September 1966

[September 1], 1966 (Thursday)

• China's Prime Minister Zhou Enlai ordered members of the Red Guards to stop their attacks on Mrs. Soong Ching-ling, the widow of the founder of China's republic and first President, Sun Yat-sen. Chou informed them that Mrs. Soong had been designated as "a heroine of the Chinese Communist revolution" and that disrespect to her would not be tolerated. In addition, Chou told the Red Guards to halt their violence against Chinese citizens and to quit destroying artwork, noting that "objects of no use for China" could still be exported and sold to pay for technical equipment. His speech would be published nationwide on September 16, bringing some control over the violence of the Cultural Revolution.
• While waiting at a bus terminal, Ralph H. Baer, an inventor with Sanders Associates, wrote a four-page document which laid out the basic principles for creating a video game to be played on a television set. As Baer, a division manager for Sanders Associates, described it, he had been on New York City's East Side, waiting to board a bus to Boston, when he noticed an advertisement for TV Guide on the wall. Contemplating what a viewer could do with a television set if there was nothing worth watching, he remembered an idea that had occurred to him in 1951, the possibility of playing a game on a TV set, and realized that he now had the resources to develop the concept. His idea would become the Magnavox Odyssey home entertainment system, introduced on January 27, 1972.
• Color television was introduced to Canada at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation presented the one-hour special Color Preview '66, followed by its documentary series Telescope. At the time, an estimated 50,000 of the five million sets in Canada were color TVs, so 99 percent of viewers continued to see the programming in black and white. CBC would be followed on September 6 by the CTV Television Network, with the new series Star Trek broadcast in color.
• Britannia Airways Flight 105, a chartered plane, crashed as it was making the approach to the city of Ljubljana, in Yugoslavia, killing 98 people, nearly all of them British tourists who had departed, the night before, from the Luton Airport near London. A later investigation would conclude that the pilot had failed to adjust the altimeter setting to reflect the QFE directions from the controller on the elevation of the airfield, and came in lower than the instruments showed.
• United Nations Secretary-General U Thant declared that he would not seek re-election, because of the failure of U.N. efforts to end the Vietnam War. "Today it seems to me, as it has seemed for many months, that the pressure of events is remorselessly leading toward a major war... In my view the tragic error is being repeated of relying on force and military means in a deceptive pursuit of peace."
• The 24th World Science Fiction Convention opened at the Sheraton-Cleveland in Cleveland, Ohio. The guest of honor was L. Sprague de Camp and the toastmaster was Isaac Asimov.
• KUAM-FM, Guam's first FM radio station, began broadcasting under the name FM94.
• Born: Tim Hardaway, American NBA player; in Chicago

  [September 2], 1966 (Friday)

• Alabama Governor George C. Wallace signed a bill into law, refusing to accept U.S. federal government aid to the state's education program. The new law, intended to prevent the federal government from forcing racial desegregation in Alabama schools, was passed in response to guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Governor Wallace said that he had pushed the bill "in the interest of preserving the freedoms and rights of our people to make the decisions that determine the destiny of their children". Less than three hours earlier, the measure had been approved, 70–18, by the Alabama House of Representatives, after passing the state Senate, 28–7. "The governor's effort only delayed the inevitable", an author would note later, but would note that even in December, after the school segregation was no longer legal, only 2.4% of black students in Alabama were attending formerly all-white schools.
• The United States expelled Soviet diplomat Valentin A. Revin, the Third Secretary of the USSR's embassy in Washington, after accusing him of trying to steal American missile secrets. Twelve days later, the Soviet Union would expel the Second Secretary of the American Embassy in Moscow, Donald R. Lesh, on accusations of espionage.
• Born: Salma Hayek, Mexican-born American film and television actress; in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz state
• Died: Howard McGrath, 62, former U.S. Attorney General and former Governor and U.S. Senator for Rhode Island, died of a heart attack

  [September 3], 1966 (Saturday)

