November 1964

[November 1], 1964 (Sunday)

• Viet Cong infiltrators staged a mortar attack on Bien Hoa Air Base in South Vietnam, destroying five U.S. Air Force B-57 Canberra bombers, a U.S. Air Force HH-43F helicopter, and four Republic of Vietnam Air Force A-1 Skyraider attack aircraft, and damaging 15 B-57 bombers and some HH-43F helicopters. Five servicemen were killed and 72 wounded. The attack happened shortly after midnight Indochina Time.
• The Studebaker Corporation announced a bankruptcy settlement of its debts owned on its retirement pension plans. Although people who were already drawing full benefits would continue to do so, and workers who had at least 10 years of service and were at least 60 years old got full payment, all other participants got little or nothing. Lump sums representing about 15% of accrued benefits were paid to 4,080 participants, who got between $200 and $1,600 if they had 10 years' service and were between 40 and 59 years old. The 2,900 remaining employees who were less than 40 or who had less than 10 years got nothing back from their plan contributions.
• Born: Daran Norris, American voice actor best known for The Fairly OddParents, in the role of both the father and the fairy godfather ; in Ferndale, Washington

  [November 2], 1964 (Monday)

• King Saud was forced from the throne and his younger brother, 59-year old Prince Faisal, was proclaimed as the new King of Saudi Arabia. Saud departed into an exile in Greece, and would die of a heart attack at his hotel suite in Athens on February 23, 1969. King Faisal would rule until being assassinated in 1975.
• The Royal Dutch Shell oil corporation announced that it had found a large expanse of oil beneath the Sultanate of Oman in the southeast Arabian Peninsula, with an expected output of 140,000 barrels per day by 1967.
• The purchase of baseball's New York Yankees by the Columbia Broadcasting System became effective with the payment of $14.4 million to owners Dan Topping and Del Webb by CBS.
• A U.S. Air Force HH-43F helicopter based at Bien Hoa Air Base, South Vietnam, conducted the first night rescue by the Air Forces Air-Sea Rescue Service in Southeast Asia.
• Stars appearing in front of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom at the annual Royal Variety Performance in London included Tommy Cooper, The Bachelors, Cilla Black, Millicent Martin, Kathy Kirby, Brenda Lee, Morecambe and Wise, Gracie Fields, Jimmy Tarbuck, Cliff Richard & The Shadows, Bob Newhart and Lena Horne.

  [November 3], 1964 (Tuesday)

• In the 1964 United States presidential election, President Lyndon Johnson defeated his Republican challenger, U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater with a record of 61.05 percent of the popular vote and the electoral votes of 44 of the 50 states. Johnson received 43,127,041 out of 70,639,284 votes and Goldwater got 27,175,770; he also got 486 electors to Goldwater's 52. The election marked a change in traditional voting patterns, with five Democratic Party states in the Deep South being carried by Goldwater and nearly all of the commonly Republican Party strongholds favoring Johnson. The Johnson/Humphrey ticket received no votes in Alabama because no Democratic party electors were on the ballot in that state; 210,732 of the 689,817 votes cast there went to other presidential candidates.
• Nationwide voting also gave the Democrats a larger majority in the House of Representatives and in the Senate.
• Eduardo Frei Montalva was inaugurated for a six-year term as the 29th President of Chile.
• Born:
• *Brenda Fassie, South African singer known as MaBrrr and nicknamed "The Queen of African Pop" ; in Langa, Cape Town
• *Paprika Steen, Danish film actress; as Kirstie Steen in Frederiksberg

  [November 4], 1964 (Wednesday)

• Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was arrested after denouncing the Shah of Iran, sentenced to exile, put on an airplane in Tehran, and flown to the city of Bursa in Turkey. In the evening, the government issued a statement that "Based on credible information, evidence, and sufficient reasons against Mr. Khomeini and threats imposed by him against the national interest, security, independence, and territorial integrity of the country, he has been exiled from Iran on 13 Aban 1343." After a year in Turkey, Khomeini would move to Iraq until 1978; he would become the leader of Iran in 1979 after successfully advocating the overthrow of the Shah.
• In Bolivia, the government of President Víctor Paz Estenssoro was overthrown in a coup led by General Alfredo Ovando Candía, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and Paz was replaced by his Vice-President, General René Barrientos, who had assisted in the plot. The overthrow brought an end to 12 years of rule by the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario political party, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement. Paz was sent into exile in Peru, but would return in 1971 and would become president again from 1985 to 1989.
• The burial of NASA astronaut Theodore Freeman, who had died in a plane crash on October 31, took place at Arlington National Cemetery, the day after his funeral at Seabrook Methodist Church in Texas. All 28 active astronauts, as well as John Glenn, who had recently retired from the astronaut corps, attended both events. Freeman's burial was the final occasion in history when all of NASA's past and present astronauts were together in the same place.
• Trần Văn Hương was installed as the new Prime Minister of South Vietnam as part of a civilian government selected by the nation's military leaders.

