September 1962

[September 1], 1962 (Saturday)

• A 7.1 magnitude earthquake killed 12,225 people and destroyed 91 villages in northwest Iran. The epicenter was near Buin Zahra in the Qazvin Province.
• In a referendum in Singapore, voters overwhelmingly supported a proposition to merge with the Malayan Federation to become part of Malaysia, with limited autonomy. Out of 561,559 ballots cast, there were 397,626 in favor of making all Singapore residents Malaysian citizens, while allowing independence in matters of labor and education. Another 144,077 ballots were left blank as a protest.
• Typhoon Wanda killed 134 people and injured more than 200 after striking Hong Kong.
• Died: Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, 73, former German military leader

  [September 2], 1962 (Sunday)

• The Soviet Union announced an agreement on military and industrial assistance to Cuba, following an August meeting in Yalta between Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban Economics Minister Che Guevara.
• The United Kingdom approved the Malta Independence Act, providing that the British colony would become its own nation on September 21, 1964.
• All non-military air travel in the United States and Canada was grounded for five hours as part of "Exercise Sky Shield III".
• Born:
• *Keir Starmer, British politician and barrister serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2024; in London
• *Prachya Pinkaew, Thai film director, producer and screenwriter; in Nakhon Ratchasima Province
• Died: William R. Blair, 89, Irish-born American physicist and inventor, most famous for the 1937 creation of the "Object Locating System" better known as radar. He was not allowed to apply for a patent until after World War II and was granted U.S. Patent No. 2,803,819 five years before his death.

  [September 3], 1962 (Monday)

• Jens Otto Krag succeeded the ailing Viggo Kampmann as Prime Minister of Denmark.
• Wally Gator debuted in syndication as one of the segments of the 1962–63 block The Hanna-Barbera New Cartoon Series. The other two segments that composed the series were Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, and Touché Turtle and Dum Dum.
• Died:
• *E. E. Cummings, 67, American poet and author, died after a cerebral hemorrhage the night before. Edward Elstin Cummings had written his last words the afternoon before, about delphinium flowers, chopped some wood, sharpened the axe, then collapsed in his home.
• *Franz Schrönghamer-Heimdal, 81, German Catholic, Nazi, and anti-Semitic author

  [September 4], 1962 (Tuesday)

• The closing ceremony of the 1962 Asian Games was held in Jakarta, Indonesia, following an attack on India's embassy by 1,000 rioters. Earlier, Asian Games Federation Vice-President G. D. Sondhi had announced that he was seeking to have the executive council declare that the competition was not part of the name "Asian Games", because AGF members Israel and Nationalist China had had their teams excluded.
• NASA requested that McDonnell Aircraft Corporation provide Gemini spacecraft No. 3 with space rendezvous radar capability and a rendezvous evaluation pod for Gemini's missions 2 and 3. One prototype, two pods to be used in flight, and one flight spare were asked for.
• The Beatles made their first recording of a song that would become a hit single, "Love Me Do". It would become their fourth #1 song in the United States, in 1964.
• Born:
• *Patrice Lagisquet, French rugby union player with 46 caps for the France national rugby union team; in Arcachon, Gironde département
• *Ulla Tørnæs, Danish Minister of Education, and Minister for Development Cooperation ; in Esbjerg

  [September 5], 1962 (Wednesday)

• Sputnik 4, a Soviet mockup of a crewed spacecraft, fell out of orbit after 843 days, having been launched on May 15, 1960. What was believed to be a fragment landed at the intersection of North 8th Street and Park Street in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, which was along the path where the craft disintegration took place.
• The composition of the American penny was changed to 95% copper and 5% zinc, which remained until 1982, when pennies became 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper.
• The U.S. National Park Service acquired "Cedar Hill", the home of Frederick Douglass, located at 1411 W Street S.E. in Washington, D.C., which became "the first black national historic site". On the same date, the Park Service acquired "Glenmont", the home of Thomas Edison in West Orange, New Jersey.
• Died: Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosuwirjo, 57, Indonesian Islamic mystic and leader of the Darul Islam rebellion against the Sukarno regime, was executed by a firing squad.

