September 1963

[September 1], 1963 (Sunday)

• An unidentified visitor to Lenin's Mausoleum, in Moscow, entered the shrine with a bomb concealed under his coat, and then detonated the explosive, killing himself and causing an unspecified amount of damage and injuries. The event was not reported in the Soviet press and would not be revealed until after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
• At the annual meeting of the Quebec wing of the Social Credit Party of Canada in Granby, Quebec, delegates voted to form a new party. However, the Ralliement créditiste du Québec would not come into being until 1970.
• The Commonwealth Marriage Act 1961 took full effect in Australia, creating a national law regulating marriage, divorce and domestic relations and superseding individual state laws.
• About 100,000 people in two Japanese cities demonstrated against the presence of American nuclear submarines.
• Kilkenny GAA defeated Waterford GAA in the 1963 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final at Croke Park, Dublin.
• Australian driver Jack Brabham won the Austrian Grand Prix at Zeltweg Airfield.

  [September 2], 1963 (Monday)

• U.S. TV presenter Walter Cronkite introduced the first broadcast of CBS Evening News with the statement, "Good evening from our CBS newsroom in New York, on this, the first broadcast of network television's first half-hour news program." The first show was aired at 6:30 p.m. local time and included a pre-recorded segment of Cronkite's interview with U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Previously, the three U.S. networks had run their daily national news for fifteen minutes. NBC would inaugurate its half-hour news program a week later, although ABC would not follow suit until 1967.
• Died: Fazlollah Zahedi, 70, Prime Minister of Iran from 1953 to 1955

  [September 3], 1963 (Tuesday)

• The United States federal minimum wage was increased to $1.25 an hour. Fifty years later, the minimum wage would be $7.25 an hour.
• NASA's Mission Planning Coordination Group was established to review monthly activities in Gemini operations, network guidance and control, and trajectories and orbits, and to ensure the coordination of various Manned Spacecraft Center divisions concerned with Project Gemini mission planning.
• The Gemini Project Office suspended testing of the parachute recovery system until a drogue parachute could be added as a means of stabilizing the spacecraft during the last phase of reentry, at altitudes between and. Testing would resume in January.
• Jin Yong's wuxia novel Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils began its serialisation in the newspapers Ming Pao in Hong Kong and Nanyang Siang Pau in Singapore.
• Died: Louis MacNeice, 55, Irish poet and dramatist, died from pneumonia that developed from bronchitis contracted while caving on the Yorkshire moors

  [September 4], 1963 (Wednesday)

• All 80 people aboard Swissair Flight 306, a jet airliner on its way to Rome, were killed when the aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff from Zurich. The plane, a Sud Aviation Caravelle, caught fire and came down near the town of Dürrenäsch. Most of the 44 passengers were from the tiny village of Humlikon, including the town's mayor and its entire city council, all of whom had planned to disembark at Geneva for a visit to an agricultural experiment station.
• For the first time ever, black students registered at white schools in the segregated U.S. state of Alabama; in some places, they faced state troopers deployed by Governor George Wallace to prevent integration. That night, the bombing of a black household in Birmingham triggered a riot, and a black 20-year-old was shot to death by police.
• Sennin Buraku became the first late night anime to be broadcast on Japanese television.
• Died: Robert Schuman, 77, Luxembourg-born French politician who served twice as Prime Minister of France in 1947 and 1948

  [September 5], 1963 (Thursday)

• British model and showgirl Christine Keeler was arrested for perjury, after witnesses established that she had lied under oath in the criminal trial of Aloysius Gordon in the course of the Profumo affair.

  [September 6], 1963 (Friday)

• The 100,000th American major league baseball game was played, the milestone having been calculated by baseball historians from the first official game, played on May 4, 1871 by the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. In game number 100,000 the Washington Senators defeated the visiting Cleveland Indians, 7 to 2. In the 1871 season opener, the Fort Wayne Kekiongas had defeated the visiting Cleveland Forest City team, 2 to 0.
• The U.S. Department of Defense approved the Titan II Augmented Engine Improvement Program. The formal Combined Systems Acceptance Test of the Titan II GLV rocket No. 1 was conducted in the vertical test facility at Martin-Baltimore. and the rocket was presented to the Air Force for final acceptance five days later.
• Professors Daniel Bastian and Hubert Forestier founded the Centre for International Industrial Property Studies as part of the University of Strasbourg.
• The United States National Security Council launched the Krulak–Mendenhall mission to South Vietnam.
• Born: Mark Chesnutt, American country music singer; in Beaumont, Texas

  [September 7], 1963 (Saturday)

• The Pro Football Hall of Fame opened in Canton, Ohio, with 17 charter members.

