November 1961

[November 1], 1961 (Wednesday)

• The U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission's federal order, banning racial segregation at all interstate public facilities, went into effect.
• The first Soviet ICBM, called the R-16 in the USSR and the SS-7 by Americans, was put on active status.
• A Panair do Brasil Airlines DC-7 with 85 people on board crashed, killing 48 people. The plane, arriving from Lisbon in Portugal, was coming in for a landing at Recife when it struck a hillside in the Recife suburb of Tijipio.
• Women Strike for Peace, a women's peace activist group in the United States, held its first event, as thousands of American women, most of them housewives concerned over the contamination of strontium-90 from fallout, marched in 60 different U.S. cities to demand an end to further nuclear testing. Estimates of the number of participants ranged from 25,000 to 50,000.
• The U.S. attempted to launch a Mercury-Scout 1 rocket and its payload, a Manned Space Flight Network communications package, into orbit, in advance of the next crewed orbital flight, Mercury 4. However, 43 seconds after liftoff, the rocket veered off course and was remotely destroyed by the Range Safety Officer.
• NASA's Space Task Group was redesignated the Manned Spacecraft Center, with Robert R. Gilruth as Director. STG Director Robert R. Gilruth and Chief Engineer James A. Chamberlin briefed NASA Associate Administrator Robert C. Seamans, Jr. on the Mercury Mark II proposal and awaited NASA approval.
• The Hungry generation literary movement was launched in Calcutta, India, by the publication of the first manifesto by the so-called "Hungryalist quartet", consisting of Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roy Choudhury, Samir Roychoudhury and Debi Roy.
• Born: Petr Pavel, 4th President of the Czech Republic since 2023; in Planá, Czechoslovakia

  [November 2], 1961 (Thursday)

• Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Emir of Bahrain since 1942, died at the age of 67. At the time, the oil-rich Arab sheikdom was a protectorate of the United Kingdom. Salman's son, Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, became the new Emir and would lead the nation to independence in 1971, reigning as King of Bahrain until his death in 1999.
• The cover of Oleg Penkovsky, who had passed along top secret Soviet information to American CIA agents operating in the USSR, was blown, after four KGB agents caught a CIA case officer in the act of picking up information that had been dropped off. The CIA man was expelled; the execution of Penkovsky would be announced on May 17, 1963.
• The musical Kean, based on the life of 18th-century Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean, opened at the Broadway Theater in New York City. It would close on January 20 after only 92 performances.
• Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion received approval to form a new coalition government, with the Knesset approving a vote of confidence, 63–46.
• Born: k.d. lang, Canadian singer-songwriter; in Consort, Alberta
• Died:
• *Harriet Bosse, 83, Swedish-Norwegian actress
• *James Thurber, 66, American humorist

  [November 3], 1961 (Friday)

• In one of the more unusual finishes in pro football history, the Dallas Texans were trailing the Boston Patriots, 28–21, but had made it down to the one-yard line with one second left. Patriots fans rushed onto the field, and even after being held back by police, one spectator ran into the end zone on the final play, thwarting a pass to the Texans' Chris Burford from Cotton Davidson, then disappeared back into the crowd.
• After returning from South Vietnam on a factfinding mission for President Kennedy, U.S. Army General Maxwell Taylor submitted a report proposing the commitment of 10,000 American combat troops to defend against the Communist Viet Cong. Kennedy eventually sent 25,000 troops to South Vietnam.
• The UN General Assembly unanimously elected U Thant, the Ambassador from Burma, as acting Secretary General, to replace the late Dag Hammarskjöld. The other candidate for the position had been General Assembly President Mongi Slim of Tunisia. Thant would serve for two terms, ending in 1971.
• U.S. Army Major General Edwin A. Walker resigned his commission, after having lost his command of a division in West Germany earlier in the year from controversial comments. Walker told reporters that "I must be free from the power of little men who, in the name of my country, punish loyal service to it."
• United Artists announced the selection of Scottish actor Sean Connery to portray James Bond in the upcoming film Dr. No. Patrick McGoohan had turned down the role, and Roger Moore was unavailable due to his commitments on the TV show The Saint.
• The White House Historical Association was created as a result of the efforts of U.S. First Lady Jackie Kennedy to fund the maintenance of the American presidential residence. Money was raised through the sales of the Association's book, The White House: An Historic Guide.
• The United States Agency for International Development was established to coordinate American foreign aid.
• Born: David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley, first child of Princess Margaret; at Clarence House, in London. At the time of his birth, he was fifth in line to the British throne, after his cousins Charles, Andrew, and Anne, and his mother.

