May 1963

[May 1], 1963 (Wednesday)

• American mountaineer Jim Whittaker and Sherpa guide Nawang Gombu became the fifth and sixth people to successfully reach the top of Mount Everest, following Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, and Ernst Reiss and Fritz Luchsinger. Whittaker, a 32-year-old resident of Redmond, Washington, became the first American to accomplish the feat.
• McDonnell Aircraft Corporation began tests to qualify the "attitude control and maneuver electronics" system for the Gemini spacecraft, after completing development testing. The subject of the qualification tests was the first production prototype ACME unit received from Minneapolis-Honeywell.
• West New Guinea, the last remaining Netherlands possession in what had been the Dutch East Indies, was formally transferred to Indonesian control by the United Nations in ceremonies at Hollandia. The Indonesians renamed the territory West Irian, and Hollandia was renamed Kotabaru.
• Former U.S. Vice-President Richard M. Nixon continued his retirement from politics with the announcement that he would join the New York City law firm of Mudge, Stern, Baldwin & Todd on June 1.
• Sir Winston Churchill announced his retirement from politics at the age of 88, for reasons of health. He pledged that he would remain an M.P. until Parliament was dissolved but would not stand for re-election.
• Died: Lope K. Santos, 83, Filipino writer and politician

  [May 2], 1963 (Thursday)

• Hundreds of African Americans, including children, were arrested during the Birmingham campaign as they set out from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, to protest segregation. There were 959 people taken on the first day. Two days later, Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor would order the use of dogs and fire hoses to repel new demonstrators, images of which were picked up by news media around the world.
• Near Cuxhaven in West Germany, Berthold Seliger launched a three-stage rocket with a maximum flight altitude of more than. This was the only sounding rocket developed in Germany.
• Died: Jack A. Bade, 42, American World War II flying ace and test pilot, was killed in the mid-air collision of two F-105 Thunderchiefs over the Catskill Mountains in New York. The other pilot, Don Seaver, was also killed.

  [May 3], 1963 (Friday)

• In Brazil, 37 of the 50 people on a Cruzeiro do Sul airliner were killed as the Convair CV-340 was attempting to return to São Paulo shortly after its takeoff from the Congonhas Airport. The plane had been bound for Rio de Janeiro but its right engine caught fire. In its final approach to the runway, the aircraft nosed up to a 45-degree angle, stalled and struck a house on the Avenida Piassang.
• Development testing of the Gemini Agena Model 8247 main engine at Arnold Engineering Development Center began, with an objective of verifying the engine's ability to start at least five times. Two major problems, turbine overspeed and gas generator valve failure in high temperature operations, were found.
• Condingup, Western Australia, was declared a townsite.

  [May 4], 1963 (Saturday)

• All 55 people on an Air Afrique airliner died when the Douglas DC-6 crashed into Mount Cameroon less than half an hour after takeoff from Douala in Cameroon, bound for Lagos in Nigeria. Blame for the accident was placed on the pilot's decision to descend from to while flying toward the high mountain. One passenger, a U.S. diplomatic courier, initially survived the crash, but would die of his injuries on May 10.
• New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller secretly married his girlfriend, Margaretta "Happy" Murphy, despite being advised that his remarriage, after divorcing the year before, would hurt his chances for the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. presidency. Television comedian Carol Burnett, 28, married television producer Joe Hamilton in a ceremony in Juarez, Mexico, on the same day, after Hamilton had obtained "a quickie Mexican divorce".
• The sinking of a motor launch on the Nile River drowned more than 185 people in Egypt, nearly all of them Muslim pilgrims who were beginning the journey to Mecca from the city of Maghagha. The boat's capacity was only 80 people, but more than 200 people crowded on board to make the trip. Among the 15 people who survived were the boat's captain, its owner and its conductor, who were all jailed while the matter was investigated.
• Police used high-pressure water hoses and police dogs to disperse a crowd of more than 1,000 African-American protesters in Birmingham, Alabama.
• A fire at the Le Monde Theater in Diourbel, Senegal, killed 64 people.
• Died: Dickey Kerr, 69, American baseball pitcher for the Chicago White Sox, praised later for remaining honest during the corrupt Black Sox Scandal in 1919.

