April 1964

April 1, 1964 (Wednesday)

• Queen Elizabeth II became the Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom as part of the reorganisation of the defence of the nation. The post of First Lord of the Admiralty, held for the past year by the Earl Jellicoe, was abolished after 163 years. The position of Minister of Defence, held by Peter Thorneycroft, Baron Thorneycroft, became the Secretary of State for Defence.
• Most of the 12,000 physicians and dentists in Belgium went on strike and refused to treat patients, as a protest against a medical reform program that had gone into effect on January 1. The strike would end after 18 days, after Belgian government mobilization of all doctors benefiting from government assistance.
• Brazil's President João Goulart fled from Rio de Janeiro as rebel units of the 2nd Brazilian Army Corps approached the city to carry out a coup d'état. Goulart flew to Brasília, then to his home in Porto Alegre, where he pledged to take command of the Brazilian 3rd Army in a bid to reclaim his office.
• The Trident jet airliner began regular service, with British European Airways Flight 564 from London to Zürich.
• The Chrysler corporation introduced the Plymouth Barracuda.
• NASA astronauts visited to evaluate the Project Gemini translation and docking trainer and pointed out minor discrepancies which McDonnell corrected. Five days later, engineering evaluation was completed and the trainer was disassembled and shipped to for shipment to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.
• Died: Alejandro Lavorante, 27, Argentine heavyweight boxing champion, died 18 months after being knocked out on September 21, 1962. Earlier in the year, he had fought, and been knocked out by, both Archie Moore and Muhammad Ali. Lavorante never woke up after a bout with Johnny Riggins.

  April 2, 1964 (Thursday)

• Ranieri Mazzilli, the presiding officer of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, was sworn in as the new President of Brazil, while João Goulart abandoned further efforts to fight the coup leaders. Goulart and his family drove from his ranch in São Borja, and crossed the border to reach Santo Tomé in Argentina. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, who was in favor of the ouster of Goulart by anti-Communist forces, sent a cable to Mazzilli, and called the relationship between the U.S. and Brazil "a precious asset in the interest of peace and prosperity and liberty in this hemisphere and in the whole world." Mazzilli would step down on April 15 when the Brazilian Congress elected Humberto Castelo Branco to the Presidency.
• The Soviet Union launched Zond 1 on a flyby of the planet Venus. Although the probe would pass within of that planet on July 18, no data could be received because of a failure of transmitters in May and in June.
• Alfons Gorbach resigned as Chancellor of Austria and was succeeded by Josef Klaus, who would serve until 1970.
• Mrs. Malcolm Peabody, 72, mother of Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody, was released on $450 bond after spending two days in a St. Augustine, Florida jail for participating in an anti-segregation demonstration there.
• Testing of the Gemini No. 5 static vehicle

  April 3, 1964 (Friday)

• Malcolm X gave his speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet", at the Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, calling on African-Americans to reconsider the policy of nonviolent resistance in pursuit of equal rights. "Don't be throwing out any ballots," he told the crowd; "A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket." He closed by saying, "in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. This doesn't mean you're going to get a rifle and form battalions and go looking for white folks, although you'd be within your rights... If the white man doesn't want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job. That's all... In 1964, it's the ballot or the bullet."
• The Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued a statement calling the Chinese Communist Party "the main danger to the unity of the world communist movement", and called for a summit of the leaders of the world's communist parties. Printed in the party newspaper Pravda, the CPSU wrote that "Peking is steering a course toward a split among the communist parties, toward the setting up of factions and groups hostile to Marxism-Leninism."
• Panama resumed diplomatic relations with the United States, after a split on January 17. An agreement between representatives of the two nations was signed at a meeting of the Council of the Organization of American States in Washington.
• Born:
• *Nigel Farage, British politician, MP of the European Parliament, and co-founder of the right-wing UK Independence Party; in Farnborough, Kent.
• *Bjarne Riis, Danish professional bicycle racer; in Herning
• Died: John Haynes Holmes, 84, African-American activist and co-founder of the NAACP and the ACLU

  April 4, 1964 (Saturday)

• The Beatles held the top five positions in the Billboard Top 40 singles in America, an unprecedented achievement. The top songs in America as listed on April 4, in order, were: "Can't Buy Me Love", "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "Please Please Me". "No one had ever done anything even close to this before," an author would note later, "and it is doubtful the conditions will ever exist for anyone to do it again." The Beatles also held the 31st, 41st, 46th, 58th, 65th, 68th and 79th spots in Billboard's Hot 100.
• Born: David Cross, American standup comedian; in Atlanta

