September 1964

[September 1], 1964 (Tuesday)

• Only two months before the scheduled election to the New York State Senate, delegates to the Democratic Convention nominated U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy as their candidate for U.S. Senator, favouring him 968 to 153 over Congressman Samuel S. Stratton. On the same day, the Liberal Party of New York nominated Kennedy as its candidate as well, while the Republican Party of New York renominated the incumbent U.S. Senator, Kenneth Keating. Kennedy was a resident of Massachusetts rather than New York, but New York law did not have a residency requirement for its candidates for the U.S. Senate. Later in the day, U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina introduced a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would require that a U.S. Senator to meet the same residency requirements as a voter "in the state he represents", commenting that "Recent occurrences have negated the clear intention of the Constitution. This circumstance should be remedied."
• Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese player to appear in an American major league baseball game, coming to the mound during the 8th inning as a relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants in their game at Shea Stadium against the New York Mets. During his brief first appearance, "Mashi" Murakami, formerly of the Nankai Hawks of Japan's Pacific League, struck out two players and allowed one single in his team's 4–1 loss to the Mets. After he proved to be a successful player during the remainder of the season, the Nankai Hawks would demand to have him back; ultimately, the Giants and the Hawks would agree that Murakami could play the full 1965 National League season and then would have to return to Japan.
• Spokoynoy nochi, malyshi!, a ten-minute bedtime story for young children to watch before they went to bed at 9:00 p.m., premiered on Soviet Central Television. Featuring clay animation and puppetry, the series is still broadcast on Russian TV today.
• The Titan IIIA expendable launch system, on its first test launch, failed to achieve orbit.
• Died: George Georgescu, 76, Romanian conductor

  [September 2], 1964 (Wednesday)

• Melvin D. Synhorst, a Republican as well as being the Iowa Secretary of State, set politics aside and announced that he would order November's election ballots to include the names of U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and his running mate, U.S. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, despite the state Democratic Party's failure to file certification papers before the midnight deadline on August 31. "The placing of the names of national candidates before the voters on equal footing is of primary importance to the voters of the nation," said Synhorst, adding that "The people of Iowa and the country should not be penalized by an oversight on the part of others or for a lack of courage on my part." Johnson and Humphrey would win Iowa's nine electoral votes in November.
• At the request of President Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover initiated a COINTELPRO against various Ku Klux Klan organizations and other white supremacist hate groups. "The purpose of this program", Hoover wrote in a memorandum to the FBI field offices, "is to expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize the activities of the various klans and hate organizations, their leadership and adherents."
• The murder of a Malay rickshaw driver in the Geylang Serai section of Singapore, believed to have been committed by Singaporean Chinese assailants, triggered rioting within the Malay community. Before the violence abated, 36 people would be killed and more than 500 injured.
• Having caused considerable damage and deaths in the United States, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Guadeloupe during late August, Hurricane Cleo, now over the Atlantic, intensified to hurricane force again, before dissipating three days later.
• Born: Keanu Reeves, Canadian film actor best known for playing Neo in The Matrix and the titular assassin in the John Wick franchise; in Beirut, Lebanon
• Died:
• *Alvin York, 76, American war hero and Medal of Honor winner whose life was commemorated in the popular film Sergeant York in 1941
• *Francisco Craveiro Lopes, 70, President of Portugal from 1951 to 1958
• *Glenn A. Black, 64, American archaeologist

  [September 3], 1964 (Thursday)

