1964

Events

January

• January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved.
• January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople meet in Jerusalem.
• January 6 – A British firm, the Leyland Motor Corp., announces the sale of 450 buses to the Cuban government, challenging the United States blockade of Cuba.

• January 9 – Martyrs' Day: Armed clashes between United States troops and Panamanian civilians in the Panama Canal Zone precipitate a major international crisis, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and 4 U.S. soldiers.
• January 11 – United States Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to one's health.
• January 22 – Kenneth Kaunda is inaugurated as the first Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia.
• January 28 – A U.S. Air Force jet training aircraft that strays into East Germany is shot down by Soviet fighters near Erfurt; all three crewmen are killed.
• January 29 – February 9 – The 1964 Winter Olympics are held in Innsbruck, Austria.
• January 29
• * The Soviet Union launches two scientific satellites, Elektron I and II, from a single rocket.
• * Ranger 6 is launched by the US space agency NASA, on a mission to carry television cameras and crash-land on the Moon.
• January 30 – General Nguyễn Khánh leads a bloodless military coup d'état, replacing Dương Văn Minh as Prime Minister of South Vietnam.

  February

• February 4 – The Government of the United States authorizes the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, outlawing the poll tax.
• February 5 – India backs out of its promise to hold a plebiscite in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In 1948, India had taken the issue of Kashmir to the United Nations Security Council and offered to hold a plebiscite in the held Kashmir under UN supervision.
• February 9 – The Beatles perform for the first time for an American audience on The Ed Sullivan Show to a record television audience of 73 million people, launching Beatlemania in the United States, as part of The British Invasion.
• February 10 – Melbourne–''Voyager'' collision: 82 Australian sailors die when a Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier and a destroyer collide off New South Wales, Australia.
• February 11
• * Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus.
• * The Republic of China severs diplomatic relations with France because of French recognition of the People's Republic of China.
• February 17 – Gabonese president Léon M'ba is toppled by a military coup and his arch-rival, Jean-Hilaire Aubame, is installed in his place. However, French intervention restores M'ba's government the next day.
• February 25 – Cassius Clay beats Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, Florida, and is crowned the heavyweight champion of the world.
• February 27 – The Italian government asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over.

  March

• March 6
• * Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King Paul.
• * American boxer Cassius Clay announces the change of his name to Muhammad Ali.
• March 18 – 1964 Moscow protest: Approximately 50 Moroccan students break into the embassy of Morocco in the Soviet Union and stage an all-day sit-in protesting against sentencing of eleven people to death for the alleged assassination attempt of King Hassan II of Morocco.
• March 20–June 6 – The first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development takes place.
• March 20 – The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
• March 21 – Non ho l'età, sung by Gigliola Cinquetti, wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1964 for Italy.
• March 27 – The Great Alaskan earthquake, the second-most powerful known at a magnitude of 9.2, strikes Southcentral Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
• March 28 – King Saud of Saudi Arabia abdicates. His brother, Prince Faisal, does not officially assume the throne until November.
• March 31 – The military overthrows Brazilian President João Goulart in a coup, starting 21 years of dictatorship in Brazil, lasting until 1985.

  April

• April 8 – The U.S. Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft.
• April 9 – The United Nations Security Council adopts by a 9–0 vote a resolution deploring a British air attack on a fort in Yemen 12 days earlier, in which 25 persons were reported killed.
• April 11 – The Brazilian Congress elects Field Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco as President of Brazil.
• April 13 - At the 36th Academy Awards ceremony, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award in the category Best Actor in a Leading Role in Lilies of the Field.
• April 16 – In the Assize Court at Buckingham, England, sentences totalling 307 years are passed on twelve men who stole £2,600,000 in used bank notes, after holding up the night train from Glasgow to London in August 1963 – a heist that becomes known as the Great Train Robbery.
• April 17 – Jerrie Mock completes the first around-the-world airplane flight by a woman. Her solo flight in the Spirit of Columbus, which took 29 1/2 days, took off and landed at the Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio.
• April 19 – In Laos, the coalition government of Prince Souvanna Phouma is deposed by a right-wing military group, led by Brig. Gen. Kouprasith Abhay. Not supported by the United States, the coup is ultimately unsuccessful, and Souvanna Phouma is reinstated, remaining as Prime Minister until 1975.
• April 20
• * U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in New York, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, simultaneously announce plans to cut back production of materials for making nuclear weapons.
• * Nelson Mandela makes his "I Am Prepared to Die" speech at the opening of the Rivonia Trial, a key event for the anti-apartheid movement.
• * In the UK, BBC Two television starts broadcasting for the first time.
• * British businessman Greville Wynne, imprisoned in Moscow since 1963 for spying, is exchanged for Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale.
• April 25 – Thieves steal the head of the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, Denmark. Although the attack is attributed to Jørgen Nash, the Danish media blame painter Henrik Bruun, who never confesses to the crime.
• April 26 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.

  May

• May 1 – At 4:00 a.m., John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz run the first computer program written in BASIC, an easy to learn high level programming language which they have created. BASIC is eventually included on many computers and even some games consoles.
• May 2
• * Vietnam War: Attack on USNS Card – An explosion caused by Viet Cong commandos causes carrier USNS Card to sink in the port of Saigon.
• * Some 400–1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, and another 700 in San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. Smaller marches also occur in Boston, Seattle, and Madison, WI.
• * Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, hitchhiking in Meadville, Mississippi, are kidnapped, beaten and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their badly decomposed bodies are found by chance in July during the search for missing activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.
• May 7
• * Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.
• * At a mail rockets demonstration by Gerhard Zucker on Hasselkopf Mountain near Braunlage, three people are killed by a rocket explosion.
• May 9 – South Korean President Park Chung Hee reshuffles his Cabinet, after a series of student demonstrations against his efforts to restore diplomatic and trade relations with Japan.
• May 12 – Twelve young men in New York City publicly burn their draft cards to protest against the Vietnam War, the first such act of war resistance.
• May 23 – Madeline Dassault, 63, wife of a French plane manufacturer and politician, is kidnapped while leaving her car in front of her Paris home; she is found unharmed the next day in a farmhouse from Paris.
• May 24–25 – The crowd at a football match in Lima, Peru, riots over a referee's decision in the Peru-Argentina game; 319 are killed, 500 injured.
• May 27 – The ongoing Colombian conflict starts, with an assault by 1,000 Colombian soldiers, backed by fighter planes and helicopters, against about 50 guerrillas in the community of Marquetalia.
• May 28 – The Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization is released by the Arab League.
• May 29 – Having deposed them in a January coup, South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Khanh has rival Generals Tran Van Don and Le Van Kim convicted of "lax morality".

  June

• June 3 – South Korean President Park Chung Hee declares martial law in Seoul, after 10,000 student demonstrators overpower police.
• June 11
• * Greece rejects direct talks with Turkey over Cyprus.
• * Cologne school massacre: In Cologne, West Germany, Walter Seifert attacks students and teachers in an elementary school with a flamethrower, killing 10 and injuring 21.
• June 12 – Nelson Mandela and 7 others are sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa, and sent to the Robben Island prison.
• June 14 – Freedom Summer, a volunteer Civil Rights project in the United States intended to promote voter registration for as many African Americans as possible in Mississippi, begins with orientation sessions for the 300 volunteers at Western College for Women, Oxford, Ohio.
• June 20 – The Ford GT40 makes its first appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Its first victory will come 2 years later in 1966.
• June 21 – Spain beats the Soviet Union 2–1 to win the 1964 European Nations Cup.
• June 26 – Moise Tshombe returns to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from exile in Spain.