01 - In Britain, the first edition of Top of the Pops screens on
the BBC. Host Jimmy Savile introduces
The Rolling Stones, Dusty
Springfield, The Hollies,
The Swinging Blue Jeans
and The Dave
Clark Five.
14 - Arab League countries decide to set up a unified military
command.
27 - Actress Bridget Fonda is born.
29 - Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera is born.
03 - Double-decker carriages introduced on Sydney railway in
Australia.
06 - British and French governments agree to build a Channel
Tunnel.
07 - The
Beatles begin their first visit to the USA.
BEATLEMANIA GRIPS U.S. AS FAB FOUR FLY IN
Feb 8
- The Beatles flew into Kennedy Airport in New York today
and met their most ecstatic reception yet. Urged on by disc
jockeys, who had been broadcasting constant updates on the
progress of Pan-Am flight 101, thousands of American teenagers
packed the airport to scream their adulation. They broke through a
police cordon, then formed a Beatles motorcade that followed their
heroes all the way to the city's Plaza Hotel.
The Beatles, already superstars in Europe, are set to conquer
America. Their song I Want to Hold Your Hand has gone straight to
the top of the charts and tomorrow night's TV appearance on the Ed
Sullivan show, once the springboard for Elvis, will put them into
every American living-room.
09 - The Beatles appear on the
Ed Sullivan Show.
10 - In Australia, HMAS Melbourne slices HMAS Voyager in half. 82
die.
12 - Civil war erupts in independent Cyprus between Greek and
Turkish Cypriots.
25 - Boxer Cassius Clay becomes heavyweight champion of the world,
defeating the legendary Sonny Liston, and later changes his name
to Muhammad Ali.
02 - The Beatles begin filming their first feature film -
A
Hard Day's Night.
10 - US reconnaissance plane is downed after accidentally crossing
into East German airspace. The plane's three pilots are eventually
released.
10 - Singer Neneh Cherry is born.
10 - Prince Edward (of England) is born.
14 - Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald (the man accused
of assassinating JFK), is found guilty of murder.
15 - Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are married in Montreal.
28 - Radio Caroline, Britain's first
pirate radio station, begins
broadcasting illegally from a ship in the North Sea.
29 - Mods and Rockers fight a battle on the beaches of Clacton,
Essex (UK).
30 - US entertainer Tracy Chapman is born.
TEN GREAT TRAIN ROBBERS ARE GUILTY
March 27
- Six months after the Great Train Robbery in Britain,
and with 20 members of the notorious gang still at large, a court
today recorded the first conviction as a result of the hold-up.
Ten men were found guilty of the plot to steal mailbags worth more
than £2.6 million by ambushing a travelling post office on the
railway line at Cheddington. The trial had lasted 51 days and the
12 man jury at Buckinghamshire Assizes took a record 66 hours to
come to their verdicts. Nine other defendants are facing trial.
 05 - General Douglas MacArthur dies.
13 - Ian Smith is elected PM of Southern Rhodesia.
21 - BBC2 goes on the air in the UK - Its first program is Play
School.
22 - 1964/1965 New York World's Fair opens at Flushing Meadows
Park in Queens, New York.
25 - Andy Bell of UK group Erasure is born.
25 - The head of the 'little mermaid' statue in Copenhagen Harbour
is sawn off and stolen.
27 - Zanzibar merges with Tanganyika to form Republic of
Tanganyika and Zanzibar (renamed Tanzania on Oct 29).
02 - Death of Britain's first woman MP, Nancy Astor.
MODS AND ROCKERS CLASH AT BRIGHTON
May 18 - About 50 teenagers were arrested today after fierce
clashes on Brighton seafront between police and Mods and
Rockers.
Hundreds of holiday makers gathered outside the police station as
the teenagers were bundled out of police vans. Police took
possession of a number of weapons including studded belts, an
airgun and a golf club.
Trouble started soon after 9.30 am when several hundred Mods went
Rocker hunting, armed with stones from the beach. As scores of
white helmeted police arrived in radio controlled vans there were
scenes reminiscent of war films.
Meanwhile a 17 year old Mod who rode his new scooter to Brighton
with more than 30 other youths, fell to his death from the 100ft
high cliffs at Saltdean earlier today. He had been sleeping out
with friends on the cliff top.
