January 1966

[January 1], 1966 (Saturday)

• In college football, the #1 Michigan State Spartans were upset by the #5 UCLA Bruins, 14–12, in the Rose Bowl, and the #2 Arkansas Razorbacks were toppled, 14–7, by the unranked LSU Tigers in the Cotton Bowl, setting up that evening's Orange Bowl game between the #3 Nebraska Cornhuskers and the #4 Alabama Crimson Tide as the game that was likely to determine the unofficial national champion in the final poll of the season. Alabama won convincingly, 39–28, and would be voted #1 in the final Associated Press poll of sportswriters.
• A strike of the 36,000 public transportation workers in New York City began at 5:00 in the morning, as the New York City Transit Authority's subway trains and buses halted service. It was the first time in the city's history that the commuters were without either bus or subway service at the same time, and the full effect would be felt on Monday morning, when six million people would have to find alternate transportation.
• A military coup brought Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa into power in the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. Bokassa would name himself as President on January 4, and crown himself as Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire on December 4, 1977. Captain Alexandre Banza, the co-leader of the coup, would be accused of treason and executed by Bokassa in 1969.
• Two separate Garuda Airlines DC-3 airplanes took off from Jakarta, Indonesia, both due to make their first stop at the island of Sumatra at Palembang, but neither arrived. The wreckage of the first plane was spotted from the air in a jungle, south of Palembang, but the other was not found. In all, 34 people died in the crashes.
• In the Soviet Union, an Aeroflot twin-engine Avia 14 en route from the east coast city of Magadan to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, crashed into a mountain on the Kamchatka Peninsula after engine trouble and icing on the wings caused it to lose altitude.
• NASA Associate Administrator Homer E. Newell announced a chance for astronomers to contribute to the design of instruments to be flown on Apollo and Skylab missions, including the Apollo Telescope Mount.
• The New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement came into force. It would be superseded in 1983 by the new Australia New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement.
• Died: Vincent Auriol, 81, President of France from 1947 to 1954

  [January 2], 1966 (Sunday)

• Cuban premier Fidel Castro announced that his nation's trade agreement with the People's Republic of China, wherein Cuba imported Chinese rice and China purchased Cuban sugar, had been terminated by the Chinese.
• The Green Bay Packers won the NFL Championship at home, beating the Cleveland Browns, 23–12.
• Died: Dino Alfieri, 79, the former Italian Minister of People's Culture in the government of Benito Mussolini

  [January 3], 1966 (Monday)

• The Atlantic Richfield Company, which became the 10th most productive oil company in the United States, was created as stockholders of both the Atlantic Refining Company and the Richfield Oil Corporation approved a merger after Atlantic was granted authority by the U.S. Department of Justice to purchase $575,000,000 for Richfield's stock. Atlantic Richfield would continue to market gasoline under Atlantic Refining's brand name, ARCO.
• In the Republic of Upper Volta, Major General Sangoulé Lamizana, the Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, led a coup d'état that overthrew the government of President Maurice Yaméogo. General Lamizana would rule the West African nation for almost 15 years, until being overthrown himself in a coup on November 25, 1980.
• Died:
• *Sammy Younge Jr., 21, American civil rights and voting rights activist, was murdered after an argument with the night manager of a Standard Oil gas station in Tuskegee, Alabama, after the manager had told Younge that the station's restroom was for white people only. Younge, an SNCC activist at Tuskegee Institute, known for his successful 1965 integration of the city's swimming pool, was shot in the face with a.38 caliber pistol by station manager Marvin S. Segrest.
• *Marguerite Higgins, 45, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent who had covered both World War II and the Korean War. Ms. Higgins had been hospitalized since November, because of complications from an illness caused by a parasite contracted during a trip to the war zone in South Vietnam.
• *USAF General Irving L. Branch, 53, was killed in the crash of a Northrop T-38 Talon that plunged into Puget Sound

  [January 4], 1966 (Tuesday)

• Film and television actor Ronald Reagan announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for Governor of California in order to challenge incumbent Governor Pat Brown. Reagan purchased air time on 15 television stations throughout California in order to broadcast his half-hour taped announcement. At the time, the future President of the United States was still hosting the television show Death Valley Days.
• The Alabama Crimson Tide received the mythical national championship of college football after receiving 37 first place votes in the postseason poll of 57 sportswriters, and 537 points overall, while the Michigan State Spartans, who had been #1 until their being upset in the Rose Bowl, finished second with 18 first place votes and 479 points overall.
• India's Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistan's President Ayub Khan met in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, at the time a part of the Soviet Union, for a conference arranged by Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, aimed at arriving at an agreement to end the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
• The St. John's University strike of 1966–67 began in New York City; it would last for over a year.
• A gas leak fire at an oil refinery in Feyzin, near Lyon, France, killed 18 people and injured 84.
• Born: Christian Kern, Chancellor of Austria from 2016 to 2017; in Vienna