  [May 5], 1963 (Sunday)

• After 18 years of denial, the Soviet Union confirmed that it had recovered and identified the burned remains of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945. Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky, the Chief of Operations during the Battle of Berlin, publicly disclosed the details to American researcher Cornelius Ryan and allowed him unprecedented access to classified documents, and allowed him and English historian John Erickson to interview fifty top-ranking officials. Sokolovsky told Ryan, "You should be informed that the Soviet Union officially regards Hitler as dead." Previously, the official Soviet position had been that of the Soviet commander, Georgy Zhukov, who had said, "We have found no body definitely identified as Hitler's. For all we know, he may be in Spain or Argentina."
• Celebrations were held in the city of Huế in South Vietnam, to honor the ordination of Ngo Dinh Thuc, elder brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Huế. In advance of the event, the President decreed that religious banners could not be displayed above the national flag, a rule that would lead to tragedy at a Buddhist celebration three days later.
• NASA awarded a $6,700,000 contract to North American Aviation for the Paraglider Landing System Program, intended to allow NASA spacecraft to come down on land rather than splashing down at sea. The final contract would be completed on September 25.
• The 4th Pan American Games drew to a close in São Paulo, Brazil.
• Born: Kimiyasu Kudō, former Japanese professional baseball pitcher and manager; in Nagoya City

  [May 6], 1963 (Monday)

• Graduate student Beverly Samans, 23, became the tenth murder victim of Albert DeSalvo. Unlike the first nine Boston Strangler victims, Samans was stabbed repeatedly, although he repeated his modus operandi of strangling a woman with her own stocking. Her body would be discovered three days later.
• Notable civil rights activist and comedian Dick Gregory was beaten and jailed by police while participating in the Birmingham campaign.
• The Gemini Program Planning Board approved the Air Force Systems Command development plan for the Gemini/Titan II improvement program.
• The Limitation Bill came before the UK parliament to amend the statute of limitations. The resulting act would not be fully repealed until 1980.
• Timothy Leary was dismissed from his post at Harvard University for failing to carry out his duties.
• Born: Alessandra Ferri, Italian ballerina; in Milan
• Died:
• * Theodore von Kármán, 81, Hungarian mathematician, engineer and physicist
• * Ted Weems, 61, American bandleader, died of emphysema.
• * Monty Woolley, 75, American actor

  [May 7], 1963 (Tuesday)

• The communications satellite Telstar II was launched into Earth orbit to replace the first Telstar satellite, which had stopped functioning on February 21 because of damage by the Van Allen radiation belts. As with the first Telstar, the satellite amplified the signals that it was receiving from ground station transmitters.
• Aerojet-General delivered the first flight engines for the Gemini 1 rocket to Martin-Baltimore. Tests were completed May 27.
• Died: Max Miller, 68, British stand-up comedian

  [May 8], 1963 (Wednesday)

• The Hue Vesak shootings took place when soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam shot and killed eight people while firing on Buddhists who had defied a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Vesak, the birthday of Gautama Buddha. Earlier, South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem allowed the flying of the Vatican flag, symbolic of Roman Catholicism, in honor of his brother, Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc.
• The James Bond film, Dr. No, premiered in the United States. The film had been seen in Europe since its premiere in London on October 5, 1962.
• CVS Pharmacy, originally named the Consumer Value Stores from 1963 to 1969, was founded in Lowell, Massachusetts.
• Born: Anthony Field, Australian musician, leader of the children's entertainment group The Wiggles; in Kellyville, New South Wales

  [May 9], 1963 (Thursday)

• Testing of the Gemini parachute recovery system began at El Centro, California, as a welded steel mock-up of the Gemini reentry section was dropped from a C-130 aircraft at to duplicate dynamic pressure and altitude at which actual spacecraft recovery would be initiated. The main problem, parachute tucking recurred in two drops and the Gemini Project Office would suspend testing until the condition could be corrected. Qualification testing resumed August 8.
• After the first six attempts at a successful launch of the MIDAS satellite failed, MIDAS 7 was successfully placed into a polar orbit. During the first three years of attempts, three satellites failed to reach orbit, while the other three suffered power failures. MIDAS 7 would operate for 47 days and would detect nine Soviet missile launches.