01 - In Central African
Republic, Colonel Jean-Bedel Bokassa seizes power
05 - Pentridge Prison
escapees Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker are captured in Concord,
Sydney. The two have been on the run for 17 days since shooting dead
a warder and walking out of Pentridge with a Salvation Army chaplain
as hostage
08 - 8,000 GIs launch war's
biggest attack against the "Iron Triangle", a Viet Cong stronghold
near Saigon
11 - India's Prime Minister
Lal Bahadur Shastri dies. Mrs Indira Gandhi comes to power
13 - Robert C Weaver is the
first black member of the US cabinet
14 - Robert Helpmann is
named Australian of the Year
15 - Nigerian Army led by
General Ironsi seizes control of the country
17 - After a US air
collision, a hydrogen bomb is lost over Spain
19 - Nehru's daughter
Indira Gandhi is new Indian PM
20 - Australian PM Robert
Menzies retires after 16 years in office. Harold Holt succeeds him
21 - Beatle George Harrison
marries model Patti Boyd
24 - 117 die when an Air
India Boeing 707 crashes into Mont Blanc in France
26 - Dame Annabelle Rankin
is the first woman to serve as a government minister in Australia.
She will be Minister for Housing in the new Holt Ministry
28 - Three Beaumont
children are missing in Glenelg, South Australia
28 - Film actress Hedy
Lamarr is arrested for shoplifting in the US
29 - Mutilation murder in
Wollongong, NSW (Australia) leaves city in shock
29 - Auckland International
Airport is opened in New Zealand
01 - Star of the silent
screen, Buster Keaton dies (b. 1895)
01 - China protests to
Britain about US warships in Hong Kong
01 - Hotel trading hours in
Victoria, Australia, are extended from 6PM to 10PM
02 - Prince Charles starts
his term in the bush at Australia's Geelong Grammar Timbertop school,
near Mansfield in Victoria's high country
03 - The unmanned Soviet
spacecraft Luna 9 makes the first soft landing on the Moon
04 - 133 are killed when an
airliner crashes in Tokyo Bay, Japan
04 - The reward for the
missing Australian Beaumont children is increased to £1,050
06 - 1980s British pop
fabrication, Rick Astley, is born
07 - President Johnson
meets South Vietnamese leaders in Honolulu
10 - The first draft card
burner is convicted in the USA
10 - In the UK, Watneys
increase their beer prices by a penny a pint, which now costs 1/8d
13 - In Australia, Gough Whitlam uses the TV program Seven Days to attack the Federal
Labor Executive, calling them "12 witless men", and risks expulsion
from the Australian Labor Party
14 - Goodbye £ - G'day
dollars and cents. Australia changes over to decimal currency
14 - An H-bomb lost when a
US B-52 bomber crashed last month in Spain has been found completely
intact
21 - President de Gaulle of
France calls for NATO to be dismantled
22 - Milton Obote, PM of
Uganda, seizes power and two days later suspends the constitution
23 - Italian Premier Aldo
Moro forms a new Cabinet
24 - In Ghana, President
Kwame Nkrumah's government is overthrown by the army while he is on
an official visit to China
28 - Danish architect Joern
Utzon quits the construction of the Sydney Opera House he designed,
following a series of confrontations with the NSW government
01- A Soviet spacecraft
lands on Venus
03 - Deputy leader of the
Australian Labor party, Gough Whitlam, survives a bid by the
left-wing controlled Federal Executive of the party to have him
expelled from the ALP
05 - 130 die when a British
Boeing 707 crashes into Mount Fuji in Tokyo, Japan
08 - Australia announces
that it will triple its forces in Vietnam
10 - France requests
removal of NATO bases from all French territory
10 - Princess Beatrix of
the Netherlands marries an aristocratic German diplomat, Claus von
Amsberg, in Amsterdam
11 - President Sukarno of
Indonesia is stripped of office and army commander General Suharto
takes power
15 - Black teenagers riot
in Watts, Los Angeles; two men killed and at least 25 injured
16 - Gemini 8
carries out the first docking operation in space
23 - The first official
meeting for 400 years of the heads of the Roman Catholic and Anglican
churches takes place in the Vatican. The Pope and the Archbishop of
Canterbury embrace and exchange a "kiss of peace"
25 - Flinders University,
