March 1961

[March 1], 1961 (Wednesday)

• Uganda became self-governing by holding its first general elections a year in advance of full independence. With 90% of the 1.3 million eligible voters participating, the Democratic Party, led by Benedicto Kiwanuka, won 43 of the 81 seats in the National Assembly. The Uganda People's Congress received more votes overall, but won only 35 seats.
• President of the United States John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps by Executive Order 10924.

  [March 2], 1961 (Thursday)

• Algerian nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas announced in Rabat, Morocco, that the FLN had agreed to French President Charles de Gaulle's proposal to begin peace talks on Algerian independence. By then, the Algerian War was in its seventh year.
• At the age of 79, artist Pablo Picasso married 35-year-old Jacqueline Roque. The two would remain together until his death in 1973.
• Twenty-two coal miners were killed in an underground explosion at the Viking Coal Company near Terre Haute, Indiana.
• Congolese soldiers killed 44 civilians in the city of Luluabourg, capital of the Kasai province.
• Died: Olaf Hagerup, 71, Danish botanist

  [March 3], 1961 (Friday)

• Elsie May Batten, a 59-year-old shop assistant and wife of sculptor Mark Batten, was found stabbed to death with an antique dagger at the London curiosity shop where she worked. Her killer, Edwin Bush, was the first British murderer to be caught by use of the Identikit facial composite system.
• Factory roll-out inspection of Atlas launch vehicle No. 100-D was conducted at Convair-Astronautics. This launch vehicle was allocated for the Mercury-Atlas 3 mission.
• The U.S. Air Force successfully launched the first of its "economy" rockets, the RM-90 Blue Scout II, designed to put payloads into space at a lower cost.
• Hassan II was formally enthroned as King of Morocco, one week after his father's death.
• Born: Tom Emmer, Majority Whip for the Democrats in the United States House of Representatives since 2023, after being a U.S. Representative for Minnesota since 2005; in South Bend, Indiana
• Died: Paul Wittgenstein, 73, Austrian-born pianist

  [March 4], 1961 (Saturday)

• The Soviet Union made its first successful test of its V-1000 anti-ballistic missile system, proving that it could intercept an intercontinental ballistic missile. The ICBM, an R-12 Dvina, was fired from the Kapustin Yar in southwest Russia. The V-1000 was launched from the Sary Shagan range thousands of miles to the east, and the intercept took place at an altitude of over the Kazakh SSR.
• The centennial of the presidential inauguration of Abraham Lincoln was observed with a re-enactment at the east front of the U.S. Capitol. A crowd of 20,000 people watched, twice as many as had witnessed the actual event in 1861.
• Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower became, once again, a five-star general, as an act of Congress restored him to his former rank of General of the Army.
• was commissioned as the Indian Navy's first aircraft carrier.
• Born: Ray "Boom-Boom" Mancini, American boxer best remembered for the tragic 1982 bout with Duk Koo Kim ; in Youngstown, Ohio
• Died: Pudge Wyman, 65, American pro football player credited with the first NFL touchdown. Wyman played for the Rock Island Independents in their 45–0 win over the Muncie Flyers on October 3, 1920.

  [March 5], 1961 (Sunday)

• At a press conference at Andrews Air Force Base, spokesmen for the U.S. Air Force Research and Development command announced that they had developed an atomic clock "so accurate that its biggest error would not exceed one second in 1271 years", and, at, light enough that it could be used on aircraft in place of the existing system of crystal oscillators. Conventional atomic clock units, though more accurate, weighed over and were impractical for flight.
• The crash of a U.S. Air Force Boeing KB-50 refueling plane killed all ten men on board.
• Born: Marcelo Peralta, Argentinian musician; in Buenos Aires
• Died: Kjeld Abell, 59, Danish playwright, shortly after finishing his last work, ''Skriget''

  [March 6], 1961 (Monday)

• The phrase "affirmative action" was first used to refer to a governmental requirement to promote equal opportunity by giving preferences in order to remedy prior discrimination. President Kennedy used the term with the issuance of Executive Order 10925. The original context was in Section 301 of the order, providing that federal government contracts include a provision that "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."
• The British soap opera Coronation Street was fully networked by ITV, with a new schedule of Monday and Wednesday evenings at 19:30.
• Born: Bill Buchanan, Scottish academic, computer scientist, cryptographer, first person to receive an OBE for services to Cyber Security at the 2017 Birthday Honours; in Falkirk, Stirlingshire
• Died: George Formby, Jr., 56, British singer, comedian and actor; of his second heart attack in two months

