July 1959

July 1, 1959 (Wednesday)

• A new standard for the yard and for the inch was adopted by the United States and Britain. The yard was formally defined as 0.9144 meters, and, as 1/36 of a yard, the inch was or 2.54 centimeters.
• "World Refugee Year" began for the United Nations, running until June 30, 1960. At that time, the UN estimated that 15,000,000 people were refugees, and campaigned for private contributions and increased government spending.
• At 12:01 a.m., the consumption of opium in Thailand became illegal, and all approved opium dens were closed. When 12:01 arrived, Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat sent the military on a nationwide crackdown on the opium trade.
• Heinrich Lübke was elected the second President of West Germany, succeeding Theodor Heuss. Lübke had 517 of the 1038 electoral votes, 3 shy of a majority, while Carlo Schmid had 385 and Max Becker 104 on the first ballot in the electoral college. Lübke won on the second round.
• The order for Jupiter launch vehicles in support of Project Mercury was canceled because the same or better data could be obtained from Atlas flights.
• On July 1 and 2, a pressure suit compatibility evaluation in the Mercury spacecraft mock-up was performed in suits submitted by the David Clark Company, B. F. Goodrich Company, and International Latex Company. Four subjects participated in the tests.

  July 2, 1959 (Thursday)

• The Lushan Conference opened, with members of the Politburo and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party discussing the failure of the Great Leap Forward, an economic program instituted by Mao Zedong. When members of the committee drafted a letter to the chairman, a purge followed against so-called "right-wing deviation."
• Crown Prince Albert married Princess Paola Ruffo di Calabria. Albert succeeded his brother Baudouin of Belgium as King of Belgium in 1993.
• A fire at the Pentagon destroyed worth of computers in the Air Force Statistical Center and forced the evacuation of 30,000 employees. 25 firemen required medical treatment.

  July 3, 1959 (Friday)

• For the first time, a Wimbledon champion came from South America, as Alex Olmedo a United States citizen from Peru won the men's singles title, beating Australia's Rod Laver 6–1, 6–3 and 6–4. The next day, Maria Bueno of Brazil completed the South American sweep and ended a 21-year streak of U.S. titles, defeating American Darlene Hard, 6–4, 6–3, to win the women's singles.
• Born: Julie Burchill, British journalist and novelist; in Frenchay

  July 4, 1959 (Saturday)

• The Cayman Islands became a Crown colony of the British Empire.
• The Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, a U.S. park located in portions of the states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, was dedicated.

• The 49th star was added to the American flag on the first Fourth of July following Alaska's admission to the Union. Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton raised the banner at 12:01 a.m over Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key wrote about the Star Spangled Banner.

  July 5, 1959 (Sunday)

• President Sukarno of Indonesia dissolved the Konstituante parliament and introduced a totalitarian system, which he called "Guided Democracy", with the assistance of General Abdul Haris Nasution.
• David Ben-Gurion resigned as Prime Minister of Israel and new elections were called for the Knesset. Ben-Gurion's Israel Workers' Party would win a majority of seats in the November election.
• German jurisdiction over Saarland, and its one million residents, became effective at after a period of transition that had begun on January 1, 1957. France had administered the region since the end of World War II, and Saarlanders were given five days to exchange 117 francs for each deutschmark.

  July 6, 1959 (Monday)

• A C-124 Globemaster cargo plane, carrying nuclear weapons, crashed on takeoff from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The crew of seven survived, and safety devices functioned properly, but one weapon was destroyed in the fire that followed.
• Born: Richard Dacoury, French National Team basketball player

  July 7, 1959 (Tuesday)

• Venus passed between Earth and the star Regulus at 1428 GMT, providing astronomers an opportunity to learn more about the second planet. Because the starlight dimmed measurably as it passed through the Venusian atmosphere during the occultation, the density of that atmosphere could be calculated more precisely. The next conjunction of Venus and Regulus will take place on October 1, 2044.
• Bulgaria, Romania and the Soviet Union signed the "Convention Concerning Fishing in the Black Sea" at Varna, Bulgaria's Black Sea resort.
• The National League All-Stars defeated the American League All-Stars 5–4 at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field in the first of two Major League Baseball All-Star games. Because of an offseason vote by the MLB owners, an unprecedented second All-Star game would be played on August 3.

