December 1961


The following events occurred in December 1961:

[December 1], 1961 (Friday)

[December 2], 1961 (Saturday)

  • In a speech that began at midnight, Cuban revolutionary prime minister Fidel Castro declared "soy marxista-leninista y seré marxista-leninista hasta el último día de mi vida". Castro confirmed that he would guide Cuba to becoming a Socialist state, and, in the long run, a Communist state, but added, "I'm saying this for any anti-communists left out there. There won't be any Communism for at least thirty years". However, he made clear that there would be only one political party, "The United Party of Cuba's Socialist Revolution", adding that "There is only one revolutionary movement, not two or three or four revolutionary movements."
  • Dean Smith began his career as the North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball head coach. He opened with an 80–46 victory over the visiting University of Virginia Cavaliers, the first of a record 879 wins as coach of one team. The record for most wins overall was broken by Mike Krzyzewski on November 15, 2011, which included 83 wins as coach of Army before he became coach of Duke University.
  • Actors Dinah Shore and George Montgomery announced that they would divorce after 18 years of marriage.
  • Died: Laura Bullion, 88, American outlaw

[December 3], 1961 (Sunday)

  • Workers at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City discovered that there had been a mistake in the museum's exhibit of "The Last Works of Henri Matisse". For 47 days, beginning on October 18, Le Bateau had been on display, hanging upside-down, and 116,000 visitors had passed it before Mrs. Genevieve Habert, a stockbroker, noticed the mistake. She confirmed the problem by referring to a catalogue of Matisse's works, then talked to various MOMA employees before she was taken seriously. The Museum rehung the painting, right-side up, the next day.
  • Discoverer 35 fell out of orbit about three weeks after its launch.
  • Born:
  • *Marcelo Fromer, Brazilian guitarist; in São Paulo
  • *Adal Ramones, Mexican TV presenter; in Monterrey

[December 4], 1961 (Monday)

  • In Toronto, Floyd Patterson defeated challenger Tom McNeeley with a fourth-round knockout to retain the world heavyweight boxing championship. Tom's son, Peter McNeeley, would become Mike Tyson's first opponent upon the latter's release from prison in 1995. On the same evening, Sonny Liston knocked out Albert Westphal in a Philadelphia bout. It was the last bout for both Patterson and Liston, until they faced each other in 1962 in Chicago, with Liston taking the title from Patterson.
  • In elections in Trinidad and Tobago, the People's National Movement, led by Prime Minister Eric Williams, captured 20 of the 30 seats in the Parliament, while the Democratic Labour Party won the others. The voting was split along ethnic lines, with the vast majority of Afro-Creole residents voting for the PNM, and those of East Indian descent voting for the DLP.
  • The 1961 [Alabama Crimson Tide football team|Alabama Crimson Tide] was voted No. 1 in the final AP and UPI polls, granting them recognition the national college football champion. In the AP sportswriters poll, unbeaten Alabama received 26 first place votes and 452 points overall. Ohio State finished second with 20 first place votes and 436 points.
  • The Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal was established by Executive Order of the U.S. President, for service in specified military operations during designated times. Retroactive awards were made for service in the Quemoy and Matsu Islands, Lebanon, the Taiwan Straits and in West Berlin since August.
  • President Kennedy authorized the U.S. Department of Defense to commence of Operation Ranch Hand, the defoliation of the jungles of South Vietnam. The first run was on January 12, 1962, and the last in February 1971.
  • An agreement on maintaining the neutrality of Laos was reached at the 14-nation Laos Peace Conference being held in Geneva.
  • The Hundred of Hoo Railway in Kent, UK, ended passenger services.
  • Born: Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis, American teenager who had craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, an extremely rare sclerotic bone disorder; in Glendora, California

[December 5], 1961 (Tuesday)

  • The largest-ever escape from East Berlin to the West was carried out by Harry Deterling, a 28-year-old train engineer, after he and co-worker Hartmut Lichy learned that there was still an open rail connection at Albrechtshof, from the border, and that East German authorities were preparing to block it. Deterling's wife and four children, his mother, and 13 friends boarded at Oranienburg, and four others got on at Falkensee. Deterling and Lichy never stopped at the Albrechtshof station, and rushed the train past startled border guards. The train's conductor, and six passengers who had not been in on the plot, elected to return to East Germany. The government tore up the tracks the next day and put up barriers, and there were no further escapes by train.
  • The Titan II GLV rocket, a modified Titan II missile, was recommended by deputies at NASA and by the U.S. Department of Defense for use in the Mercury Mark II rendezvous program. Robert C. Seamans Jr. of NASA and John H. Rubel of the DoD had the choice of the Titan II, Titan II-1/2, or Titan III systems.
  • U.S. President John F. Kennedy authorized American financial support to the Volta Dam project in Ghana, in order to prevent the West African nation from coming under the influence of the Soviet Union.
  • Natalie Wood's imprint ceremony was held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
  • Died:
  • *Emil "Judge" Fuchs, 83, owner of the Boston Braves baseball team, and the team's manager in the 1929 season
  • *Finn Kjelstrup, 77, Norwegian traitor

