January 1961

[January 1], 1961 (Sunday)

• Australia became the second nation to permit the sale of the birth control pill, and the first to allow the Scherer oral contraceptive, with the brand name of Anovlar. The G.D. Searle pill Enovid had been permitted in the United States in May 1960.
• The British farthing coin, used since the 13th century, and worth of a penny, ceased to be legal tender.

  [January 2], 1961 (Monday)

• In the Rose Bowl, the No. 1 ranked Minnesota Gophers were upset by the No. 6 ranked Washington Huskies, 17–7, before a crowd of 97,314 fans in Pasadena, California. The loss, however, did not affect Minnesota's recognition as the national champion of the 1960 college football season, since the final AP and UPI polls were taken prior to the postseason bowl games.
• Cuba's Prime Minister, Fidel Castro, demanded that the United States Embassy in Havana reduce its staff from 87 to only 11 within 48 hours. U.S. President Eisenhower ended diplomatic relations with Cuba the next day.

  [January 3], 1961 (Tuesday)

• U.S. Marines, guarding the United States Embassy in Cuba, lowered the American flag for the last time for what would be more than half a century, as the Embassy closed and the United States and Cuba severed diplomatic relations. On August 14, 2015, the three Marines who had lowered the flag—Larry Morris, James Tracey, and Francis "Mike" East—would be present at the Embassy and would hand the same flag to three new U.S. Marine guards to be raised again.
• In the worst airplane crash in the history of Finland, all 25 persons on Aero OY Flight 311 died when the DC-3 crashed shortly after takeoff from Vaasa while en route to Kronoby. The plane impacted in trees away, near the village of Koivulahti. A subsequent investigation concluded that both the pilot and co-pilot had been drinking as recently as five hours before takeoff.
• The 87th United States Congress began, with the Democratic Party having a 65 to 35 majority in the U.S. Senate, and 263 to 174 majority in the House of Representatives, although Southern Democrats in 11 states from the Deep South were conservative.
• At the United States National Reactor Testing Station near Idaho Falls, Idaho, the atomic reactor SL-1 exploded, killing three military technicians.
• The Space Task Group, charged by NASA to conduct Project Mercury and other human spaceflight programs, officially became a separate NASA field element directly under NASA Headquarters. Prior to this time, the Space Task Group was organized under the Goddard Space Flight Center and was administratively supported by the Langley Research Center. As of this date, the personnel strength of Space Task Group was 667.

  [January 4], 1961 (Wednesday)

• East Germany's Chancellor and Communist party chief, Walter Ulbricht, held a secret emergency meeting of the Politburo of his Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the SED, and told his fellow party leaders that East Germany's own economic failures accounted for 60% of the departure of East Germans to West Germany. He warned the SED that the nation needed to take action to fix housing shortages, low wages, inadequate pensions, and the six-day workweek before the end of the year. Ulbricht also criticized East German schools, pointing out that 75% of the people who left were younger than 25. Most importantly, he created a task force to stop the loss of refugees; the solution would come in the form of the Berlin Wall and the heavily-guarded border in August.
• Michael Goleniewski, an officer of Poland's Army counter-espionage unit GZI WP, who also spied on Poland as a double agent for the Soviet Union's KGB, defected to the American CIA office in West Berlin, becoming, in effect, a triple agent.
• Died:
• *Erwin Schrödinger, 73, Austrian physicist and pioneer in quantum mechanics, 1933 Nobel laureate for his discovery of the Schrödinger equation. In 1935, he would propose a popular analogy that is referred to now as Schrödinger's cat.
• *Barry Fitzgerald, 72, Irish stage, film and TV actor best known for the film ''Going My Way''

  [January 5], 1961 (Thursday)

• Mister Ed, one of the first "fantasy sitcoms" on American television, premiered as a syndicated TV program and would be picked up by the CBS network beginning on October 1. The show, about a talking horse, was similar in concept to the Francis the Talking Mule film comedies of the 1950s and starred Alan Young as Wilbur Post, and Allan "Rocky" Lane as the voice of the horse. "Mister Ed" was portrayed by an American saddlebred horse, Bamboo Harvester. The show ran for five years, ending on February 6, 1966.
• Italian sculptor Alfredo Fioravanti went to the U.S. Consulate in Rome and signed a confession, stating that he had been part of a team that forged the Etruscan terracotta warriors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Officials of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation began a two-day presentation to NASA for a one-person space station, consisting of a Mercury capsule and a cylindrical space laboratory capable of supporting one astronaut in a shirt-sleeve environment for 14 days in orbit. The complete vehicle, as described by the McDonnell officials, could be placed in a orbit by an Atlas-Agena booster, thus affording NASA what the company termed a "minimum cost manned space station."
• On the same day, NASA's Space Exploration Program Council opened two days of meetings in Washington, D.C., to discuss a landing my astronauts on the Moon. Among the results of the meeting was an agreement that NASA should plan an earth-orbital rendezvous program independent of, although contributing to, the crewed lunar program.

