October 1967

[October 1], 1967 (Sunday)

• The final day of the regular season in baseball's American League came down to a game between the Boston Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins, who both had 91–70 records after Boston's 6–4 win the day before. The Detroit Tigers were at 90–70 going into their final two games, and could have forced a playoff if they could win both parts of their doubleheader against the California Angels. Boston beat Minnesota, 5–3, in a game that ended at 3:25 in the afternoon Eastern Time, to finish at 92 wins and 70 losses. Eighty minutes later in Detroit, the Tigers had a 91–70 record after a 6–4 win over the Angels, and baseball fans watched to see whether the Tigers could win their last game; unfortunately, the Angels took a five-run lead after five innings, and would hold on for an 8–5 win.
• Representatives of the world's communist nations had been invited to a celebration in Beijing to mark the 18th anniversary of the October 1, 1949 takeover of China by the Communists, but China's second-in-command, Lin Biao, gave an address that was described as having "rude anti-Soviet attacks and outbursts against the international communist government." With that, the Soviet guests walked out, and were joined by those from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Mongolia and Poland.
• Color television was introduced in France at 2:15 in the afternoon on the ORTF's second channel, La deuxième chaîne, which used the SECAM technology. Only 1,500 households in France had color televisions at the time; within a year, 200,000 color sets were used in France.

  [October 2], 1967 (Monday)

• As the United States Supreme Court began its new term, Thurgood Marshall joined the court as the Court's first African-American justice. Although a swearing-in ceremony was held, Marshall had already taken the oath of office on September 1. He would serve for 24 terms of the Court, announcing his resignation on June 27, 1991, and died on January 24, 1993.
• NASA Deputy Administrator Robert C. Seamans Jr. resigned, effective January 1, 1968. He had joined NASA in 1960 as an Associate Administrator, and became Deputy Administrator in 1965.
• England, Wales and Northern Ireland adopted a judicial procedure that was already in place in Scotland, allowing for jury verdicts by less than a unanimous decision. Thereafter, juries could decide a case by a 10–2 or an 11–1 margin.
• Greece's military government placed former Greek Prime Minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos under house arrest after he issued a public appeal for democracy.
• Lesotho Airways made its first flight, taking off from Maseru in Lesotho to Johannesburg in South Africa in a Douglas DC-3.
• Born:
• *Frankie Fredericks, track and field athlete, and the only Olympic medalist from Namibia; winner of silver medals in the 100m and 200m races in 1992 and 1996; in Windhoek
• *Tohir Yoʻldosh, Uzbek founder of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; as Tohir Abduhalilovich Yuldashev in Fergana, Uzbek SSR, Soviet Union
• *Gillian Welch, American country singer-songwriter; in New York City

  [October 3], 1967 (Tuesday)

• United States bombers struck targets in North Vietnam as close as from Communist China, striking the Loc Dinh highway bridge, the Bao Dang highway bridge from the frontier, and the Ha Thuoc railroad yards, the northernmost penetration that American bombs had been dropped in Vietnam.
• Carl B. Stokes became the first African-American to win a primary election for mayor of a large American city, defeating incumbent mayor Ralph S. Locher of Cleveland in the Democratic primary. Stokes would win in November against Republican candidate Seth Taft.
• Flying an X-15 experimental aircraft, U.S. Air Force Major William "Pete" Knight made the fastest flight of a powered aircraft, at a speed of Mach 6.72. The mark remains unsurpassed.
• The National Assembly of South Vietnam voted, 58 to 43, to approve the results of the September 3 presidential election won by Nguyễn Văn Thiệu.
• North Vietnam rejected a proposal by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson to discuss peace. The decision was announced in the Hanoi newspaper Nhan Dan.
• Britain's Royal Navy commissioned its first Polaris ballistic missile submarine,.
• NASA Headquarters issued a revised Apollo Applications Program schedule incorporating recent budgetary cutbacks. The schedule reflected the reduction of AAP lunar activity to four missions and of Saturn V Workshop activity to 17 Saturn IB and 7 Saturn V launches. There would be two Workshops launched on Saturn IBs, one Saturn V Workshop, and three Apollo Telescope Mounts. Launch of the first Workshop was scheduled for March 1970.
• Born: Rob Liefeld, American comic book creator; in Anaheim, California
• Died:
• *Pinto Colvig, 75, American voice actor known for being the original voice of the Disney character Goofy
• *Woody Guthrie, 55, American folk singer and songwriter, died of Huntington's disease.
• *Malcolm Sargent, 72, British orchestra conductor

  [October 4], 1967 (Wednesday)