  July 8, 1959 (Wednesday)

• A Viet Cong attack on the divisional headquarters at Biên Hòa killed United States Army Major Dale R. Buis and Master Sergeant Chester M. Ovnand, formerly listed as the first two of 57,939 Americans to die in the Vietnam War. They were two of the 700 American military advisors sent to South Vietnam and had been watching a movie with six other advisors when the attack began. Four were wounded. Buis's name is the first on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Richard Vandegeer, one of 18 Americans killed on May 15, 1975, in the Mayaguez incident, is the last.
• An explosion on a tour boat in Haderslev, Denmark, killed 44 people.
• Born: Pauline Quirke, British comedian and actress known for her portrayal of Sharon Theodopolopodous as the star of the British TV sitcom Birds of a Feather; in Hackney, London

  July 9, 1959 (Thursday)

• After a 16-month break, the United States secretly resumed U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union. Pilot Marty Knutson flew into Soviet airspace to photograph the missile site at Tyuratam. Ironically, the same day marked the signing of an exchange agreement between the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.
• Al Sharpton preached his first sermon, at the age of four, at the Washington Temple Church of God in Christ in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.
• Born:
• *Jim Kerr, Scottish rock singer, in Toryglen
• *Kevin Nash, American professional wrestler, WCW and WWF, in Trenton, Michigan
• *D. H. Peligro, American drummer, as Darell Henley in St. Louis, Missouri
• *Clive Stafford Smith, British civil liberties attorney, in Cambridge

  July 10, 1959 (Friday)

• A memorial for Frank Foley was dedicated in Harel, Israel, in the form of a forest planted in the desert. As a passport control officer at Britain's embassy in Nazi Germany, Foley flouted strict rules in order to help as many as 10,000 German Jews to leave the country.
• The Hate That Hate Produced, a TV documentary by Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax, was first broadcast. Intended as an exposé of the Black Muslim movement, the show instead gave national celebrity to Malcolm X and Wallace Muhammad. Prior to the program, the Black Muslim sect had 30,000 members, and within a few weeks the number had doubled.
• E. C. Braley and Laurence K. Loftin Jr., sponsored a conference at Langley Research Center to focus study at the center on placing a space station with a crew into Earth orbit. Braley, Loftin, and others envisioned a space station to serve the purpose of studying physical and psychological reactions of humans in the space environment for extended time, and their capabilities and usefulness during such missions; studying materials, structures, and control systems for extended-duration space vehicles, and means for communication, orbit control, and rendezvous in space; and evaluating techniques for terrestrial and astronomical observation and how a human crew could enhance those techniques in space. Participants saw the study as the first step toward landing humans on the Moon between 1969 and 1974.

  July 11, 1959 (Saturday)

• The Japanese government implemented a policy of publishing documents with a combination of 881 approved kanji symbols and the katakana syllabary.
• The crew of a Pan Am flight from Honolulu to San Francisco encountered a UFO at over the Pacific, and the sighting was confirmed by pilots on two other airlines. Captain George Wilson told reporters, "There was an extremely bright light surrounded by small lights", and that the object traveled at "inconceivable" speed, and added, "I'm a believer now."
• Born:
• *Richie Sambora, guitarist in Bon Jovi, in Perth Amboy, New Jersey
• *Suzanne Vega, American singer-songwriter, in Santa Monica, California
• Died: Charlie Parker, 76, English cricketer

  July 12, 1959 (Sunday)

• More than 100 people were killed during a 15-hour-long rebellion in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. Members of the National Police seized the town of Comayagua and captured several locations in the capital but failed to get control of the residence of President of Honduras Ramon Villeda Morales.

  July 13, 1959 (Monday)

• One of the most notable nuclear accidents in American history happened at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in southern California. The Sodium Reactor Experiment, which used liquid sodium to cool the uranium fuel rods and the nuclear reactor, experienced a sudden rise in temperature and radiation. Technicians managed to shut down the reactor, and after a two-hour inspection, the reactor was restarted. On July 26, a second inspection determined that 13 of the 43 fuel rods had melted. For two weeks, radioactive by-products had been released into the surrounding area.
• The planet Neptune reached its aphelion, the point in its 165-year orbit furthest from the Sun. The planet was at its closest on August 28, 1876, and will be again on September 5, 2042.
• Western Electric Company and associates were announced as winner of the competition for construction of the Mercury tracking network.
• Born: Richard Leman, British field hockey player and Olympic champion; in East Grinstead, West Sussex