August 1967

[August 1], 1967 (Tuesday)

• Nine Japanese high school students were killed by a bolt of lightning that struck them while they were descending Mount Nishihodaka, a peak in Japan's Hida Mountains, near Nagano. Ten others were injured, and the other 31 members of the group were unhurt.
• The U.S. State Department lifted restrictions on American travel to Algeria, Libya and the Sudan, imposed after the Six-Day War, but still limited travel to Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen.
• After its construction at the Pullman Company yards in Chicago, the UAC TurboTrain was sent eastward at regular speed and without passengers, to Providence, Rhode Island in order for UAC Aircraft Systems engineers to tear it down, study it for further development, and then do eventual high-speed testing on a specially-built track between Trenton and New Brunswick, New Jersey.

  [August 2], 1967 (Wednesday)

• The Turkish soccer football team Trabzonspor, which would become one of the "big four" teams that have won all but one of the championships in Turkey's top national circuit the Süper Lig, played its first game, after having been created by the merger of six teams in the city of Trabzon. Trabonzpor would win six Süper Lig titles in the nine seasons between 1975–76 and 1983–84. The other teams in the "big four" are all in Istanbul.
• Israel issued IDF Order Number 82, canceling municipal council elections that had been scheduled in the Palestinian towns of the West Bank prior to its capture from Jordan. The four-year terms of all of the members who had been elected in 1963 were extended indefinitely. Elections would finally be held on March 28, 1972, in the cities of Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya and Jericho ; and in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron on May 2, 1972.
• NASA terminated hardware and software procurement for the lunar mapping and survey system, a search for scientifically interesting areas of the Moon that would also be safe for landing, as well as development and testing,
• Died: Walter Terence Stace, 80, British philosopher and mystic

  [August 3], 1967 (Thursday)

• Thieves stole several priceless artifacts from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, taking the "Gold Crown of the Madonna" from a statue of the Virgin Mary and six solid gold hearts. The crown had been presented to the church in 1624 by Elisabeth, Queen Consort of Spain and Portugal. Police recovered the stolen artifacts 11 days later in Tel Aviv, intact, after several men were arrested.
• U.S. President Johnson asked Congress to temporarily increase individual and corporate income taxes by 10 percent for the 1968 tax year. He also announced that he had approved sending an additional 45,000 American troops to fight in the Vietnam War before June 30, 1968, bringing the total number of U.S. personnel in South Vietnam to more than half a million.
• Born:
• *Creme Puff, American cat that holds the record for its longevity ; in Austin, Texas
• *Skin, British rock musician; in Brixton

  [August 4], 1967 (Friday)

• NASA named its sixth group of astronauts, with 11 men, seven of whom would be launched on American space shuttle missions. Joseph P. Allen and William B. Lenoir would be the first to go into space, on board the fifth space shuttle mission on the Columbia 15 years later, on November 11, 1982. Story Musgrave would be sent on six shuttle spaceflights between 1983 and 1996, starting with STS-6. The other four would be William E. Thornton, Robert A. Parker, Anthony W. England and Karl Gordon Henize, both on STS-51-F.
• "The biggest riot in Shanghai" took place after municipal party activist Wang Hongwen called on citizens to attack the Shanghai Diesel Engine Plant on the grounds that its employees and managers were foes of Zhang Chunqiao and the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. According to one account, a crowd of 100,000 people surrounded the diesel engine factory, and 600 workers inside were taken out forcibly and tortured. Film of the attack would be shown at the Gang of Four trial of the two men in 1980.
• The Defence Amendment Act, 1967 went into effect in South Africa, providing that every young, able-bodied white South African male was subject to military training and service with the South African Defence Force. The only persons exempt were policemen, railroad or prison workers, or enlisted servicemen. The new law also prohibited the media from releasing, without government permission, information about the SADF or its operations, and any "information that would damage South Africa's foreign relations".
• The rock band Pink Floyd released their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, in the United Kingdom.
• Born: Mike Marsh, American sprinter, 1991 world champion 200 meter racer and 1992 Olympic gold medalist; in Los Angeles
• Died: Sir Stewart Gore-Browne, 84, white Zambian independence advocate and adviser to Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda

  [August 5], 1967 (Saturday)

