November 1965

[November 1], 1965 (Monday)

• In Egypt, a trolleybus plunged into the Nile River at Dokki, a suburb of Cairo, drowning 74 people. Most of the dead were high school students who were on their way home from school. Only 19 passengers survived, breaking windows or escaping from open doors to free themselves.
• The charter of Asian Development Bank was drafted in Manila.
• King Mohammed Zahir Shah appointed Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as the new Prime Minister of Afghanistan, replacing Mohammad Yusuf, who had been dismissed the previous Friday. Maindawal, who had served as the Afghan ambassador to the United States as well as the United Kingdom and Pakistan, would serve until November 1, 1967. After Afghanistan's declaration of a republic in 1973, Maindawal would be arrested on charges of attempting to overthrow President Mohammed Daoud Khan and would die in prison.
• In advance of the Gemini 6 mission, a panel of the Agena Flight Safety Review Board reviewed Lockheed's analysis of the October 25 failure of the attempt to launch the Gemini Agena target vehicle. The subpanel concluded that a "hard start" of the Agena rocket's main engine was caused by a lead of rocket fuel, rather than oxidizer, into the rocket's thrust chamber before ignition. Meeting two days later, the full Safety Review Board, chaired by George E. Mueller, reached the same conclusion as the subpanel.

  [November 2], 1965 (Tuesday)

• The Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas reported that it was the first to begin regular use of the new technology of "an instrument which makes possible the continuous monitoring of the vital signs of both mother and child", now commonly known as the fetal heart monitor. Initially, the instrument was used only when the mother was in labor.
• Banks and newspapers in the Dominican Republic reopened for business for the first time in more than five months. All banks in the downtown district of Santo Domingo had been closed since April 24 during the outbreak of violence following a coup, and the independent newspapers El Caribe and Listin Diario had been shut down since April 28.
• Israel's Prime Minister Levi Eshkol retained his office as parliamentary elections were held for the Knesset. Eshkol's Mapai party and its alignment with the Ahdut HaAvoda lost five seats but retained 45 of the 120 available.
• The United States Treasury Department announced an embargo, effective November 10, banning "imports of wigs made with human hair from Red China".
• Republican John Lindsay was elected Mayor of New York City, narrowly defeating Democrat challenger Abe Beame.
• Born: Shah Rukh Khan, Indian film actor, producer and TV host; in New Delhi
• Died:
• *Norman Morrison, 31, American Quaker and pacifist, died of burns suffered when he set himself on fire in front of The Pentagon, in protest against the Vietnam War. Morrison was holding his one-year-old daughter as he doused himself in kerosene, and was reportedly still holding her as he began to burn, letting the child go after horrified onlookers yelled 'Drop the baby!" The child was rescued, unharmed, and Mr. Morrison was dead on arrival at the Fort Myer dispensary. Morrison had set himself ablaze from, and within sight of, the office of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who would write 30 years later, "Morrison's death was a tragedy not only for his family, but also for me and the country." North Vietnam would memorialize him with a postage stamp and named a street after him.
• *José Ramón Guizado, 66, 17th President of Panama for 57 days in 1955 after the assassination of President José Antonio Remón Cantera, died of a heart attack. Guizado had served two years in prison after being convicted of complicity in the 1955 murder of President José Antonio Remón Cantera, then exonerated and released.

  [November 3], 1965 (Wednesday)

• All 69 people on an Argentine Air Force transport plane were killed when the C-54 airplane plunged into the sea while flying from Balboa-Howard Air Force Base in Panama, toward San Salvador, capital of El Salvador. The passengers were 55 Argentine Air Force cadets and five officers who were one of two groups who were en route to a tour of the United States. The aircraft was last heard from at 7:35 in the morning when the pilot sent a distress call, saying that one of the plane's engines had caught fire and that he was about from Puerto Limon in Costa Rica. More than 50 years later, no trace of the airplane has ever been found.
• Edward Bond's play Saved was performed for the first time, presented in its entirety in a private session by players and an audience made up of members of the English Stage Society, after Britain's Lord Chamberlain's Office had allowed only a heavily censored version for public audiences. Under the Theatres Act 1843, all scripts for British plays had to be sent to the Lord Chamberlain for approval, and even a "sanitized" version of Saved had been sent back with directions to make more than 30 cuts from the script, including entire scenes. The protest by the drama community would eventually lead to the Theatres Act 1968, abolishing censorship of plays.
• The sinking of the Jose Marti, a Cuban fishing boat, killed 39 of the 45 people on board. According to a spokesman from the Mexican Navy, the overcrowded boat, carrying refugees from Cuba,"just came to pieces" while short of its destination in Mexico, breaking up near Isla Contoy.
• Born: Ann Scott, French novelist; in Paris