• Because the Democratic Party was a day late on filing the necessary papers to place incumbent President Johnson and his running mate, Hubert H. Humphrey, on the ballot in South Dakota for the November general election. Secretary of State of South Dakota, Essie Wiedenman, refused to certify the candidates because the party had missed the deadline that had expired at midnight the day before. In place of the required forms, she said, she had been handed "a piece of paper" that was typed up and signed by state Democratic Party leaders to attest that Johnson and Humphrey were the party nominees. South Dakota's Attorney General Frank Farrar voiced his opinion that the required paper, which was put in the mail and didn't arrive until the morning after the deadline, "arrived too late to be certified," raising the possibility that Johnson and Humphrey would not be eligible for the state's four electoral votes. However, Farrar ruled the next day that South Dakota law was ambiguous about certifying presidential candidates for the ballot, and cleared the way for President Johnson to be on the ballot in all 50 states.
• The Wilderness Act was signed into law in the United States, protecting 9,139,721 acres of federal land in 54 areas and providing a legal definition of "wilderness" as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain", and creating the National Wilderness Preservation System. The act had passed, 374 to 1 in the U.S. House of Representatives and 73 to 12 in the U.S. Senate. Fifty years later, the protected wilderness would have added almost exactly 100 million more acres and would cover 109,138,248 acres in 801 protected sites.
• Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia proclaimed a state of emergency in a nationwide radio and television broadcast, after concluding that Indonesia was preparing to stage a massive attack on the Malaysian mainland. The day before, Indonesian paratroopers had landed in the Malaysian state of Johore.
• Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union accepted an invitation from Chancellor Ludwig Erhard to visit West Germany, to take place in November or December after the U.S. presidential election. Khrushchev, however, would be deposed in October, before the state visit could take place.
• Two days after his nomination for U.S. Senate, Robert F. Kennedy announced his resignation as United States Attorney General.

  [September 4], 1964 (Friday)

• Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy who had been hanged in Japan in 1944 after the Soviets had refused to exchange their own prisoners for him, received posthumous recognition from the Communist Party with the publication of an article in Pravda, celebrating the bravery and achievements of "Comrade Sorge". The campaign marked a change in state policy not to acknowledge its espionage operations to the Soviet public. Twenty years after his death, Sorge would be awarded the nation's highest honor, Hero of the Soviet Union; his likeness would appear on a postage stamp; a Moscow street would be renamed in his honor; and a tanker ship would be named for him.
• In Chile, Eduardo Frei Montalva defeated Marxist candidate Salvador Allende in the presidential election. The American CIA "became involved in extensive covert actions to ensure Allende would not win," an author would note later, contributing almost four million dollars to Frei's campaign to finance direct mail, radio advertisements, posters, leaflets and counterpropaganda. Frei received 1,409,012 votes, Allende had 977,902 and a third candidate, Julio Duran, had 125,233. Allende would defeat Frei in the 1970 presidential election, and would die in 1973 during a violent coup d'état.
• The shortest session in the history of the United States Senate — two seconds — took place in Washington after the president pro tempore, Senator Lee Metcalf of Montana, had called the Senate to order. He quickly said, "Under the previous order the Senate stands adjourned until Tuesday noon next," and struck the gavel.
• All 39 people aboard VASP Flight 141 were killed when the airliner crashed into the side of the Pico de Caledonia, a mountain in Brazil, while on its way from Recife to São Paulo. The plane had departed from Vitória and was off course when it collided into the slope at an elevation of about.
• An all-white jury in Danielsville, Georgia, acquitted two members of the Ku Klux Klan on murder charges arising from the July 11 killing of African-American educator Lemuel Penn. Joseph Howard Sims and Cecil William Myers remained under indictment on federal civil rights violations.
• At 8:23 in the evening, the United States successfully launched the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, its largest scientific satellite up to that time, from Cape Kennedy. OGO 1 would still be in orbit around the Earth 50 years after its launch.
• The U.S. Air Force Space Systems Division recommended the launch, as scheduled, of the GLV 2 Gemini rocket. Manned Spacecraft Center proposed cancellation because of an August 17 lightning strike and from Hurricane Cleo. After review, NASA agreed to the launch.
• The Forth Road Bridge, spanning over Scotland's Firth of Forth, opened for highway and pedestrian traffic. Connecting Fife with Edinburgh, the bridge replaced a ferry service that had existed for centuries.
• Died: James Coburn, 38, American criminal; by electrocution in Alabama for robbery, the last person in the United States to be executed for a crime other than murder