March 1964

[March 1], 1964 (Sunday)

• All 85 people on Paradise Airlines Flight 901 were killed when the Lockheed Constellation crashed into a mountain while on its way to Tahoe Valley, California, a ski resort town across the border from casinos in Nevada. Wreckage of the plane was located the next day on an ridge in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where it had impacted after running into a sudden snowstorm while on its approach to Tahoe Valley. The plane had taken off from Salinas with 20 people and another 61 passengers boarded at San Jose. Another 15 in San Jose had wanted to board Flight 901 but were told that they would have to catch a later plane.
• The American premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Momente, performed by Martina Arroyo, the Crane Collegiate Singers of SUNY Potsdam, and members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer, took place in Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, New York.
• The Liberian tanker Amphialos broke in two and sank southeast of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada. HMCS Athabaskan of the Royal Canadian Navy rescued 34 of her 36 crew.
• Anti-government demonstrations began in Gabon, with protesters shouting "Léon M'ba, président des Français!" and calling for the end of the "dictatorship".
• Born: Florencio Randazzo, Argentine politician; in Chivilcoy
• Died: Richard Welsh, a professional skydiver celebrating his 29th birthday, was killed by an accident blamed on his habit of screaming while pretending to fall off of an airplane and on the fact that he had no pocket on his outfit. Lacking a pocket, Welsh had clinched the handle of his parachute's ripcord between his teeth, but when he opened his mouth as he fell, the cord flew over his shoulder. As he fell to his death, Welsh was seen "groping desperately all the way down" trying to grab the cord to open the chute; his body, along with his unopened parachute, was found in the backyard of a home in Delhi Township, Michigan.

  [March 2], 1964 (Monday)

• After modifications, a U-2 spyplane was able to successfully land on an aircraft carrier, as pilot Bob Schumacher brought the high-altitude jet down onto the USS Ranger. Previously, the plane's use had been limited to sites within a radius of a U.S. base, and some areas of the globe were beyond its reach until it could operate from a mobile airstrip.
• President Joseph Kasavubu of the Congo suspended the parliament indefinitely, after more than half of the 137 deputies of the Central Assembly failed to appear in Léopoldville, whether out of fear of arrest or because of joining a rebellion against the Congolese government.
• The sudden eruption of the volcano Mount Villarrica killed 22 people in Chile, and left 35 others missing, after triggering an avalanche that buried the village of Coñaripe. Twenty-two people were reported killed and 35 others missing.
• Born: Laird Hamilton, American big-wave surfer and co-inventor of tow-in surfing; in San Francisco

  [March 3], 1964 (Tuesday)

• The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Republic resumed diplomatic relations after six years, following a meeting between Prince Faisal and President Nasser at the Arab Summit in Cairo.
• The Tsurugisan Quasi-National Park was founded in Japan.

  [March 4], 1964 (Wednesday)

• Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa was found guilty by a federal jury in Chattanooga, Tennessee on two counts of jury tampering that had happened in 1962. The conviction was the first after four previous trials on other federal charges had ended in an acquittal. Hoffa was released after posting a new bail bond for $75,000 pending the appeal of the verdict and his 8-year prison sentence. His appeals would finally be exhausted three years later, and he would begin his sentence on March 7, 1967.
• Mark Lane, an attorney from New York City, asked for and was granted the opportunity to appear before the Warren Commission for the stated purpose of representing the interests of the late Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been charged with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Lane, who would write the bestselling book Rush to Judgment and who would become the most well-known proponent of JFK conspiracy theories, showed the group news photographs from the assassination scene which he believed had been altered. Commission member and future U.S. President Gerald Ford told reporters later that Lane "was given a fair hearing. He put his ideas in the record, and all will be checked out."
• The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 186, providing for a multinational peacekeeping force for Cyprus. UNFICYP would become operational on March 27.
• Teressa Belissimo invented the Buffalo wing at The Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.

  [March 5], 1964 (Thursday)

• The Republic of Zanzibar prohibited the use of the pulled rickshaw on its streets, banning the human-pulled taxi as a symbol of feudal exploitation.
• British Army troops engaged in combat in Cyprus for the first time, when two soldiers fired back at Turkish Cypriot combatants in the predominantly Turkish village of Karmi. The gunfire began after an army unit was sent to protect Greek Cypriot schoolchildren.
• Following an attempted coup in Gabon, some Gabonese mistakenly accused the United States of being a co-conspirator in the recent coup attempt that had temporarily overthrown President Leon M'Ba, and bombed the U.S. Embassy in Libreville. The explosion, which occurred at a time when the building was closed and locked, "cracked two windows, partially demolished the embassy sign and splattered mud over the front of the building."
• Gemini launch vehicle 1 and Gemini spacecraft No. 1 were mechanically mated at complex 19.