[December 6], 1961 (Wednesday)

[December 7], 1961 (Thursday)

  • Robert R. Gilruth, Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, announced the Mercury Mark II Project, the second phase of U.S. human spaceflight after the Mercury program. The Gemini missions would use two astronauts, in a modified version of the one-person Mercury capsule to be built by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. Gilruth's procurement plan for $75,800,000 was approved for the initial phase of the program, with flights without a crew in 1963 and flights with two astronauts starting in 1965. The total cost for the equipment for the uncrewed and crewed missions — 12 capsules plus boosters and other equipment — was estimated at $500,000,000. On January 3, 1962, the Mercury Mark II program would be renamed to Project Gemini at the suggestion of Alex Nagy, after the constellation of the same name, associated with the "heavenly twins", Castor and Pollux. Gemini 1 would be launched on April 8, 1964, and Gemini 2 on January 19, 1965. The first Gemini astronauts, Gus Grissom and John Young, would be launched on Gemini 3 on March 23, 1965.
  • NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense offered their joint recommendations to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara on the division of effort between NASA and DOD in the Mercury Mark II program, with the U.S. Air Force's Space Systems Division to become NASA's contractor for developing, procuring, and launching the Titan II and Atlas-Agena rockets.
  • Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay gave his last concert, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, then retired at the age of 47 due to illness. He would die of cancer 14 months later.

[December 8], 1961 (Friday)

  • In a triple-overtime NBA game in Los Angeles, Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors scored 78 points, breaking the record of 71 set by Elgin Baylor, as the two men faced each other. Baylor, playing for the Lakers, poured in 63 points. The two men had already combined for 100 points at the end of regulation with the score tied 109–109. Chamberlain's Warriors lost the contest, 151–147, and while his record carried with it an asterisk, he would score 100 points in a regular game on March 2.
  • A flash fire killed 16 people on the ninth floor of the Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. The blaze started in a trash chute and swept across the ceiling tiles, killing 7 patients, 5 visitors, and 4 hospital employees, including a physician. Investigators eventually concluded that the fire had resulted from the discarding of x-ray film into the chute, and ignition from a cigarette.
  • Portugal's ambassador to the United Nations appealed for help from the UN Security Council, reporting that 30,000 troops from India were massing along the border of the Portuguese colony at Goa, and that seven ships from the Indian Navy were approaching Goa's coast.
  • Errol Barrow replaced Hugh Gordon Cummins as Premier of Barbados.
  • Born: Ann Coulter, American conservative commentator; in New York City
  • Died:
  • *Francesco Severi, 82, Italian mathematician
  • *Séumas Robinson, 71, Irish republican

[December 9], 1961 (Saturday)

[December 10], 1961 (Sunday)

[December 11], 1961 (Monday)

  • The Vietnam War officially began for the United States, as the USS Core arrived at Saigon Harbor. The ship brought in two helicopter units, the 8th Transportation Company from Fort Bragg and the 57th Transportation Company from Fort Lewis, with 33 H-21 Shawnee helicopters, and 400 U.S. Army personnel.
  • After months of trial before a three-judge panel in Israel, Adolf Eichmann was found guilty of multiple crimes arising from the extermination of German and European Jews during the Holocaust. Judge Moshe Landau started his reading of the verdict with the words, "Accused, the court convicts you of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and membership in hostile organizations," then began reading the text of the judgment. Judge Landau was followed by Judges Benyamin Halevi and Itzhak Raveh. The reading of the entire verdict was not completed until the next day.
  • Soviet writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn got his big break when he received a telegram from Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the editor of the magazine Novy Mir, announcing that his novel, with the working title of Щ-854, would be published in serial form. Tvardovsky renamed the book One [Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich].
  • The first spacecraft emergency exiting exercises began for the Mercury astronauts at the Back River near Langley Field, with training for the astronauts and for helicopter recovery teams. In three days of training, the astronauts encountered no problems in using the top and side hatch exits from the spacecraft.
  • In "Letter Contract NAS 9-170", NASA set its contract specifications with McDonnell Aircraft for the two-man Gemini spacecraft, with the five objectives of a spacecraft capable of orbital flights lasting up to 14 days, determining human ability to function in a weightless environment on extended missions, demonstrating rendezvous and docking with a target vehicle in Earth orbit, simplifying countdown procedures and techniques, and making controlled landing on land the primary recovery mode.
  • The 1961 Southeast Asian Peninsular Games opened in Rangoon.
  • Born:
  • *DJ Yella, American DJ and rapper; in Los Angeles, California
  • *Marco Pierre White, British chef and restaurateur; in Leeds, West Yorkshire

