January 1958

January 1, 1958 (Wednesday)

• King Bhumibol Adulyadej named Lieutenant General Thanom Kittikachorn of the Army of Thailand as Thailand's new Prime Minister. General Kittikachorn retained his post as Defense Minister.
• The Asian-African Peoples Solidarity Conference, with 500 delegates, closed after having met for one week in Cairo, where the participants were guests of Egypt's President Gamel Abdel Nasser.
• The European Economic Community, more commonly called "the Common Market", came into being as an economic and cooperative union between Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The founding was put into effect by the Treaty of Rome, which had been signed on March 25, 1957.
• The Ohio State Buckeyes, ranked number one college football team in the final coaches poll by United Press International in the 1957 season, defeated the Oregon Ducks, 10 to 7, in the Rose Bowl before a crowd of over 98,000 in Pasadena, California. Auburn University, though ranked number one in the Associated Press poll of writers, and unbeaten, was suspended from postseason competition by the NCAA and was not ranked by the coaches' poll.
• Born: Grandmaster Flash, Barbados-born American hip-hop music recording artist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee; in Bridgetown, Barbados
• Died:
• *William T. Bovie, 75, American biophysicist and inventor who developed the Bovie electrosurgical generator or "electric scalpel" that prevented bleeding in brain surgery.
• *Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Kelley, 45, chief psychiatrist at Nuremberg Prison during the Nuremberg War Trials in 1946, committed suicide at his home in Berkeley, California, by ingesting potassium cyanide in the same manner as Nazi leader Hermann Göring had done at Nuremberg.
• *Edward Weston, 71, innovative American nature photographer nicknamed the "Rembrandt of the Lens".

  January 2, 1958 (Thursday)

• The Communist government of the Soviet Union, which controlled wages and prices, announced that the price of vodka and wine would increase immediately by as much as 20 percent, while the price of an automobile went up by as much as 50 percent, which a reporter for The New York Times noted "will affect relatively few Russians." To offset discontent, the price of bread was lowered slightly.
• Opera star Maria Callas, the prima donna of the Rome Opera, halted singing at the end of the first act of the Vincenzo Bellini opera Norma, the opener of the new season at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, and refused to come back onstage for the second act. There was no understudy to complete the role; Italy's President Giovanni Gronchi and his wife walked out, and the rest of the performance was canceled as members of the audience began fighting. The opener was being broadcast to millions of radio listeners on the Italian State Broadcasting Network at the time.
• The new four-lane Connecticut Turnpike opened for traffic at 2:30 in the afternoon. The total tolls for driving the highway from Greenwich to Killingly were $2.10, equivalent to more than $18 60 years later.
• Born: Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Russian-born pianist and member of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, 1982 winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition; in Belebey, Bashkir ASSR, Soviet Union

  January 3, 1958 (Friday)

• Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completed the first overland journey to the South Pole in more than 46 years, the first to use motorized vehicles, and the third trip to the South Pole overall.
• The West Indies Federation was formed. Patrick Buchan-Hepburn, 1st Baron Hailes was sworn in as the first Governor-General at the Federation's capital in Port of Spain, Dominica, Antigua, and Montserrat. A prime minister would take office until April 18, when Grantley Herbert Adams became the first and only holder of the office.
• General Luo Ruiqing, the Minister of Public Security for the People's Republic of China, announced in an article in the party journal Study, that more than 100,000 persons had been classified as "counter-revolutionaries" and "rightists" by the nation's ruling Communist Party in an investigation of 1,770,000 people that had been conducted from June 1955 to October 1957. In his feature, he said that at least 5,000 of the people were Communist Party members and that 3,000 had been found in the Communist Youth League. The announcement found a month later when a copy of the journal arrived in Hong Kong, came after the start of the "rectification" campaign by Party Chairman Mao Zedong and before a purge of cabinet ministers labeled as "non-Communists", including Communications Minister Chang Po-chun and Food Minister Chang Nai-chi, and 57 party members dismissed by the National People's Congress

  January 4, 1958 (Saturday)

