November 1967

[November 1], 1967 (Wednesday)

• Arvid Pardo, the United Nations ambassador from Malta, delivered a historic speech before the General Assembly, describing Earth's oceans and seabed as "the common heritage of all mankind". Pardo, acknowledging that his small nation of Mediterranean islands was one of the smallest members of the U.N., stated that "We are, naturally, vitally interested in the sea which surrounds us," and noted that the Maltese people were concerned about "the truly incalculable dangers for mankind as a whole were the sea-bed and ocean floor beyond present national jurisdiction to be progressively and competitively appropriated, exploited and used for military purposes by those who possess the required technology." Pardo's speech would be the beginning of the process of getting the world's nations to agree upon what would become the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
• In Trento, a group of leftist Catholic students occupied university buildings, at the beginning of a violent wave of protests in the Italian campuses that would last for at least a decade. Many of Trento's protesters would play a primary role in the Italian New Left or in the Red Brigades.
• In India, the state of Kerala became the first in the nation to sell tickets for a state lottery, with each of the one rupee tickets being eligible for the grand prize of 50,000 Indian rupees to be drawn on January 26, 1968.
• Nur Ahmad Etemadi became the new Prime Minister of Afghanistan after Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal resigned for health reasons. Etemadi would serve until 1971, and would later be executed in 1979 for conspiring to overthrow the Afghan government.
• King Hussein of Jordan rejected a public proposal by Israel's Prime Minister Levi Eshkol for the leaders of the two neighboring nations to meet in person to begin peace talks. The statement came during a live interview in London on David Frost's talk show.
• President Houari Boumedienne of Algeria announced that, starting in 1968, compulsory military service would begin for all young men in the north African nation, a program that would give Algeria one of the largest standing armies on the continent.
• U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara presented President Johnson with a gloomy projection for the next 15 months in the Vietnam War.
• Born: Tina Arena, Australian singer and stage actress; as Filippina Lydia Arena in Keilor East, Victoria
• Died: Benita Hume, 60, English actress, died from bone cancer.

  [November 2], 1967 (Thursday)

• U.S. President Johnson held a secret meeting at the White House with a group of "former officials whose advice he trusted" and asked them to suggest ways to unite the American people behind the Vietnam War effort. The panel, referred to in later histories as "the Wise Men", included Dean Acheson, McGeorge Bundy, Clark Clifford, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and Maxwell Taylor, who urged the President to continue the war and to give the American people more optimistic reports on the war's progress, based on their conclusion that the U.S. was winning the conflict.
• In Portland, Oregon, African-American members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union brought their first charges of racial discrimination against the union, asserting before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the ILWU's referral system deliberately excluded black dockworkers from better jobs within the industry. It would take ten years for the case to come to trial, but in 1977, a federal court would find in favor of the Portland workers and would order the ILWU to eliminate its discriminatory practices.
• The Scottish National Party, an advocate for Scotland's independence from the United Kingdom, won a seat in the House of Commons for only the second time in its history, when Winifred Ewing defeated both the Labour Party and Conservative Party candidates in a by-election to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of Labour Party MP Tom Fraser. The SNP would win seats in the House of Commons in all general elections afterward.
• A ceasefire was negotiated between two warring organizations in the Guangdong Province of China, both created during the Cultural Revolution. The radical "Red Flag Faction" and the more conservative "East Wind Faction" of the Red Guards had been fighting since January.
• U.S. President Johnson addressed 1,000 delegates at "Consumer Assembly '67", and told them that the American people should urge Congress to increase taxes in order to stop price inflation.
• In Nuoro, at a checkpoint, the fugitive bandit Nino Cherchi killed traffic officer Giovanni Maria Tamponi with a machine gun burst. Six months before, on the same road, two policemen had been killed in a shooting with Graziano Mesina's gang. Tamponi was the sixth police victim of Sardinian gangsterism since the beginning of the year.
• A total eclipse of the sun took place, primarily over southern Africa and portions of Antarctica.
• Born:
• *Akira Ishida, Japanese voice actor, winner of the first Seiyu Awards for Best Supporting Character actor; in Nisshin, Aichi prefecture.
• *Chris Williams, American actor, voice actor and comedian known for a supporting role in the 2016 CBS TV series ''The Great Indoors''

  [November 3], 1967 (Friday)

