November 1960


The following events occurred in November 1960:

[November 1], 1960 (Tuesday)

[November 2], 1960 (Wednesday)

[November 3], 1960 (Thursday)

  • Explorer 8 was launched to study the Earth's ionosphere. The satellite, which confirmed the existence of a helium layer in the upper atmosphere, stopped functioning later in the year but would remain in orbit for more than 50 years until returning into Earth's atmosphere on March 28, 2012.
  • Died: Félix-Roland Moumié, 35, Cameroonian Marxist leader, was assassinated by a fatal dose of thallium, received earlier while he was visiting Geneva.

[November 4], 1960 (Friday)

  • The Soviet news agency TASS was forced to deny that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had been overthrown in a coup, after a rumor reported in a Vienna evening newspaper was repeated worldwide. The story began earlier in the day when a man, claiming to be an Austrian employee of the Soviet Embassy, told the Abend Presse that he had learned from an indiscreet Soviet employee that disgraced former leader Georgi Malenkov had replaced Khrushchev. The German-language paper then ran the banner headline, "Struggle For Power In Moscow: Khrushchev ousted, Malenkov Successor". Western newspapers repeated the news, usually with the caveat that it was unconfirmed, before TASS debunked it.
  • As John F. Kennedy arrived at the Chicago Stadium for a pre-election rally, Jaime Cruz Alejandro forced his way through the crowd to get as close as he could to Kennedy's open convertible, then fought with police after running from them. He was found to be carrying a loaded.25 caliber pistol. Moments later, Reverend Israel Dabney was caught attempting to carry a.38 revolver into the coliseum. Both men said that they were carrying the weapons for self-defense and were later released.
  • Filming of The Misfits, starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, was finished. It proved to be the last film for both legendary actors. Gable, who had performed many of his own stunts, had a heart attack the next day and died on November 16. Monroe would die in 1962 during the filming of the never completed Something's Got to Give.
  • Anacafé, the Asociación Naacional del Café, was founded in Guatemala City to increase the world market share of coffee grown in Guatemala.

[November 5], 1960 (Saturday)

  • The People's Republic of China successfully built and launched its first anti-ship cruise missile, basing it upon a Soviet weapon. The R-2, known popularly as the silkworm missile, had a range of.
  • Dorrence Darling II, a football player for Illinois State University, broke his leg during a game. Poor medical treatment led to an amputation, and "the Darling case" would become a benchmark in medical malpractice law, legally presuming a hospital to be responsible for the mistakes of physicians to whom it extended privileges.
  • Died:
  • *Ward Bond, 57, American TV actor and star of the western series Wagon Train, died of a heart attack while in Dallas, where he was scheduled to appear at the halftime show of an NFL game between the Cowboys and the Los Angeles Rams. His death came days after filming his ninth episode of the 1960–1961 season. His final show would be telecast on February 22, 1961.
  • *Johnny Horton, 35, American country music singer known for "The Battle of New Orleans", was killed in an automobile accident when his car collided with a truck near Cameron, Texas
  • *Mack Sennett, 80, American silent film actor, director and producer, known for the Keystone Cops
  • *August Gailit, 69, Estonian novelist

[November 6], 1960 (Sunday)

  • One person was killed and 18 injured by a bomb that had been placed inside a subway car in New York City. The bomb was the fifth to have exploded in New York City on a Sunday since October 2, and the first to have taken a life. The five bombings had injured a total of 58 people to that time, including the fatal injury to Sandra Breland, a 15-year-old Brooklyn resident.
  • Died: Erich Raeder, 84, German naval commander during World War II

[November 7], 1960 (Monday)