• China's President Liu Shaoqi and his wife, Wang Guangmei, were put on trial at the Zhongnanhai, the governmental residence center for Chinese officials, after they both fell into disfavor with Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. With photographers and a film crew present, President Liu and Wang were beaten and kicked after being ridiculed by party members. Kept under arrest, and starved and deprived of medication, Liu would die two years later, while his wife would be incarcerated at Qincheng Prison for the next 12 years.
• Poisoning killed 137 people at a new moon festival in Madras after they had ingested drinking a cocktail of lime juice and varnish. The deadly substitute for alcohol was made because of a prohibition in Madras state against the sale of liquor. C. N. Annadurai, the Chief Minister of the Madras State in India, declined to push for a repeal of prohibition and said instead that the sale of varnish would be temporarily prohibited.
• The World Boxing Association began a single-elimination tournament to fill the heavyweight boxing title that it had taken away from Muhammad Ali, starting with two quarterfinal bouts at the Houston Astrodome. In the first fight, Thad Spencer beat former WBA champion Ernie Terrell, and in the second card, eventual champion Jimmy Ellis beat Leotis Martin. The other four competitors were Oscar Bonavena and Karl Mildenberger and Jerry Quarry and Floyd Patterson.
• For the first time, almost all of the teams in the American Football League and the National Football League played against each other, as part of a series of 16 interleague preseason football games. In the opening game, a team from the AFL defeated an NFL team for the first time, as the Denver Broncos upset the Detroit Lions, 13 to 7. All of the AFL teams, and 12 of the 16 from the NFL, played in the series. The exceptions were the Packers, the Cardinals, the Giants, and the Browns.
• Born:
• *Fred Whitfield, African-American professional rodeo calf roper and eight-time world champion of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association; in Hockley, Texas
• *Reid Hoffman, American internet entrepreneur, billionaire, and co-founder of LinkedIn; in Palo Alto, California
• *Thomas Lang, Austrian-born American metal band drummer; in Vienna

  [August 6], 1967 (Sunday)

• Graduate student Jocelyn Bell of the University of Cambridge radio telescope observatory became the first person to discover a pulsar, while doing the routine job of analyzing data from the radio receivers. She found "a peculiar train of radio signals" that repeated every 1.33 seconds on the 81.5 megahertz radio frequency when the telescope was viewing a particular section of the sky, and she and Chief Astronomer Antony Hewish were surprised to find the signal appear again at the same time the next day. Confirmation that the regular pulses were coming from the source would take place on November 28. The stellar object would be designated originally as Cambridge Pulsar 1919 and would later be referred to as PSR B1919+21.
• Scientists in the Chinese city of Changchun made two tests of conventional explosives that included radioactive materials. The two "radioactive self-defense bombs" were both detonated within city limits, one at 1:15 in the morning and the other at 12:35 in the afternoon. In so doing, they earned "the dubious distinction of having first designed and tested various primitive 'dirty bombs'."
• A nonviolent general strike was called by Palestinian representatives in East Jerusalem to protest Israel's administration of the formerly-Jordanian city, most notably the directive that teachers in the city's schools would have to teach an Israeli-approved curriculum. "We have called a general strike so that the world will hear your outcry," a notice read, "and to prove you are steadfast in your refusal to accept the plans and the laws of the Zionists and that you belong to the Arab nation on both banks of the Jordan. Long live Jordan on both banks, long live Arab Jerusalem." The next day, Palestinian residents refused to show up to work, and the protest leaders announced that they would never accept citizenship in Israel, nor participate in the upcoming municipal elections.
• KMPX of San Francisco became the first radio station in the United States to take advantage of new FCC regulations that dropped a previous requirement of government approval of a change of the music to be played and another restriction of the FM band to classical and "easy-listening". KMPX went to a progressive rock format. The programming on the 106.9 FM frequency began a trend toward FM radio stations making the transition from music to "album rock" music.

  [August 7], 1967 (Monday)

• Lunar Orbiter 5, launched six days earlier by NASA, transmitted the most clear pictures up to that time of the far side of the Moon, taken from an altitude of 1,660 miles and then processed on the spacecraft and televised back to Earth.
• Died: William Spratling, 66, American silver designer, was killed in an automobile accident in Mexico near his home in Taxco de Alarcón in the state of Guerrero.