February 1966


The following events occurred in February 1966:

[February 1], 1966 (Tuesday)

  • West Germany bartered for the release of 2,600 political prisoners from East Germany by a transaction involving the export of $24,250,000 worth of West German consumer goods to their East German neighbors, in return for allowing the prisoners to depart the Communist nation. The New York Times described the agreement as "payment of ransom of up to $10,000 per prisoner". The goods, scarce in the East and abundant in the West, were items such as coffee, fresh fruit and butter, as well as fertilizer.
  • In the United States, 19 employees of the John W. Campbell farms in Dade County, Florida, were killed when the bus they were riding in was struck by a freight train. The men were being brought home after a day's work of harvesting vegetables, and the Seaboard Lines train was on its way to the farm to pick up the cars that had been loaded with produce. All of the dead were migrant workers from Puerto Rico, and most of them were young men in their 20s.
  • International pressure against the white-minority government of Rhodesia was stepped up when three major airlines serving the nation— British Overseas Airways Corporation, British United Airways and Alitalia— made their last flights into the capital at Salisbury, then departed and canceled further service.
  • Died:
  • *Buster Keaton, 70, American film comedian known for his daring stunts, died from lung cancer.
  • *Hedda Hopper, 80, American gossip columnist, died from pleural pneumonia.

[February 2], 1966 (Wednesday)

  • American adventurer Nick Piantanida set off in the Strato Jump II from a park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in an attempt to make the highest parachute jump ever, and inadvertently reached the highest altitude ever reached by a balloonist. When he reached his target altitude of, he prepared to jump and then discovered that the oxygen hose that tethered him to the gondola was frozen and could not be disconnected. While he struggled to set himself free, the balloon continued to climb until he was more than high. At, he aborted the parachute jump, separated the gondola from the balloon, and spent the next 32 minutes descending to Earth while the gondola's parachute system slowed his fall. Besides not being able to set the parachute record, he did not set an officially recognized altitude record either, because he had returned to Earth without the balloon. Three months later, on May 1, Pantanida would make a new attempt to set a record, but would suffer a fatal accident on Strato Jump III.
  • At Belmore Park in Sydney, three young Australian men became the first people to burn their draft registration cards as a protest against Australia's participation in the Vietnam War. Wayne Haylen, Barry Robinson and Greg Barker stood before a crowd of 200 people and declared their intention to refuse the draft.
  • A vulture collided with a Pakistan International Airlines helicopter, causing a rotor blade to tear off, and killing 24 of the 25 people on board. The accident occurred as the helicopter was approaching a landing in Faridpur in what is now Bangladesh.
  • At a mission planning meeting for Project Gemini flights 9 through 12, held at McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, the joint group decided on using the Agena target vehicle primary propulsion system the Gemini spacecraft into an unprecedented high elliptic orbit of up to. Since reentry from the high altitude would be unsafe, the Agena system would return the spacecraft to a circular orbit for nominal reentry.
  • Go-Set, Australia's first pop music newspaper, was launched in Melbourne.

[February 3], 1966 (Thursday)

  • At 18:45:30 UTC, the uncrewed Soviet Luna 9 became the first object to make a controlled landing on the Moon, touching down in the Oceanus Procellarum to the northwest of the Reiner crater. It began transmitting signals four minutes later, and within 20 minutes of landing, sent back the first ground-level photographs of the Moon's surface. Although the arrival was not quite a "soft" landing— the capsule was ejected when the descent module was above the surface, and bounced several times before coming to rest— it was a more gentle descent than previous probes that had crashed into the ground. The pictures would yield an important discovery, demonstrating that the surface of the Moon was solid rock, rather than the accumulation of eons of dust deposits, and therefore would be suitable for a human landing.

[February 4], 1966 (Friday)

[February 5], 1966 (Saturday)

[February 6], 1966 (Sunday)

[February 7], 1966 (Monday)

[February 8], 1966 (Tuesday)

  • The Tugu Nagara, Malaysia's National Monument to commemorate the lives of the 11,000 people who died in combat during the Malayan Emergency, was unveiled in a ceremony in near Kuala Lumpur, by Ismail Nasiruddin of Terengganu, the elected monarch. The world's tallest bronze freestanding sculpture features seven statues of Malay fighters and has the inscription, "Dedicated to the Heroic Fighters in the Cause of Peace and Freedom— May the Blessing of Allah Be upon Them."
  • Died: Paul Sophus Epstein, 82, Russian-American mathematical physicist and pioneer in quantum mechanics

