April 1963

[April 1], 1963 (Monday)

• The long-running American TV soap opera General Hospital made its debut on the ABC network. On the same afternoon, the first episode of NBC's hospital soap opera, The Doctors, premiered. General Hospital, set in the fictional town of Port Charles, New York, would begin its 60th year in 2022, while The Doctors, set in the fictional New England town of Madison, would end on December 31, 1982.
• The Titan II-Gemini Coordination Committee was established to direct efforts to reduce longitudinal vibration in the Titan II and to improve engine reliability.
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Ian Fleming's eleventh James Bond novel, was first published by Jonathan Cape.
• Died: Quinim Pholsena, 47, the Foreign Minister of Laos, was assassinated by a soldier assigned to guard him. Quinim and his wife had returned home from a reception with the King, when Lance Corporal Chy Kong fired a machine gun at the couple. Minister Quinim was hit by 18 bullets, after which the guard "finished him off with a shot through the head".

  [April 2], 1963 (Tuesday)

• The Soviet Union launched Luna 4 at 8:04 a.m. UT toward the Moon, using a curving path rather than a straight trajectory.
• NASA signed an almost half-billion-dollar contract with McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to produce 13 Gemini spacecraft, the next generation of capsules designed to carry two astronauts rather than the single-person capacity Mercury spacecraft. In addition to the 13 flight-rated Geminis, McDonnell would also provide the docking simulator trainer, five boilerplates, and three static articles for vibration and impact ground tests. On the same day, NASA's Director of Manned Space Flight, D. Brainerd Holmes, to explain a request for a $42.6 million increase in Project Gemini's Fiscal Year 1963 budget.
• The Navy of Argentina began a revolt against the government of President José María Guido, with the insurrection starting at Puerto Belgrano. The rebellion would quietly end the next day.
• Singapore television channel Saluran 5 Television Singapura began the regular service in the Asian nation, with four hours of programming every evening.
• The Beatles began their Spring 1963 UK tour in Sheffield, England.

  [April 3], 1963 (Wednesday)

• The Delaware Supreme Court upheld their state's law, unique in the United States, permitting the flogging of criminals. Although the penalty, dating from colonial days, had not been carried out for several years, a 20-year-old man had been given a probated sentence of 20 lashes for auto theft, then violated the probation.
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference volunteers kicked off the Birmingham campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, against racial segregation in the United States, with a sit-in.

  [April 4], 1963 (Thursday)

• The cost of making a long-distance telephone call was lowered throughout the continental United States, with a maximum charge of one dollar for three-minute "station-to-station" calls made between 9:00 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. The equivalent 60 years later for the three-minute call would be $10.50.
• Network Ten, the third television network in Australia, began with the granting of a corporate operating license to United Telecasters Sydney Limited. Broadcasting would begin on ATV-0 in Melbourne on April 1, 1964, and on Channel Ten in Sydney on April 5, 1965.
• All 67 people on board Aeroflot Flight 25 were killed, one hour after the Ilyushin-18 plane had taken off from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, bound for Krasnoyarsk.
• The Beatles performed at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, UK, for a fee of £100, having accepted a personal request from schoolboy David Moores, a fellow Liverpudlian.
• The Henry Miller novel Tropic of Cancer went on sale legally in the United Kingdom for the first time, after having been banned for thirty years because it had been deemed obscene.
• Died: Gaetano Catanoso, 84, Italian parish priest canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005

  [April 5], 1963 (Friday)

• The Soviet Union accepted an American proposal to establish a Moscow–Washington hotline so that the leaders of the two nations could communicate directly with each other in order to avoid war. Originally, the hot line was a teletype system rather than a direct voice line.
• Luna 4, the first successful spacecraft of the USSR's "second generation" Luna program, missed the Moon by at 13:25 UT and entered a barycentric Earth orbit.
• Mercury 9 pilot Gordon Cooper and backup Alan Shepard visited the Morehead Planetarium in North Carolina to review the celestial sphere model, practice star navigation, and observe a simulation of the flashing light beacon experiment planned for the mission.
• Ferdinand Marcos became President of the Senate of the Philippines.
• Died: Sonja McCaskie, 24, British skier and 1960 Olympics competitor, was kidnapped and murdered.

