June 1965

[June 1], 1965 (Tuesday)

• An explosion at the coal mine in Fukuoka, Japan, killed 237 people. Another 280 miners were able to get out uninjured, while 36 were brought alive to the surface.
• Marina Oswald, the widow of accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, remarried a little more than 18 months after her husband's slaying. Eluding reporters who had learned of their engagement, she and an electronics worker, Kenneth Porter, got a license in the Dallas suburb of Sherman, Texas, drove to Durant, Oklahoma, to get a blood test, then were wed by a justice of the peace in Fate, Texas.
• The Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, first achieved criticality, with its uranium-235 fuel able to sustain a chain reaction on its own, marking the first time that the inherently safer MSR was proved to be practical. It would reach full power by May 23, 1966. It would continue to operate until March 26, 1968.
• Elliott Roosevelt, the son of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won his first, and only, political office, defeating incumbent Melvin J. Richard for the office of Mayor of Miami Beach, Florida.
• Florida International University was founded in Miami.
• Born:
• *Larisa Lazutina, Russian cross-country skier, Olympic gold medalist in 1992, 1994, and 1998, and gold medalist in six world championships between 1987 and 2001; in Kondopoga, Karelian ASSR, Soviet Union
• *Nigel Short, British chess grandmaster who lost to Garry Kasparov in the 1993 World Chess Championship; in Leigh
• Died: Earl "Curly" Lambeau, 67, American pro football player, coach and co-founder of the Green Bay Packers

  [June 2], 1965 (Wednesday)

• The first contingent of Australian combat troops to fight in the Vietnam War arrived in South Vietnam.
• Deputy Sheriffs Oneal Moore and Creed Rogers, the first African-American deputies with the Washington Parish, Louisiana Sheriff's Office, were shot by the occupant of the bed of a pickup truck that pulled up alongside their patrol car. Moore was killed and Rogers was blinded in one eye. The FBI would continue investigating the shooting, believed to be racially motivated, into the 21st century, although the prime suspect, Ernest Ray McElveen, would die in 2003.
• A two-day-long series of storms, with winds as high as, dissipated after devastating the Barisal Division of East Pakistan. According to the investigation performed by the Pakistani government, the death toll from the second cyclone in less than a month was 12,047 after storm surges swept across the settlements near sea level.
• Born: Steve Waugh and Mark Waugh, Australian cricketers; in Campsie, New South Wales

  [June 3], 1965 (Thursday)

• Gemini 4, the second crewed and first long-duration mission in the Gemini program, was launched from complex 19 at Cape Kennedy at 11:16 a.m. Command pilot Astronaut James A. McDivitt and pilot Astronaut Edward H. White II were the crew. At 3:45 p.m., when the craft was making its third orbit and passing at an altitude of above the southern United States, White, using a hand-held maneuvering gun, became the first U.S. astronaut to walk in space. White stayed outside the capsule for 20 minutes as the ship moved at over the nation. Gemini 4 was the first mission to be controlled from the mission control center in Houston.
• In Japan, the Farmland Reward Bill took effect as 1965 Law 121, to compensate former landowners who had lost their property in the land reforms that had followed World War II. The bill authorized a fund of ¥145.6 billion Japanese yen for payments over a ten-year period to 1,670,000 people who had owned land prior to 1945, or to their heirs.

  [June 4], 1965 (Friday)

• Duane Earl Pope, a 22-year-old man who had graduated from McPherson College only a week earlier, committed what was called "the modern era's bloodiest bank robbery", murdering three people and critically wounding another. Pope, a resident of Salina, Kansas, drove to Big Springs, Nebraska, and walked into the Farmers State Bank at noon. There were no customers in the bank, but one of the four employees, a teller, pressed the button for the bank alarm. Pope then ordered the bank president, the teller, a bookkeeper, and another employee to lie face down on the floor, then shot all four in the back before escaping with $1,500. After a nationwide search that lasted a week, Pope called police in Kansas City, Missouri, and surrendered because he was "tired of running".
• London Records released The Rolling Stones single " Satisfaction" to the U.S. for the first time, it would be followed by a UK release on August 20 by Decca Records. The single become an instant hit in both countries and is the band's best-selling song.
• Born: Mick Doohan, Australian motorcycle racer and five time 500cc World Champion; in Gold Coast, Queensland

  [June 5], 1965 (Saturday)

