December 1958

December 1, 1958 (Monday)

• A fire killed 92 students and three teachers at the Our Lady of the Angels parochial school in Chicago. The fire started in a cardboard trash barrel in a stairway, 40 minutes before classes were to end for the day. Because the school was filled with combustible materials and fire doors and alarms were inadequate, the fire spread quickly on the building's second floor. Most of the students who died had been in three classrooms, 210, 211 and 212. The fire resulted in numerous reforms in fire prevention in schools.
• The government of the Republic of Iraq announced that it was withdrawing from circulation all coins and banknotes that still had portraits of King Faisal II, who had been assassinated in a coup d'état in July, with the currency to be worthless after the time for exchanging for new currency and coinage expired.
• Martial law came to an end in the Kingdom of Jordan after 19 months.
• Mrika, composed and written by Prenk Jakova as the first Albanian-language opera, premiered in Tirana at the Migjeni Theatre. Dashnor Kaloçi,
• The French colony of Ubangi-Shari received partial self-government within the French Community as France declared the Central African Republic. France still administered the semi-independent nation's foreign and defense affairs in preparation for the republic's full independence in 1960. Barthélemy Boganda served as the first Prime Minister of the Central African Republic and was expected to become its first President but would die in a plane crash on March 29, 1959.
• Design of the Big Joe spacecraft for the Project Mercury reentry test was accomplished by the Space Task Group. Construction of the spacecraft was assigned as a joint task of the Langley and Lewis Research Centers under the direction of the Space Task Group. The instrument package was developed by Lewis personnel assigned to the Space Task Group, and these individuals later became the nucleus of the Space Task Group's Flight Operations Division at Cape Canaveral.
• The LSU Tigers, at 10–0 the only unbeaten and untied major college football team in the nation, finished ahead of the 7–1–1 Iowa Hawkeyes for the number one ranking in the United Press International poll of its board of 34 college football coaches, and win the national championship for the 1958 college football season.
• Adolfo López Mateos was sworn in as the new President of Mexico.
• Born:
• *Javier Aguirre, Mexican soccer football midfielder with 59 caps for the Mexico national team, later the manager of the national teams of Mexico, Japan and Egypt ; in Mexico City
• *Yanko Rusev, Bulgarian weightlifter and 1980 Olympic gold medalist; in Ivanki
• *Belal Shafiul Huq, Chief of Staff of the Bangladesh Army from 2015 to 2018; in Noakhali District
• *Charlene Tilton, American TV actress known for Dallas
• Died:
• *Thomas Orde-Lees, 81, German-born British Antarctic explorer
• *Elizabeth Peratrovich, 47, American Tlingit civil rights activist for indigenous Alaskans, and founder of the Alaska Native Sisterhood who was instrumental in the passage of the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945, died of breast cancer.

  December 2, 1958 (Tuesday)

• The completion of the Kariba Dam closed off the Zambezi River, creating the world's largest artificial lake and reservoir by volume, Lake Kariba. Four years and four months later, the lake was filled to sufficient capacity to make a hydroelectric plant operable.
• In Ireland's County Kildare, 15 prisoners successfully escaped Curragh Camp out of 26 who made the attempt. The moment came during a soccer football game outside the prison building. The leaders managed to use "improvised wire-cutters" to break through the three fences that encircled the prison, but some were stopped by "aimed leg-shots by the guard and the blinding flash effect of ammonia grenades", as well as the setting afire of bushes that would have been used as hiding places. Two were unable to cross the final barrier, a "substantial ditch", because of injuries, and two more were recaptured after an extensive search.
• Space Task Group officials visited the Army Ballistic Missile Agency to determine the feasibility of using the Jupiter launch vehicle for the intermediate phase of Project Mercury, to discuss the Redstone program, and to discuss the cost for Redstone and Jupiter launch vehicles.
• In the Associated Press college football poll of 212 sportswriters, the LSU Tigers finished ahead of the Iowa Hawkeyes, 1,904 points to 1,459, to be recognized by the NCAA as the undisputed champion of the 1958 season in both the AP and UPI rankings. LSU received 139 first-place votes, compared to 17 for Iowa and 13 for the Army Cadets.
• Born: George Saunders, American short story writer; in Amarillo, Texas
• Died:
• *Dr. Ernest Sachs, 79, pioneering American neurosurgeon and the first Professor of Neurosurgery at a U.S. medical school.
• *Cora Wilson Stewart, 73, American educator who pioneered, in 1914, the night school concept with the opening of the "Moonlight School" in Kentucky, and the subsequent establishment of similar "Moonlight" programs in other states to offer education to illiterate people outside of regular school hours.