[February 9], 1966 (Wednesday)

[February 10], 1966 (Thursday)

  • Valley of the Dolls, by author Jacqueline Susann, was released by publisher Bernard Geis Associates and quickly rose to become the number one best-selling novel. From a friend, Susann had obtained a list of the bookstores upon which The New York Times relied on sales figures to determine its bestseller list. She then used her own money to buy large quantities of the book at these stores, resulting in her novel going to #1 on the list. Valley of the Dolls would go on to rank among the best selling novels of all time.
  • Died:
  • *Ryan DeGraffenried Sr., 40, American attorney and candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for Governor of Alabama, was killed in a plane crash after making a campaign speech in Fort Payne, Alabama. Despite being warned of high winds, DeGraffenried and pilot Bob Hoskins took off from Fort Payne to fly to Gadsden in a Cessna 310, which crashed into a hillside four minutes later.
  • *Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, 87, British Army strategist and military historian

[February 11], 1966 (Friday)

  • Deputy Mayor Robert Price ordered New York City's "Crash Clean-up Campaign", to be administered by Assistant Commissioner Sidney Davidoff of the city's Department of Buildings. A forty-block area within East New York, Brooklyn was targeted for urban renewal, and by the end of the campaign, 80 buildings were targeted for demolition. Ultimately, though, inspectors were withdrawn with no followup, "leaving most of the housing in the same condition as it was found".
  • Marshall Space Flight Center submitted its response to the call from NASA Headquarters for project management proposals for the Apollo telescope mount. The plan summarized Marshall's developmental work on ATM-type systems and contained specific technical and managerial concepts for implementing the ATM project.
  • The final, deciding Test match in the 1965–66 Ashes series of cricket opened in Melbourne.
  • The Soviet Union launched the Kosmos 108 research satellite.
  • Born: Dieudonné, French comedian, actor, and political activist; in Fontenay-aux-Roses

[February 12], 1966 (Saturday)

[February 13], 1966 (Sunday)

  • The Washington Post ran a story headlined "Car Safety Critic Nader Reports Being 'Tailed'", by reporter Morton Mintz, a revelation that would eventually propel consumer advocate Ralph Nader to national fame and turn his recent book Unsafe at Any Speed into a bestseller. Nader's crusade against General Motors had largely been overlooked, until "the company did not recognize the value of public relations and opted instead to use intimidation and harassment to shut down Nader... The result was the media coverage and attention GM had hoped to avoid." Though the Post story ran on page 43, and did not get attention right away, other magazines and newspapers would soon investigate the story and make Nader's name a household word.
  • In what one author has described as "the single largest contribution made by drones during the Vietnam War", a Firebee 147E unmanned aircraft with electronic intelligence monitors was sent on a one-way mission to be shot down by the SA-2 antiaircraft radar and missile defense system being used by North Vietnam. The drone was picked up by the radar and destroyed, but not before "finally acquiring the long-mysterious command uplink and downlink signals" that were used in the SA-2 operation, and relaying the data back to a nearby DC-130 transport aircraft; acquisition of the signal led to developing methods to jam it as well.
  • The Second Route of Western Australia's Eastern Railway was closed, after almost 70 years of operation.
  • The closing ceremony of the 1966 Winter Universiade was held at Sestriere, Italy.

[February 14], 1966 (Monday)

  • At 12:01 a.m., "C-day" began. The currency of Australia was decimalised, and the Australian dollar was introduced, while the Australian pound would be phased out over two years under the auspices of the Decimal Currency Board. Pound notes were replaced by two-dollar bills, ten-shilling notes by one-dollar notes, and the shilling itself exchanged for a ten-cent piece. The sixpence and the new five cent piece were interchangeable. The nation's banks, which had been closed since February 9, began the exchange of monies upon opening Monday morning.
  • Soviet writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky were convicted of authoring "anti-Soviet" books and sentenced to five and seven years hard labour, respectively. Under the pen-name "Nikolai Arzhak", Daniel had written the story "Moscow Calling", which Judge Lev Smirnov concluded to be intentionally malicious. Judge Smirnov described Sinyavsky's "What Is Socialist Realism?" as "a mockery of the ideas of communist construction".
  • A railway accident killed 23 people, and injured 30, when the train they were in derailed after departing the town of Shwe Nyaung in northeast Burma and sent seven coaches into a deep ravine.