• U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara announced that the Soviet Union was developing a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, a nuclear missile designed to be placed into low Earth orbit and to be brought back down on command to a selected target. The development raised the frightening prospect of a new arms race in outer space, with the weapons of the world's nuclear powers circling the globe and ready to destroy any target on short notice.
• The Battle of Dak To began about 280 miles north of Saigon and near South Vietnam's border with Cambodia. The largest concentration, up to that time, of North Vietnamese Army regiments had formed around the Dak To camp of the U.S. Special Forces. A defector from the north had tipped off the Americans, and General William Westmoreland ordered the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade, and divisions of the 4th Infantry and the 1st Cavalry to reinforce the 1,000 Americans already based at the camp. During three weeks of fighting, 361 American servicemen were killed, 1,441 wounded and 15 were missing in action.
• General Maxwell Taylor advised U.S. President Johnson to refute the advice of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara given two days previously regarding conduct of the Vietnam War. Taylor's sentiments were echoed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas and McNamara's replacement as Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford.
• Garry Trudeau, a 19-year old sophomore at Yale University, began his career of publishing political commentary in cartoon form, with an editorial cartoon in the college newspaper, the Yale Daily News. While in college, Trudeau would later create a comic strip which, after his graduation in 1970, became the syndicated Doonesbury.
• Died:
• *Clare Hoffman, 92, United States Representative for Michigan for 14 terms, from 1935 to 1963)
• *Baburao Pendharkar, 71, Indian film director

  [November 4], 1967 (Saturday)

• All 37 people on Iberia Airlines Flight 062 were killed when it crashed into a hillside while making its approach for a landing at London's Heathrow Airport. The twin-engine Sud Aviation Caravelle jet had taken off from Málaga Airport in Spain, and impacted in a forest on Blackdown Hill, near Fernhurst, West Sussex, about from its destination. The plane had been cleared to descend to and, for no discernible reason, steadily continued its descent.
• In the Congo, Belgian mercenaries led by Jean Schramme and Jerry Puren began a two-day withdrawal from Bukavu, over the Shangugu Bridge, to Rwanda. The four-month long mutiny had started on July 5 with an attack on Stanleyville by Schramme and 10 other mercenaries, who had soon been joined by 1,000 mutineering soldiers and rebels, and another 150 mercenary soldiers, and had claimed the lives of as many as 6,000 people.
• Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser told former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Robert B. Anderson that he was willing to agree to many of the requests of Israel to end the state of belligerence between the two nations following the recent Six-Day War but to do so officially would be suicide for any Arab leader. Anderson was in Cairo unofficially to meet with Nasser at the request of U.S. President Johnson.
• U.S. President Johnson spoke with former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower on the telephone regarding recent diplomatic overtures with the National Liberation Front and the recent successful free elections in South Vietnam. Eisenhower communicated his support of Johnson's handling of the "unfortunate, but necessary" war in Vietnam.

  [November 5], 1967 (Sunday)

• ATS-3, the third of the Applications Technology Satellite geostationary weather and communications relays, was launched into orbit from Cape Kennedy at 6:37 p.m. from Florida. It was the first satellite with the capability of sending back full color images of the Earth. Designed to function for three years, ATS-3 would continue transmitting images until its deactivation on December 1, 1978.
• A railway accident killed 49 people and injured 78 when a British Rail express train derailed outside London near Hither Green. Most of the victims were on their way back to London after a weekend at the seaside resort in Hastings. A subsequent investigation would conclude that the piece of the rail which had broken was poorly supported and that while it had been adequate to support steam locomotives, "the smaller wheels of diesel and electric locomotives and units, combined with the high unsprung weight resulting from their axle-hung traction motors" had caused the tracks to wear out more quickly than forecast.
• A bloodless coup in the Yemen Arab Republic took place shortly after midnight, while President Abdullah al-Sallal was on his way to a state visit to the Soviet Union. The Yemeni Army seized control "without firing a shot" and installed a civilian-led presidential council headed by Judge Abdul Rahman al-Iryani. Sallal had been on his way to Moscow to attend the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution and to seek further aid for his regime after Egypt's recent withdrawal of troops; with news of the coup, he had his plane land in Baghdad and would spend the next 14 years in exile in Iraq.
• U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was greeted by thousands of flag-waving locals when he arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia. The warm welcome was attributed to the hardline American policy on Communism.
• Born: Duilio Forte, Italian-Swedish architect; in Milan
• Died:
• *Robert Nighthawk, 57, African-American blues musician, died of a heart attack.
• *Joseph Kesselring, 65, American playwright who wrote ''Arsenic and Old Lace''