February 1963
The following events occurred in February 1963:
- A convent school collapsed in the town of Biblián, in Ecuador, during chapel services during a heavy rainfall. An estimated 450 people, mostly schoolgirls, were buried in the rubble, and 104 were killed.[1]
- Middle East Airlines Flight 265, with 14 people on board, was struck by a Turkish Air Force C-47 airplane with 3 people, as the airliner was descending for a landing at the airport in Ankara. Plunging from an altitude of 7,000 feet, the wreckage of Flight 265 fell into Ulas Square, killing another 87 people and injuring 200 injured.[2]
- A double-headed train rammed into a passenger train, exploded and caught fire at Nogales, Veracruz, Mexico, killing 17 people and injuring 63.
- The United States Army activated the 11th Air Assault Division (Test) to test the concept of helicopter assault by ground forces.
- In the Nicaraguan general election, evidence of massive impending fraud caused the Traditional Conservative Party, led by Fernando Agüero Rocha, to abandon its loyalist stance and to call for a boycott of the 1963 elections.[8] The result was a victory for René Schick Gutiérrez, considered a puppet of Luis Somoza and the Somoza family that had ruled since 1932.
- On orders from Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Operation Coldstore was carried out in Singapore, with the arrest of more than 150 journalists, labor and student leaders, and members of political parties that opposed Lee's People's Action Party (PAP). The detainees were kept at the Outram Road Prison for three months; with the leaders of the Barisan Sosialis and other parties forced out of campaigning, the PAP would capture 2/3rds of the seats in the parliamentary elections, and maintain control thereafter.[9]
- Canadian Minister of National Defence Douglas Harkness resigned in disagreement over the nuclear policies of Prime Minister Diefenbaker, triggering the collapse of the rest of the ministry.[10]
- The SS Marine Sulphur Queen, a tanker with a crew of 39 and a cargo of molten sulphur, was heard from for the last time, two days after its departure from Beaumont, Texas en route to Norfolk, Virginia. Contact between the ship and its owner, Marine Transport Lines, Inc., was lost and the ship was reported missing two days later.[11] Debris from the tanker washed ashore in Florida, but a search by U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy airplanes did not locate the ship.[12] The story of the disappearance of the tanker would be the first wreck described in the Argosy magazine article (by Vincent Gaddis) "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle", although an investigating panel concluded that the ship, structurally unsound and burdened by its heavy cargo, broke in half during a storm.[13]
- The UK Football Association decided to postpone the fifth and sixth rounds of the 1962–63 FA Cup because of delays caused by the severe winter.
- The Canadian House of Commons voted 142-111 in favor of a resolution of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.[14] Parliament was dissolved the next day by Governor-General George Vanier, and elections were scheduled for April 8.
- Travel, as well as financial and commercial transactions, by United States citizens to Cuba were made illegal by the John F. Kennedy Administration.[15]
- Died: Abd el-Krim, 77, Moroccan nationalist who fought for independence against France and Britain after Morocco had become a French protectorate in 1911; and Barnum Brown, 90, American paleontologist who discovered the first documented Tyrannosaurus rex remains in 1902.
- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara appeared at a nationally televised press conference from the White House to show proof, with photographs from U-2 spy planes, that all offensive missiles had been removed from Cuba.[16]
- Died: Piero Manzoni, 29, Italian artist (heart attack)
- In one of New Zealand's worst road accidents ever, a bus crashed after its brakes fail nearing the top of the southern descent of the Brynderwyn Range, killing 15 of the 35 people on board.[17] The bus, bringing back a group of Maori people from a welcome for Queen Elizabeth's visit to Waitangi, plunged over a 130-foot embankment, and evoked memories of a December 24, 1953, train crash that killed 151 people who were on their way to Auckland to welcome the Queen to New Zealand.[18]
- In the first ballot to select the new leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, Harold Wilson received 115 votes, George Brown 88, and James Callaghan 41. Since no candidate got a majority of MP votes, a second round would be held on February 14 between Wilson and Brown.[19]
- "Please Please Me", The Beatles first single to be sold in the United States, was released by Vee-Jay Records. Only 7,310 copies of the record were bought.[20]
- The Boeing 727 made its first flight.[23] Pilot S.L. Wallick, copilot R.L. Loesch and flight engineer M.K. Schulenberger took the plane aloft from the company's airfield at Renton, Washington.[24]
- The Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj, Archbishop and leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and a Roman Catholic cardinal, was allowed by the Soviet Union, departing Lviv by train. He would never return, dying in 1984.[25]
- Died: Abd al-Karim Qasim, 48, former Prime Minister of Iraq, was executed by a firing squad, one day after being overthrown and only hours after a brief military courtmartial.[26]
- Five Japanese cities located on the northernmost part of Kyūshū were merged to become the city of Kitakyūshū, with a population of more than one million.
