May 1960

[May 1], 1960 (Sunday)

• The U-2 Incident began when an American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, entered Soviet airspace ten minutes after takeoff from a U.S. base in Pakistan, at Peshawar. At , his plane was struck by shrapnel from an exploding Soviet SA-2 missile while he was at 70,500 feet. Powers parachuted and chose not to commit suicide, and landed near Sverdlovsk, where he was captured alive.
• Maharashtra and Gujarat were formed as the 14th and 15th States of India, when the Bombay State was split along linguistic lines.
• Born: Steve Cauthen, American jockey, 1978 U.S. Triple Crown winner; Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year at age 17; in Covington, Kentucky

  [May 2], 1960 (Monday)

• Caryl Chessman was executed at in the gas chamber at California's San Quentin Prison after ten years on Death Row. In San Francisco, defense attorneys had asked to present an argument, and U.S. Judge Louis E. Goodman had decided to issue a stay of execution as Chessman was being strapped into his chair, and instructed his secretary to call the prison, but the secretary had copied only four of the five digits of the telephone number, after which the call took a full minute to go through. Goodman blamed the defense attorneys for waiting until the last minute to seek a stay, commenting that "One of them, at least, should have been here earlier." Chessman, an accomplished author on death row for rape rather murder, had won eight prior stays of execution, and his death was protested worldwide.
• Outfielder Jim Lemon of the Washington Senators became the first Major League Baseball player to wear a batting helmet with earflaps. Helmets had been required in both leagues since 1958 but the helmet, required in Little League Baseball, was made available by Senators' owner Calvin Griffith, who ordered the headgear after Earl Battey was struck in the head by a pitch thrown by Tom Sturdivant of the Boston Red Sox. Despite concerns that the flap obscured the batter's vision, Lemon got two hits in three at-bats in a 3–2 win over the Cleveland Indians.
• As police officer Leonard Baldy was preparing to do a live traffic report on Chicago's WGN radio station, he and helicopter pilot Horace Ferry were killed when one of the overhead rotor blades fell from the station's helicopter. Ferry was able to maneuver the craft away from the intersection of Milwaukee Avenue and Hubbard Street into a railroad yard embankment, narrowly missing a truck and three children who had been walking along a sidewalk.
• Dr. Robert H. Goetz, a German-born surgeon, led a team at the Van Etten Hospital in the Bronx in performing the first coronary artery bypass surgery on a human patient.
• WLS-AM of Chicago became the first large radio station in the Midwest to switch over to a rock 'n roll format.

  [May 3], 1960 (Tuesday)

• At 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, all regular television and radio broadcasting in the United States halted for 30 minutes as the airwaves were taken over by CONELRAD, and sirens sounded across the nation, and all people outside were directed to go to the nearest fallout shelter. It was all part of "Operation Alert 1960" and regular programming was restored after 30 minutes. At New York's City Hall Park, a crowd of 500 demonstrators refused police orders to seek shelter, in protest over the nuclear arms race.
• The Fantasticks, the most popular musical of all time, was staged for the first time. The opening night, at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York City, was the first of a record 17,162 outings for the show, which would run until January 13, 2002.
• The European Free Trade Association, founded by Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal, came into being, five months after the Stockholm treaty signed on January 4.

  [May 4], 1960 (Wednesday)

• The United States signed an agreement to sell 17,000,000 metric tons of surplus grain to India over a four-year period, in exchange for $1,276,000,000.
• Lucille Ball was granted a divorce from Desi Arnaz by a court in Santa Monica, California.
• The 1960 Cannes Film Festival opened.
• Born: Werner Faymann, Chancellor of Austria from 2008 to 2016; in Vienna

  [May 5], 1960 (Thursday)

• Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev announced to that nation's parliament that an American military plane had been downed in Soviet territory on May 1.

  [May 6], 1960 (Friday)

• Ramon Mercader, aka Jacques Monard, the man who had killed Leon Trotsky with an axe on August 20, 1940, was released from the penitentiary in Juarez, Mexico, after which he emigrated to the Soviet Union.
• President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law. The bill had passed the House 288–95, after being amended and passed by the Senate 71–18.
• Princess Margaret of the United Kingdom, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II, married Antony Armstrong-Jones in a royal wedding at Westminster Abbey.
• The town of Wilburton, Oklahoma, was destroyed by tornadoes that swept through Oklahoma and Arkansas, killing 27 people and hurting 250.