  April 5, 1964 (Sunday)

• Jigme Palden Dorji, the first Prime Minister of Bhutan, was shot and fatally wounded by an assassin while visiting the city of Phuntsholing. According to early reports, Dorji had been relaxing in a travelers home when the killer fired through an open window and shot him in the back. He died the next day. On April 8, a Bhutanese soldier named Jambay Dukpa confessed to firing the shot, after being arrested ten miles away at the city of Tala.
• A United States Marine Corps F-8C fighter crashed into a residential neighborhood at Hara Machida near Tokyo, killing four people on the ground and injuring 32 others. The F-8C malfunctioned and the aircraft's pilot ejected and was not seriously injured.
• Elections for the 99-seat Majlis an-Nuwwab began in Lebanon, and would continue on consecutive Sundays until May 3.
• Born: Christopher Reid, formerly known as Kid, comedian, actor, and rapper of the hip-hop duo Kid 'n Play; in The Bronx
• Died: Douglas MacArthur, 84, U.S. Army five-star general and hero of World War II and the Korean War

  April 6, 1964 (Monday)

• A group of 16 employees of the IBM company, led by Gene Amdahl and Gerrit Blaauw, filed a patent application for a data processing system machine. U.S. Patent number 3,400,371 would be granted on September 3, 1968.
• Vatican City became associated with the United Nations with the creation of the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, allowing it to participate, but not to vote, in the UN General Assembly.
• Born: Tim Walz, American politician, Governor of Minnesota and vice presidential candidate; in West Point, Nebraska

  April 7, 1964 (Tuesday)

• IBM announced the System/360 mainframe computer system, the first commercially available system to use micro-miniaturized logic circuits. The new machine, which IBM chairman Thomas J. Watson Jr. described as "the beginning of a new generation—not only of computers—but their application in business, science and government", was shown off at meetings in 165 cities before a total of 100,000 customers. The system could "accept messages from remote locations, no matter what the distance" and could "communicate simultaneously with 248 terminals". The most basic system had a storage of 8 kilobytes and the largest could accommodate 8 megabytes.
• The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric who would eventually be the leader of Iran, was released from prison in Tehran and permitted to relocate to the city of Qom.
• Born: Russell Crowe, New Zealand-born film actor; in Wellington
• Died:
• *Bruce W. Klunder, 26, American Presbyterian minister, was accidentally killed in Cleveland, Ohio, while protesting the construction of a new school that would have reinforced the Ohio city's pattern of racially segregated school districting. Klunder and three other protesters attempted to block the path of a bulldozer by lying down in its path, and the machine backed over him.
• *John Alan West, 53, English crime victim, was murdered during a burglary in his home in Workington. Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen would be convicted of the murder and, on August 13, 1964, would become the last two people to be legally executed in the United Kingdom.

  April 8, 1964 (Wednesday)

• The United States launched its first Project Gemini spacecraft, capable of accommodating two astronauts and a successor to the one-astronaut Project Mercury capsules. The uncrewed Gemini 1 ship lifted off from Cape Kennedy, Florida, at 11:00 a.m. EST. Mission plans did not include separation of the Gemini spacecraft from stage II of the Titan II Gemini launch vehicle, and both were inserted into Earth orbit as a unit six minutes after launch. The planned mission included only the first three orbits and ended about 4 hours and 50 minutes after liftoff with the third orbital pass over Cape Kennedy. No recovery was planned for this mission, but Goddard continued to track the spacecraft until it reentered the atmosphere on the 64th orbital pass over the southern Atlantic Ocean and disintegrated.
• Sheikh Abdullah, the former head of government of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, was released from incarceration by the government of India after more than ten years of confinement on accusations of seeking Kashmir independence. Abdullah returned to Srinagar to a hero's welcome.
• Four of five railroad-operating unions struck against the Illinois Central Railroad without warning, bringing to a head a 5-year dispute over railroad work rules.
• The James Bond film, From Russia with Love, premiered in the United States, after its premiere in London six months earlier.
• Born: Biz Markie, American rapper and DJ ; in Harlem, New York City
• Died: Jim Umbricht, 33, American Major League Baseball pitcher who had appeared in 35 games in 1963 despite being terminally ill with cancer. His last game had been on September 29, as a member of the Houston Colt.45s.