- U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, taking up a challenge made by his brother, the President, for U.S. Marines to meet Teddy Roosevelt's standard for hiking 50 miles within three days, completed the distance in 17 hours and 50 minutes.[27]
- Born: Smiley Culture, British reggae singer and DJ, (as David Victor Emmanuel) in South London (died 2011)
- The CIA's Domestic Operations Division was created.
- The Beatles recorded the ten songs of their debut album Please Please Me in a single, 13-hour session at the Abbey Road Studios.[28]
- Died: Sylvia Plath, 30, American poet, novelist and short story writer (suicide)
- Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 705, a Boeing 720-051B, broke up in mid-air during a severe thunderstorm and crashed into the Florida Everglades west of Miami, Florida, shortly after takeoff from Miami International Airport, killing all 43 people on board. The plane took off from Miami at 1:35 pm local time, bound for Chicago, and was cleared to climb to a higher altitude to avoid a thunderstorm, but a 1:48, was broken apart by downdrafts at an altitude of 10,000 feet and crashed.[29][30]
- Construction work began on the Gateway Arch at St Louis, Missouri. The 620-foot-tall structure, commemorating St. Louis as the "gateway to the West", would be completed on October 28, 1965.[31]
- An inquiry into the death of Sylvia Plath ruled that it was suicide.
- Jacqueline Woodson was born.
- Residents of the Rwenzori Mountains in the Toro Kingdom region of southwestern Uganda rebelled against the government and declared independence of a state they called the Republic of Ruwenzuru. The Toro independence movement was defeated in 1970, and a majority of the secessionist leaders were murdered in 1972.[32]
- An earthquake occurred off the coast of Taiwan, near Su-ao, Yilan County. It had a magnitude of Mw 7.3[33] and killed three people.
- The Dutch liner Maasdam struck the wreckage of Harborough at Bremen, West Germany and was holed. All 230 passengers and 276 crew were rescued by the German ship Gotthilf Hagen. The Maasdam had been three days away from inaugurating direct service between West Germany and the United States.[38]
- The Tandy Center Subway, the only privately owned subway in the United States, opened in Fort Worth, Texas.[39] It would cease operations in 2002.
- Television was introduced in Singapore, with one hour per week of programming initially, increasing by April to five hours of programming each weeknight, and 10 hours each on Saturday and Sunday.[40]
- Toru Terasawa of Japan set a new world record for fastest time in the marathon, winning the Beppu Marathon in 2 hours, 15 minutes and 16 seconds.
- Turkey accepted the proposal to remove the remaining Jupiter nuclear missiles based there by the United States, with the last of the weapons taken out by April 24; nuclear defense of Turkey would be replaced by Polaris submarines.[42]
- African-American activist W. E. B. Du Bois renounced his American citizenship and became a citizen of Ghana, six months before his death.[43]
- Born: Michael Jordan, American NBA basketball player, five time MVP (1988, 1991–92, 1996, 1998; in Brooklyn, New York
- Mount Agung, a dormant volcano on the Indonesian island of Bali, became active again for the first time in 120 years. Its lava flow would destroy villages in the vicinity and kill more than 1,000 people.[44]
- Born: Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin ("Udin), Indonesian journalist murdered in 1996. The date of his birth was considered unlucky in the Javanese calendar as it fell on a kliwon Monday.
- Der Stellvetreter, by West German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, premiered in West Berlin at the Volksbühne. The play, which would be translated into 17 languages, was described as a revival of documentary theatre and based on the thesis that Pope Pius XII was a participant in the Holocaust by failing to speak out against it; the hero of the work was Kurt Gerstein, the Nazi SS Officer who attempted to make the Pope aware of the genocide.[48]
- Born: Charles Barkley, American NBA player, MVP in 1993, in Leeds, Alabama; and Ian Brown, British alternative rock singer for The Stone Roses, in Warrington
- Died: Ferenc Fricsay, 48, Hungarian-Austrian conductor (stomach cancer)
- Telstar 1, the first privately financed satellite, became the first satellite to be destroyed by radiation. Telstar had been launched from the United States eight months earlier on July 10, 1962, one day after the U.S. had conducted a high altitude nuclear test, and the increased concentration of electrons in the Van Allen radiation belt had caused the communication satellite's transponders to deteriorate.[49]
- An earthquake destroyed the city of Al Maraj, Libya. Measuring 5.3 magnitude, the quake lasted for 15 seconds collapsed 70 percent of the town's buildings and killed between 300 and 500 people, and left 12,000 homeless.[50]
- The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party sent a formal letter to the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee, proposing a summit between the two in order to settle their differences. China would respond favorably on March 9.[51]
- Operation Plowshare: A nuclear test blast of 3 kilotons took place at the Nevada test site in the US.
- Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago received a shipment of Mannlicher–Carcano rifles from Crescent Firearms Company of New York, including rifle #C2766, which would be used to kill John F. Kennedy.[52]
- General Ne Win, the President of Burma, ordered the nationalization of all that country's banks. At 1:00 in the afternoon, tanks were sent to the various financial institutions in Rangoon and the private management was forced by troops to relinquish the vaults to the Army.[55]
- Canadian politician Marcel Chaput called a press conference to announce the opening of the office of the Parti républicain du Québec (PRQ).
- Born: Bobby Bonilla, American MLB player, in New York City
- Died: Robert Leroy Cochran, 77, American politician and 24th Governor of Nebraska
- The Greek cargo ship SS Aegli sank in the Aegean Sea with the loss of all but one of her 22 crew.[56]
- An unnamed ferry collided with a Japanese cargo ship off Kobe and sank. Of the 64 people on board, nineteen were rescued, seven killed and 38 reported missing.
- A final piece of debris from the decaying orbit of Mars 2MV-4 No.1 re-entered the earth's atmosphere.
- Chicago alderman Benjamin Lewis of the 24th Ward, the first African-American to be elected to the Chicago City Council, was found murdered at the Ward's Democratic Headquarters, two days after being overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term. Lewis had been handcuffed and then shot four times in the back of his head.[58] The murder was never solved.[59]
- Dorothy Schiff resigned from the New York Newspaper Publisher's Association, saying that the city needed at least one paper operating during the newspaper strike. Her newspaper, the New York Post, would resume publication on March 4.
- Died: Rajendra Prasad, first President of India (1950–1962)
References
- ↑ "104 Killed At Prayer In Ecuador", Miami News, February 2, 1963, p1
- ↑ The
"Searchers Seek Bodies In Ankara Air Disaster", Miami News, February 2, 1963, p1; Flight Safety Network database
- ↑ "It'll Be Up, Up With Even Fiberglass", Miami News, February 3, 1963, p1C
- ↑ Jonathan Haslam, Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (Yale University Press, 2011) p210
- ↑ Youngmi Kim, The Politics of Coalition in Korea (Taylor & Francis, 2011) p22
- ↑ Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Vogel, The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea (Harvard University Press, 2011) p109
- ↑ "This Day in Beatle History"
- ↑ John A. Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution, 2d. Ed. (Westview Press, 1985) p99; "Four Killed In Nicaragua Vote Riot",Miami News, February 4, 1963, p2A
- ↑ Carl Trocki, Singapore Wealth, Power and the Culture of Control (Routledge, 2005) p110
- ↑ Greg Donaghy, Tolerant Allies: Canada and the United States, 1963-1968 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003) p7
- ↑ "Search Widens For Lost Tanker With 39 Aboard", Miami News, February 9, 1963, p
- ↑ "'Sulphur Queen a Risky Ship'", Pacific Stars And Stripes, February 25, 1963, p1
- ↑ Bruce Parker, The Power of the Sea: Tsunamis, Storm Surges, Rogue Waves, and Our Quest to Predict Disasters (Macmillan, 2012) p126
- ↑ "2 Commons Votes Topple Diefenbaker Government", Montreal Gazette, February 6, 1963, p1
- ↑ René De La Pedraja Tomán, Latin American Merchant Shipping in the Age of Global Competition (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999) p50
- ↑ "NO CUBA BUILDUP, McNAMARA STATES- All Offensive Weapons Gone, U. S. Is Assured", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 7, 1963, p1
- ↑ New Zealand Disasters - Bus Accident: The Brynderwyns. Christchurch City Libraries website
- ↑ "15 Die After Seeing Their Queen", Miami News, February 5, 1963, p2A
- 1 2 Kevin Jefferys, Labour Forces: From Ernie Bevin to Gordon Brown (I.B.Tauris, 2002) p160
- ↑ Harry Beckwith, Unthinking: The Surprising Forces Behind What We Buy (Hachette Digital, 2011); Linda Schultz, Tales of the Awesome Foursome: Beatles Fans Share Personal Stories and Memories of the Fab Four (Infinity Publishing, 2004) p130
- ↑ "Iraq Regime Reported Overthrown", Miami News, February 8, 1963, p1
- ↑ Sturtivant, Ray, British Naval Aviation: The Fleet Air Arm, 1917-1990, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1990, ISBN 0-87021-026-2, p. 216.