  [November 4], 1961 (Saturday)

• Italy's second television network Rai 2 began broadcasting, joining the original RAI which had begun in 1954.
• Born: Ralph Macchio, American film and television actor known for The Karate Kid; in Huntington, New York

  [November 5], 1961 (Sunday)

• A fire killed 106 schoolchildren and four teachers at the Soviet city of Elbarusovo (roughly 15 miles southeast of Novocheboksarsk in the Chuvash ASSR; the disaster would not be acknowledged until 1994, with sculptor Vladimir Nagornov's creation of a monument that was erected on the site. The fire was also acknowledged in news coverage following a 2009 fire at a nightclub in Perm.
• The remains of Welsh chorus girl Mamie Stuart, who had disappeared in 1919, were located 42 years after her death. Three amateur cave explorers had gone into an abandoned lead mine at Brandy Cove in Wales, and found a sack protruding from a stone slab. Looking for a possible treasure, the three discovered human bones from a body that had been sawed into three pieces. A coroner's inquest concluded that the remains were those of Stuart, whose husband George Shotton could not be charged with murder because her body could not be found.
• Tropical Storm Inga formed in the Gulf of Mexico, the first time a tropical storm has formed in the Gulf as late as November.
• Died: Channing H. Tobias, 79, chairman of the Board of Directors of the NAACP from 1953 to 1960

  [November 6], 1961 (Monday)

• Heinz Felfe, West Germany's chief of counterintelligence for the Bundesnachrichtendienst, was arrested by his own agents. Felfe, a former Nazi, was discovered to have been passing secrets of the American CIA to the Soviet Union and to East Germany since 1959, revealing the identify of more than 100 CIA agents in Moscow.
• The British freighter Cinn Keith exploded and sank in the Mediterranean Sea off of the coast of Tunisia, killing 62 of the 68 crewmen on board.
• American actor Michael J. Pollard married actress Beth Howland.
• Born : Florent Pagny, French singer and actor

  [November 7], 1961 (Tuesday)

• José María Velasco Ibarra was pressured into resigning as President of Ecuador. The Ecuadorian Army had the oath of office administered to Supreme Court President Camilo Gallegos Toledo. Ten minutes later, the Ecuadorian Congress voted to elevate Vice-president Carlos Arosemena to the post.
• Konrad Adenauer was re-elected by the Bundestag for a fourth four-year term as Chancellor of West Germany, but by a margin of only 8 votes. With approval necessary from 250 of the 499 members, the vote was 258 to 206 in his favor, with 26 abstaining and 9 members absent.
• The Taiwanese cargo ship Union Reliance collided with the 9,003 GRT Norwegian tanker MS Berean in the Houston Ship Channel, catching fire and killing 12 people on the Berean.
• The most damaging blaze in Southern California history, up to that time, destroyed 48 homes in one of the wealthiest areas of the United States in the Hollywood Hills, including the houses of actors Burt Lancaster, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Joe E. Brown.
• France secretly set off its first underground nuclear explosion, and its fifth overall since joining the nuclear club on February 13, 1960. Confirmation was not given until nearly three weeks later.
• Died:
• *Hugh Ruttledge, 77, English mountaineer who led two unsuccessful tries at being the first to climb Mount Everest
• *Augustin Rösch, 68, German Jesuit and resistance fighter against Fascism
• *Mary Richardson, 72, Canadian suffragette and Fascist

  [November 8], 1961 (Wednesday)

• The crash of Imperial Airlines Flight 201/8 killed 77 of the 79 people on board. The Lockheed L-049E Constellation, had been chartered to carry U.S. Army recruits from Baltimore, to basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, crashed while attempting an emergency landing at Richmond, Virginia. The plane caught fire after coming down in a wooded ravine at 9:24 p.m. Subsequent investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board determined that most of the people on board had survived the impact, but died of smoke inhalation after panicking in their rush toward the exits. The crew of the plane was blamed for allowing the fuel tank for one of the engines to empty, causing the stall; for failing to use an emergency valve to deploy a malfunctioning landing gear, which would have made an emergency landing possible at the airport; and for failing to instruct the passengers about what to do in the event of a crash. There was no attempt by the recruits to open any of the three emergency exits.
• U.S. Amateur golf champion Jack Nicklaus, a 21-year-old senior at Ohio State University announced at a press conference that he was turning professional. Nicklaus would go on to win 19 major championships, including six Masters tournaments and six PGA Championships.
• Born: Seán Haughey, Irish politician, Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1989 to 1990; in Raheny, County Dublin, as the son of future Taoiseach Charles Haughey and Maureen Haughey Lemass