April 1967

[April 1], 1967 (Saturday)

• The Battle of Ap Gu ended after two days in South Vietnam's Tay Ninh Province, as the 1st Battalion of the 26th Infantry of the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division overcame an attack by the much larger 9th Viet Cong Division. The battalion commander, Lt. Colonel Alexander M. Haig, would win the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroism in flying into gunfire and defending against multiple assaults against the American encampment; Haig would rise through the ranks quickly, becoming a general two years later, and retiring as a four-star general in 1979. The U.S. Army lost 17 men, compared to 609 Viet Cong soldiers.
• Radio Zurich, a radio network in Switzerland, played an April Fool's Day joke on thousands of its listeners, by frequently interrupting regular programming with bulletins about an American crewed landing on the Moon. Telephone lines were jammed, hundreds of people traveled out to the countryside to watch for the re-entry of the mission, and even the American consulate in Zürich called the UPI news bureau in an attempt to confirm the story. "Belief in the story was increased," a UPI dispatch noted, "because there are no week-end newspapers in Switzerland and television does not start broadcasting until 6 p.m."
• The United States Department of Transportation, created as a cabinet-level department separate from the U.S. Department of Commerce, began operations at 400 Seventh Street S.W. in Washington. As part of the opening day celebrations, new Transportation Secretary Alan S. Boyd arrived "in a horse-drawn omnibus" and "piloted a large yellow balloon" above the National Mall.
• French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou and his cabinet resigned in an apparent political maneuver to get a mandate of approval from the incoming National Assembly.
• In the PBA Firestone Tournament of Champions, Jack Biondolillo bowled a 300 perfect game, the first time that happened on the Pro Bowlers Tour on ABC Sports.

  [April 2], 1967 (Sunday)

• Local elections began in 1,004 of the 2,526 villages in South Vietnam, despite threats by the Viet Cong to attack polling places. The other 1,522 villages were either not in a secured area or were under the control of Viet Cong rebels. Village elections would be held every Sunday through May 7 as the new South Vietnamese constitution took effect.
• A United Nations delegation arrived in Aden as it approached independence. They would leave five days later, after accusing British authorities of a lack of cooperation. The British would say the delegation had not contacted them in advance.
• Born: Renée Estevez, American TV and film actress, daughter of actors Janet Sheen and Martin Sheen, and younger sister of actors Emilio Estevez, Ramon Estevez and Charlie Sheen; in New York City
• Died:
• *Laura Evangelista Alvarado Cardozo, 91, Venezuelan Roman Catholic nun who was beatified in 1995; founder of the Augustinian Recollect Sisters of the Heart of Jesus.
• *Joe Cino, 45, American theatrical producer credited with creating "Off-Off-Broadway" theatre, died three days after slashing his arms and stomach with a cooking knife.
• *Austin Duncan-Jones, 57, British philosopher

  [April 3], 1967 (Monday)

• Larry O'Brien, the United States Postmaster General said in a speech that the U.S. Department of the Post Office should be abolished and replaced by a nonprofit government corporation. "If we ran our telephone system the way we run the post office, the carrier pigeon business would still have a great future," O'Brien told a gathering of magazine publishers and editors. The Postal Reorganization Act would be signed in 1970 and the cabinet-level department would be replaced on July 1, 1971 by the U.S. Postal Service.
• The island kingdom of Tonga adopted a new, decimal system of currency in advance of its full independence from the United Kingdom, replacing the Tongan pound, whose value had been tied to the Australian pound. Whereas the Tongan pound had been divisible into 20 Tongan shillings or 240 Tongan pence, the new currency, the paʻanga could be divided into 100 seniti. The pa'anga was worth 10 Tongan shillings, and its value was on a par with one Australian dollar.