19 - 40 hidden microphones are uncovered in the US Embassy in
Moscow.
26 - Entertainer Lenny Kravitz is born.
27 - India's PM and statesman since 1947, Jawaharlal 'Pandit'
Nehru dies.
12 - Macquarie University founded at North Ryde, Sydney,
Australia.
13 - Beatlemania hits Australia as Fab Four tour down-under.
14 - Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life imprisonment for treason,
sabotage, violent conspiracy and plotting to overthrow the South
African government.
26 - Moise Tshombe, leader of the Katangan province, is recalled
from exile to join the Congolese government.
02 - LBJ signs sweeping
Civil Rights Act and racial
discrimination is banned.
06 - The Beatles' debut film, A Hard Day's
Night, premiers at the
London Pavilion cinema in Piccadilly Circus. Thousands of fans
cause traffic chaos in the West End.
15 - In Australia, News Limited launches The Australian, the first
national daily newspaper, in Canberra.
31 - First detailed photographs of the Moon are sent back from
Ranger 7.
31 - Entertainer Jim Reeves dies.
01 - Rockabilly star Johnny Burnette drowns in a boating
accident in California.
02 - US Navy ships are attacked off Vietnam coast by North
Vietnamese patrol boats. The attack (later revealed to have been
provoked by the US Navy) caused Congress to pass the Tonkin Bay
Resolution, enabling
President Johnson to take extensive military
action in Southeast Asia.
04 - Three young Civil Rights
workers, missing since June 21st,
are discovered murdered and buried on a farm outside Philadelphia,
Mississippi.
07 - LBJ commits large forces to US intervention in
Vietnam.
U.S. STEPS UP ACTION AGAINST VIETNAM
Aug 7 - With the smoke still rising from North Vietnamese
installations bombed and rocketed by US carrier-borne planes,
President Johnson has asked for and received, approval from
Congress to take "all necessary action" against the
Communist regime in North Vietnam.
Both houses voted almost
unanimously to give the President the powers he wanted, but some
members expressed fears that it would be used to commit US troops
to an unwanted war.
The crisis arose from an attack by three North Vietnamese torpedo
boats on the US Destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin last
Sunday. President Johnson immediately ordered a retaliatory air
strike. The Russian delegate Mr Platon Morozov has called on the
US to halt her actions or "bear the responsibility for the
consequences of such acts".
FLEMING, MAN WITH A GOLDEN PEN, DIES
Aug 12 - Ian Fleming, creator of British agent James Bond (007) and
scoundrels such as Dr No, Goldfinger and numerous unpleasant
Russians, died of a heart attack today at the age of 56. He led a
dilettante life at Eton, two European universities and as assistant
to the head of Naval Intelligence.
In his first James Bond book Casino Royale in 1953, he discovered
the winning blend of sex, violence and gourmet style living which he
never varied - "Snobbery with violence" it was once
called.
Fleming married Lord Rothermere's former wife, Anne, after being
cited in their divorce case in 1952.
20 - Former US President Herbert Hoover dies.
21 - The film Mary
Poppins is first seen by an invited audience in Hollywood.
24 - The first Catholic Mass is said in English rather than Latin.
26 - Lyndon Johnson nominated for re-election by the Democrats.
03 - State of emergency declared in Malaysia.
21 - Malta becomes an independent state within the Commonwealth.
22 - Goldfinger
premiers in Leicester Square, London.
23 - Richard Walsh, Richard Neville and Martin Sharp sentenced to
prison after Sydney magistrate rules OZ magazine to be obscene.
27 - The Warren Commission releases its report on the Kennedy
assassination. The report concludes that there was no conspiracy,
either domestic or international, to assassinate the president, and
that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Over 50 books are published
about the assassination by the end of the year, many of them
disputing the Commission's findings.
28 - Harpo, the silent Marx Brother, dies.
02 - Sydney's Gladesville Bridge opens. It is the world's largest
single concrete arch, with a span of 1,000 feet.
05 - 57 people escape from East Berlin by crawling through a tunnel.
06 - The first episode of Stingray
airs on British television.
10 - XVIIIth Olympic Games open in Tokyo.