  [January 5], 1966 (Wednesday)

• Bobby Baker, who had been a chief adviser to Lyndon Johnson when the President had been the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, was indicted by a federal grand jury for theft, tax evasion, and misappropriation of about $100,000 in contributions to Johnson's political campaigns. The U.S. Justice Department investigation of Baker had started in late 1963, when Johnson had been Vice-President, but had halted after the Kennedy assassination elevated Johnson to the presidency and was not renewed until after Johnson's election in 1964. Baker would not be convicted until five years later, after Johnson had left office.
• Because of the poor quality of the sound recording of their August 15 concert at Shea Stadium, The Beatles went into a studio and re-recorded most of their songs for dubbing in a TV documentary; crowd noises were dubbed in as well to make the film seem like the original performance. "But what you see in the film," an author would later write, "is what happened that night, and the thrill of the event is clear."
• Died: Gian Gaspare Napolitano, 58, Italian film director and screenwriter

  [January 6], 1966 (Thursday)

• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee became the first African-American civil rights organization to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. "We are in sympathy with, and support, the men in this country who are unwilling to respond to a military draft which would compel them to contribute their lives to United States aggression in Vietnam in the name of the 'freedom' we find so false in this country", the SNCC statement read in part. "We take note of the fact that 16 percent of the draftees from this country are Negroes called on to stifle the liberation of Vietnam, to preserve a 'democracy' which does not exist for them at home. We ask, where is the draft for the freedom fight in the United States?"
• Singers Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, who had performed as "The Warlocks", appeared for the first time under their new name, the Grateful Dead. The occasion was the fifth, and largest up that time, of the "Acid Test" concerts, where over 2,000 patrons listened to music, many while under the influence of the hallucinogen LSD, and the venue was the Fillmore in San Francisco, California. Garcia and Lesh had appeared at the first of the Acid Tests on November 27, 1965.
• All 47 people on board the Windjammer Cruises schooner Polynesia were rescued after the ship ran aground on a reef south of Bimini, Bahamas. Civilian and military watercraft evacuated the group, and 17 of the passengers were lifted from longboats by a United States Coast Guard helicopter. It was the second disaster for Windjammer in less than a week.
• Lockheed delivered its first SR-71 Blackbird, a strategic reconnaissance aircraft that could fly at speeds up to Mach 3, to the U.S. Air Force. The SR-71A prototype would crash only 19 days later.
• Harold Robert Perry became the first African-American in more than 90 years to be made a Roman Catholic bishop. The Louisiana native was elevated to the position of auxiliary bishop of New Orleans.
• The new government of the Central African Republic severed all ties with the People's Republic of China, which had been providing aid to the nation since 1964.
• Born: Jesse Dylan, American film director and production executive; in New York City, as the eldest son of Bob Dylan and Sara Noznisky Dylan
• Died: James Lawrence Fly, 67, American lawyer and former administrator of the Federal Communications Commission, died from cancer

  [January 7], 1966 (Friday)

• The SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, which had first flown at the end of 1964, went into regular service, as part of the 4200th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in California.
• Lou Thesz, dubbed the "Babe Ruth of Pro Wrestling", was defeated for the National Wrestling Association championship for the last time, losing to Gene Kiniski. Thesz, whose multiple reigns as NWA champion totaled more than ten years, would later be elected as a charter member of the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.
• Helicopters rescued all 179 people who had been trapped in a Canadian National Railway train by snow that had blocked them in the Fraser Canyon in British Columbia. The airlift was accomplished by three private helicopters and a 22-seat Royal Canadian Air Force helicopter.
• The Soviet Union launched the Zenit-2 spacecraft Kosmos 104, the thirty-second of 81 such satellites to be launched. The carrier rocket malfunctioned, placing the spacecraft into the wrong orbit, but it still managed to complete most of its imaging mission.
• A weather record of 1,825 millimeters of rain was reached at the end of a 24-hour period on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion as a consequence of Tropical cyclone Denise.
• The Dominica Labour Party won 10 of 11 seats in the Dominican general election with a voter turnout of 80.3%. At the time, Dominica was one of the components of the West Indies Federation.
• Born:
• *Jonathan Jackson, U.S. business professor, entrepreneur, social justice advocate, and son of the Reverend Jesse Jackson; in Chicago
• *Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, wife of John F. Kennedy Jr.; in White Plains, New York
• Died: Herbert Sandberg, 63, Swedish conductor, librettist, and composer