August 1961

[August 1], 1961 (Tuesday)

• U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara issued DOD Directive 5105.21, ordering the creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
• Three days of testing of the seaworthiness characteristics of the operational Mercury capsule began.
• Born:
• *Peter Evans, Australian Olympic swimming champion; in Perth
• *Danny Blind, Dutch footballer and coach; in Oost-Souburg

  [August 2], 1961 (Wednesday)

• Sixteen foreign tourists drowned in Switzerland's Lake Lucerne after their tour bus was sideswiped by a truck, then plunged down an embankment into the lake, near Hergiswil. There were 22 survivors, including the driver, the tour conductor, and his wife. All of the dead were Americans, and all but two were women. Most were schoolteachers who had been on a European trip organized by Gateway Holiday Tours of New York.
• Cyrille Adoula became the new Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after his nomination by President Joseph Kasavubu was confirmed by the parliament in a closed session in Leopoldville.
• Born: Cui Jian, Korean Chinese singer-songwriter; in Beijing
• Died: Michael John O'Leary, 70, Irish winner of the Victoria Cross for valor during World War I

  [August 3], 1961 (Thursday)

• In the United Kingdom, the Suicide Act 1961 was given royal assent and took effect immediately in England and in Wales, removing any criminal penalties previously assessed against people who had unsuccessfully attempted suicide.
• The nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher was commissioned at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Naval Shipyard. On April 10, 1963, the Thresher would be lost along with all 129 of its crew during deep diving tests.
• In the UK, the Trustee Investments Act 1961 received royal assent.
• Born:
• *Nicola Jane Chapman, British disability activist and sufferer of brittle bone disease, who was appointed, as Baroness Chapman, to the House of Lords in 2004 as one of the "People's peers"; in Leeds
• *Art Porter Jr., American jazz saxophonist; in Little Rock, Arkansas
• Died:
• *Nicola Canali, 87, Italian Roman Catholic cardinal who was the first President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State from 1931 until his death.
• *Zoltán Tildy, 71, last Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hungary and first President of Hungary.

  [August 4], 1961 (Friday)

• Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, made a "secret" speech at the Conference of first secretaries of Central Committees of Communist and workers parties of socialist countries for the exchange of views on the questions related to preparation and conclusion of a German peace treaty. Describing his encounter with U.S. envoy John J. McCloy, he said, "I told him to let Kennedy know... that if he starts a war then he would probably become the last president of the United States of America."
• Clarence Earl Gideon, charged with burglary, represented himself at his criminal trial after his request for an attorney was denied. After being sentenced on August 25 to five years in prison, Gideon petitioned the United States Supreme Court for review of his conviction, citing the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
• Born:
• *Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States; in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama was born at 7:24 p.m. in the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children, and the birth was reported in The Honolulu Advertiser on August 13.
• *Wanda Walkowicz, second victim of the Alphabet murders ; in Rochester, New York
• *Lauren Tom, American actress and voice artist; in Highland Park
• Died: Maurice Tourneur, 88, French film director. His 1917 film The Poor Little Rich Girl and his 1920 version of The Last of the Mohicans are both in the U.S. National Film Registry.

  [August 5], 1961 (Saturday)

• Residents of Cuba were told that they would have until the end of Monday to exchange their Cuban pesos for new paper money, after which their old bills would be worthless. The terms were that only 250 new pesos in cash would be provided per person, and all other money would have to be deposited into a bank account. On Tuesday, Fidel Castro announced that most bank deposits of more than 10,000 old pesos would be confiscated by the government, although elderly and disabled persons would be allowed to own 20,000 pesos.
• The Berlin Crisis of 1961 began at the close of a meeting in Moscow, as leaders of the Warsaw Pact nations announced that they had agreed unanimously to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany with the objective of ending the occupation of American, British and French troops in Berlin. That day, the number of East Germans fleeing into West Berlin had reached 1,500 or "one per minute". At the same meeting, Soviet Premier Khrushchev gave East German leader Walter Ulbricht his approval for closing the boundaries of East Berlin with a barbed-wire fence.
• The Six Flags over Texas theme park, located in Arlington, Texas, officially opened to the public. The park, first of 31 that have been part of the Six Flags franchise, had had a "soft" opening for selected visitors during the first four days of August.
• Eight days of testing of the Mercury spacecraft explosive exit hatch began after the difficulties experienced during the Mercury 4 mission.
• Born: Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysian politician and lawyer who served as Senior Minister of the Security Cluster and Minister of Defence from 2021 to 2022; in Johor Bahru, Johor
• Died: Hanns Seidel, 59, former minister-president of Bavaria