Adelaide (Australia) is officially opened
27 - The World Cup (which
had been stolen a few days earlier) is found in a South London
garden by a dog named 'Pickles'
30 - In Melbourne,
Australia, Ronald Ryan is found guilty of the murder of a warder and
sentenced to death
31 - Labour landslide in
British election
07 - The US hydrogen bomb
lost over Spain in January is recovered off the Palomares
08 - Leonid Brezhnev, the
Soviet Communist Party leader is now the top Soviet leader
09 - Actress Sophia Loren
marries Italian producer Carlo Ponti in France, although Ponti is
still married in Italy
10 - English author Evelyn
Waugh dies aged 62, at Combe Florey, Somerset
12 - B-52 bombers used for
the first time on North Vietnamese targets
12 - Jan Berry (of surf
vocal duo Jan & Dean) is seriously injured in car crash on Whittier
Boulevard, Los Angeles
15 - 80's Page 3 model and
"singer", Samantha Fox, is born
18 -The Sound of Music
wins the Academy Award for Best Film
24 - The first of the
4,500-man Australian Army task force, most of them conscripts or
National Servicemen, leaves for Vietnam from Richmond RAAF base in
Sydney
27 - A bid to unseat the
Australian opposition leader Arthur Calwell by his deputy, Gough Whitlam, fails at a caucus meeting in Canberra
30 - Hoverlloyd begins the
first regular English Channel hovercraft service, between Calais
(France) and Ramsgate (England)
03 - US admits firing on
targets in Cambodia for the first time
06 - In Britain, Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, are sentenced. Brady receives
three concurrent life sentences. Hindley receives two
11 - Police in Barcelona,
Spain, beat up 100 priests protesting against police brutality
14 - Everton beats
Sheffield Wednesday 3-2 in the FA Cup Final
15 - 10,000 anti-war
demonstrators picket the White House while the pledges of 63,000
voters to vote only for anti-war candidates are displayed at the
Washington Monument
16 - Janet Jackson is born
21 - Cassius Clay beats
Henry Cooper in the sixth round to retain the world heavyweight
championship in London
22 - Jackie Stewart wins
the Monaco Grand Prix
25 - Private Errol Wayne
Noack, 21, is the first Australian conscript to be killed in Vietnam
02 - First Australian
troops arrive home on leave from Vietnam
02 - Surveyor 1,
launched May 30, makes the first US soft landing on the Moon's
surface. The spacecraft sends back more than 11,000 televised
pictures before its batteries go dead
03 - US spacecraft Gemini
9 is launched with two astronauts onboard
06 - James Meredith, the
first Negro to brave the color bar at the university of Mississippi
in 1962, is shot in the back as he enters Mississippi on a
civil
rights march. He is taken to hospital in Memphis and survives
06 -Gemini 9
splashes down safely after failing to dock with a satellite in space
06 - The British comedy TV
series Till Death Us Do Part screens for the first time on the
BBC
07 - Dr Martin Luther King
leads a civil rights march through Mississippi, starting from the
point on US Highway 51 where Meredith was gunned down yesterday
08 - The British
Conservative party request a copy of the script of Till Death Us
Do Part which called Edward
Heath a "grammar school twit"
14 - A US pilot admits
shooting down two South Vietnamese planes while high on drugs
20 - James White gets 18
years for his part in the Great Train Robbery
21 - Leader of the Australian
Federal Opposition, Arthur Calwell is shot at and injured as he
leaves an anti-Vietnam conscription meeting in Mosman Town Hall in
Sydney
25 - James Meredith rejoins
civil rights marchers near Jackson, Mississippi
26 - A major
civil rights
rally is held in Jackson, Mississippi
29 - US bombers hit Hanoi
for the first time
29 - Barclays Bank
introduce Barclaycard - the first credit card in Britain
01 - France withdraws from
NATO
01 - Australian Prime
Minister Harold Holt promises the USA that Australia will go "all the
way with LBJ" in Vietnam
02 - France explodes a
nuclear bomb on Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific despite strong
protest from Britain, America and Australia
02 - Spain's Manuel Santana
beats Dennis Ralston (USA) in the men's singles final at Wimbledon.