[December 12], 1961 (Tuesday)

[December 13], 1961 (Wednesday)

  • In Geneva, the United States and the Soviet Union announced that they had come to an agreement on the formation of a multinational discussion to reduce nuclear weapons, in a group described as the "Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament". The United Nations General Assembly endorsed the idea one week later, and the group first met on March 14, 1962. The 18 nations were the U.S., the UK, Italy, Canada and France; the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania; and the non-aligned states of Mexico, Brazil, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Egypt, Sweden, India and Burma.
  • The chairman of the Dutch cycling federation, Piet van Dijk, revealed his experiences of doping in the sport, stating that, in the 1960 Rome Olympics, "dope - whole cartloads - used in royal quantities."
  • Born: Maurice Smith, African-American kickboxer, World Kickboxing Association world heavyweight champion from 1983 to 1993, UFC heavyweight champion in 1997; in Seattle
  • Died: Grandma Moses, 101, American painter

[December 14], 1961 (Thursday)

  • A bus accident killed 20 schoolchildren were killed and seriously injured 13 others near Greeley, Colorado, when their school bus was struck by a Union Pacific train. The crossing, located to the west of Evans, did not have flashing lights. The engineer for the train "City of Denver", which was inbound from Chicago at, told police that the driver, who had only minor injuries, did not stop at the crossing, while a student on the bus reported that the driver stopped at the crossing and opened the door. The 23-year-old driver, Duane Harms, was acquitted of manslaughter.
  • The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women was created by Executive Order 10980 by U.S. President Kennedy, with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as the honorary chairman. The Commission's report, American Women, was published in 1965 and described the unequal treatment faced by women in American society.
  • Nazim al-Kudsi was elected unopposed by the 172-member National Assembly as President of Syria. Former Premier Khalid al-Azm withdrew his name from consideration prior to the voting.
  • Tanganyika was admitted to the United Nations.
  • Water drop tests of the Mercury capsule began and concluded that the ablation heat shield could withstand re-entry without damage.
  • Died:
  • *John Joseph Bittner, 57, American geneticist and cancer researcher, died of a heart attack.
  • *Richard Schirrmann, 87, German teacher and founder of the first youth hostel
  • *Emil Sodersten, 62, Australian architect, died of a coronary occlusion.

[December 15], 1961 (Friday)

[December 16], 1961 (Saturday)

  • The African National Congress, frustrated with peaceful attempts to end apartheid in South Africa, began a bombing campaign with a new organization, Umkhonto we Sizwe, setting off explosions at empty government buildings in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban. "Had we intended to attack life," Nelson Mandela would say in a statement at his trial in 1964, "we would have selected targets where people congregated, and not empty buildings and power stations." The Manifesto of Umkhonto, published the same day, began, "The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices— submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means in our power in defence of our people, our future, and our freedom." The only casualty was one of the saboteurs, Petrus Molefe, who died at the Dube township in Johannesburg, when the bomb he was placing exploded prematurely. There would be 190 attacks in all until the group was suppressed in 1963, and only one other death, when a young girl was killed by a bomb.
  • The British medical journal The Lancet published a letter from Dr. W. G. McBride, an Australian obstetrician in the Sydney suburb of Hurstville, New South Wales, with the heading "Thalidomide and Congenital Abnormalities". The letter, which brought the link between thalidomide and birth defects to the world's attention, began "Sir- Congenital abnormalities are present in approximately 1.5% of babies. In recent months, I have observed that the incidence of multiple severe abnormalities in babies delivered of women who were given the drug thalidomide during pregnancy, as an anti-emitic or as a sedative, to be almost 20%..."
  • Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa was crowned Emir of Bahrain.
  • Born:
  • *Bill Hicks, American comedian; in Valdosta, Georgia
  • *Salatyn Asgarova, Azerbaijani journalist; in Baku
  • Died: Hans Rebane, 78, Foreign Minister of Estonia from 1927 to 1928, died in exile in Sweden.

