April 1959

April 1, 1959 (Wednesday)

• Kazuo Inamori founded worldwide office copy complex machine and solar panel brand Kyocera in Japan; the predecessor name was Kyoto Ceramic.
• After the Soviet Union restricted travel of American diplomats, the U.S. did the same for the Soviets in America.
• The Research Steering Committee on Manned Space Flight, chaired by Harry J. Goett of the Ames Research Center, was created to assist NASA in long-range planning and basic research on human spaceflight. The Goett Committee would meet for the first time on May 25 to concentrate on NASA's long-range objectives, particularly the issue of a flight program to follow Project Mercury. H. Kurt Strass of the Space Task Group at Langley Field envisioned that the next project would include an enlarged Mercury capsule to place two astronauts in orbit for three days, or accompanied by a large cylindrical structure to support a two-week mission.
• The Navajo Nation Supreme Court came into existence, along with a set of district courts with jurisdiction in Navajo territory in Arizona and New Mexico.
• A U.S. Air Force cargo plane crashed at Orting, Washington, killing all four of the crew on board. Witnesses reported that the C-118 had collided with another object in midair, and the incident has become part of UFO lore. The pilot, Lt. Robert R. Dimmick, radioed, "We have hit something, or something has hit us", moments before the crash.

  April 2, 1959 (Thursday)

• The Soviet Union's Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs advised the Russian Orthodox patriarch of new measures to reduce the number of convents, followed by property and income tax increases on the convents.
• NASA completed the selection of seven men as astronauts for Project Mercury. Originally planning to pick only six men, the STG screened 508 records and found 110 candidates who met the minimum standards. STG interviewed 69, invited 32 to go through tests and then narrowed the number down to 18. Deputy Administrator Robert Gilruth suggested picking the seven finalists with the most flying experience.
• At the same meeting, prospective bidders from 20 companies were briefed on construction of the worldwide tracking range for Project Mercury. The preliminary plan called for an orbital mission tracking network of 14 sites. Contacts had not been made with the governments of any proposed locations except for Bermuda. All sites would have facilities for telemetry, voice communications with the pilot, and teletype communications with centers in the United States for primary tracking. The tracking sites would provide the Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, with trajectory predictions; landing-area predictions; and vehicle, systems, and pilot conditions.
• After the initial meeting with contractors, plans were made for the Project Mercury animal payload program with monkeys used to cover nine flights, involving four different rocket launch vehicles.
• The U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations directed the Atlantic Fleet to support Project Mercury's recovery operations.
• A superbolt, more powerful than an ordinary lightning bolt, struck a cornfield near Leland, Illinois, leaving a crater deep, and breaking windows in homes almost away.
• Born: Juha Kankkunen, Finnish rally car driver and four-time world champion; in Laukaa

  April 3, 1959 (Friday)

• Vito Genovese, New York Mafia don and boss of the Genovese Crime Family, was convicted on federal narcotics conspiracy charges, but was released three days later after posting $150,000 bond.
• Elmer David Bruner died in the electric chair at the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia, becoming the last person to be executed in that state, which abolished the death penalty in 1965.
• Born: David Hyde Pierce, American television actor known for Frasier; in Saratoga Springs, New York

  April 4, 1959 (Saturday)

• In a speech at Gettysburg College, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the first American commitment to keeping South Vietnam as a separate, non-Communist nation. "We reach the inescapable conclusion", said Eisenhower, "that our own national interests demand some help from us in sustaining in Vietnam the morale, the economic progress, and the military strength necessary to its continued existence in freedom."

  April 5, 1959 (Sunday)

• In Dortmund, West Germany, Rong Guotuan of Communist China defeated Ferenc Sido of Hungary to win the 25th World Table Tennis Championships, becoming the first Chinese player to do so.
• At the Southmoor Hotel in Chicago, black nationalist S.A. Davis, Chairman of the Joint Council of Repatriation, and eight of his associates met with George Lincoln Rockwell, white supremacist, and two of his associates in the American Nazi Party, to discuss a joint resolution in support of government-supported "repatriation" of African-Americans to a homeland on the African continent.