Billie-Jean King beats Maria Bueno for the women's title
12 - In Australia, the
Sydney Water Board bans its female staff from wearing miniskirts to
work
01 - Charles Whitman, 25,
shoots 12 dead at Texas University in Austin, USA, before being
killed by a policeman
01 -
The Who fans riot at
the National Jazz and Blues Festival at Windsor, UK
01 - Colonel Yakubu Gowon
seizes power in another Nigerian coup
02 - Prince Charles departs
for home from Australia, saying his stay at Timbertop school was "marvelous
and a worthwhile experience"
03 - US Comedian Lenny
Bruce dies of a drug overdose (b. 1926)
04 - In Australia, a draft
call of 46,200 is announced for October - The highest ever so far
04 - The Kray twins are
taken in for questioning by police conducting a murder investigation
in London
05 - Commonwealth Games
open in Jamaica. For the first time, the word "Empire" is dropped
from the old title of Empire and Commonwealth Games
06 - Demonstrations against
the Vietnam War are held across Australia
11 - Indonesia and Malaysia
end three years of undeclared war
13 - Chairman Mao proclaims
a Chinese cultural revolution at a mass rally in Peking
16 - Orbiter I
spacecraft is in orbit around the Moon
18 - 17 Australian soldiers
are killed in a savage battle at Long Tan, where two platoons of the
6th Battalion are encircled by the Viet Cong
26 - 20 US soldiers die
in Vietnam when US planes napalm Americans by mistake
27 - British yachtsman
Francis Chichester sets off from Plymouth on a solo around-the-world
voyage
29 -
The Beatles play their
final live concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco
30 - Peter Raymond Kocan,
19, is sentenced to life imprisonment in Sydney, Australia, for his
attempt on Arthur Calwell's life on June 21
31 - 92 die when a British
airliner crashes in Yugoslavia
06 - South African Prime
Minister Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the father of apartheid, is knifed to
death by a parliamentary messenger in Cape Town
08 - The Severn Bridge is
opened in Britain
13 - Balthazar Johannes
Vorster is sworn in as new South African Prime Minister
15 - Britain's first
Polaris submarine, HMS Resolution, is launched
17 - St George defeat
Balmain 23-4 in the Australian Rugby League Grand Final, to make a
staggering 11 consecutive premiership wins for Saints in 11 years
19 - Singer Joan Baez leads
black children to an all-white school in Mississippi
22 - All 29 onboard an
Ansett ANA Viscount die when it crashes near Winton in Queensland,
Australia
24 - St Kilda 10.14 (73)
beat Collingwood 10.13 (73) by one point to take their very first VFL
Grand Final
28 - US planes accidentally
bomb a friendly South Vietnamese village killing 28
01 - Albert Speer, one of
Hitler's henchmen, leaves Spandau Prison after serving 20 years for
war crimes
05 - Spain closes the land
frontier with Gibraltar, except for pedestrians
07 - Johnny Kidd (born
Frederick Heath), lead singer of
Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, is
killed in a car crash near Manchester (UK), aged 27
08 - The hallucinogenic
drug LSD is outlawed in the US
09 - John Lennon meets Yoko
Ono for the first time
11 - Jensen presents its
latest model cars - the FF and the Interceptor
18 - The Queen grants a
posthumous free pardon to Timothy John Evans, the 25-year-old lorry driver who
was hanged in 1950 for murdering his wife and daughter in the house
occupied by mass-murderer John Reginald Christie
18 - Canadian-born US
cosmetics expert Elizabeth Arden (b. 1884) dies
20 - US President Johnson
arrives in Australia
21 - Welsh coal tip slips
and engulfs a school, burying 116 children and 28 adults alive at the
mining village of Aberfan in South Wales
21 - Demonstrators throw
paint bombs at President Johnson during his visit to Melbourne, Australia
21 - Five miners are killed
in a coal mine collapse in Wyee, NSW, Australia
22 - George Blake sentenced
to 42 years for spying for Russia. He breaks out of Wormwood Scrubs
jail in London and vanishes
25 - Australia, New