  December 3, 1958 (Wednesday)

• Ahmed Balafrej, the Prime Minister of Morocco, was fired by King Hassan II after less than seven months in office, following a conflict with the president of Morocco's Constitutional Assembly, Mehdi Ben Barka.
• Former Colombian dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla was arrested on charges of attempting to overthrow the government of the recently elected President Alberto Lleras Camargo. Colombian Army units loyal to President Lleras discovered the coup and took up strategic positions around the capital.
• Control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech was transferred from the U.S. Army to the administration of NASA, effective January 1, by order of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• American gangster Gus Greenbaum, operator of the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, was found brutally murdered along with his wife Bess in his home in Phoenix, Arizona, the victim of an apparent mob hit, after the Riviera had been losing money while Greenbaum was supporting a gambling and narcotics habit. He was found in his bed, "nearly decapitated with a butcher knife", and his wife was found on a sofa with her throat slit. The crime was never solved.

  December 4, 1958 (Thursday)

• All 21 people aboard an Aviaco Airlines SE.161 Languedoc in Spain were killed when the piston-engine plane crashed into the side of "La Rodina de la Mujer Muertal", a mountain peak in the Sierra de Guadarrama range. The plane had departed at 3:40 in the afternoon from Vigo en route to Madrid.
• Died:
• *José María Caro, 92, Chilean Roman Catholic Cardinal and Archbishop of Santiago
• *Isabel Lyon, 94, former private secretary of Mark Twain, who fired her in 1909 after accusing her of embezzlement.

  December 5, 1958 (Friday)

• The first British motorway, the Preston By-pass, opened with its dedication by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Now part of the M6, the longest four-lane controlled-access highway in the United Kingdom, the bypass ran through Lancashire in England from Bamber Bridge to Broughton. Macmillan himself and his chauffeur were the first persons to travel on a British motorway the length of the initial part of the new road, traveling in his Austin Sheerline limousine.
• The first subscriber trunk dialling telephone call in the United Kingdom was made, with Queen Elizabeth II given the honor of making a long-distance phone call to Edinburgh while at a telephone in Bristol. The service is known as "long-distance direct dialing" in the United States.
• Don Jordan of Los Angeles won the world welterweight boxing championship in a unanimous decision over title holder Virgil Akins of St. Louis. Jordan would hold the title for one year and one week, losing on December 12, 1959, to Luis Federico Thompson.
• Actress Ingrid Bergman was restored to her Swedish citizenship by vote of members of the Swedish cabinet in Stockholm. Bergman had lost her citizenship in 1950 by marrying Italian movie producer Roberto Rossellini.
• Arizona State University was created by executive order of Arizona's Governor Ernest McFarland, following the approval by Arizona voters on November 4 of Proposition 200 to fund the transformation of Arizona State College at Tempe into a research university.
• Born: Shinji Harada, Japanese pop music artist; in Hiroshima
• Died:
• *Willie Applegarth, 68, British Olympic champion track and field athlete who held the world record in the 200-meter dash from 1914 to 1928.
• *Patras Bokhari, 60, Pakistani humorist and diplomat who was that nation's first representative to the United Nations.

  December 6, 1958 (Saturday)

• Pioneer 3, the third attempt by the United States to launch a lunar probe, was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Juno II rocket at 12:45 in the morning local time. Pioneer 3 reached an altitude of but failed to break Earth's gravitational pull, and fell back out of orbit the next day, 38 hours after its launch, burning up in the atmosphere above Africa at 2:51 in the afternoon on Sunday.
• Soviet composer Rodion Shchedrin's First Symphony was given its premier performance, with Natan Rakhlin conducting the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.
• The first playoffs in American college football were held in the form of two semifinal games to determine who would play in the December 20 football championship game of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. At Tulsa, Oklahoma, Northeastern Oklahoma State beat St. Benedict's College of Kansas, 19-14, while Arizona State College beat visiting Gustavus Adolphus College of Minnesota, at Flagstaff, Arizona, 41 to 12. and Northeastern won, 19-14 Northeastern would defeat Arizona State, 19-13, at the Holiday Bowl in St. Petersburg, Florida on December 20.
• Born: Nick Park, British English animator known for Wallace and Gromit; in Preston, Lancashire