April 1958

April 1, 1958 (Tuesday)

• Spain ended its protectorate over most of southern Morocco, ceding the territory of Cape Juby, with the signing of the Treaty of Angra de Cintra by Spain's Foreign Minister Fernando María Castiella y Maíz and Morocco's Foreign Minister Ahmed Balafrej meeting at Dakhla in the colony of the Spanish Sahara. The treaty ended the five month long Ifni War between Moroccan insurgents and the Spanish Army.
• One million public workers in France went on a 24-hour strike to seek wage increases of 10 to 25 percents, shutting down all public transportation by bus, subway, train or airplane.
• The ballet Clytemnestra, choreographed by Martha Graham, had its first performance, premiering at the Adelphi Theatre in New York City.
• Born: Dr. Hasnat Khan, Pakistan-born British heart surgeon known for his relationship with Princess Diana; in Jhelum, Punjab province

  April 2, 1958 (Wednesday)

• The word "beatnik", used to describe an anti-conformist youth who embraced the culture of what Jack Kerouac called "The Beat Generation", was introduced by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen in his daily newspaper column. Caen's coined word was a portmanteau of "Beat" and of "Sputnik", the satellite which had been launched almost six months earlier by the Soviet Union. Caen's column, under the heading "Words, Words, Words", referred to a recent party hosted by Look magazine for a photo essay on the Beat Generation in a "beach house for 50 Beatniks", and commented, "They're only Beat, y'know, when it comes to work..."
• U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a message to Congress advocating the establishment of a civilian agency to direct nonmilitary space exploration. U.S. Representative Harry G. Haskell Jr. of Delaware introduced the legislation, approved by both houses of Congress by July 16, to create the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
• Workers digging a trench in the town of Caernarfon, in Wales, accidentally discovered the ruins of the Caernarfon Mithraeum, a Roman temple in what is now Wales and constructed by Roman Britons worshiping the Zoroastrian god Mithras.
• Delaware became the first U.S. state in almost 47 years to abolish capital punishment, as Governor J. Caleb Boggs signed a bill that had passed the state house of representatives, 18–11, after being sponsored by Senator Elwood F. Melson Jr. and approved the year before by the state senate. Delaware's last execution, a hanging, had taken place on December 7, 1945, when Anderson D. Butler was executed for raping a child. No new U.S. states had acted since North Dakota had repealed the death penalty in 1911.
• Died:
• *Willie Maley, 89, Scottish soccer football player manager who coached Celtic F.C. for 43 years and led them to 16 league championships and 14 Scottish Cups
• *Jōsei Toda, 58, Japanese Buddhist activist who co-founded the Soka Gakkai movement in 1930 and had led it since 1951

  April 3, 1958 (Thursday)

• The effectiveness of 5-Fluorouracil, a new anti-cancer drug, developed at the McArdle Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, was announced at a press conference at Madison by its inventor, Dr. Charles Heidelberger, an oncologist at the University of Wisconsin Hospital. The drug, still used in chemotherapy as a treatment of colorectal cancer, oesophageal cancer, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, and cervical cancer, is marketed under the name Adrucil.
• New York Justice Harry B. Frank dismissed the last attempt to stop baseball's New York Giants from moving to San Francisco, after reviewing a lawsuit brought in August by a stockholder in the team, Julius November. Frank wrote that "Beneath these judicial robes still beats the heart of a Giant fan," but added, "The court, as distinguished from Justice Frank the fan, must find that the plaintiff's contentions, while sentimentally four-baggers, are legally outs."
• Born:
• *Alec Baldwin, American TV and film actor; in Amityville, New York
• *Clifford Nass, American communications professor at Stanford University who formulated "Media equation"; in Teaneck, New Jersey

  April 4, 1958 (Friday)

• The first protest march by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the United Kingdom began in London. Starting at Trafalgar Square, the march over the next four days to Aldermaston, Berkshire, site of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, manufacturer of the UK's nuclear weapons. During the march, the peace symbol was first displayed, printed on "Ban the Bomb" placards made by the children of the symbol's creator, Gerald Holtom..
• Cheryl Crane, the 14-year-old daughter of film actress Lana Turner, stabbed and killed Turner's abusive boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, at Turner's home in Beverly Hills, California. Crane turned herself in to the police, and, after a public hearing, a coroner's inquest ruled that her killing of Stompanato was justifiable homicide and released her.
• Born:
• *Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, Thai billionaire businessman and sports team owner; in Bangkok
• *Adil al-Kalbani, Afro-Saudi Islamic cleric who make the first Imam of African-descent to lead the prayers at the Great Mosque of Mecca; in Riyadh
• *Karen Oliveto, the first openly lesbian bishop of the United Methodist Church; in West Babylon, New York
• *Cazuza, Brazilian rock singer; in Rio de Janeiro
• Died: María Luisa Sepúlveda, 59, Chilean composer

  April 5, 1958 (Saturday)