  [January 6], 1961 (Friday)

• John F. Kennedy was formally elected as the 35th president of the United States, as a joint session of the U.S. Congress witnessed the counting of the electoral vote. U.S. Vice-President Richard Nixon, who had opposed Kennedy in the 1960 election, formally announced the result, saying, "I now declare John F. Kennedy elected president." The results were 303 votes for Kennedy, 219 for Nixon, and 15 for U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr.
• Blamed on a person smoking in bed, a fire at a San Francisco hotel for the elderly killed 20 of the 135 residents. Police charged the smoker, who escaped unhurt, with manslaughter. He was released for lack of evidence, and would die of cirrhosis four months later.
• Born: Georges Jobé, Belgian motocross rider, and five-time world champion between 1980 and 1992; in Retinne

  [January 7], 1961 (Saturday)

• The NFL's first "Playoff Bowl", between the second-place finishers in the league's Eastern and Western Conferences, took place in Miami. Officially, the game was called the "Bert Bell Benefit Bowl" and raised money for the NFL players' pension fund. Playing a week after Philadelphia beat Green Bay in the NFL championship, the Detroit Lions won third place in a 17–16 victory over the Cleveland Browns.
• In the first round of the Los Angeles Open golf tournament in the United States, golfing legend Arnold Palmer took 12 strokes to complete the 18th hole. The defending Masters and U.S. Open champion hit his first four shots at the green out of bounds, for four penalties; it took two more strokes to reach the green, and, once there, two more to sink the ball.
• After leading Duke 36–33 at halftime, North Carolina State's basketball team lost 81–67. Months later, it was revealed that two N.C. State players had been paid $1,250 each by gamblers for point shaving. The two were paid $2,500 each in the Wolfpack's 62–56 loss, on February 15, to North Carolina.
• Following a four-day conference in Casablanca, five African chiefs of state announced plans for a NATO-type African organization to ensure common defense. From the Charter of Casablanca emerged the Casablanca Group, consisting of Morocco, the United Arab Republic, Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.

  [January 8], 1961 (Sunday)

• In France, a referendum supported Charles de Gaulle's policies on independence for Algeria with a majority of 75% in favor.

  [January 9], 1961 (Monday)

• British authorities announced that they had discovered the Soviet Portland spy ring in London. Arrested on January 7 were Harry Houghton, Ethel Gee and Gordon Lonsdale.
• In the former Belgian Congo, aides of jailed premier Patrice Lumumba formed the "Republic of Lualaba", in the valley of the Lualaba River.
• Born: Candi Milo, American voice actress; in Palm Springs, California

  [January 10], 1961 (Tuesday)

• A committee chaired by Dr. Jerome Wiesner, professor of electrical engineering at MIT and John F. Kennedy's choice for science adviser, issued Report to the President-Elect of the Ad Hoc Committee on Space.
• The University of Georgia was forced to admit its first African-American students, after U.S. District Judge William Bootle ordered the university to admit Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton E. Holmes.
• Ali Amini, the Prime Minister of Iran, announced a program for land reforms, but was unable to implement the ideas because of disagreement with the Shah of Iran.
• Died:
• *Dashiell Hammett, 66, American detective novelist, creator of Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, and The Continental Op
• *Isabel Paterson, 74, Canadian-born American journalist, political philosopher, and author of ''The God of the Machine''

  [January 11], 1961 (Wednesday)

• Ukrainian SSR Communist Party Chief Nikolai Podgorny was berated by Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev after corn production fell short of goals set for 1960. In a session of the party's Central Committee in Moscow, Khrushchev accused Podgorny of lying to conceal theft and warned, "You will pay for this lack of leadership." Podgorny, along with Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin, would be part of the troika that would overthrow Khrushchev in 1964.
• USAF test pilot Jack B. Mayo disappeared over the Gulf of Mexico while test-firing M61 Vulcan cannons from a Republic F-105D Thunderchief. He was officially declared missing eight days later. In 1959, Mayo had been one of the 32 finalists for NASA Astronaut Group 1.
• The name Grampian Television was selected for independent television's new service covering the north of Scotland, replacing the name North of Scotland Television. The Grampian Mountains are one of three mountain ranges in Scotland.
• The University of Georgia admitted African-American students for the first time, five days after a federal judge ordered integration. Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter were the first to begin classes in Athens.
• The Naval Auxiliary Landing Field San Clemente Island was renamed "Frederick Sherman Field" in honor of Vice Admiral Frederick C. Sherman, a U.S. naval commander of World War I and World War II.
• The Pisces, a yacht carrying Moroccan Jews to Israel, capsized off the coast of Algeciras, Spain, drowning the 40 passengers and all but 3 of the crew. The ship's captain survived.
• Born:
• *Karl von Habsburg, former member of the European Parliament for Austria, and eldest son of the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, celebrated by monarchists since 2011 as the would-be Emperor Karl II; in Starnberg, West Germany
• *Lars-Erik Torph, Swedish rally driver; in Säffle
• *Jasper Fforde, English novelist; in London