August 1964

[August 1], 1964 (Saturday)

• With the acceptance by voters of a new constitution, the former Belgian Congo officially changed its name from the "Republic of the Congo" to the "Democratic Republic of the Congo". Since 1960, both the former French Congo and the former Belgian Congo had referred to themselves as "Republic of the Congo" and had been distinguished as "Congo-Brazzaville" and "Congo-Léopoldville", respectively.
• Emancipation Day was first observed in Barbados, Bermuda, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Jamaica – as a celebration of the end of slavery during the British colonial era in the Caribbean.
• The final Looney Tune cartoon, Señorella and the Glass Huarache, was released. Jack L. Warner would subsequently shut down the Warner Bros. Cartoon Division.

  [August 2], 1964 (Sunday)

• The Gulf of Tonkin incident took place when the destroyer engaged three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron, while performing a signals intelligence patrol as part of DESOTO operations. Accounts from both sides agreed that the North Vietnamese fired first, with Commander Nguyen Van Tu of T-336 giving the order to launch the first torpedo, followed by the T-339 and the T-333. According to the U.S. Navy, the Maddox evaded two torpedoes at 4:08 in the afternoon local time, and at 4:21 the Maddox and a third Viet boat exchanged gunfire. During the battle, the Maddox spent over 280 three-inch and five-inch shells, and in which four U. S. Navy F-8 Crusader jet fighter bombers strafed the torpedo boats. One American aircraft was damaged, one 14.5 mm round hit the destroyer, four North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed and six wounded.
• Swimmers broke two world records on the final day of the Amateur Athletic Union's national championships in Los Altos, California, in a meet where competitors had set 10 new world bests. Murray Rose of Australia swam the men's 1,500-meter freestyle in 17 minutes, 1.8 seconds, and 15-year-old Sharon Stouder set a new mark for the women's 200-meter butterfly at 2 minutes, 26.4 seconds.
• The wreckage of a plane piloted by popular singer Jim Reeves was found near Brentwood, Tennessee, 42 hours after it crashed. Reeves' body had been thrown from the aircraft, while the body of his manager, Dean Manuel, was found inside the plane.
• British driver John Surtees won the 1964 German Grand Prix.
• Born: Mary-Louise Parker, American stage, television and film actress; in Fort Jackson, South Carolina
• Died: Carel Godin de Beaufort, 30, Dutch nobleman and motorsport driver; from injuries from crash during practice for the German Grand Prix

  [August 3], 1964 (Monday)

• Followers of Alice Lenshina and the Lumpa sect attacked the town of Lundazi in Zambia and indiscriminately murdered residents they found on the streets, using hatchets, spears, arrows and gunfire. They then marched northward from Lundzi and attacked seven villages. At least 150 people were killed in the attack. Zambian troops and riot police counterattacked at the Lumpa village of Chipoma and killed 74 of the rebels, and Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda outlawed the Lumpa church. Lenshina would be captured, alive, 8 days later.
• The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party issued decree number 655–268, directing Vladimir Chelomey of the OKB-52 bureau to proceed on building rockets for a crewed landing on the Moon. The decree slowed the progress of the OKB-1 rocket design program headed by Sergei Korolev for a Soyuz lunar mission.
• Lyman Frain Sr., aged 80, became the oldest person to complete a transcontinental bicycle ride across the United States, arriving at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco after a journey of 86 days and. Frain had taken up the sport at the age of 72.
• At NASA, the Ad Hoc Astronomy Panel of the Orbiting Research Laboratory issued its preliminary report about the opinion of American scientists on the validity of astronomical research by humans in space, and to define astronomy objectives for the ORL mission. The panel concluded that although sounding rocket and satellite exploration had merit, broader goals required having humans in space. Although Earth-orbiting labs were the next step, the panel studied the eventual possibility of observatories on the Moon. The ad hoc panel noted the main rationale for humans in space astronomy was because of the need to assemble, maintain, repair, modify and directly monitor equipment in space and data immediately during specialized operations.
• Born:
• *Abhisit Vejjajiva, English-born Prime Minister of Thailand from 2008 to 2011; as Mark Abhisit Vejjajiva in Wallsend, Northumberland
• *Ralph Knibbs, English rugby union centre for Bristol RFC from 1983 to 1996; in Bristol
• *Lucky Dube, South African reggae musician ; as Philip Lucky Dube in Ermelo
• Died: Flannery O'Connor, 39, American novelist, died of lupus.