  April 6, 1959 (Monday)

• The Academy Awards ceremony took place at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Gigi won a record nine Oscars, including the award for Best Picture.
• Texas A&M University won in its fight against admitting women as students, as the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by two women from a state court decision.
• Robert Sobukwe founded the Pan Africanist Congress as a black African alternative to the African National Congress.
• Hal Holbrook began his career of portraying a retired author, with his first performance of Mark Twain Tonight! at the Forty-first Street Theatre in Manhattan.
• The "escudo" was created as the new currency of the South American nation of Chile, with the signing by President Jorge Alessandri of Law 13,305 in response to runaway inflation. The new escudo was worth 1,000 old pesos, which would be completely replaced by January 1, 1960. The "new peso" would replace the Chilean escudo on September 29, 1975, at a rate of one new peso for every 1,000 escudos.

  April 7, 1959 (Tuesday)

• In Washington, the National Safety Council first warned parents about the risk of suffocation posed by plastic bags, particularly those used by dry cleaners. The AMA, as well as a trade association of dry-cleaning stores, joined in the warning. In January, Dr. Paul B. Jarrett of Phoenix had begun a campaign to educate the public after five children had suffocated in the previous year.
• The first photograph of a falling meteorite was taken in Příbram, Czechoslovakia.
• For the first time, a radar signal was sent between the Earth and the Sun. A team led by Dr. Von R. Eshleman, Lt. Col. Robert C. Barthle, and Dr. Philip B. Gallagher, transmitted the beam from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and received the return 17 minutes later. The morning experiments were repeated on April 10 and April 12, and the data was published in the journal Science on February 5, 1960.
• By a margin of 386,845 to 314,380 voters in Oklahoma elected to repeal the state's constitutional prohibition on the sale of alcohol, leaving Mississippi as the only dry American state. Liquor sales began on September 1.
• The town of Jackpot, Nevada, was founded. Located a few miles south of the border with Idaho, the gambling center was created after Idaho banned gambling.
• Israel created the first Holocaust Memorial Day by vote of the Knesset in Tel Aviv, to be observed on the 27th day of Nisan, which fell on May 5 in 1959. If the 27th falls on a Friday, the observation is held on the 26th. In 2009, Nisan 27 was on April 21.
• The Philippine government began use of the presidential yacht, the R.P.S. Lapu-Lapu.

  April 8, 1959 (Wednesday)

• Grace Hopper and others met at the University of Pennsylvania to discuss a computer programming language that would be more applicable to programming for business than FORTRAN. Following the meeting, a task force overseen by Hopper created COmmon Business Oriented Language, or COBOL.
• The Inter-American Development Bank was founded in Washington as an initiative by the Organization of American States to distribute financial aid to OAS member nations.
• As many as 250 delegates to a conference of the AFL-CIO got food poisoning after eating dinner on board a train bound from Toledo to Washington.
• One day before the press conference introducing the members of NASA Astronaut Group 1, USAF test pilot Capt. Halvor M. Ekeren Jr., who had been one of the 32 astronaut finalists earlier in the year, died in the crash of his Convair JF-106A-50 Delta Dart near Indian Springs AFB in Nevada.
• Died: Marios Makrionitis, 45, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Athens, was killed in an automobile accident.

  April 9, 1959 (Thursday)

• NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan introduced the Mercury Seven astronauts at a press conference in Washington, D.C. By rank, they were Lt. Col. John Glenn, Lieutenant Commanders Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard, Air Force Captains Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom and Deke Slayton, and Navy Lt. Scott Carpenter.
• The first hijacking of an airliner to Cuba took place after six Haitian rebels killed the pilot of a Coahata Airlines flight bound from Aux Cayes to Port-au-Prince, then flew the DC3 to Havana.
• Comedian Lenny Bruce made his national television debut, as a guest on The Steve Allen Show.
• The Boston Celtics beat the Minneapolis Lakers 118–113 to sweep the four-game NBA championship series, in the first of the Celtics-Lakers title matches.
• Actor George Reeves, who portrayed Superman on television, was injured when the brakes failed on his Jaguar automobile, and he crashed into a light pole near his home in Beverly Hills. Reeves suffered regular headaches after the accident, and would die from a gunshot wound on June 16.
• Died: Frank Lloyd Wright, 91, American architect, died in Phoenix, three days after intestinal surgery.