  [April 4], 1967 (Tuesday)

• By a vote estimated to be 139 to 11 in favor, the parliament of Spain amended the nation's criminal code to provide for terms of up to six years in prison for journalists who were convicted of repeatedly criticizing the government, and up to six months for publishing any news deemed to be "false reports or information dangerous for morals or good customs, or contrary to the exigencies of national defense, of the security of the state, or of the maintenance of internal public order and external peace." Journalists could also be incarcerated if they showed a lack of "due respect for institutions and individuals when criticizing political administrative action", including anything seen as an "attack" on the government of President Francisco Franco.
• In a speech titled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, his strongest antiwar declaration up to that time, Martin Luther King Jr. denounced U.S. involvement in Vietnam and related his own discussions with African-Americans in the past several months. "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos," King said, "without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, our own government." King, who would be assassinated exactly one year later, addressed a gathering at the Riverside Church in New York City.
• Johnny Carson quit his job as host of The Tonight Show, the day after the NBC network had broadcast another rerun of one of his prior shows. Carson had not performed while the AFTRA strike continued against the American TV and radio networks. During the two weeks after the AFTRA strike failed, singer Jimmy Dean and comedian Bob Newhart took over hosting duties. Carson would receive a raise and return on April 24, and continue until 1992.
• The popular Peanuts comic strip entered a new era with the introduction of a new character that would later be given the name "Woodstock". The tiny bird, who landed on Snoopy, would become the dog's sidekick, and the comic would gradually shift from the misfortunes of Charlie Brown to the adventures of dog and bird.
• Died:
• *Guy Chamberlin, 73, American football player, coach and inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame
• *Al Lewis, 65, American songwriter

  [April 5], 1967 (Wednesday)

• Police in West Berlin arrested 11 people, most of them students, on accusations that they had planned to assassinate U.S. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey during his April 6 visit. The Spassguerrilla group, dedicated to humorous protests, would be released 34 hours later, after Humphrey's departure and after a search of their apartments showed that they were harmless and that their attack on the Humphrey motorcade would consist of wheat flour, soluble paint, pies and the Vice President's favorite dessert, pudding.
• Corazon Amurao, the only eyewitness to Richard Speck's murder of eight nurses on July 13, 1966, testified in his criminal trial in Peoria, Illinois, and pointed him out as the man who had killed her roommates. Miss Amurao had seen Speck when she opened the door to the bedroom she shared with two fellow nurses, but had been able to hide under a bed during the killings.
• Piet de Jong formed a coalition government as the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands, replacing Jelle Zijlstra after the February parliamentary elections.
• Born: Anu Garg, Indian-born American writer and creator of Wordsmith.org site; in Meerut
• Died: Hermann Joseph Muller, 76, American geneticist, recipient of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

  [April 6], 1967 (Thursday)

• Donald K. Slayton, Manned Spacecraft Center Director of Flight Crew Operations, requested that the proposed T-020 "Jet Shoes" experiment be removed from all Apollo Applications Program flights. The "Jet Shoes" experiment was an astronaut maneuvering system consisting of two small thrusters mounted one beneath each foot and oriented so that the thrust vectors passed close to the center of body mass with legs and feet in a comfortable position. During January, several astronauts tested an engineering development model of the "Jet Shoes" on the MSC air bearing facility. Although the tests by the astronauts were shirt-sleeve runs, a Langley Research Center test pilot made several runs in an inflated pressure suit. The results were unsatisfactory. In his objections to the experiment, Slayton suggested that its attempted use by an astronaut wearing a life support unit would provide extremely poor visibility.
• Bill Baird, an advocate for reform of restrictions against birth control, was arrested in front of 2,500 people at an auditorium at Boston University, shortly after announcing that he would challenge the Massachusetts state law. Baird handed a can of Emko spermicidal foam and a condom to a 19-year-old student and was taken off the stage by Boston police, who charged him with providing contraceptives to a minor, distributing medicines without a pharmacist or medical license, and "illegally exhibiting an obscene object". Baird would fight his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would, on March 22, 1972, reverse the lower courts in the case of Eisenstadt v. Baird.
• Marking the largest ransom in United States history up to that time, the president of a bank in Beverly Hills, California, paid $250,000 for the safe release of his 11-year-old son, who had been kidnapped from his home three days earlier. A few days short of three years later, Ronald Lee Miller, an investigator for the Internal Revenue Service, would be indicted for the crime before the 3-year statute of limitations expired. After his conviction, Miller would be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. None of the ransom money would ever be found.
• "The City on the Edge of Forever", a favorite episode of fans of the TV show Star Trek, was telecast for the first time, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time and again at 8:30 Pacific time. One newspaper summarized that night's plot as "Under the influence of drugs, Dr. McCoy plunges through a time portal and into the New York City of the 1930s."