[February 15], 1966 (Tuesday)

[February 16], 1966 (Wednesday)

  • One week before Ash Wednesday, Pope Paul VI issued the apostolic constitution Paenitemini, revising obligations for Roman Catholic Church adherents for Lent. The age at which abstinence was required was raised to 14 years old, and the number of universal days of fasting days was reduced from 40 days to only two, and the days of obligatory abstinence to eight.
  • A pair of bombs killed 36 people and injured 53, after having been placed on an express train in the Indian state of Assam. According to Railways Minister Ram Sabhag Singh, the train had been halted when a time bomb exploded in the rear compartment of a coach with passengers inside. An hour later, while the victims were still being removed, a second bomb exploded in the front of the train, killing rescue workers and more passengers.
  • The 20th and final nuclear explosion in Algeria was conducted in the desert in a test by France, near the village of In Eker. Afterwards, until January 27, 1996, all French tests would take place at locations in the South Pacific Ocean, primarily at the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa.
  • A commuter train crash killed 29 people, and injured 27, as they approached the Yugoslavian city of Split. The passenger train was impacted by a 19-car coal train that had been descending a steep grade when its brakes failed.
  • J. Carlyle Sitterson became Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
  • A coal miner explosion killed 16 workers near Kamp-Lintfort, West Germany.

[February 17], 1966 (Thursday)

[February 18], 1966 (Friday)

  • In an attempt to give an artificial boost to the Nielsen ratings for a sweeps month, by cheating on the rating reports for a television presentation of An Evening with Carol Channing, Rex Sparger conspired with Channing's husband, producer Charles Lowe, to pay viewers in 58 households in Ohio and Pennsylvania to watch the entire program. The Nielsen company's screening procedures detected the unusual spike of viewers in those locations, and omitted the areas from its sample that evening. Nielsen would file a $1,500,000 lawsuit against Sparger on March 24, which would be settled after Sparger signed a consent order conceding his attempt to distort the ratings. Sparger would reveal that he had found out the identities of contractors who serviced the meters placed on television sets, then followed them as they called on the sample homes.
  • The consulate of the People's Republic of China in Phong Saly, Laos, was heavily strafed by gunfire, and the Beijing government charged that four American fighter jets had attacked "with more than 600 bullets", as well as dropping eight bombs to the east of the city, which was from the border with China.
  • A bus accident killed 22 people and seriously injured 23, when the vehicle ran off of a high cliff outside the seaside town of Ye in Burma. Burmese officials reported that the steering rod had snapped as the bus was driving on a curving mountain road.
  • Born: Phillip DeFreitas, England cricketer; in Scotts Head, Dominica
  • Died: Grigori Nelyubov, 31, one of the twenty original Soviet cosmonauts, after being struck by a train in an apparent suicide attempt. Nelyubov and two other cosmonauts had been dismissed from the Soviet space program after getting into a fight with military guards on March 27, 1963.

[February 19], 1966 (Saturday)

[February 20], 1966 (Sunday)

  • The Norwegian oil tanker Anne Mildred Brovig collided with the British coaster MV Pentland off of the coast of West Germany near Heligoland. Both ships caught fire and the Brovig sank, spilling 16,000 tons of its cargo of Iranian crude oil, the last major spill to threaten Germany. Between the use of dispersants and favorable weather, the oil slick disappeared without damaging the German coast.
  • After the injection of contaminated waste water into the mountains of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal caused earthquakes in Denver, Colorado, the program was halted. Tremors had started one month after the first injection on March 8, 1962, then halted temporarily after a cessation of the process.
  • Emmett Ashford became the first African-American Major League Baseball umpire, hired by the American League after 15 years of umpiring in the minor leagues.
  • The Soviet Union revoked the citizenship of Soviet author Valery Tarsis, who had emigrated to the United Kingdom two weeks earlier.
  • Cecilia Cummins was born in Richmond, North Yorkshire, the fifth child of the Cummins family to have a February 20 birthday since 1952, a coincidence that has been noted in the Guinness Book Of World Records since 1977 under the category "Most siblings born on the same day". The book noted that the odds were one in 17,797,577,730. Her arrival coincided with the birthdays of her sisters Catherine, Carol, Claudia and her brother Charles.
  • Born: Cindy Crawford, American model and actress; in DeKalb, Illinois
  • Died: Chester Nimitz, 80, U.S. Fleet Admiral who commanded the Pacific Fleet in World War II, and later Chief of Naval Operations

[February 21], 1966 (Monday)

[February 22], 1966 (Tuesday)

