July 1958

July 1, 1958 (Tuesday)

• The destruction began of the "Lost Villages", ten communities in the Canadian province of Ontario that had been evacuated to make way for the Saint Lawrence Seaway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes in North America. At 8:00 in the morning, a cofferdam was demolished and within four days, the waters of the Atlantic had submerged the villages of Aultsville, Dickinson's Landing, Farran's Point, Maple Grove, Mille Roches, Moulinette, Santa Cruz, Sheek's Island, Wales, and Woodlands.
• Amintore Fanfani was sworn into office as Prime Minister of Italy along with a cabinet of ministers.
• Using the Trans Canada Microwave relay of 139 towers, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television network inaugurated telecasting from coast to coast for the first time since the network had gone on the air on September 6, 1952 in Montreal. The first 90-minute program, "Memo to Champlain", began on Canada's Dominion Day at 4:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time, 1:30 pm Pacific and 6:00 pm in Newfoundland.
• The first conference among scientists from the world's nuclear powers to address nuclear weapons testing began in Geneva as delegates from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and other nations working on a nuclear bomb, arrived in Switzerland. The meeting took place in the former conference room of the old League of Nations building.
• The capitol complex of federal government buildings of the new city of Brasília, scheduled to be the capital city of Brazil beginning in 1960, were dedicated in a ceremony by President Juscelino Kubitschek. capitol
• The Soviet Union's "new order for Soviet agriculture" went into effect, implementing Nikita Khrushchev's reforms to provide a more equitable compensation for their production in collective farming.
• The scientific journal Physical Review Letters published its first issue.

  July 2, 1958 (Wednesday)

• The world's largest hotel at the time, the 1,065-room Stardust Resort and Casino, opened in the United States in Las Vegas. It would close in 2006 after 48 years of operation.
• The Phoenix of Hiroshima, a yacht commissioned by anti-nuclear protester Earle L. Reynolds, his wife and two children, and several Japanese crew, was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard ship USCGC Planetree after having sailed into Enewetak nuclear test zone in use by the U.S. for its ongoing Operation Hardtack I series of nuclear explosions. Mr. Reynolds was arrested and taken to Honolulu, where he was convicted of trespassing, a finding later overturned on appeal.
• Nineteen people in Audubon County, Iowa, were killed in a flood of the Nishnabotna River, with the towns of Exira and Hamlin being the hardest hit.
• Elvis Presley's first film since joining the U.S. Army, King Creole, was released in the U.S.
• Born:
• *Pavan Malhotra, Indian film and TV actor; in Delhi
• *Mylswamy Annadurai, Indian aerospace engineer who directed the satellite program of the Indian Space Research Organisation ; in Kothavadi, Madras State
• *Colonel General Anatoly Sidorov, Russian Army officer and Chief of Staff of the six-nation Collective Security Treaty Organization; in Siva, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
• Died: Martha Boswell, 53, American jazz singer and pianist who was the oldest of the Boswell Sisters trio.

  July 3, 1958 (Thursday)

• The Agreement for Cooperation on the uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes, a mutual defense agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom, was signed in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. assisting the UK financially in developing a ballistic missile program. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and British Embassy official Samuel Hood signed on behalf of their respective nations.
• Martin Sommer, a former German S.S. sergeant and guard at the Buchenwald concentration camp, was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of murdering at least 25 inmates at Buchenwald. Sommer, who later lost an arm and a leg in battle and used a wheelchair, was given the maximum penalty allowed under West German law. After 13 years in prison, he would be transferred to a hospital and then to a nursing home, where he would be confined until his death in 1988.
• Born:
• *Zbigniew Adam Strzałkowski, Polish Franciscan Catholic missionary to Peru and one of the Three Martyrs of Chimbote murdered by the terrorist group Shining Path in 1991; in Tarnów
• *Didier Mouron, Swiss-born Canadian artist specializing in elaborate pencil-sketched artwork; in Vevey
• Died: Viscount Bledisloe, 90, British foreign administrator and Governor-General of New Zealand from 1930 to 1935.