• A fast-moving bushfire killed 8 firefighters at Mount Gambler as they were battling the blaze at a pine tree plantation near the small town of Wandilo, South Australia.
• In China, the crash of a CAAC Airlines flight from Xi'an to Taiyuan killed all 14 people on board.
• The People's Daily, the newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, announced the initial success of the Party's program of training former factory owners to become ordinary employees of the businesses they once owned. The move was made as part of bringing to an end the five-percent per year compensation to the former owners for the Communist seizure of their investments, scheduled to end by 1962. Citing examples of the benevolent treatment where owners were "permitted" to work at the factories they once guided, the newspaper commented that "Most of the capitalists behind lathes and counters obeyed the instructions of officials, respected discipline, worked hard and learned submissively from the workers."
• The top of "Ripple Rock", an underwater mountain that had been a hazard to ship travel within the Inside Passage through British Columbia's waters, was destroyed in what remains the largest controlled non-nuclear explosion in North America. Based on a study by the National Research Council of Canada, contractors of the Canadian government of Canada had spent more than two years to drill two long tunnels in which to place 1,270 metric tonnes of Nitramex 2H explosive, and at 9:31 in the morning local time, detonated the weapon. The event was televised live on Canadian television in a coast-to-coast hookup.

  April 6, 1958 (Sunday)

• In the U.S., Capital Airlines Flight 67 crashed in a snowstorm on its approach to the Tri-City Airport in Freeland, Michigan, killing all 47 people on board. The turboprop Vickers Viscount had departed from Flint as part of a multi-stop flight between New York and Chicago. and had an undetected buildup of ice on its horizontal stabilizer. When the crew attempted a steep turn on landing, the airplane stalled and went into a spin.
• Arnold Palmer of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, a former paint salesman, hung on to win his first major professional golf championship with a one-stroke victory in the 1958 Masters Tournament. Palmer, ahead of everyone else by at least three strokes going into the final round, faced a challenge from defending Masters winner Doug Ford and by Fred Hawkins.
• The divorce of Queen Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari from the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, became final after having been announced on March 15.
• Died: Vítězslav Nezval, 57, Czech avant-garde writer, from pneumonia

  April 7, 1958 (Monday)

• All 32 people aboard Aerovias Ecuador Flight 222 were killed when the Douglas DC-3 crashed into a mountain while flying from Guayaquil to Quito. An investigation concluded that the cause was the pilot's decision to fly a more direct route between the two Ecuadorian cities rather than the course authorized for his altitude of. Shortly after being cleared to climb above the clouds, the airplane crashed into the side of Mount Illiniza in the Chugchilan mountain range.
• Japan unconditionally released the remaining 10 "Class A war criminals" convicted after World War II, after having reached an agreement with the wartime Allied powers. Set free from Sugamo Prison in Tokyo were the two former War Ministers, former Finance Minister Okinori Kaya former adviser Kōichi Kido, the former Navy Minister Admiral Shigetarō Shimada, Naoki Hoshino, General Hiroshi Ōshima, Lt. General Teiichi Suzuki, Naoki Hoshino, and Admiral Takasumi Oka. All had been on parole at the time of their pardon.
• Born: Major General Gunnar Karlson, Swedish Army officer and Director of Sweden's Military Intelligence and Security Service, from 2012 to 2019; in Karlskrona
• Died: Mark M. Mills, 40, U.S. nuclear physicist and atomic weapons designer, was drowned after the helicopter he was on was forced down at the Eniwetok Atoll.

  April 8, 1958 (Tuesday)

• A U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker became the first airplane to fly more than without refueling, landing at the Lajes Air Force Base in Portugal's Azores islands, 18 hours and 48 minutes after its departure from Tokyo, for a total distance of.
• The first, and only, film shown with the widescreen process of "Cinemiracle", the travel documentary Windjammer, premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California, where it would run for 36 weeks. The next day, the Roxy Theatre in New York City began showing the film as well and would do so for the next 22 weeks. Regarding the film, critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "Every last moviegoer with a drop of salt in his blood will want to swing aboard 'Windjammer'... this giant, panoramic picture of the new Cinemiracle process, which is again to Cinerama, is so full of the thrills and beauties of ocean sailing that it takes the breath away." Los Angeles Times critic Philip K. Scheuer praised the photography but wrote that "As dramatic storytelling the film is a disappointment... the first half is monotonously repetitive and lacking in high spots or excitement." Patents for the Cinemiracle process would be purchased by the owners of the older Cinerama process, which used a wider 146° curved screen.
• Residents of the Los Angeles suburb of Monte Vista, California, voted overwhelmingly, 1,399 to 212, in favor of changing the name of the city to Montclair, because of the existence of an older, unincorporated community in Placer County. Monte Vista had been incorporated on April 26, 1956. There were no objections from the similar-sounding city of Claremont, incorporated in 1907 and on the north border of Montclair.
• Died:
• *Alcibíades Arosemena, 74, former President of Panama from 1951 to 1952
• *Frank Eaton, 97, American lawman, author and entertainer who performed under the name "Pistol Pete"
• *Frank Kingdon-Ward, 72, English botanist and author
• *George Jean Nathan, 76, American drama critic