• Sputnik 1, which had been launched three months earlier on October 4, 1957, as the first man-made satellite in history, fell out of orbit and burned up upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
• The American Rocket Society and the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel issued a summary of their proposals for a National Space Establishment. The consensus was that the new agency should be independent of the United States Department of Defense and not, in any event, under one of the military services.
• Born:
• *Matt Frewer, American-born Canadian TV and film actor known for portraying the title role in the TV show Max Headroom; in Washington, D.C.
• *Ahuti Prasad, Indian actor in the Telugu film industry
• Died: Archie Alexander, 59, African-American designer and Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands from 1954 to 1955

  January 5, 1958 (Sunday)

• The paramilitary group BAJARAKA was founded in South Vietnam to fight against persecution against the Montagnards, a minority ethnic group living in the hills of Vietnam, and organized by a Montagnard, Y Bham Enoul.
• The broadcast of a science fiction drama on Radio Moscow was mistaken by Western listening posts as a news report that the Soviets had launched the first man into outer space. Although the radio play opened with a statement of something that might happen "in the not too distant future" and closed with the narrator saying "of course, so far no actual flight of a man in the cosmic ship has taken place", rumors began circulating the next day that the Russians had launched a manned rocket to an altitude above Earth. The first launch of a man into space would take place from the Soviet Union three years later.
• The Soviet Union announced that the number of delegates in both houses of its parliament, the Supreme Soviet, would be increased because of the population increase nationwide. The Council of the Union increased its number from 700 to 731, while the Council of Nationalities went from 600 to 633.
• Bellevue Baptist Church, now a megachurch in Memphis, Tennessee, became the first church in history to televise its services live using its own equipment.

  January 6, 1958 (Monday)

• Five Americans were allowed by the People's Republic of China to become the first visitors since 1949 to be invited to the Communist nation. Four had asked permission to visit relatives who were imprisoned in China, and crossed the border at Hong Kong, while the other person, A. L. Wirin, was a defense attorney seeking to gather information for his clients, who were awaiting trial on charges of espionage in the U.S. Mrs. Mary V. Downey and her son William were visiting her son John T. Downey; Mrs. Ruth Redmond was visiting her son Hugh Francis Redmond; and Mrs. Philip G. Fectau was present to visit her son Richard Fecteau, who was captured along with Downey and serving a 20-year sentence and would be released on December 13, 1971. Mr. Downey and Mr. Redmond had been sentenced to life imprisonment. On January 9, the mothers were allowed to spend two hours with their sons, with Mrs. Redmond going to Shanghai and Mrs. Downey and Mrs. Fecteau meeting with their sons at the Tsao Lan-tze Prison in Beijing. All three men were CIA agents; Fecteau would be set free in 1971 and Downey would remain until 1973 after more than 20 years' incarceration, while Redmond would die in prison in 1970.
• A U.S. Navy Mercator patrol bomber with 12 crew crashed into a neighborhood in Norfolk, Virginia, when its engines failed during its approach to the Norfolk Naval Air Station. Four of the servicemen on the plane were killed, and although three cottages at the intersection of 22nd Bay and East Ocean View Avenue were destroyed, the occupants sustained only minor injuries.
• The television game show Dotto, hosted by Jack Narz, premiered on the CBS television network in the United States with a premise of a general knowledge quiz and "connect the dots". The show, along with its prime time version which premiered on the rival NBC network in July 1, was abruptly canceled after its last episode on August 15. Soon afterward, Dotto was among the shows identified as providing answers in advance to some of the contestants.
• Born:
• *Themos Anastasiadis, Greek newspaper publisher and founder of the Sunday paper Proto Thema
• *Gulab Chandio, Pakistani television and film actor; in Shahmir Chandio, Sindh province

  January 7, 1958 (Tuesday)

• Meeting in Paris, the foreign ministers of the six member nations of the new European Economic Community approved West Germany's Walter Hallstein as the first President of the European Commission that served as the executive committee of the EEC, and engineer Louis Armand of France as chairman of the European Atomic Energy Community. The ministers could not agree on the site of a headquarters, although Brussels, Luxembourg City and Strasbourg were all under consideration.
• Died:
• *Petru Groza, 73, Romanian politician, Prime Minister of Romania from 1945 to 1952, later the Head of the State as President of the Presidium of the Great National Assembly.
• * Margaret Anglin, 81, Canadian stage actress and leading lady on Broadway in the late 19th and early 20th century