14 - Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
14 - Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones marries Shirley Shepherd in
Bradford, Yorkshire
KHRUSHCHEV DEPOSED WHILE ON HOLIDAY
Oct 15 - Nikita Khrushchev, the undisputed Soviet leader for more
than six years, was ousted in a Kremlin coup today and packed off
into retirement. Khrushchev, aged 70, who had been on holiday at his
villa by the Black Sea, was brought down by his cronies in the
ruling Politburo. He was succeeded as Communist Party leader by
Leonid Brezhnev, and as Prime Minister by Alexei Kosygin.
The announcement of the removal of Khrushchev came as a considerable
shock to both the West and the Soviet people. He was summoned to
Moscow two days ago for a meeting of the Politburo and walked
straight into a trap. The plotters secured the backing of the KGB
and took precautions to ensure Khrushchev would be isolated.
A roly-poly, stout little man, fast on his feet, Khrushchev has
changed the Soviet Union irreversibly. Although he served Josef
Stalin faithfully for many years, he has broken up most of the
labour camps for political prisoners and, to some extent, modified
the power of the secret police. His most famous feat of daring was
his anti-Stalin speech in 1956 which led to turmoil in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe as well as among the Communist Parties of
the world. His vitality and drive were harnessed to selling a new
Soviet image to the West of "peaceful coexistence" and
cooperation.
For all his faults the proper epitaph to his rule is that he has
probably left the Soviet Union a better place than he found it.
15 - Cole Porter dies.
LABOUR WINS POWER BY A WHISKER
Oct 16 - After a nail biting count, Labour is tonight in power in
Britain again after 13 years of Tory rule. "Nice place we've
got here" quipped Harold Wilson when he stepped inside 10
Downing Street as the new Prime Minister. Then he announced Cabinet
appointments at the start of a promised 100 days of dynamic action.
Labour's general election victory is by a whisker - Labour 317
seats, Tories 303, Liberals 9, the Speaker 1. So the overall
majority is just four. For the first time the main Party leaders are
men born in this century.
24 - Northern Rhodesia becomes independent as Zambia with Kenneth
Kaunda as president.
25 - British PM Harold Wilson warns Southern Rhodesian that a
unilateral declaration of independence would lead to economic
sanctions.
THE WINDMILL'S NAKED ARMS STOP TURNING
Oct 31 - The Windmill Theatre, a British institution as unchanging
as saucy seaside postcards, has finally put up the shutters. All
through the wartime air raids its proud boast was "We Never
Closed". Now, permissiveness has left it behind.
The kind of
titillation the Windmill girls provided was strictly limited by the
law that permitted stage nudity only if it did not move. A Windmill
girl known as Peaches was celebrated for having made an illegal dash
from the stage on seeing a mouse while in mid-tableau.
The Windmill was known as a forcing house for new comedians. Peter
Sellers and Tony Hancock first appeared between the nude acts and
learned to hold an audience whose mind was elsewhere.
02 - King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed and Prince Faisal
becomes king.
03 - LBJ wins election and sends Senator Goldwater packing.
09 - Prime Minister Menzies reintroduces conscription in Australia.
21 - Verrazano Narrows Bridge over New York Harbour is officially
opened. It becomes the longest suspension bridge in the world.
27 - Life magazine's cover story on Vietnam reports that the crisis
is worsening.
11 - Soul singer Sam Cooke is shot and killed at a Los Angeles
motel, The Hacienda, by its manageress Bertha Franklin who claimed
Cooke had tried to rape a young woman. The coroner returned a
verdict of justifiable homicide.
16 - La Trobe University established in Australia.
21 - Capital punishment ends in Britain.
EVA GABOR ROBBED, DARLING . . .
Lying in wait in a Miami hotel room, two gunman hit Eva Gabor,
over the head with the butt of a gun and take her $25,000 15
carat diamond ring.
Both Gabor and her husband were then tied up, with socks
stuffed in their mouths. Miss Gabor also said "one of those
nasty boys hit me, darling, in the mouth with his fist."
Doctors said the actress was progressing nicely. Leaving the
hospital with a lump on her head and bruises all over her body,
Eva Gabor tells reporters "darling, I’ll never wear
jewellery again and I mean it. No more jewellery. I’ve had
it."
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