  [August 6], 1961 (Sunday)

• Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov was launched into space at 9:00 a.m. Moscow time on Vostok 2. Staying up for 25 hours and 18 minutes, he became the first human to sleep while in outer space, and the first to be in space for more than a day. He was also the first to experience the nausea of "space sickness". At the age of 25, Titov set a record that still stands, as the youngest person ever to go into Earth orbit. At the time that Titov became the second human into Earth orbit, the U.S. had yet to send an astronaut past the planet's gravitational pull. The spacecraft weighed more than Vostok 1, and the progress of Cosmonaut Titov's flight was reported continuously on Radio Moscow.
• British driver Stirling Moss won the 1961 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring.
• Born: Ali Abbasi, Pakistani-Scottish television presenter ; in Karachi
• Died: Jozef-Ernest van Roey, 87, Belgian cardinal and Archbishop of Mechelen since 1926

  [August 7], 1961 (Monday)

• The famous Milgram Experiment began on the campus of Yale University, as psychologist Stanley Milgram tested the willingness of test subjects to administer torture to other people, rather than to disobey rules. The study, which would continue until March 1962, used a machine that was labeled "Shock Generator, Type ZLB" and "Output 15 Volts— 450 Volts". Unaware that they were the study subjects, volunteers were given the role of "teacher" to assist the experimenter and given a mild shock to show what the "shock generator" was capable of, then pressured by the experimenter into giving increasing amounts of voltage to a "learner" on the other side of a window. In all cases, the "learner" was pretending to receive painful shocks from the Type ZLB machine. Milgram's experiment showed that, in almost two-thirds of the experiments, the volunteers would continue to follow orders from the authority figure to deliver shocks.
• The Vostok 2 capsule and Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov returned to Earth, landing at 10:18 in the morning near Krasny Kut, in Soviet Russia.
• On the day of Titov's return, the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate approved almost 1.7 trillion dollars in aid to the U.S. space program by voice vote. The quickly passed bill included $471,750,000 funding for a crewed mission to the Moon.
• Four days after being briefed by representatives of the Martin Company on the technical characteristics and expected performance of the Titan II rocket, NASA Director Robert R. Gilruth recommended using the Titan for human spaceflight, noting that it could carry larger payloads to orbit than the Atlas rocket, making the Titan II more desirable for a two-man spacecraft. Martin officials estimated the cost of procuring and launching nine Titan II boosters at $47,889,000 to be spread over three years.
• The Cape Cod National Seashore was created, as President Kennedy signed legislation setting aside of land in his native Massachusetts for public use. It was the first U.S. National Park to be established from land not already owned by the federal government, and was acquired by eminent domain with the U.S. Department of the Interior paying the landowners for the land taken.
• Born:
• *Ileen Getz, American actress ; in Bristol, Pennsylvania
• *Walter Swinburn, English jockey ; in Oxford
• *Brian Conley, English entertainer; in Paddington
• Died: Frank N. D. Buchman, 84, American Lutheran evangelist who founded the spiritualist movements the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament

  [August 8], 1961 (Tuesday)

• The Fantastic Four team of superheroes was introduced by Marvel Comics, as issue #1 of the comic book of the same name, post-dated for November, was placed on American newsstands and stores for the first time.
• The Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League defeated the visiting Buffalo Bills, at that time a member of the American Football League, in a preseason exhibition game in Hamilton. The Bills, playing the entire game under Canadian rules, lost 38–21. The game marked the only CFL–AFL meeting. CFL teams lost all six games played against NFL teams, including the last two, played the previous week.
• Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and her husband Prince Philip arrived at Carrickfergus on HMY Britannia to begin a 2-day royal visit to Northern Ireland.
• The SM-65F Atlas rocket was launched for the first time from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
• The nuclear missile carrying submarine USS Ethan Allen was commissioned.
• Born:
• *The Edge, Irish musician and guitarist for U2; in Barking, Essex, England
• *Simon Weston, Welsh war hero, broadcaster and campaigner; in Caerphilly
• Died:
• *Mei Lanfang, 66, Chinese Beijing Opera performer
• *Muriel Rahn, 50, African-American theatre singer
• *Bhagawan Nityananda, 63, Indian guru