  [September 6], 1962 (Thursday)

• Archaeologist Peter Marsden discovered the first of the "Blackfriars Ships" in London, buried in the mud of the Thames River and literally "under the shadow of Blackfriars Bridge". With a cofferdam to hold back the waters during low tide, and assistance from the London Fire Brigade, the oak craft was excavated. From pottery shards in the wreckage, Marsden estimated that the ship sank during the 2nd century AD, when the Roman Empire ruled Britain.
• McDonnell Aircraft completed redesign and testing of the Gemini capsule ejection seat.

  [September 7], 1962 (Friday)

• The world's first aquanaut, Robert Sténuit of Belgium, was brought back from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, where he had become the first person to spend 24 hours on the ocean floor. Sténuit, who was lowered off the coast of France near Cap Ferrat, stayed inside a pressurized airtight cylinder designed by Edwin Link. Scheduled to remain below for two days in a long cylinder, Sténuit was brought up early, after one day instead, but became the first living person to stay at least 24 hours in an underwater habitat on the ocean floor.
• Results were announced of a joint study by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Department of Defense, and NASA of possible harmful effects of radiation on Mercury 8 and astronaut Wally Schirra. An artificial radiation belt had been created by Operation Dominic, a series of 26 atmospheric nuclear explosions from April through July. The study predicted that radiation outside Schirra's capsule during the six-orbit flight would be about 500 roentgens, but that shielding, vehicle structures, and the flight suit would reduce this exposure to about 8 roentgens on the astronaut's skin, well below the tolerance limits previously established.
• Former French Prime Minister Georges Bidault, who had fled from France to Italy after being indicted for anti-government activities, was taken into custody at Rome and ordered to leave Italy, with transportation "to the frontier of his choice".
• Filming of Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace began and would continue for another six years.
• Died:
• *Karen Blixen, 77, Danish author known by her pen name of Isak Dinesen. As Dinesen, she wrote the memoir Out of Africa in 1937, which would become the basis for the 1985 film of the same name.
• *Morris Louis, 49, American painter, died of lung cancer from prolonged exposure to toxic paint fumes.

  [September 8], 1962 (Saturday)

• The Cuban Missile Crisis began as the first consignment of Soviet R-12 offensive missiles arrived in Cuba, on board the freighter Omsk. The medium range ballistic missiles, which could be fitted with nuclear warheads, could strike targets in the U.S. within 2,000 km or 1,300 miles of Cuba.
• In the Sino-Indian War, two companies of Communist Chinese troops crossed the McMahon Line that had marked the border between India and China, to confront soldiers at the recently established Indian Army border post at Dhola.
• Atlas rocket No. 113-D for Schirra's Mercury 8 flight was static-fired at Cape Canaveral to check modifications made to the booster for smoother engine combustion.

  [September 9], 1962 (Sunday)

• Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper, published the article "Plans, Profits, and Bonuses", by economics professor Evsei Liberman of the Kharkiv National University of Economics, as the Communist Party introduced discussion of new policies that would become a reality in the 1965 Soviet economic reform. Liberman's proposal was to depart from the Communist system, of measuring factory efficiency by whether a pre-set production quota had been met, and judging performance instead by the amount of the factories' profit, with the goal of increasing the quality and quantity of products.
• For the first time since Taiwan began U-2 overflights over Mainland China in January, one of the pilots of the Black Cat Squadron, the 35th Reconnaissance Squadron of the Republic of China Air Force, was shot down. Colonel Chen Huai-seng's U-2 plane was struck by an SA-2 Guideline missile near Nanchang, and Colonel Chen did not survive the crash. Another of the Black Cats, Major Wang Cheng-wen, was killed on the same day in an unrelated accidental crash of his U-2 plane.
• Jack Nicklaus won the first "World Series of Golf", a made-for-television exhibition organized by the NBC television network as a competition between the champions of the four major professional golf tournaments. With a 138 on 36 holes, Nicklaus won the $50,000 first prize by finishing four strokes ahead of ahead of Masters and British Open champion Arnold Palmer and PGA Championship winner Gary Player, who tied at 139.
• While India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was out of the country for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in London, Defence Minister V. K. Krishna Menon gave the order for the Indian Army to "evict" Chinese troops from south of the McMahon Line, even though there were Indian troops north of the line in China. The decision proved to be a disaster.
• Born:
• *Jack Trudeau, American football player and radio announcer; in Forest Lake, Minnesota
• *Liza Marklund, Swedish journalist and crime writer; in Pålmark
• Died: Paavo Aaltonen, 42, Finnish gymnast and a winner of three gold medals in the 1948 Olympics