• The Shag Harbour UFO incident occurred in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on the tenth anniversary of the Sputnik launch, as "an illuminated object, sixty feet in diameter, descended from the sky and disappeared beneath the waves" in front of numerous witnesses, including a constable of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A Canadian Coast Guard vessel rushed to the impact point and found a "thick yellow foam" 80 feet wide at the crash site. Acting on the possibility that the object had been a crashing airplane, Canadian Navy divers conducted a four-day search of the harbor for wreckage but found nothing.
• The cliché of "a bull in a china shop" was played out literally in the town of Chester, Pennsylvania when three steers escaped from Medford's Inc., a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant, and "caused a considerable amount of damage to the china and other valuable items in a downtown jewelry store." The three animals raced a few blocks up Market Street and onto Edgmont Avenue, then charged into the Morris Jewelry Store. No people were injured, but the steers smashed display cases on their way back out.
• The formerly German parcel of land Verenahof was officially transferred to Switzerland, along with an equal amount of formerly Swiss land being transferred to Germany.
• Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin III of Brunei abdicated in favor of his son, Hassanal Bolkiah, but would remain an adviser to the nation's new ruler until his own death in 1986.
• Born: Liev Schreiber, American stage, film and television actor; in San Francisco
• Died: Claude C. Bloch, 89, U.S. Navy Admiral

  [October 5], 1967 (Thursday)

• Pacific Ocean Park, located in Santa Monica, California, was closed down by a bankruptcy trustee. The park had been operating only on weekends during its final months of operation, and its last actual day had been on Sunday, October 1. Nicknamed "P.O.P.", the amusement park had opened in 1958 and had pioneered the concept of allowing visitors to get on rides as often as they wished after paying for admission, which was promoted by using "P.O.P." to stand for "Pay One Price".
• The Maiskoe-Ashgabat–Bezmeyn natural gas pipeline, in length and under the management of the Soviet Ministry of Gas Industry, began its first deliveries of natural gas from the Turkmen SSR in Central Asia through the Russian SFSR.
• Born: Guy Pearce, British-born Australian film actor; in Ely, Cambridgeshire
• Died: USMC Major Clifton C. Williams Jr., 35, American astronaut, was killed while piloting a T-38 jet plane from Patrick Air Force Base in Florida to the Brookley Air Force Base in Alabama. Major Williams had been one of 14 men chosen for NASA Astronaut Group 3, and would have been the lunar module pilot for Apollo 12 in late 1969. He would be replaced by Alan Bean for the mission.

  [October 6], 1967 (Friday)

• Three students at Duke University became the first people to be certified as a physician assistant. Kenneth Ferrell, Victor Germino and Richard Scheele, each of whom had been a medical corpsman in the United States Navy, had entered the two-year experimental program in 1965 after the American Medical Association had granted permission to Dr. Eugene Stead to implement the proposal by Dr. Charles Hudson.
• The Canadian record for heaviest rainfall in 24 hours was set at the town of Ucluelet, British Columbia, located on the west coast of Vancouver Island, with 489 millimeters of precipitation from a downpour that had started the day before.
• The government of South Vietnam implemented its new policy toward student protesters by drafting 12 demonstrators into the South Vietnamese Army.
• Born: Attila Ambrus, Hungarian folk hero nicknamed "The Whiskey Robber" for his predilection for drinking whiskey before carrying out his heists of banks, post offices and other businesses during a six-year career between 1993 and 1999; in Fitod, Harghita County, Romania

  [October 7], 1967 (Saturday)

• Film actress Elizabeth Taylor escaped death by a matter of seconds while in Sardinia for the filming of the Universal Pictures release Boom!. Taylor had just stepped out of a trailer that served as her dressing room in the hills of the Porto Conte Natural Park, when the vehicle's brakes and safety blocks failed, sending it plunging over a 150-foot high embankment and into the Mediterranean Sea.
• The National Development Council that decided domestic policy in India was reorganized to include the Prime Minister and all cabinet ministers, the Chief Ministers of all states and territories, and members of the Indian planning commission.
• Saad Jumaa, who had served as Prime Minister of Jordan since before the Six-Day War, resigned to return to the diplomatic corps, and was replaced by former Prime Minister Bahjat Talhouni.
• The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued a directive banning unscheduled, hostile demonstrations against foreigners.
• Born: Toni Braxton, American R&B singer; in Severn, Maryland
• Died:
• *Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, 25, African-American civil rights activist and Executive Secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, died of cancer.
• *Norman Angell, English author and politician, winner of the 1933 Nobel Peace Prize