by the General Assembly.^[105]
• Former Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, who had narrowly lost the U.S. presidential race in 1960, told a crowd in Los Angeles that he would not run for president in 1964, and that he would run for Governor of California in 1962.^[106] After a disastrous campaign, Nixon lost to Governor Pat Brown, but would win the presidency in 1968.^[107]
• The first episode of TV prime-time cartoon series Top Cat was aired on the ABC network in the U.S.
• Rahmankul Kurbanovich Kurbanov replaced Arif Alimovich Alimov as the Premier of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (now the nation of Uzbekistan).
• Born: Arturo Beltrán Leyva, Mexican drug trafficker, in Badraguato (shot dead by law enforcement officers in 2009)
• Died: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), 75, American poet and novelist; and Haji Laq Laq, 63, Indian poet and humorist who wrote in the Urdu language

September 28, 1961 (Thursday)

• The United Arab Republic, which had united Egypt and Syria under Egyptian rule in 1958, was brought to an end when Lt. Col. Abd al-Karim al-Nahlawi led a coup in Damascus and announced that Syria would leave the UAR. President Nasser sent a force of 2,000 Egyptian paratroopers to crush the revolt, but rescinded the order when Syrian commanders in Aleppo and Latakia supported the insurrection. Nasser's chief aide in Syria, Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer, was put on a plane and sent back to Cairo.^[108][109] The next day, Dr. Maamun al-Kuzbari was named to head the interim government as premier.^[110]
• The word "ain't" was accepted into the English language with the publication of the Third Edition of the Merriam-Webster, the first completely new edition since 1944. Merriam President Gordon J. Oallan had announced the controversial decision on September 6, noting that "ain't" was one of thousands of new words that had been added.^[111]
• Born: Quentin Kawānanakoa, pretender to the Hawaiian throne since 1997; in Monterey, California

September 29, 1961 (Friday)

• Operating in secrecy, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sent a 26-page long private letter to President Kennedy, expressing his regrets over the harsh treatment he had given to Kennedy their Vienna summit, and seeking a way to resolve the Berlin Crisis. Using the analogy of "Noah's Ark, where both the 'clean' and the 'unclean' found sanctuary" for the world, Khrushchev wrote that regardless of what each side thought of the other, both sides "are all equally interested in one thing, and that is that the Ark should successfully continue its cruise." Concealed in a newspaper, the letter was handed by KGB agent Georgi Bolshakov to presidential press secretary Pierre Salinger in a hotel room in New York City. Kennedy responded with an equally private letter on October 16.^[112]
• Forty-year-old Hawaiian Keo Nakama became the first person to swim from the island of Molokai to Oahu. It took him  15 ¹⁄₂ hours to cross the treacherous 27-mile Ka Iwa Channel.^[113]
• Minutes after Fidel Castro announced that he was going to "clean up" Havana, the last casinos in Cuba were closed. At the time of the revolution, there had been 25 gambling casinos. Five were left, all in government operated hotels, at the time of the order.^[114]

September 30, 1961 (Saturday)

• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was formed, replacing the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC).^[115]
• The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 was signed into law by President Kennedy, providing a limited exception to U.S. antitrust law to allow American sports leagues to negotiate TV and radio contracts.^[116]
• Born: Eric Stoltz, American film and television actor, in Whittier, California

References