August 1966

[August 1], 1966 (Monday)

• Sixteen people were shot to death, and 31 wounded, by Charles Whitman, a student at the University of Texas at Austin and a former U.S. Marine sniper, who was firing from the observation deck on the 28th floor of the tower overlooking the campus. Prior to the shooting, Whitman had stabbed his mother and his wife to death in order to spare them "the embarrassment" his actions would cause. At 11:48 a.m., Whitman began shooting victims at random, and was not stopped until 96 minutes later, when policemen Ramiro Martinez and Houston McCoy were able to reach the sniper's perch and kill him. An autopsy showed later that Whitman had a brain tumor.
• After three days of confusion about the whereabouts of kidnapped President Ironsi, General Yakubu Gowon became the President of Nigeria.

  [August 2], 1966 (Tuesday)

• The station manager of WAQY-AM radio in Birmingham, Alabama, became the first to urge listeners to boycott record stores and bookstores that sold music and memorabilia of The Beatles, starting an American backlash against the British rock group that was preparing to make a tour of the United States. Manager Tommy Charles told reporters, "We just felt it was so absurd and sacrilegious that something ought to be done to show that they cannot get away with this sort of thing." On March 4, John Lennon had been quoted by a British interviewer as saying, "We're more popular than Jesus now", and the statement had largely gone unnoticed until it was reprinted in the July issue of the American teen magazine Datebook. On July 28, Charles and disc jockey Doug Layton stopped playing the group's records and announced plans for a bonfire of records on July 30. Other radio stations joined in the boycott, including in South Africa and Spain, before Lennon made an apology when the group arrived in Chicago on August 11.
• Nigeria's new president, Lt. Yakubu Gowon, announced the immediate release of political prisoners who had been incarcerated during the Balewa regime. The most prominent of the men to go free were Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Anthony Enahoro, who had been jailed since 1962 for conspiracy against the Balewa government.
• Unopposed, Alexei Kosygin received a unanimous "yes" vote for a four-year term as Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, in voting by the 1,517 members of both houses of the Supreme Soviet parliament. Officially, the result for Kosygin was 767–0 in the Soviet of the Union, and 750–0 in the Soviet of Nationalities.
• The Soviet Union's Sukhoi Su-17 attack aircraft made its first flight, with Vladimir Ilyushin at the controls, becoming the first Soviet variable geometry aircraft.
• George E. Mueller, of NASA proposed that the Apollo Telescope Mount of the Apollo spacecraft should be mounted on a rack on the Apollo Lunar Module descent stage or attached directly to the Command Service Module, with development to begin immediately to be ready for the 1968–1969 period of maximum solar activity. Mueller also recommended that NASA proceed with developing an S-IVB airlock module experiment as part of the proposed dual-launch Apollo-Saturn 209-210 mission. The AM, a tube structure long and in diameter, would have a docking adapter at one end for the CSM and a sealed connection at the other end to a hatch to provide an oxygen-pressurized passageway for the crew and to create a "shirt-sleeve" environment. NASA Administrator James E. Webb endorsed the airlock module experiment, commenting that the module "would open up additional areas of knowledge we might need if Russian programs accelerate to the degree that we wish to add to our manned operations with the least lead time."
• Born: Tim Wakefield, American baseball pitcher; in Melbourne, Florida
• Died: Boyd Raeburn, 52, American jazz bandleader, died of a heart attack

  [August 3], 1966 (Wednesday)

• A U.S. Navy board of inquiry recommended a court-martial for Captain Archie C. Kuntze for misconduct during his two years as commander of the supply depot operations within South Vietnam. Captain Kuntze, who called himself "The American Mayor of Saigon", would be convicted on November 14 of lesser charges involving a romantic affair and would receive a reprimand.
• A radio broadcast by China's Prime Minister Zhou Enlai in Ürümqi called on the people of the multi-ethnic Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to support the Cultural Revolution. Within a month, the predominantly Sunni Muslim Uyghurs would be under the persecution of the mostly Han Chinese Red Guards.
• Born: Brent Butt, Canadian comedian; in Tisdale, Saskatchewan
• Died:
• *Lenny Bruce, 40, American comedian, died from an overdose of morphine. Bruce was found in the bathroom at his home at 8825 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, reportedly with the needle of his syringe still lodged in his arm. The day before, he had received a foreclosure notice on the house.
• *René Schick Gutiérrez, 56, President of Nicaragua since 1963, died of a heart attack inside the Presidential Palace at Managua. He was succeeded by Vice President Lorenzo Guerrero the following day.