  [August 4], 1964 (Tuesday)

• The second Gulf of Tonkin incident, which would propel the United States into a large-scale commitment to the Vietnam War, involved the commanders of two U.S. Navy destroyers believing that they had been victims of an attack that "probably never occurred". The USS C. Turner Joy and the USS Maddox reported during the evening that they were being attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson would authorize a retaliatory air strike from the carrier USS Ticonderoga and deliver a late-night televised address calling Congress to action. Three days later, Congress would overwhelmingly authorize American use of force to a war that would claim the lives of over 58,000 Americans and one million Vietnamese. Nearly 40 years later, declassified information would show that the President was skeptical about the second attack, and the National Security Agency concluded after analyzing 140 formerly secret documents that, although there was no doubt about the August 2 attack on the Maddox, there had never been a second attack. NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok concluded that, "In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August. SIGINT reports which suggested that an attack had occurred contained severe analytical errors, unexplained translation changes and the conjunction of two unrelated messages into one translation." The overall consensus is that "there was no attack on the American ships on August 4, but... Johnson believed that there had been an attack when he ordered retaliation."
• The bodies of murdered civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were found at the site of an earthen dam on a farm near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where they had disappeared on June 21. Acting on a tip from an informer who was motivated by a $30,000 reward, FBI agents obtained a warrant to search the "Old Jolly Farm" with the assistance of road-grading equipment. After six hours, at 2:05 in the afternoon, the searchers "smelled decaying flesh" and began excavating with shovels. Schwerner's body was found 73 minutes later, followed by those of Goodman and Chaney.
• Nine miners in a French limestone quarry were rescued alive after being trapped for eight days by a cave-in near Champagnole. Another five died beneath the surface.

  [August 5], 1964 (Wednesday)

• U.S. Navy Lieutenant Everett Alvarez Jr. became the first American serviceman to be taken prisoner in North Vietnam, when his A-4 Skyhawk was hit by ground-fire and he parachuted to safety over Hon Gai. Members of the local militia pulled him on to their boat after he landed in the water, and he would be held as a prisoner of war for eight and a half years until February 12, 1973. Alvarez's captivity would be second only to that of U.S. Army Captain Floyd "Jim" Thompson, who had been captured in South Vietnam four months earlier, on March 26.
• The Simbas, the participants in the Simba rebellion, captured Stanleyville, the third largest city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and took several hundred Western hostages. Belgian paratroopers, airlifted into Stanleyville by the U.S. Air Force, would retake the city on November 24. During the siege, at least 120 hostages were killed.
• The United States bombed North Vietnam for the first time as it launched Operation Pierce Arrow from the aircraft carriers and. The raid, conducted on the North Vietnamese PT boat bases and coastal installations, destroyed 90 percent of the oil storage facilities in the port of Vinh.
• After taking off from the Constellation, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Richard C. Sather became the first American serviceman to be killed in North Vietnam, when his A-1 Skyraider was hit by anti-aircraft fire, and he crashed into the water off the shore of Thanh Hoa.
• The Vietnam Era began for purposes of federal law pertaining to members of the United States Armed Forces, which defines the period of American involvement in the Vietnam War as "the period beginning on August 5, 1964, and ending on March 27, 1973".
• Born: Adam "MCA" Yauch, American hip hop musician and founder of the Beastie Boys ; in Brooklyn

  [August 6], 1964 (Thursday)

• The first North Vietnamese Air Force jet fighter unit, Fighter Regiment No. 921, arrived in North Vietnam after training at the Mengzi airfield in the neighboring Yunnan province in the People's Republic of China, bringing 36 MiG-17 and MiG-19 fighters to Phúc Yên Air Base near Hanoi.
• Born: Gary Valenciano, Filipino pop musician and singer; in Santa Mesa, Manila
• Died: Sir Cedric Hardwicke, 71, English stage, film, radio and television actor

  [August 7], 1964 (Friday)

• By a unanimous vote in the House of Representatives and an 88 to 2 vote in the Senate, the United States Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, endorsing President Lyndon B. Johnson's broad use of war powers to combat North Vietnamese and local Communist attacks in Vietnam. The approval would clear the way for a massive American commitment to the Vietnam War. The only two votes against the resolution came from Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon and Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska. U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York did not vote for or against the resolution, and chose to vote "present" during the roll call. The resolution authorized the president to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States" and "to assist any member" of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, but fell short of a declaration of war. The resolution would be repealed by both houses of Congress on June 24, 1970, although American combat operations would continue into 1973.
• On the same day, the People's Republic of China warned that it would "without hesitation... resolutely support the Vietnamese people's just war against U.S. aggressors", though not committing to direct military intervention. American strategy during the war would be set when the Beijing government "informed Washington privately that it would not go beyond material aid provided that the United States did not invade North Vietnam with ground forces", which would be considered a threat to China's frontier.
• The funeral for James Chaney, the first for the three victims of the murder in Neshoba County, Mississippi, was held before African-American mourners at the First Union Baptist Church in Meridian, and one of the eulogies was given by a white preacher, Ed King, the chaplain at Tougaloo College. "I come before you to try to say that my brothers have killed my brothers," he told the gathering. "My white brothers have killed my black brothers." Pastor King, a native of Vicksburg, had fought for civil rights since 1960 and had been frequently jailed and beaten for his activities.
• Born: Carlo Colombara, Italian operatic bass; in Bologna
• Died:
• *Salima Machamba, 89, former Queen of the island of Mohéli in the Comoro Islands until she was deposed in 1909
• *Aleksander Zawadzki, 65, President of Poland since 1952