April 1966

[April 1], 1966 (Friday)

• General Pham Xuan Chieu, a member of South Vietnam's 10-man military junta who was appearing as an emissary of Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ to seek popular support, was surrounded by a mob of 1,000 students and Buddhist activists as he arrived at city government offices. The group then held him captive, transported him around the city in a cycle rickshaw, forced him to make a speech at the local radio station, and then released him unharmed.
• At the Communist Party Congress, Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky made a cryptic reference to "the blue belt" of national defense, then discussed recently constructed intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines, along with other weapons that could destroy "any planes and many rockets of the adversary".
• The long-running Christian telethon The 700 Club was broadcast for the first time on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Pat Robertson would host The 700 Club from 1966 until his retirement in 2021.
• Born:
• *Janette Rallison, American writer; mother of YouTuber and cartoonist Robert J. Rallison ; in Pullman, Washington
• *Chris Evans, English television and radio presenter; in Warrington
• Died: Brian O'Nolan, 54, Irish humorist who wrote under the pen names "Flann O'Brien" and "Myles na Gopaleen"; of throat cancer

  [April 2], 1966 (Saturday)

• Ten thousand protesters marched through the streets of Da Nang in South Vietnam and denounced both the United States and the South Vietnamese government of Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky. Da Nang Mayor Nguyen Van Man, who had allowed protesters free use of city offices, motor vehicles and printing facilities, was accused of treason by Ky, who said that he planned to have Man executed by a firing squad.
• People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial by cultural critic Qi Benyu, titled "On the Essence of 'Han Rui Scolding the Emperor' and 'Hai Rui Dismissed from Office'", in what would be a prelude for the Party's calls for a violent public uprising.
• On his fourth day in office, Ecuador's new President, Clemente Yerovi, announced that he was cancelling a presidential election that had been scheduled for July.
• Died: C. S. Forester, 66, English adventure novelist known for the Horatio Hornblower series

  [April 3], 1966 (Sunday)

• A North Sea gale ran the British passenger ship Anzio aground at Donna Nook, Lincolnshire, near the mouth of the Humber River, and it was demolished. The ship, which had recently been purchased and was en route from London to Inverness to be delivered to its new owners, was occupied only by its skipper, Adam Fotheringham, and twelve other crewmembers. There were no survivors. The bodies of ten men, all wearing life jackets but killed after being battered by debris and the rocks, washed ashore on the beach, while three men were presumed to have gone down with the ship.
• At 18:44 UTC, the Soviet lunar probe Luna 10 became the first human-made object to orbit the Moon. Luna 10 would make a complete trip around the Moon every three hours and would transmit signals back to Earth until May 30.
• Died: Battista Farina, 72, Italian car designer

  [April 4], 1966 (Monday)

• NASA announced the names of its fifth group of astronauts, 19 men qualified for missions in the 1970s. From the fifth generation of explorers came Apollo astronauts Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa, James Irwin and Alfred Worden, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly, Ronald Evans and Vance D. Brand ; Skylab astronauts Paul J. Weitz, Jack R. Lousma and Gerald P. Carr and William R. Pogue ; and Space Shuttle astronauts Joe Engle, Don L. Lind and Bruce McCandless II. Two would not go into outer space; John S. Bull would be disqualified by a medical condition, while Edward Givens would be killed in an automobile accident in 1967.
• So Sau Chung began a hunger strike at the entrance of the Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong's Central District, sparking the Hong Kong 1966 riots. At issue was the recent announcement that the fare for ferry boats would be increased by one cent; the next day, hundreds of youths joined him in a protest. Within days, thousands of young protesters were setting fires, smashing glass windows, and battling British colonial police.
• A deadly tornado family affected the I-4 corridor in Central Florida from the Tampa Bay area to Brevard County. Eleven people were killed across the state in what remains one of only two F4 tornadoes ever to strike that U.S. state.
• Born:
• *Brother Marquis, American rapper for 2 Live Crew; in Rochester, New York
• *Viceregal, Canadian Champion Thoroughbred racehorse ; at Windfields Farm

  [April 5], 1966 (Tuesday)

• Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin said in a speech to the 23rd Communist Party Congress that the nation would begin measuring economic success by profits rather than by achievement of production target quantities. Starting in 1967, Kosygin said, nearly one-third of factory workers would be eligible for incentive bonuses. He asked the Party Congress to approve a new Five Year Economic Plan implementing the changes.
• The first Congressional hearing about unidentified flying objects was convened in Washington, D.C., before the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by U.S. Representative L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina. The request for the Congressional investigation had been made by House Republican leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan.
• Acting upon authority granted by NASA Headquarters and approval of Manned Spacecraft Center 's statement of work, Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, MSC Gemini Program Deputy Manager, informed officials in Washington and Huntsville that Houston had presented requests for proposals to Douglas, Grumman, and McDonnell to undertake definition studies on the Saturn S-IVB spent-stage experiment support module.
• NBC television broadcast the final original episode of Dr. Kildare. In its final season, the popular show had been moved from one hour on Thursday nights, to half-hour programs shown on Monday and Tuesday, "with disastrous results", and was canceled after poor ratings.
• In an attempt to suppress the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese prime minister and strongman Nguyễn Cao Kỳ personally attempted to lead the capture of the restive city of Đà Nẵng before backing down.
• The International Convention on Load Lines was signed in London.