• The Italian tanker SS Luisa exploded and caught fire at Bandar-e Mahshahr, Iran, killing 30 of her 41 crew, and two others onshore.
• The first report of the discovery of a human coronavirus was published in the British Medical Journal by Dr. David A. Tyrell and Dr. Malcolm L. Bynoe, who had made microscopic study of a specimen collected on February 17, 1961, of a highly infectious respiratory virus which they labeled the B814 strain of the common cold virus. In their article, "Cultivation of a Novel Type of Common-cold Virus in Organ Cultures", they wrote "we now believe that the B814 strain is a virus virtually unrelated to any other known virus of the human respiratory tract, although, since it is ether-labile, it may be a myxovirus."
• Joseph Francis Shea, NASA's manager of the Apollo program, told reporters that the ongoing Gemini 4 mission had resolved five important issues for a crewed mission to the Moon, and that "If everything goes as well as the Gemini-4 shot today, then we can get everything done for the Moon shot by mid-1968", at least one and a half years ahead of the projected 1970 date.
• The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier presence in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam reached five ships with the full-time staffing of Dixie Station off South Vietnam by one aircraft carrier.
• Born: Sandrine Piau, French operatic soprano; in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Hauts-de-Seine département
• Died:
• *Thornton W. Burgess, 91, American children's book author who wrote 70 books and 15,000 short stories in his career
• *Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland, 81, author and second son of King Gustav V of Sweden
• *Eleanor Farjeon, 84, English children's author and poet who wrote the hymn "Morning Has Broken"

  [June 6], 1965 (Sunday)

• A centuries-old tradition, of no business on Sundays on the Isle of Skye, came to an end as British Rail began operating its ferry from mainland Scotland seven days a week. A group from Kyleakin's Free Church of Scotland, commonly called the "Wee Frees", organized a campaign of non-violent resistance. When the first car drove off of the ferry, the Reverend Angus Smith sat down in the road to block traffic. After he was arrested, 11 other members of his congregation stepped forward, one by one, to block traffic and get arrested. The last person to block the road was Alan MacDonald, a, farmer, and after six policemen were unable to move him, reinforcements came in and hauled him to jail. Afterward, Chuck Sheldon, an American tourist visiting from Denver, became the first Sabbath day visitor to Skye.
• Born: Cam Neely, Canadian ice hockey player and inductee of Hockey Hall of Fame; in Comox, British Columbia

  [June 7], 1965 (Monday)

• Chemist Norman H. Stingley filed the original patent application for the Wham-O Super Ball, made of a polybutadiene compound which he called "Zectron". The toy was capable of bouncing three times as high as other elastic and rubber balls. The rights had been sold to the Wham-O Toy Company, which would begin selling the toys as early as July 29. U.S. Patent No. 3,241,834 would be granted on March 22, 1966.
• A methane gas explosion in the Yugoslav city of Kakanj, Bosnia and Herzegovina, killed 128 coal miners.
• Gemini 4 made a safe return to Earth at 1:13 p.m., after completing 62 orbits and four days in outer space. The crew decided to handle reentry manually because of problems with the on-board computer, and fired a reentry rocket one second too soon, causing the capsule to land short of the target area in the Atlantic Ocean, from the prime recovery ship, the aircraft carrier.
• Born:
• *Mick Foley, American professional wrestler; in Bloomington, Indiana
• *Damien Hirst, English artist; in Bristol
• Died: Judy Holliday, 43, American stage and film actress; from breast cancer

  [June 8], 1965 (Tuesday)

• A U.S. State Department spokesman, Robert J. McCloskey told a press conference "more or less offhandedly", that General William C. Westmoreland had been given presidential authorization to commit American ground troops to combat in support of South Vietnamese army missions. McCloskey specifically said that "I'm sure it's been made clear... that American forces would be available for combat support together with Vietnamese forces as and when necessary." The White House issued a carefully worded denial the next day, but American troops would be used in offensive combat later in the summer.
• Physicists at Johns Hopkins University reported that the mythical "four corners of the Earth" actually existed, in the form of giant bulges on the Earth's surface, confirmed by satellite radar measurements of the pull of gravity. The locations of the four sites where the pull of gravity was 0.002% greater than expected were in an area centered on Ireland; one centered in the Pacific Ocean between New Guinea and Japan; an area between Africa and Antarctica; and a fourth corner off the coast of Peru.
• The very first Major League Baseball draft was held at an owners' meeting in the Hotel Commodore in New York City. The Kansas City Athletics, who had finished the 1964 season with a 57–105 record and last place in the American League, got the first pick and selected outfielder Rick Monday of Arizona State University.