  [November 5], 1964 (Thursday)

• Mariner 3, a U.S. space probe intended to make the first flyby of Mars, was successfully launched from Cape Kennedy, but the lightweight heat-shielding shroud that had been used to protect its instruments from air friction had melted and failed to separate after the Atlas-Agena rocket left the atmosphere. Because the protective shroud was stuck to the payload, the $25,000,000 Mariner's solar panels were unable to unfold and the craft could not be controlled after it achieved solar orbit. The problem with the shroud's design would be determined in time to prevent the same thing from happening to Mariner 4 three weeks later.
• King Sobhuza II opened the Swaziland Railway in a dedication ceremony, with railroad tracks crossing the landlocked South African kingdom for the first time. The railway line did not originally transport passengers and, as the official history states, "was established for the sole purpose of transporting a single commodity – iron ore", specifically between the Ngwenya Mine and the village of Goba, Mozambique.
• In West Germany, the cabinet of Chancellor Ludwig Erhard voted against seeking an extension of the 20-year statute of limitations for prosecution of war crimes, though it would not announce its decision until November 11. Without an extension, six months remained for the indictment of former Nazis, who would not face prosecution after May 6, 1965.
• Died:
• *Vasily Nemchinov, 70, Soviet mathematician and economist who provided the groundwork for the Communist theory of a centrally-planned economy.
• *Lansdale Ghiselin Sasscer, 71, American politician and U.S. Representative for Maryland for six terms between 1939 and 1953.
• *John S. Robertson, 86, Canadian film director
• *Mabel Lucie Attwell, 85, British illustrator

  [November 6], 1964 (Friday)

• Uganda's Prime Minister Milton Obote gave instructions to the African nation's security police "to use such powers as they have to protect the lives and the properties of the public" and gave authorization to use deadly force against civilians as they felt necessary. Four days later, in the Naakulabye neighborhood in the capital, Kampala, police responded to a husband and wife argument by firing their weapons into a crowd of people who had gathered around to see what was happening, killing six of them indiscriminately.
• Died:
• *Samuil Samosud, 80, conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra
• *Hans von Euler-Chelpin, 91, German-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

  [November 7], 1964 (Saturday)

• Soviet Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev attempted to mend relations with the People's Republic of China by hosting Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and his advisers in Moscow on the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, the first celebration since the removal of Nikita Khrushchev as leader three weeks earlier. However, the position of China's Mao Zedong was that reconciliation was not possible so long as the Soviets continued to appease "United States imperialism" and to attempt a peaceful co-existence with "the common enemy" of Communism. Another historian notes that any patching of relations "that had seemed possible after Khrushchev's fall evaporated after the Soviet minister of defense, Rodion Malinovsky... approached Chinese Marshal He Long, member of the Chinese delegation to Moscow, and asked when China would finally get rid of Mao like the CPSU had disposed of Khrushchev."
• At the annual parade of new weapons through Red Square in Moscow, the Soviets displayed the first anti-ballistic missile, referred to as the ABM-1 Galosh by NATO and the A-350 by the Soviet military. The large new weapon — long, in diameter and driven by four motors, was described as being capable of destroying incoming missiles at great distances and "was an unexpected surprise to Western intelligence analysts".
• Born: Dana Plato, American child actress who portrayed Kimberly Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes ; in Maywood, California

  [November 8], 1964 (Sunday)

• The opening ceremony of the 2nd Summer Paralympics was held in Tokyo, with 5,000 spectators and 369 athletes from 22 nations. Japan's Crown Prince Akihito declared the games open.
• A ceasefire went into effect at 1:00 between the royalist and the republican factions in the North Yemen Civil War but would last for less than a month.
• Habib Bourguiba was re-elected as President of Tunisia without opposition, in that the Socialist Destourian Party was the only legal political party in nation.
• Consecration of the Sri Sithi Vinayagar Temple took place in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.
• Died: Joseph Francis Rummel, 78, Roman Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans since 1935