  [November 4], 1965 (Thursday)

• Harvard University botany professor Elso Barghoorn announced the discovery of the earliest evidence of life on Earth, with the finding of fossil evidence from three billion years in the past. Dr. Barhoorn, who was presenting his findings to the Geological Society of America at its annual convention in Kansas City, said "It proves that life must have existed much further back than any previous evidence has shown", and that the fossil had been found in February 1965, at a location in the Kingdom of Swaziland, southeast of Barberton in South Africa. The organisms, bacteria only one half of a micron long, were detected by electron microscope evaluation in October.
• Lee Breedlove, wife of Craig Breedlove, set a new women's land speed record of, based on the average between one run of and another of. She was driving her husband's jet-powered race car, the Spirit of America, on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
• Charles de Gaulle announced that he would stand for re-election on December 5 in pursuit of another seven-year term as President of the French Republic.
• The Food and Agriculture Act of 1965 was signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson.
• Pavshie i zhivye, by Soviet playwright Yuri Lyubimov, premiered at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow after the Ministry of Culture had ordered 19 changes in its script. By 1968, hardliners within the Communist Party would condemn even the censored version of the play as a departure from the official Party policy.
• The Ned Rorem opera Miss Julie was premiered by the New York City Opera.
• Born:
• *Wayne Static, American heavy metal musician and lead vocalist for the band Static-X; in Muskegon, Michigan
• *Pata, Japanese musician best known as rhythm guitarist of the Japanese rock band X Japan; in Chiba
• Died: Dickey Chapelle, 46, American photojournalist, became the first war correspondent to be killed in the Vietnam War, and the first female American reporter to die in combat. Chapelle was mortally wounded when a land mine exploded in front of her while she was accompanying a platoon of U.S. Marines near Chu Lai.

  [November 5], 1965 (Friday)

• A three-month state of emergency was declared in Southern Rhodesia by British colonial Governor Humphrey Gibbs, who said that the British colony's security was being threatened by Prime Minister Ian Smith's agitation for independence from the United Kingdom, and by two African nationalist organizations, Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union, and Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole's Zimbabwe African National Union.
• The United Nations General Assembly voted, 82 to 9, to demand that the United Kingdom use military force if Rhodesia made a unilateral declaration of independence.
• Died: Ho Thi Que, 38, Vietnamese fighter known as "The Tiger Lady of South Vietnam", was shot and killed during an argument with her husband, Major Nguyen Van Dan.

  [November 6], 1965 (Saturday)

• The prototype of the new Chinook ACH-47A helicopter gunship was given its first test flight by Boeing Vertol. Delivery was made to the U.S. Army the following month, and a trio of the ACH-47As would enter combat in May.
• Representatives of the United States and Cuba signed a Memorandum of Understanding, brokered through the government of Switzerland, agreeing to begin "Freedom Flights" from Cuba to the U.S. for families whose names were on both nations' lists of Cuban applicants who had family in the states. Under the pact, the United States would pay for the air transport and use its own aircraft, and Cuba would allow officials of the U.S. Public Health Service and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to maintain offices at the Varadero airport to screen passengers before their embarkation. By the time of the service's end in 1971, more than 250,000 Cubans would take advantage of the program.
• The United States launched GEOS-1, the first cartographic satellite, at 1:39 in the afternoon from Cape Kennedy. GEOS Project Director Jerome Rosenberg told reporters, "We've got a satellite that's just peachy-dandy", and said that it was equipped with four high-powered flashing lights, laser beam reflectors and three sets of radio gear that would provide the data to produce the most accurate maps in history, precisely locate long-range missile targets, and measure the Earth's dips and bulges with unprecedented accuracy. It was the first payload to be launched by a Delta E rocket.
• The Italian luxury ocean liner Raffaello arrived in Genoa with 56 injured passengers, six days after a fire had crippled the ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
• Troops from Chile and Argentina fought at their border in the Laguna del Desierto incident.
• Died:
• *Clarence Williams, 67, American jazz composer
• *Edgard Varèse, 81, French classical composer