[December 17], 1961 (Sunday)

  • The Zimbabwe African People's Union was founded by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo with the goal of eliminating white colonial rule in Southern Rhodesia attempted to escape. Towards the end of the second afternoon performance of the Gran Circus Norte-Americano, the circus tent had 2,500 spectators. At 3:45 p.m., as trapeze artists began their act, the nylon tent caught on fire and then fell upon the crowd and the wooden bleachers inside. Days later, Adilson Marcelino Alves, a disgruntled worker nicknamed "Dequinha", confessed to pouring gasoline on part of the tent with gasoline, with the help of Walter Rosa dos Santos and José dos Santos, in revenge for not being given free tickets to the circus after helping erect the tent. The three conspirators were sentenced to 16 years in prison.
  • A legislative election held in El Salvador, for 54 deputies to that country's Constituent Assembly.

[December 18], 1961 (Monday)

[December 19], 1961 (Tuesday)

[December 20], 1961 (Wednesday)

[December 21], 1961 (Thursday)

[December 22], 1961 (Friday)

  • U.S. Army Specialist 4 James T. Davis, of Livingston, Tennessee, became the first American combat fatality in the Vietnam War. Davis, aged 25, had been ordered to lead a South Vietnamese Army team near Cau Xang, west of Saigon. Davis was the lone American among ten soldiers killed in a Viet Cong ambush.
  • France granted the Comoros Islands internal political autonomy.
  • McDonnell Aircraft accepted NASA's Letter Contract NAS 9-170 specifications, to design and manufacture 12 spacecraft, 15 launch vehicle adapters, and 11 target vehicle docking adapters for Mercury Mark II, along with static test articles and all ancillary hardware necessary to support spacecraft operations. Major items to be furnished by the U.S. Government to McDonnell to be integrated into the spacecraft were the paraglider, launch vehicle and facilities, astronaut pressure suits and survival equipment, and orbiting target vehicle. The first spacecraft, with launch vehicle adapter, was to be ready for delivery by March, 1963, with each of the remaining 11 to follow at 60-day intervals, and initial Government obligation under the contract was $25 million.
  • Born:
  • *Yuri Malenchenko, Ukrainian cosmonaut with 827 days in space on five Russian and one U.S. space mission; in Khrushchev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
  • *Andrew Fastow, American fraudster who was Chief Financial Officer for the Enron Corporation; in Washington, D.C.
  • Died: Elia Dalla Costa, 89, Italian cardinal

[December 23], 1961 (Saturday)

[December 24], 1961 (Sunday)

[December 25], 1961 (Monday)

[December 26], 1961 (Tuesday)

[December 27], 1961 (Wednesday)

[December 28], 1961 (Thursday)

  • The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge opened to traffic for the first time, with the bridge being named after the 28th U.S. president. Edith Wilson was supposed to have been the guest of honor at the bridge's dedication ceremony in Washington, D.C., but died that very morning. In October 2000, construction on a new, more modern replacement consisting of two separate spans began. The downstream span of the new bridge opened in June 2006; the upstream span opening just 2 years later. The original 1961 bridge would be demolished in July 2006.
  • The Defence Food Research Laboratory was established in Mysore, India.
  • Canada's first BOMARC Missile squadron was formed.
  • Born: Katina Schubert, German politician and leader of the leftist party Die Linke; in Heidelberg
  • Died: Edith Wilson, 89, sometimes referred to as the "first woman president" of the United States after her husband, Woodrow Wilson, was disabled by a stroke. Mrs. Wilson's passing occurred on the 105th anniversary of her husband's birth.

[December 29], 1961 (Friday)

  • France's President, Charles de Gaulle, delivered his annual New Year's address on national television and radio, and announced that in the coming year, his listeners "would see the end of French Algeria 'one way or another'" and that with the withdrawal of French Army forces from Africa, 1962 would be "the year the army will be regrouped in Europe". The declaration was a shock to most of the one million French residents of north Africa who had still hoped that their homes would not become part of an Arab Muslim nation; Algeria would be granted its independence seven months later, on July 5.
  • Enver Nazar ogly Alikhanov became the Premier of the Azerbaijan SSR, at that time one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union.
  • NASA issued the Gemini Operational and Management Plan, outlining the division of responsibilities of between NASA and the Department of Defense on the Gemini program. The U.S. Department of Defense would be responsible for procurement and launch of the Titan II and Atlas rockets, as well as range and recovery support, while NASA would be responsible for overall program planning, direction, systems engineering, and operations, including launch, flight, recovery, command, tracking, and telemetry during orbital operations. NASA agreed to reciprocal support of Department of Defense space projects and programs within the scope of the Gemini program. A slightly revised version of the plan would be approved on March 27, 1962.
  • Died: Anton Flettner, 76, German aviation engineer and inventor

[December 30], 1961 (Saturday)

[December 31], 1961 (Sunday)