  [April 6], 1963 (Saturday)

• The South African Soccer League, formed in 1961, was banned from further use of public stadiums because its teams included white, black and mixed race players, in violation of the Group Areas Act, and a game at Alberton, a suburb of Johannesburg, was cancelled on the day of the match. Fans climbed the fence surrounding the locked Natalspruit Indian Sports ground and 15,000 people watched the Moroka Swallows defeat Blackpool United, 6–1. Afterwards, the SASL was permanently denied access to playing fields, and disbanded in 1967 after years of financial losses.
• Boots Randolph, better-known as an accompanist for many performers in rock, pop, and country music, had his only U.S. hit, reaching #1 on the Billboard chart with "Yakety Sax".
• The Kingsmen recorded their influential cover of "Louie Louie" in Portland, Oregon, released in June.
• The Germany national rugby union team played a friendly international against a France XV at Frankfurt, losing 9–15.
• Born:
• *Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017; in Guayaquil
• *Phan Thị Kim Phúc, more commonly referred to as "The Girl in the Picture" or "Napalm Girl", she is best known as the nine-year-old child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, titled "The Terror of War", taken at Trảng Bàng during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972; in Trảng Bàng, South Vietnam
• Died:
• *Allen Whipple, 81, pioneering American cancer surgeon
• *Otto Struve, 65, Russian astronomer

  [April 7], 1963 (Sunday)

• In Kenya, 72 of the 82 people on a bus were killed when the vehicle ran off of the edge of a bridge and plunged into the Tiva River. The bus was bringing churchgoers back from a meeting in Mitaboni. Only the driver and nine other people were able to escape.
• Harold Holt, at that time the Treasurer of Australia, announced that Australia would introduce decimal currency in February 1966. The Australian pound, worth 20 shillings, would be replaced by the Australian dollar, worth 100 cents, on February 14, 1966.
• Yugoslavia was proclaimed to be a "socialist federative republic", and Josip Broz Tito was named President for Life. Tito would remain President until his death in 1980.
• At Augusta National Golf Club, 23-year-old Jack Nicklaus won the 27th Masters Tournament, becoming the youngest player to win the Masters. Nicklaus finished one stroke ahead of Tony Lema, 286 to 287.
• At more than 700 pages, the first full Sunday edition of The New York Times since the end of the printer's strike set a record for the size of a newspaper. Each copy of the Times edition weighed.

  [April 8], 1963 (Monday)

• In elections for the 265 seats in Canada's House of Commons, the Liberal Party, led by Lester B. Pearson, won 128 seats, five short of a majority, while Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives lost 21 seats and their control of the House. Pearson would replace Diefenbaker as Prime Minister on April 22.
• In the electoral race to represent the Pontiac–Témiscamingue district of Quebec in Canada's House of Commons, the two candidates, Progressive Conservative Paul Martineau and Liberal Paul-Oliva Goulet both received 6,448 votes. Under the system at the time for breaking a tie, the district's returning officer in charge of counting the votes decided in favor of Martineau.
• At the 35th Academy Awards, Lawrence of Arabia won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Gregory Peck won Best Actor for To Kill a Mockingbird, while Anne Bancroft won Best Actress for portraying Helen Keller's teacher in The Miracle Worker.
• Born: Julian Lennon, British musician, songwriter, actor and photographer; in Liverpool, to John and Cynthia Lennon

  [April 9], 1963 (Tuesday)

• Sir Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, became the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States by act of the U.S. Congress. President Kennedy signed the legislation for the 88-year-old statesman, whose mother Jennie Jerome Churchill, had been a United States native. The House of Representatives had approved the legislation on March 12 by a 377–21 vote, and the U.S. Senate approved on April 2 by voice vote. Churchill was unable to travel from the UK to the U.S., and his son, Randolph Churchill, accepted in his place in ceremonies that were televised.
• Langley Research Center personnel provided assistance to NASA for the Mercury 9 tethered balloon experiment at Cape Canaveral, installing force measuring beams, soldered at four terminals, to which the lead wires were fastened.
• Despite his party's loss in the elections for the House of Commons, Canada's Prime Minister Diefenbaker said that he would not resign until the new Parliament was called into session.

  [April 10], 1963 (Wednesday)

• All 129 people on the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine Thresher were killed when the vessel sank during sea trials east of Cape Cod, the dead included 17 civilians in addition to the 112 U.S. Navy personnel on board. The wreckage of Thresher would be located on October 1, 1964.
• An unknown gunman narrowly missed killing former U.S. Army General Edwin A. Walker, who had been working on his taxes at his home in Dallas, Texas. The would-be killer would later be claimed to have been Lee Harvey Oswald, who would allegedly use the same rifle to assassinate U.S. President John F. Kennedy in November.
• The owners and passengers of the yacht Cythera became the first modern victims of piracy when their boat was stolen by two crew members. The yacht was salvaged over a month later, and the incident would result in various legal complications, including prosecution of the pirates under an act of 1858.
• Frol Kozlov, the 54-year-old Second Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and Deputy Prime Minister, considered the likely successor to Nikita Khrushchev, had a stroke and was forced to retire. Kozlov would die on January 30, 1965.