  [March 7], 1961 (Tuesday)

• The successful test firing of the engines of a Titan I missile, as it stood inside the underground SLTF at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, demonstrated that a missile could be successfully and safely fired, before launch, within a missile silo. An actual launch from the silo would not take place until May 3.
• Flying a North American X-15 airplane, U.S. Air Force Captain Robert White became the first person to travel faster than Mach 4, reaching Mach 4.43, or. White would become the first person to break Mach 5 on June 23, and Mach 6 on November 9.
• Redstone launch vehicle number 5 was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury-Redstone Booster Development flight that would be launched on March 24 as the last space shot before the launch of the first U.S. astronaut, Alan Shepard, on Mercury 3.
• Spacecraft number 11 was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury 4 mission, flown by Gus Grissom, on July 21, 1961.
• Born: Martina Schettina, Austrian painter; in Vienna
• Died: Govind Ballabh Pant, 73, Indian statesman, and the first Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh from 1946 to 1954

  [March 8], 1961 (Wednesday)

• The first U.S. Polaris submarines arrived at the new submarine base at Scotland's Holy Loch, as the nuclear missile bearing USS Patrick Henry sailed past protesters and in alongside its tending ship, USS Proteus, to begin a two-year mission.
• Max Conrad, "the Flying Grandfather", circumnavigated the Earth in 8 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes, setting a new world record for a light airplane, breaking the previous mark, set in 1959, of 25 days.
• Mercury spacecraft number 10 was accepted and delivered to the McDonnell altitude test facility on March 31, 1961, for an orbital-flight environmental test.
• Died:
• *Sir Thomas Beecham, 81, English conductor who founded the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras
• *Gala Galaction, 81, Romanian author

  [March 9], 1961 (Thursday)

• Sputnik 9 was launched by the USSR from Baikonur LC1, carrying "Ivan Ivanovich", the dog Chernushka, some mice, and a guinea pig. The spaceship made several orbits of the Earth at an average altitude of, and then was recovered. NASA spokesman George M. Law said that the test showed that the Russians were "about ready to put a man up" into outer space.
• An underground fire killed 71 Japanese coal miners at the Ueda Mine Company at Kawara, Fukuoka Prefecture, in Japan's worst coal mine disaster since World War II.
• Born:
• *Andrei Ivanțoc, Moldovan union leader and presidential candidate; in Opaci, Moldavian SSR, Soviet Union
• *Rick Steiner, American pro wrestler; in Bay City, Michigan
• *Mike Leach, American college football coach; in Susanville, California

  [March 10], 1961 (Friday)

• The first definite proof that a signal could be sent to Venus and returned to Earth, using radar astronomy, was made by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Transmission was sent from the Goldstone Tracking Station in California at a 2,388 megacycle frequency, traveling 35 million miles to Venus and then back to Earth, in a little more than six minutes. Signals had been bounced off of Venus before, but never received back clearly enough to be "immediately detectable".
• Richard Sullivan, a staffer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, delivered a feasibility study to the Authority, entitled "A World Trade Center in the Port of New York", outlining the justification for building what would become the Twin Towers and five other buildings in the World Trade Center complex.
• Born:
• *Laurel Clark, NASA astronaut, medical doctor, United States Navy captain, and Space Shuttle mission specialist who was killed along with her six fellow crew members in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003; in Ames, Iowa
• *Greg Kolodziejzyk, Canadian cyclist and holder of world records on recumbent bicycles; in Fort St. John, British Columbia
• *Mitch Gaylord, first American gymnast to score a 10.00 in Olympic competition ; in Van Nuys, California

  [March 11], 1961 (Saturday)

• Plans for an invasion of Cuba were presented by CIA official Richard M. Bissell, Jr. for the approval of President Kennedy. In a meeting attended by the President, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, Bissell outlined the proposed "Operation Trinidad", with an invasion force storming the beaches of Trinidad, Cuba by sea and by air. Kennedy rejected the plan as "too spectacular", and directed Bissell to come up with a less obvious placement of troops. Only four days later, Bissell had drawn up a new plan, with the force to strike at the Bay of Pigs within a month. "The Kennedy team was impressed," one historian would say later, "when they should have been incredulous."
• "Ken", a doll to accompany the popular Barbie that had been brought out by the Mattel toy company introduced on March 9, 1959, was introduced at the annual American International Toy Fair in New York City.
• Died: William A. Morgan, 33, former American soldier who later became an advisor to Fidel Castro, was executed by a firing squad in Havana after being found guilty of conspiring against the government.