  July 4, 1958 (Friday)

• The St Ninian's Isle Treasure was found in Scotland by a local schoolboy, Douglas Coutts, who was assisting archaeologists in excavating a medieval chapel. The treasure had been buried under a slab more than 11 centuries earlier, between 750 and 825 AD.
• The first television transmission from an aircraft was made in Los Angeles from a helicopter, the KTLA "Telecopter", by the camera's inventor, John D. Silva, and broadcast on the KTLA Channel 5 News.
• The German-Swiss thriller film Es geschah am hellichten Tag premiered in West Berlin before going into general release on July 9 in West Germany and on July 12 in Switzerland. Seven remakes of the film, originally written by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, have been made in Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, the U.S. and India.
• Chit Khae Tar A Mhan Par Pae, the first color film in Burma was premiered in Rangoon, although black-and-white films would continue to be the standard until the early 1990s.
• In India, the popular Tamil language film Annaiyin Aanai was released.
• Died: Fernando de Fuentes, 63, Mexican film director

  July 5, 1958 (Saturday)

• Gasherbrum I, at the 11th highest mountain in the world, was first ascended. Nicholas Clinch led the American team that scaled the mountain via the Roch ridge.
• The Delaware Nation in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, descendants of the Lenape tribe that had been forced westward from the colonies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, received federal recognition as the "Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma", and would take on its current name as a self-governing unit in 1999.
• Born:
• *Chris Cline, U.S. coal mining magnate and billionaire; in Isaban, West Virginia
• *Luz María Jerez, Mexican film actress, in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato state
• *Bill Watterson, American cartoonist who created the popular Calvin and Hobbes comic strip; in Washington, D.C.
• Died:
• *Rachel Crothers, 79, American playwright
• *Vikentije II, 67, Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church

  July 6, 1958 (Sunday)

• In the first election in Mexico in which all women were allowed to vote, Adolfo López Mateos was elected President of Mexico, receiving more than 90 percent of the vote as candidate for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, which also won 153 of the 162 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. His lone challenger was Luis H. Álvarez of the Partido Acción Nacional, which won only six seats in the Chamber.
• The Exhibition of Advanced Achievements of the National Economy of the USSR opened in Kyiv as the first event of a permanent campus of the Expocenter of Ukraine.
• Born:
• *Jennifer Saunders, English comedian and actress; in Sleaford, Lincolnshire
• *Antonio Álvarez Desanti, Costa Rican politician and president of the Central American nation's National Assembly 1995-1996 and in 2016; in San José

  July 7, 1958 (Monday)

• United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act into law.
• The Automobile Information Disclosure Act of 1958 was signed into law by President Eisenhower, to take effect on January 1, 1959. It required that the dealers of all new automobiles were required to post a sticker on the window showing the manufacturer's suggested retail price, standard equipment and warranty details, prices of all optional equipment and pricing and highway mileage ratings.
• Munnu Kasliwal, Indian businessman and jewelry designer; in Jaipur, Rajasthan

  July 8, 1958 (Tuesday)

• The Recording Industry Association of America certified a record album as gold for the first time, after one million copies of the soundtrack of the film musical Oklahoma! had been sold.
• Born:
• *Kevin Bacon, American film actor; in Philadelphia
• *Jackson Anthony, Sri Lankan film and TV actor; in Podiwee Kumbura
• *Neetu Singh, Indian film actress; in New Delhi
• Died:
• *Dr. Iosif Capotă, 46, Romanian anti-communist rebel, was executed by firing squad at Gherla Prison seven months after his arrest by the Securitate, Romania's secret police.
• *Yousef VII Ghanima, 77, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church since 1947

  July 9, 1958 (Wednesday)

• General Electric Company personnel presented a briefing at NACA headquarters on studies related to human spaceflight. The company held contracts let by the Wright Air Development Center for study and mock-up of a crewed spacecraft. NACA made no official comment.
• A 7.8 magnitude earthquake in southeast Alaska caused a landslide that produced a megatsunami. The run-up from the waves reached on the rim of Lituya Bay.

  July 10, 1958 (Thursday)

• The first parking meters in Britain were installed, with 600 meters installed in the northern half of London's fashionable Mayfair area in the City of Westminster around Grosvenor Square. Parking for one hour required placement of a sixpence coin into the meter. Parking meters had been used in the U.S. since 1935.
• In a joint statement by U.S. President Eisenhower and Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, the two North American leaders announced that they had agreed to crate the "Canada-United States Committee on Joint Defense", consisting of the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs and the U.S. Secretary of State; the Canadian Minister of Defence and the U.S. Secretary of Defense; and the Canadian Minister of Finance and the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury."
• In Geneva, Western and Soviet bloc scientists reached their first agreement, that any inspections to police a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing should be done by allowing each side to place acoustic detection devices in the other's territory.
• Born: Fiona Shaw, Irish film and TV actress; in Cobh, County Cork