  [September 8], 1963 (Sunday)

• The 16 Gemini astronaut candidates began training in water and land parachute landing techniques, necessary because in low level abort the pilot would be ejected from the Gemini spacecraft and would descend by personnel parachute. In the training, a towed parasail carried each astronaut to as high as before the towline was released and the astronaut glided to a landing.
• Félix Houphouët-Boigny, President of Côte d'Ivoire, relinquished his additional post of Minister of Foreign Affairs, replacing it with the ministries of Defense, the Interior, and Agriculture.
• Voters in Algeria overwhelmingly approved that nation's first constitution, in a referendum with a 96.8% yes vote.
• Died: Stone Johnson, 23, United States Olympic sprinter and Kansas City Chiefs kick returner and running back, died nine days after having his neck broken while playing a preseason football game on August 30.

  [September 9], 1963 (Monday)

• NBC became the second U.S. television network to expand its evening news from 15 minutes to 30. As CBS did the week before, The Huntley–Brinkley Report included an interview with President Kennedy.
• U.S. Army General Maxwell D. Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved Operation 34A, authorizing American secret operations against North Vietnam.
• The fourth session of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space opened at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
• Died: Ernst Kantorowicz, 68, German historian

  [September 10], 1963 (Tuesday)

• For the first time in the history of Major League Baseball, three brothers appeared for the same team in a game. Felipe Alou, Jesús Alou and Matty Alou took the outfield for the San Francisco Giants against the New York Mets. In the 8th inning, Jesús, Matty and Felipe came up to bat in consecutive order, and were all struck out by Mets pitcher Carl Willey; the Mets won 4–2.
• U.S. President Kennedy issued an executive order that exempted married American men from being drafted.
• Italian Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was indicted for murder. Eight days later, he would become a fugitive, and would not be captured until 43 years later, on April 11, 2006.
• Born: Randy Johnson, American baseball player; in Walnut Creek, California

  [September 11], 1963 (Wednesday)

• Inspection of the Gemini 1 rocket began. The NASA team declared the rocket to be unacceptable because of severely contaminated electrical connectors and a lack of documents showing qualification of a number of major components. Martin engineers inspected all 350 of the electrical connectors and found that more than half required cleaning or replacement.
• The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that a state law, requiring segregated seating in publicly owned ballparks, was unconstitutional.
• An Indian Airlines Viscount turboprop, crashed while en route from Nagpur to New Delhi, killing all 18 people on board.
• Died: Suzanne Duchamp, 73, French Dadaist painter and sister of Marcel Duchamp

  [September 12], 1963 (Thursday)

• All 36 passengers and four crew of a chartered airliner were killed when the twin-engine VC.1 Viking crashed into a French mountain peak during a thunderstorm. The passengers were all British vacationers who were on their way to the mountain resort town of Perpignan after having departed from London. Shortly after midnight, the aircraft charted from the French company Airnautic, slammed into the high Roc de la Rouquette in the French Pyrenees mountains.
• The Ankara Agreement was signed in the capital of Turkey, between representatives of the European Economic Community and Turkey, and provided for gradual entrance of Turkey into the European Community.
• Died: Modest Altschuler, 90, Belarusian cellist, orchestral conductor, and composer

  [September 13], 1963 (Friday)

• The White House confirmed in a press release that U.S. President Kennedy would be making a trip to Dallas, Texas later in the year, though the specific itinerary was not complete. The Dallas Times-Herald reported that Kennedy would have "a breakfast in Dallas, luncheon in Fort Worth, coffee in San Antonio and dinner in Houston."
• Mary Kay Cosmetics was incorporated by a Texas widow, Mary Kay Ash, who invested her life savings of $5,000. By the time of her death in 2001, the company had sales of $1.4 billion.
• Barbra Streisand married for the first time at the age of 21, in a wedding to film actor Elliott Gould; they would divorce in 1971.
• The Glen Canyon Dam, in the U.S. state of Arizona, was "topped out" with the pouring of the last concrete.
• The charter creating the Organisation of African Unity entered into force, after having been signed on May 25.
• Russian dramatist and KGB agent Yuri Krotkov defected to the west while in London.
• Born: Robin Smith, South African-born England cricketer; in Durban
• Died: Eduardo Barrios, 78, Chilean novelist and playwright