Zealand, Philippines, Thailand and South Korea pledge aid and
political self-determination to South Vietnam at the Manila
Conference
29 - The British Army drops
its color bar
30 - The
The Black Panther
party is formed by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California
08 - Republican candidate Ronald Reagan is elected Governor of California
09 - Art masterpieces worth
$120M are destroyed in severe floods in Florence, Italy. At least 600
paintings and over 1,000 old manuscripts and books have been severely
damaged. Some masterpieces such as a 13th century Crucifixion scene
have been totally ruined
10 - Melbourne brothers
John and David Langley are fined $680 each for throwing paint bombs
at President Johnson's car on October 21 during his Australian visit
13 - Israeli forces attack
the Hebron area of Jordan
15 - James Lovell and Edwin
'Buzz' Aldrin splashdown after five days orbiting the Earth in
Gemini 12, the last Gemini mission
16 - President Johnson has
surgery to remove a throat polyp and to repair a small hernia
20 - Escaped British spy
George Blake is reported to have turned up in East Berlin
22 - General Franco
introduces a new constitution in Spain
23 - BP says it has struck
the best gas-producing areas yet in the North Sea
23 - Australian Prime
Minister Holt is mobbed by anti-Vietnam
demonstrators during his
election campaign in Sydney
25 - FBI chief J Edgar
Hoover says all evidence suggests Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy
25 - Texas Governor John
Connally, wounded in JFK's assassination, reiterates his Warren
Commission testimony for Life magazine. Connally swears that
he was hit by a second bullet, and not the same one that had killed Kennedy. Connally had been hit roughly 1.3 seconds after
JFK - As Oswald's rifle could not be fired faster than once every 2.3
seconds, Connally's bullet would have come from the gun of a second
assassin. Life calls for the case to be re-opened
25 - Qantas pilots go on
strike over salaries
26 - First television
satellite link-up between Britain and Australia takes place
27 - Soviet Communist Party
denounces the Chinese leadership
28 - Australian Holt
government sweeps back into power in a massive win over Labor
30 - NASA releases close-up
photos of the Moon taken by Orbiter 2
30 - Barbados becomes an
independent state
01 - Kurt-Georg Kiesinger
is sworn in as West German Chancellor (Prime Minister), succeeding
Ludwig Erhard. Kiesinger heads the first coalition government between
the two main West German parties, the Christian Democrats and the
Social Democrats
02 - 4,530 Qantas employees
are laid off because of the pilot's strike
08 - 280 feared dead when a
Greek ferry sinks in a storm
10 - A helicopter on
charter to the Australian ABC TV station crashes at Circular Quay,
Sydney, killing three people
12 - Lone British yachtsman
Francis Chichester completes 14,000 mile non-stop voyage from England
to Australia aboard his yacht Gipsy Moth IV
12 - In Australia, the
Victorian State Executive Council says Ronald Ryan will hang on
January 9 next year
15 - Walt Disney dies aged
65
20 - Australian Prime
Minister Holt says 1,500 more troops are going to Vietnam, making a
total of 6,000
21 - Strike by Qantas
pilots ends
22 - Southern Rhodesia
quits the Commonwealth
23 - Influential pop music
TV show Ready, Steady, Go broadcast its final show in UK
23 - The Australian Supreme
Court rejects Ronald Ryan's appeal for a stay of execution
31 - 'Swinging London' has
become the fashion capital of the world
Roman
Catholics are no longer required to abstain from eating meat on Fridays
Barclaycard
becomes Britain's first credit card
TV series
Star Trek begins in the US
Casualty
reports show that 5,008 US troops have been killed in Vietnam since the
beginning of the year, with 30,093 wounded. The US now has close to 400,000
troops in Southeast Asia
Quote of the Year
"In a decade dominated by youth, London has burst into bloom. It
swings; it is the scene" Time Magazine, "London: The Swinging City", April 15, 1966
England win
World Cup 4 - 2 over Germany