  • The Soviet Union launched two dogs, "Veterok" and "Ugolyok" into orbit around the Earth on board the satellite Kosmos 110. The two dogs would remain in orbit for 22 days and then safely return to Earth on March 16.
  • Milton Obote, the Prime Minister of Uganda, called for a meeting of his cabinet. After discussions started, he called in soldiers and then placed five of the group under arrest on grounds that they had been "conspiring to overthrow the Government by violent means".
  • The Broadway production of Slapstick Tragedy: Two Plays by Tennessee Williams premiered at the Longacre Theatre. Despite Williams's success with productions such as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the double-bill of plays would close after only seven performances.
  • British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that the United Kingdom would withdraw its troops from the Aden Protectorate by 1968, endorsing the "Defence White Paper" that stated "we do not think it appropriate that we should maintain defence facilities there" after independence was granted.
  • The 1966 Australian Grand Prix was held at Lakeside International Raceway and was won by Graham Hill.

[February 23], 1966 (Wednesday)

  • Major General Salah Jadid launched a coup d'état, arresting President Amin al-Hafiz, Prime Minister Salah al-Din al-Bitar, Speaker of Parliament Mansour Attrish, and the Defense Minister, Major General Mohammed Omran. Major General Jedid had been leader of the extremist faction of the Ba'ath Party until a purge in December. A future President, Air Force General Hafez al-Assad, was named as the new Defense Minister. Hafiz's private residence was attacked by troops led by Salim Hatum and Rifaat al-Assad. Jadid appointed Nureddin al-Atassi as the new figurehead President, and Yusuf Zu'ayyin was restored to office as Prime Minister.
  • The astronaut maneuvering unit, scheduled to be tested on the Gemini 9 mission, was delivered to Cape Kennedy. Inspection of the AMU revealed nitrogen leaks in the propulsion system and oxygen leaks in the oxygen supply system. Reworking these systems to eliminate the leakage was completed on March 11. Following systems tests, the AMU was installed in spacecraft No. 9.
  • Isaac Adaka Boro, leader of the rebel Ijaw Volunteer Force, captured the city of Yenagoa with a force of 159 youths, then declared the independence of the short-lived Niger Delta People's Republic; the Republic lasted only 12 days before police arrived from Lagos and arrested the rebels.
  • A British Defence White Paper, recommending withdrawal of British presence in Aden, was published.
  • The two-day Gemini Midprogram Conference of over 600 representatives of U.S. Government agencies and industrial firms involved with in Project Gemini was held at the Manned Spacecraft Center. The group heard 44 papers describing the development of spacecraft and launch vehicle, flight operations, and the results of the first seven Gemini missions, including the findings of experiments performed during these missions.

[February 24], 1966 (Thursday)

  • A military coup in Ghana overthrew President for life Kwame Nkrumah while he was making a state visit to Beijing. Former Major General Joseph A. Ankrah, who had been fired the year before by Nkrumah, was named as the leader of the seven-man National Liberation Council that took control of the government. Across Ghana, enthusiastic crowds tore down statues that Nkrumah had erected for himself as "Redeemer of the Nation". Declassified CIA and U.S. State Department documents, released in 2001, would show that the U.S., the UK and France provided the funding to the coup leaders. Ankrah would be forced to resign on April 3, 1969, after being charged with corruption.
  • Two days after arresting cabinet members, Uganda's Prime Minister Milton Obote fired Sir Edward Mutesa and took over as the new President of Uganda.
  • Student protesters outside of the presidential palace in Jakarta were killed when Indonesian President Sukarno's guards fired into the crowd.
  • Born: Billy Zane, American film actor; in Chicago

[February 25], 1966 (Friday)

  • Pursuant to the peace agreement signed by both nations on January 10 in Tashkent, India and Pakistan completed their troop withdrawals from the disputed territory, returning to the locations that they had occupied as of August 5, 1965, prior to the beginning of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The last Indian troops left at sunset.
  • Maurice J. Raffensperger, NASA's Director of Manned Earth Orbital Mission Studies, summarized the agreements between the U.S. government and the NASA centers regarding the S-IVB Workshop project, later called "Skylab". MSFC had overall responsibility for the Workshop system design and integration for a mission of up to 30 days. The Gemini office at MSC was responsible for the airlock module, using basic Gemini components where feasible, and would manage the CSM portion of the Workshop concept. MSFC was responsible for implementing the S-IVB Workshop experiment program and integrating experiments into the Workshop.
  • Born: Téa Leoni, American television and film actress; in New York City

[February 26], 1966 (Saturday)

[February 27], 1966 (Sunday)

[February 28], 1966 (Monday)