  • DFS Group, the first major network of duty-free stores, began operations with a shop at the airport in Hong Kong where luxury goods were sold to international travelers with the duty pre-paid and forms filled out by the store. DFS Group now has locations around the world.
  • In the worst plane crash in the history of Ecuador, all 37 people on a Companía Ecuatoriana Aérea flight were killed when the Fairchild F-27 crashed into the side of the 14,623 foot high Atacazo volcano. The plane had been making an approach to Quito following takeoff from Guayaquil.
  • A transit of Mercury took place from 14:34 UTC to 19:12 UTC. The Sun-Mercury-Earth alignment happens 13 times in a century and had last taken place on May 5, 1957, and would not happen again until May 9, 1970.
  • On the day before the U.S. presidential election, Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon appeared on the first telethon in the history of presidential campaigning. From 2:00 to , on ABC, CBS and NBC, Nixon answered questions called in, by viewers, to a Detroit studio.
  • Born: Santos Rodriguez, police shooting victim; in Dallas, Texas
  • Died:
  • *A. P. Carter, 68, American gospel singer and father of June Carter Cash
  • *Leon Dabo, 95, American landscape artist

[November 8], 1960 (Tuesday)

  • In the 1960 United States presidential election, a record number of American voters turned out to make their choice between Democratic candidate and U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy and Republican candidate and U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon. With 270 electoral votes needed to win, Kennedy received 303. The popular vote was the closest in history. Kennedy won slightly more than Nixon by a margin of of one percent of the total votes cast.
  • Little Joe 5, the first of the series with a McDonnell production Mercury spacecraft, was launched from Wallops Island to check the spacecraft in an abort simulating the most severe launch conditions. The launch was normal until 15.4 seconds after lift-off, at which time the escape rocket motor was prematurely ignited. The spacecraft did not detach from the launch vehicle until impact and was destroyed. Since the test objectives were not met, a repeat of the mission was planned.

[November 9], 1960 (Wednesday)

[November 10], 1960 (Thursday)

  • The uncensored, Penguin Books edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover went on sale in England and Wales, eight days after a London jury had concluded that it was not obscene, and became an instant bestseller.
  • According to claims published later in the Fortean Times and attributed to Russian journalist Yaroslav Golovanov, "A cosmonaut called Byelokonyev died on board a spaceship in orbit." No evidence has been found to corroborate Golovanov's statement.
  • Born: Neil Gaiman, British writer of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre, and screenplays, in Portchester, Hampshire, England

[November 11], 1960 (Friday)

[November 12], 1960 (Saturday)

  • A Type 3 solar flare, described by an American astronomer as "one of the largest, if not the largest, ever recorded" disrupted communications worldwide. An aurora borealis, normally visible only at far north latitudes, could be seen in the early morning hours in much of the Northern Hemisphere, including Washington, D.C..
  • Construction of the first Soviet nuclear submarine, the K-19, was completed, three days before the first American ballistic missile submarine would set to sea with nuclear deterrent weapons. The U.S. Navy had already been operating nuclear submarines for five years. The K-19, which would receive its nuclear arsenal later, was the first of the eight "Hotel class" nuclear-powered subs.

[November 13], 1960 (Sunday)

  • The Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre, also known as MR-13, was born when leftist rebels within the Army of Guatemala, led by Lt. Marco Antonio Yon Sosa, attempted a coup against the government of President Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes. The coup was put down with American assistance, but the MR-13 group continued to fight against the Guatemalan government.
  • A fire at a movie theatre in the Kurdish village of Amuda, Syria, killed 152 children who had been watching an "educational film". Some sources claim that the fire had been set by Syrian security forces.
  • Turkey's President Cemal Gursel announced that the 38 member National Unity Committee, which had governed the nation since May, had dismissed 14 of its members, leaving Gursel and 23 advisors.
  • African-American singer and actor Sammy Davis Jr. married white Swedish actress May Britt at a time when interracial marriage was uncommon, and, in some states, illegal. The resulting fallout would effectively end Britt's film career. The couple would have a daughter in 1961, and would adopt two sons, before separating in 1967 and divorcing in 1968.
  • System checkout tests were completed on Mercury spacecraft No. 7. In the opinion of McDonnell, the results demonstrated that this spacecraft was adequate for a crewed mission.