  [August 4], 1966 (Thursday)

• The 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games opened in Kingston, Jamaica, the first time that the Games have been held outside the "White Dominions".
• The FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 1966 opened in Portillo, Chile.
• Born:
• *Leonid Rozhetskin, Russian financier and lawyer; in Leningrad, Soviet Union
• *Alan Martin, British comics writer best known as author of the comic strip Tank Girl; in Worthing, Sussex
• Died: Helen Tamiris, 64, American choreographer

  [August 5], 1966 (Friday)

• The Caesars Palace hotel and casino opened in Las Vegas and "set a new standard of luxury for the Nevada casino-resort industry"; owner Jay Sarno said that he was tired of "Wild West themes" in Nevada casinos and wanted to recreate the opulence of the Roman Empire during the "Age of the Caesars". In his last public appearance before his August 23 death, Francis X. Bushman was the official greeter and dressed in the outfit that he wore in the 1925 silent film version of Ben-Hur.
• China's leader, Mao Zedong, authored his statement "Bombard the Headquarters" in the form of a big-character poster place on the wall of the Zhongnanhai, the residential compound for the highest-ranking Communist Party officials. The official endorsement of the Cultural Revolution and the grassroots work of the young students in the Red Guards would be described enthusiastically by the Red Guards of Nankai University in 1968 as "the shot that shook up the whole world... a salvo that opened up a whole new chapter in human history". On the same day, Bian Zhongyun, vice-principal of the girls' high school associated with Beijing Normal University, became the first person killed in beatings by the Red Guards; she reportedly was beaten to death with wooden sticks by her students.
• Groundbreaking took place for the World Trade Center in New York City, as jackhammers began breaking pavement at the former site of Radio Row. The first placement of steel construction would begin two years later, and the first of the 110-story Twin Towers, WTC 1, would house its first tenants in December, 1970, followed by the opening of WTC 2 in January 1972. Formal dedication would take place on April 4, 1973, and the two towers were later destroyed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.
• The Soviet Union protested against damage to one of its merchant ships in a North Vietnamese port, caused by American air attacks. The Soviet diesel vessel Medyn had been moored in Haiphong harbor when it was struck by large caliber bullets during an American air raid on August 2. Foy D. Kohler, the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, responded eight days later that the damage had actually been caused by anti-aircraft fire from the North Vietnamese side, and that the U.S. planes conducted no strafing operations.
• The Beatles' album Revolver was released in the United Kingdom by EMI Studios. It would be released by Capitol Records in the United States three days later, on August 8, but without three songs that had already appeared on the U.S. version of Yesterday and Today.

  [August 6], 1966 (Saturday)

• Luci Baines Johnson, daughter of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, was married to Patrick J. Nugent in the most important social event of the year in Washington, D.C., with a ceremony at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and a post-wedding reception at the White House. The ceremonies were televised live on all three American networks.
• Braniff Flight 250, a BAC One-Eleven jet, crashed near Falls City, Nebraska, after losing its right wing, right stabilizer, and tailfin during severe air turbulence when it flew into an active squall line. All 38 passengers and four crew on board were killed. At 11:12 p.m., the jet, en route from Kansas City, Missouri, to Omaha, Nebraska, impacted on a farm in Richardson County, Nebraska, northeast of the town. A later investigation concluded that the probable cause of the accident was "operation of the aircraft in an area of avoidable hazardous weather", noting that the captain had been offered the option of flying around the storm rather than through it. An author would later call it "one of several important stepping-stones over a long period of developing a safer American commercial aviation inquiry" and note that "Flight 250's demise saw the first use of cockpit voice recorder technology in an aviation accident investigation". The release of the transcript on December 7 would be described as "undoubtedly the very first sound record of the actual crunching and crackling of an aircraft breaking apart under stress", with the last reported words being the Captain saying, "Ease power back..." as the sound of rushing air began. At 11:12:06 p.m., the tape made its last recording, of "a tremendous crash which was ground impact. No such final sound record ever was made before..."
• Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the wealthy, but erratic, ruler of the oil-rich sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi, was overthrown by members of his own family, and arrested with the assistance of the British paramilitary force, the Trucial Oman Scouts. At the time, Abu Dhabi and seven other sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula were part of a British protectorate, the Trucial States. The new ruler, Shakhbut's younger brother Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, would later unite the sheikdoms and become the first President of the United Arab Emirates in 1971.
• What was, at the time, the longest suspension bridge in Europe was inaugurated as the long Salazar Bridge over the Tagus River was opened to traffic and connected the wealthy industrial region to the north of Lisbon with the poorer southern half of Portugal. Named originally for the 79-year-old dictator of Portugal, Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar, the structure would be renamed the 25 de Abril Bridge following the April 25, 1974, revolution that would overthrow the military regime.
• Kenneth McDuff began the first of at least nine murders as a serial killer, when he kidnapped and shot three teenagers in Everman, Texas. Initially sentenced to death in the electric chair, the 20-year-old killer would have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment and would be paroled in 1989. Following his release, he would resume murdering people until being arrested again in 1992. He would be executed by lethal injection on November 17, 1998.
• René Barrientos was sworn in as the new President of Bolivia. He would serve until his death in a helicopter crash in 1969.
• Died: Cordwainer Smith, 53, American science fiction writer, died from a heart attack.