- ↑ Philip K. Lawrence and David W. Thornton, Deep Stall: The Turbulent Story of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (Ashgate Publishing, 2005) p46
- ↑ "3 Jet Airliner Tested", Spokane (WA) Daily Chronicle, February 9, 1963, p2
- ↑ Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch, The Vatican and the Red Flag: The Struggle for the Soul of Eastern Europe (Continuum International, 1998) p116-117
- ↑ "Kassem Executed: Iraq to 'Annihilate' Reds", Miami News, February 10, 1963, p1
- ↑ Ed Ayres, The Longest Race: A Lifelong Runner, an Iconic Ultramarathon, and the Case for Human Endurance (Workman Publishing, 2012)
- ↑ Travis Elborough, The Vinyl Countdown: The Album from LP to iPod and Back Again (Counterpoint Press, 2009) p178
- ↑ "AIRLINER LOST — 42 ABOARD", Miami News, February 12, 1963, p1
- ↑ Flight Safety Network
- ↑ "The Gateway Arch Experience"
- ↑ "Toros", in Encyclopedia of Stateless Nations, Volume 4: S-Z, James Minahan and Peter T. Wendel, eds. (Greenwood Publishing, 2002) pp1911-1912
- ↑ http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/data/centennial.pdf
- ↑ "A Sweet Celebration: TaB Commemorates Golden Anniversary on Valentine's Day", Coca-Cola Company website, February 7, 2013
- ↑ "Coke Tests New Drink", Decatur (IL) Review, February 19, 1963, p8
- ↑ ; "No. 2 Briton Wants No A-Weapons", Miami News, February 15, 1963, p1
- ↑ Delbert D. Smith, Communication Via Satellite: A Vision in Retrospect (BRILL, 1976) p86; "Hovering Satellite Up There— Where?", Miami News, February 14, 1963, p1
- ↑ "Liner Crashes into Wreck in Fog" The Times (London). Saturday, 16 February 1963. (55627), col D-G, p. 8. ; "Dutch Liner Strikes Wreck", Miami News, February 15, 1963, p1
- ↑ "Fort Worth, Texas". 2005. Retrieved 30 December 2008.
- ↑ "Television", in Historical Dictionary of Singapore, Justin Corfield, ed. (Scarecrow Press, 2010) p268
- ↑ "Kayes, Treaty of", in Historical Dictionary of Mauritania, by Anthony G. Pazzanita (Scarecrow Press, 2008) pp285-287
- ↑ Yezid Sayigh and Avi Shlaim, The Cold War and the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 1997) p258
- ↑ Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Cornell University Press, 1997) p183
- ↑ VolcanoDiscovery.com; R. B. Cribb, Audrey Kahin, Historical Dictionary of Indonesia (Scarecrow Press, 2004) p176
- ↑ "Friedan, Betty", in Encyclopedia of Leadership, George R. Goethals, et al., eds. (SAGE Publishing, 2004) p523
- ↑ Larry Diamond, Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic (Syracuse University Press, 1988) p136
- ↑ Mary Fulbrook and Martin Swales, Representing the German Nation (Manchester University Press, 2000) p91-92
- ↑ Raoul Velazco, et al., , Radiation Effects on Embedded Systems (Springer, 2007) pp31-32
- ↑ "Libya", in Encyclopedia of Earthquakes and Volcanoes, Alexander E. Gates and David Ritchie, eds. (Infobase Publishing, 2009) p149; "Stricken Libya Counts Her Dead", Miami News, February 23, 1963, p1
- ↑ Alfred D. Low, The Sino-Soviet Dispute: An Analysis of the Polemics (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1976) pp145–146
- ↑ The Warren Commission Report (Government Printing Office, 1964) p119
- ↑ S. Frederick Starr, Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland (M.E. Sharpe, 2004) p143
- ↑ "Pebbles Flintstone Arrives Tonight", Miami News, February 22, 1963, p13
- ↑ Brian Crozier, South-East Asia in Turmoil (Taylor & Francis, 1966) p166; Krishna Sen and Terence Lee, Political Regimes and the Media in East Asia: Continuities, Contradictions and Change (Routledge, 2007) p109
- ↑ "Japanese Ferry Disaster" The Times (London). Tuesday, 26 February 1963. (56635), col D, p. 10.
- ↑ G. Pope Atkins and Larman C. Wilson, The Dominican Republic and the United States: From Imperialism to Transnationalism (University of Georgia Press, 1998) pp129-130
- ↑ "POLITICIAN HANDCUFFED, SLAIN IN CHICAGO OFFICE", Long Beach (CA) Press Telegram, February 28, 1963, p1
- ↑ John M. Hagedorn, A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) p75