[November 14], 1960 (Monday)

[November 15], 1960 (Tuesday)

  • The submarine USS George Washington, armed with 16 nuclear-tipped Polaris missiles, sailed from the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, on an undisclosed route. President Eisenhower praised history's first mobile nuclear missile base, noting that the Polaris firing submarines "possess a power and relative invulnerability which will make suicidal any attempt by an aggressor to attack the free world by surprise". The U.S. Navy said that the 16 missiles had the same destructive power as "the total of all of the bombs dropped during World War II". The Polaris has been described as "the world's most credible deterrent system".

[November 16], 1960 (Wednesday)

[November 17], 1960 (Thursday)

[November 18], 1960 (Friday)

  • In a major change of American policy, President Eisenhower ordered the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La and four other United States Navy warships to patrol the coasts of Nicaragua and Guatemala, declaring that the U.S. would "use military force rather than diplomatic protests" to prevent Communism from spreading from Cuba to other nations in the Western Hemisphere.
  • Spacecraft No. 8 was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury-Atlas 3 uncrewed orbital mission.
  • Born: Kim Wilde, English singer and the first child of singers Marty Wilde and Joyce Baker; in Chiswick, London

[November 19], 1960 (Saturday)

[November 20], 1960 (Sunday)

  • In parliamentary elections for Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party, led by Hayato Ikeda, increased its majority in the 467 member House of Representatives, gaining 13 seats for a total of 296; the Japan Socialist Party gained 23 for a total of 145. Losing ground were the leftist Democratic Socialists, falling from 40 to 23. Ikeda told a news conference that the results showed that the Japanese people approved the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty that had been violently protested in the spring.

[November 21], 1960 (Monday)

  • An attempt to launch the uncrewed Mercury-Redstone 1 rocket from Cape Canaveral failed when the premature cut-off of the launch vehicle engines activated the emergency escape system when the vehicle was only about off the pad. The launch vehicle settled back on the pad with only slight damage. The undamaged spacecraft was recovered for reuse.
  • United Nations troops clashed with the Congolese Army, for the first time since the Congo crisis had begun. Colonel Joseph Mobutu ordered soldiers to seize a diplomat at Ghana's embassy in Leopoldville. A force of 150 U.N. troops from Tunisia, supplementing Ghanaian embassy guards, fought for three hours in defending the embassy before the government troops withdrew.
  • Phase II of the helicopter Mercury spacecraft airdrop program began and was completed by November 30.
  • Died: Phao Siyanon, 50, former Interior Minister of Thailand and head of the Royal Thai Police until being fired in 1957, died of undisclosed causes while in exile in Switzerland.

[November 22], 1960 (Tuesday)

  • The USS Ethan Allen, at in length the largest Polaris submarine in the U.S. Navy fleet, was launched from the yards at Groton, Connecticut. Not yet equipped with missiles, the submarine was designed to fire nuclear weapons a distance of. On May 6, 1962, the Ethan Allen would make the only submarine launch of a live nuclear warhead, conducting an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test at a site away.
  • Faced with a choice of two rival delegations claiming to represent the former Belgian Congo, one led by President Joseph Kasavubu, the other by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the United Nations General Assembly voted 53–24 in favor of seating Kasavubu's group. Nineteen nations abstained. The vote effectively ended Lumumba's power in the Congo, and he would be arrested and killed two months later.

[November 23], 1960 (Wednesday)

[November 24], 1960 (Thursday)

[November 25], 1960 (Friday)

[November 26], 1960 (Saturday)

[November 27], 1960 (Sunday)

[November 28], 1960 (Monday)

  • The African state of Mauritania became independent shortly after midnight, with Moktar Ould Daddah receiving the transfer of sovereignty from France's Prime Minister, Michel Debre. Daddah declared that "Mauritania ... will never forget what she owes the French people."
  • A faint SOS Morse Code signal was allegedly heard from a troubled spacecraft in Earth orbit, suggesting that an unannounced crewed Soviet space mission had failed.
  • Born: John Galliano, British fashion designer; in Gibraltar
  • Died: Richard Wright, American novelist

[November 29], 1960 (Tuesday)

[November 30], 1960 (Wednesday)