• The London Midland Region of British Railways closed the former Great Central Railway London Extension to passenger traffic between Aylesbury and Rugby Central, bringing an end to its career as "the last main line".
• Died:
• *Fu Lei, 58, literary scholar who had translated the works of Voltaire and Honoré de Balzac into Chinese. Fu and his wife, Zhu Meifu, hanged themselves in their home after continued humiliation and torture from the Chinese Communist Party and by the Red Guards. His reputation would be rehabilitated in 1979.
• *Chen Mengjia, 55, Chinese archaeologist and professor at Tsinghua University, and his wife, Lucy Chao, committed suicide in his home after being persecuted by the Red Guards.
• *Constantin Bakaleinikoff, 70, Russian-born American film score composer
• *Frank Schmitz, 20, American trampoline gymnast, was killed in a plane crash.
• *Dick Barwegan, 44, American NFL player, suffered a fatal heart attack.
• *Wesley Dennis, 63, American book illustrator
• *Robert Bristow, 85, British engineer

  [September 4], 1966 (Sunday)

• After having marched for civil rights in the South, the Congress of Racial Equality challenged racism in the northern United States, with a 250-person march through the streets of the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley dispatched 50 Chicago police to accompany the marchers as far as the boundary with Cicero, and a contingent of Cicero city police took over the rest of the way, assisted by Illinois state troopers, Cook County Sheriff's deputies and 2,700 troops of the Illinois National Guard. A crowd of 200 white people began following the marchers and heckling them at Cicero Avenue, and at the intersection with Cermak Road, a larger mob of 500 confronted the marchers, and rocks and bottles were hurled. By the time the procession made it back to Chicago, 14 people had been injured.
• The first telecast of The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon concluded as comedian Jerry Lewis raised over one million dollars for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, with $1,002,114 in pledges in the New York City area alone. Gradually, more television stations would begin showing the annual live broadcast, and more celebrities would join Lewis to perform for charity. In its peak year, 2008, the event would bring in $65,031,393.
• The 1966 European Athletics Championships came to a close at the Nép Stadium, Budapest, Hungary, with the Men's marathon.
• Born:
• *Yanka Dyagileva, Soviet Russian poet and singer-songwriter; in Novosibirsk
• *Biréli Lagrène, French jazz guitarist and bassist; in Soufflenheim, Alsace

  [September 5], 1966 (Monday)

• Thermus aquaticus, a previously unknown species of bacteria that could tolerate high temperatures, was first gathered by scientists who were researching water samples from the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The source was collected from Mushroom Spring, in the Park's Lower Geyser Basin, by microbiologist Thomas D. Brock of Indiana University, and he and Hudson Freeze successfully isolated cultures from the spring. From T. aquaticus, the heat-resistant enzyme Taq polymerase would be developed, revolutionizing genetic engineering.
• Darel Dieringer won the 1966 Southern 500 NASCAR race held at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina. Richard Petty, who had avoided a pit stop to replace his car's right-side tires, had maintained a lead until seven laps remained. Then, having raced for several miles "on the cord", he suffered a blowout.
• Flying a MiG-17 jet, Nguyễn Văn Bảy became the first North Vietnamese fighter ace, when he shot down his fifth airplane, a U.S. Navy F-8 fighter. The American pilot, U.S. Air Force Captain Wilfred K. Abbott, ejected to safety, but was captured and would spend more than six years as a prisoner of war.

  [September 6], 1966 (Tuesday)

• South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, 64, the architect of apartheid, was stabbed to death by Dimitri Tsafendas during a parliamentary meeting in Cape Town. Verwoerd had been expected to make a major announcement, and was seated at a table at the front of the chambers. At 2:14 p.m., Tsafendas, a parliamentary messenger, approached Verwoerd as if to deliver a message, then pulled a knife from his uniform and stabbed Verwoerd four times in the chest and neck; five physicians tried to save the Prime Minister, who was dead on arrival at the Groote Schuur Hospital ten minutes later. Ironically, Tsafendas gave as his motive that the white supremacist Prime Minister was doing too much for nonwhites and not enough for South Africa's white population. On October 21, Tsafendas, who claimed that he was slowly being consumed from the inside by a giant tapeworm, would be found to be mentally unfit to stand trial. After being held at Robben Island, and at the Pretoria Central Prison, he would eventually be housed at Sterkfontein Hospital in Krugersdorp, and would die on October 7, 1999, at the age of 81. Theophilus Eben Dönges, the Minister of Finance, served as acting Prime Minister until Verwoerd's successor could be picked a week later.
• Although it would debut in the United States on the NBC television network two days later, Star Trek actually appeared for the first time anywhere on Canada's CTV Television Network, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time. Two of the stars were Canadian natives; William Shatner was from Montreal and James Doohan was from Vancouver.
• The Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference opened in the United Kingdom, hosted by Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
• Died: Margaret Sanger, 86, American birth control advocate