  [April 6], 1966 (Wednesday)

• The Beatles began their "Studio Years", discontinuing public concerts in favor of simply releasing new albums and singles for sale, as the first song was recorded for their upcoming album Revolver. That session, with John Lennon singing "Tomorrow Never Knows", marked the first use of automatic double tracking, invented by EMI recording engineer Ken Townsend, and the first to include music played backwards.
• Reginald Prentice replaced Charles Pannell as Minister of Public Buildings and Works and George Thomson replaced Douglas Houghton as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the British government. The Earl of Longford succeeded Sir Frank Soskice as Lord Privy Seal, and Frederick Lee became Secretary of State for the Colonies.
• The first secret meeting concerning the merger of professional football's National Football League and the American Football League took place at a parking lot in Dallas, between Dallas Cowboys owner Tex Schramm and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt.
• Mihir Sen of the Bihar state in India became the first person to swim across the wide Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka, arriving at Dhanushkodi on India's Pamban Island 25 hours and 36 minutes after departing Sri Lanka.
• Born:
• *Vince Flynn, American thriller novelist known for the "Mitch Rapp" series of political thrillers, starting with 1999's Transfer of Power ; in St. Paul, Minnesota
• *Elizabeth Fitzel, a woman who was held captive in a cellar for 24 years by her father, Josef Fritzl; in Amstetten, Lower Austria

  [April 7], 1966 (Thursday)

• After an 80-day operation in the Mediterranean Sea, the United States finally recovered the hydrogen bomb that had been lost off of the coast of Spain. After being raised from the sea by a winch, the bomb was loaded onto the rescue ship and shipped back to the United States.
• Police in Japan arrested Dr. Mitsuru Suzuki at the Chiba University Hospital, where he was employed as a bacteriologist. Between December 25, 1964, and March 15, 1966, Dr. Suzuki had deliberately infected 200 people— four of them fatally— including many of his co-workers, with various diseases from bacteria that he had placed into food. Over a period of 15 months, he laced a sponge cake with dysentery; and medicines, shellfish, a cake, bananas, and bottles of a soft drink with typhoid. Suzuki was prosecuted for 66 cases of infecting people, but not for any of the deaths.
• The United Kingdom asked the United Nations Security Council for authority to use force to stop the Joanna V, an oil tanker that, anchored outside the harbor, was loading petroleum at a port in Portuguese East Africa and preparing to violate the United Nations embargo against Rhodesia.
• Test pilot Robert G. Ferry landed a Hughes OH-6A Pawnee helicopter in Ormond Beach, Florida, after flying from Culver City, California, without refueling, to set the record for the longest non-stop helicopter flight.

  [April 8], 1966 (Friday)

• Leonid Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since replacing Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, was unanimously elected by the Party's Central Committee as the party's leader, now referred to as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In addition, the 12-man Presidium of the CPSU was renamed the Politburo, and its roster changed to 11 members. The last of the "old Bolsheviks" in the Kremlin hierarchy, 70-year-old Anastas Mikoyan and 78-year-old Nikolai Shvernik, were allowed to retire. Shvernik was replaced by newcomer Arvids Pelshe. The other ten members of the Politburo were Brezhnev, Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, party ideologist Mikhail Suslov, Russian Federation premier Gennady Voronov, Russian first deputy premiers Kiril Mazurov and Dmitry Polyansky, and Ukraine Party First Secretary Pyotr Shelest.
• The last poll tax in the United States was outlawed when a three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voided the requirement in Mississippi, in accordance with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections. Since 1890, a registered voter had to present receipts showing payment of the poll tax for the two preceding Januarys before being allowed to cast a vote in a Mississippi election. Ostensibly, the law had been justified as a fundraiser for the "common school fund", but the poll tax accounted for only 0.43% of Mississippi's education revenues. As a practical matter, the poll tax was a deterrent to participation by low income Southerners, and most African-Americans. Earlier in the year, similar decisions had outlawed the taxes in Texas, Alabama and Virginia.
• All 494 people on board the Norwegian cruise ship Viking Princess were saved from a fire that swept through the luxury ocean liner while it was sailing in the Caribbean Sea between Aruba and Curaçao, although three of the passengers died of heart attacks during their escape. "It's funny the way the passengers all stuck together," a passenger would later say, "It was a very peculiar thing. No shouting or screaming." The ship's captain, Otto Thoresen, said that it took the passengers only ten minutes to enter lifeboats after the 'abandon ship' order was given. At the time, the closest ship, the German vessel Cap Norte, was still 90 minutes away.
• Two boys, aged 13 and 12, who ran away from their homes in Fayetteville, North Carolina, sneaked on to a railroad box car and then found themselves locked inside for the next 13 days. The sealed car was carrying a cargo of nearly empty beer bottles to the Schlitz Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and for nearly two weeks, they survived by drinking small amounts of stale beer, until April 21, when they arrived in Milwaukee and workmen at the brewing company heard their cries for help.
• The terrorist group Fatah caused its first death in Israel when an Israeli farmer was killed by a land mine that had been placed by members who had sneaked across the border with Syria. After more mine casualties, Israel would launch air strikes against Syria and, in June 1967, would make the first strike against its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War.
• NASA launched its first Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, OAO-1, with detection instruments that would measure stellar ultraviolet radiation without the interference that ground-based telescopes faced on Earth. The spacecraft's batteries would be depleted two days after the launch, after a high-voltage arc when powering up the trackers.
• The Norwegian cargo ship Stavfjord collided with the Cuban ship Oriente north of Ameland, Netherlands. Both ships sank, but all crew were rescued by the Dutch ship Luden.
• In one of the most controversial covers of Time magazine, the national newsweekly's cover for Good Friday, 1966, had a black background and, in bold red letters, the question "Is God Dead?"
• Born: Robin Wright, American actress; in Dallas