  [March 6], 1964 (Friday)

• Five members of the crew of the tanker Bunker Hill, including the ship's captain, were killed when the vessel exploded and sank in deep water in Puget Sound near the coast of Anacortes, Washington. The U.S. Coast Guard was able to rescue 25 others from icy water. The ship, which was empty at the time and would normally have carried a crew of 44, had departed and was on its way to pick up a cargo of gasoline at Portland. As a result of the accident, the National Maritime Union would successfully lobby for inflatable life rafts to be placed on all ships owned by companies that had contracts with NMU members.
• The original version of the Soviet Union's MiG-25 supersonic jet fighter, referred to in the West as the "Foxbat", was flown for the first time. "These amazing aircraft", an author would note, "were to sustain the biggest development programme in history, leading to forty-nine versions, of which thirty-three flew and more than twenty entered service."
• The literacy test for Mississippi voters was upheld as a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Jackson ruled, 2–1, that the state law did not violate the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Department of Justice had brought suit to challenge a requirement that voters had to be, within the judgment of a county official, of good moral character and that they had to be able to read and write, and to be able to interpret selected sections of law. Historically, the literacy test had more often disenfranchised African Americans than white residents. The tests would be outlawed for federal elections by the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• Died: King Paul of Greece, 62, died of post-operative complications following surgery for stomach cancer. His 23-year-old son became King Constantine II.

  [March 7], 1964 (Saturday)

• The government of the People's Republic of China issued the new list of simplified Chinese characters, following up on the first reform of 1956, with a complete list of 2,236 revisions of traditional Chinese characters. The Jianhuazi Zongbiao required fewer strokes and were easier to write.
• Asadollah Alam resigned as Prime Minister of Iran to take the job of minister of the Shah's imperial court, and was replaced two hours later by Hassan Ali Mansur. Mansur would be assassinated less than a year later, dying on January 26, 1965.
• Born:
• *Vladimir Smirnov, Kazakhstani cross-country skiing world champion; in Shuchinsk, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union
• *Wanda Sykes, African-American comedienne; in Portsmouth, Virginia

  [March 8], 1964 (Sunday)

• Malcolm X, who had been suspended from the Nation of Islam, announced in New York City that he was forming a black nationalist party. "I remain a Muslim," he told reporters, "but the main emphasis of the new movement will be black nationalism as a political concept and form of social action against the white oppressors." Three days later, he incorporated his new organization as Muslim Mosque, Inc. and established a headquarters at the Hotel Theresa in the Harlem section of New York City, at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue.
• Karol Wojtyla was enthroned as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kraków at the Wawel Cathedral in Poland's city of Kraków. In 1978, Archbishop Wojtyla would become Pope John Paul II.
• All 30 people on a Taxader Air Lines DC-3 were killed when the airliner crashed in Colombia while flying from Pereira to Bogotá, killing the 25 passengers and five crew.
• Died: Franz Alexander, 73, Hungarian-American psychoanalyst and physician and pioneer of psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalytic criminology.

  [March 9], 1964 (Monday)

• The first Ford Mustang rolled off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company factory in Dearborn, Michigan. A researcher would note later that what he believed to have been the first Mustang marked for shipment was sent to fill an order by the Hull-Dobbs Ford dealership in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but added that "no record... has been discovered that indicates the VIN number of the first Mustang to roll off the line on that Monday", and that any promotional photo of the first car "typically... would picture a pre-production car purposely placed at the head of the line".
• A woman found on a sidewalk in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was saved from death despite having a body temperature of only 59.5 °F on arrival at the Hillcrest Medical Center. After 90 minutes, her temperature was recorded at 67 °F. A physician at the hospital, Dr. Edward Jenkins, credited the survival of Mrs. Marie Adams to the fact that she had been drunk and that the alcohol in her system led to an unusually quick loss of body heat and a drastic reduction in her body's need for oxygen. Mrs. Adams's injuries were limited to numb fingertips and pain in her throat and chest.
• The United States Supreme Court ruled in New York Times Co. v Sullivan that under the First Amendment, a state was limited in its power to award damages for libel arising from criticism of public officials acting within the scope of their duties. L. B. Sullivan, the police commissioner of Montgomery, Alabama, had been awarded US$500,000 in damages in a libel suit against The New York Times after the Times had run an advertisement on March 29, 1960, accusing Sullivan of overseeing "a wave of terror" against African-Americans.
• Born: Valérie Lemercier, French actress and filmmaker; in Dieppe
• Died: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, 93, General of the Imperial German Army during World War One, and known as Der Löwe von Afrika for his defense of Germany's African colonies against a much larger force of Allied troops.