  [May 7], 1960 (Saturday)

• Leonid Brezhnev took on the ceremonial post of head of state of the Soviet Union as he succeeded Kliment Voroshilov as Chairman of the Presidium of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Nikita Khrushchev continued as Premier of the Soviet Union, and as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the de facto leader of the USSR; the latter position that would be taken by Brezhnev in 1964.
• Khrushchev surprised the world by announcing that U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, of Pound, Virginia, had been captured "alive and well" near Sverdlovsk, along with film taken of military bases, and Soviet currency. U.S. officials expressed "amazement" at charges that Powers had been on a spy mission.
• In the 1960 FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, Wolverhampton Wanderers defeated Blackburn Rovers, 3–0.
• The World Chess Championship was won by Mikhail Tal, who defeated reigning champion Mikhail Botvinnik, 12½ games to 8½, in Moscow. Tal won five games and played 14 to draws, while Botvinnik won only one game.

  [May 8], 1960 (Sunday)

• Cuba and the Soviet Union formally re-established diplomatic relations, which had been ended in 1952. The United States severed its diplomatic ties with Cuba eight months later, on January 3, 1961.
• A Nationalist Chinese Sabrejet crashed into a village in Taiwan, killing the pilot and 10 people on the ground.
• Born: Franco Baresi, Italian football defender; in Travagliato
• Died: J. H. C. Whitehead, 55, British mathematician and pioneer in homotopy theory; of a heart attack while visiting Princeton University

  [May 9], 1960 (Monday)

• McDonnell's first production Mercury spacecraft, with its escape rocket serving as the propulsion force, was launched from Wallops Island. Designated the "beach-abort test", the objectives were a performance evaluation of the escape system, the parachute and landing system, and recovery operations in an off-the-pad abort situation, and were successfully tested. The spacecraft was returned to the McDonnell plant on May 14 for an integrity test.
• U.S. Attorney General William P. Rogers invoked the new Civil Rights Act of 1960 to force the turnover of voters' registration records in four Southern "cipher counties", so called because there were no African-American registered voters, despite a large population. The counties affected were Wilcox County, Alabama, Webster County, Georgia, McCormick County, South Carolina and East Carroll Parish, Louisiana.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a birth control pill for the first time, as it cleared the prescription of Enovid, manufactured by G. D. Searle & Company, for use as an oral contraceptive.
• Born: Tony Gwynn, MLB star outfielder and Baseball Hall of Fame inductee ; in Los Angeles

  [May 10], 1960 (Tuesday)

• The submarine USS Triton completed its circumnavigation of the globe, after an 84-day voyage that followed the route of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition of 1519–1522.
• John F. Kennedy defeated Hubert Humphrey in the West Virginia primary election, winning the predominantly Protestant state and dispelling doubts about whether Americans would support a Roman Catholic nominee. The win was Senator Kennedy's seventh in the primaries. At the next day, Humphrey conceded defeat, and then said "I am no longer a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination", leaving Senator Kennedy unopposed.
• Nashville became the first major racially segregated city in the United States to desegregate its lunch counters.
• Born:
• *Bono, Irish famine relief activist and rock singer for U2 and as a solo performer; in Dublin
• *Merlene Ottey, Jamaican women's champion; in Hanover, Jamaica
• Died: Yury Olesha, 61, Russian novelist

  [May 11], 1960 (Wednesday)

• At a press conference four days before a summit meeting in Paris with Soviet Premier Khrushchev, President Eisenhower of the United States accepted full responsibility for the U-2 incident, and said that spying on the Soviet Union was justified. "No one wants another Pearl Harbor", he said, adding "In most of the world, no large-scale attack could be prepared in secret, but in the Soviet Union there is a fetish of secrecy, and concealment."
• In Buenos Aires, four Mossad agents abducted fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann aka "Ricardo Klement", shortly after he got off of a bus near his home at Eichmann, mastermind of the Jewish Holocaust in Germany, would be held captive for ten days until he could be flown to Israel.
• The passenger liner was launched at Saint-Nazaire by Madame Yvonne de Gaulle, wife of the French president.
• Born: Jürgen Schult, German former track and field athlete and, as of 2023, the world record holder in the discus throw; in Hagenow, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, East Germany
• Died: John D. Rockefeller Jr., 86, American philanthropist who gave away $475,000,000 of his inheritance during his lifetime.