1967

Events

January

• January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair.
• January 6 – Vietnam War: United States Marine Corps and Army of the Republic of Vietnam troops launch Operation Deckhouse Five in the Mekong Delta.
• January 8 – Vietnam War: Operation Cedar Falls starts, in an attempt to eliminate the Iron Triangle.
• January 13 – A military coup occurs in Togo under the leadership of Étienne Eyadema.
• January 15 – Louis Leakey announces the discovery of pre-human fossils in Kenya; he names the species Kenyapithecus africanus.
• January 23
• * In Munich, the trial begins of Wilhelm Harster, accused of the murder of 82,856 Jews when he led German security police during the German occupation of the Netherlands. He is eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison.
• * Milton Keynes in England is founded as a new town by Order in Council, with a planning brief to become a city of 250,000 people. Its initial designated area encloses three existing towns and twenty one villages. The area to be developed is largely farmland, with evidence of permanent settlement dating back to the Bronze Age.
• January 25 - South Vietnamese junta leader and Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky forces his rival, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Nguyen Huu Co, into exile while overseas on a diplomatic visit.
• January 26
• * The Parliament of the United Kingdom decides to nationalise 90% of the nation's steel industry.
• * The largest-ever blizzard to hit the US city of Chicago begins.
• January 27
• * Apollo 1: U.S. astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are killed when fire breaks out in their Apollo spacecraft during a launch pad test.
• * The United States, Soviet Union and United Kingdom sign the Outer Space Treaty, prohibiting weapons of mass destruction from space.
• January 31 – West Germany and Romania establish diplomatic relations.

  February

• February 3 – Ronald Ryan becomes the last man hanged in Australia, for murdering a guard while escaping from prison in December 1965.
• February 5
• * NASA launches Lunar Orbiter 3.
• * Italy's first guided missile cruiser, the Vittorio Veneto, is launched.
• * General Anastasio Somoza Debayle becomes president of Nicaragua.
• February 6 – Alexei Kosygin arrives in the UK for an 8-day visit. He meets The Queen on February 9.
• February 7 – Serious bushfires in southern Tasmania claim 62 lives and destroy 2,642.7 square kilometres of land.
• February 10 – The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified.
• February 11 – Burgess Ice Rise, lying off the west coast of Alexander Island, Antarctica, is first mapped by the British Antarctic Survey.
• February 13 – American researchers discover the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain.
• February 22
• * Suharto takes power from Sukarno in Indonesia.
• * Donald Sangster becomes the new prime minister of Jamaica, succeeding Alexander Bustamante.
• February 23
• * Trinidad and Tobago is the first Commonwealth nation to join the Organization of American States.
• * The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution is enacted.
• February 24 – Moscow forbids its satellite states to form diplomatic relations with West Germany.
• February 25 – Britain's second Polaris missile submarine, HMS Renown, is launched.
• February 26 – A Soviet nuclear test is conducted at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, Eastern Kazakhstan.

  March

• March 1
• * Brazilian police arrest Franz Stangl, ex-commander of Treblinka and Sobibór extermination camps.
• * Óscar Gestido is sworn in as President of Uruguay after 15 years of collegiate government.
• March 4
• * The first North Sea gas is pumped ashore at Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire, UK.
• * Queens Park Rangers become the first 3rd Division side to win the English Football League Cup at Wembley Stadium, defeating West Bromwich Albion 3–2.
• March 9 – Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defects to the United States via the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.
• March 11 – The first phase of the Cambodian Civil War begins between the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.
• March 12 – The Indonesian State Assembly takes all presidential powers from Sukarno and names Suharto as acting president.
• March 13 – Moise Tshombe, ex-prime minister of Congo, is sentenced to death in absentia.
• March 14
• * The body of U.S. President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.
• * Nine executives of the German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal are charged with breaking German drug laws because of thalidomide.
• March 18
• * Torrey Canyon oil spill: The supertanker runs aground between Land's End and the Scilly Isles off the coast of Britain, causing the biggest oil spill in history up to that point.
• March 19 – A referendum in French Somaliland favors the connection to France.
• March 21
• * A military coup takes place in Sierra Leone.
• * Vietnam War: In ongoing campus unrest, Howard University students protesting the Vietnam War, the ROTC program on campus and the draft, confront Gen. Lewis Hershey, then head of the U.S. Selective Service System, and as he attempts to deliver an address, shout him down with cries of "America is the Black man's battleground!"
• * Charles Manson is released from Terminal Island. Telling the authorities that prison had become his home, he requested permission to stay. Upon his release, he relocates to San Francisco where he spends the Summer of Love.
• March 26 – Jim Thompson, co-founder of the Thai Silk Company, disappears from the Cameron Highlands.
• March 28 – Pope Paul VI issues the encyclical Populorum progressio.
• March 29
• * The first French nuclear submarine, Le Redoutable, is launched.
• * The SEACOM Asian telephone cable is inaugurated.
• * Torrey Canyon oil spill: British Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force aircraft bomb and sink the grounded supertanker.

  April

• April 2 – A United Nations delegation arrives in Aden as its independence approaches. The delegation leaves April 7, accusing British authorities of lack of cooperation. The British say the delegation did not contact them.
• April 4 – Martin Luther King Jr. denounces the Vietnam War during his sermon at the Riverside Church in New York City.
• April 7 – Six-Day War : Israeli fighters shoot down 7 Syrian MIG-21s.
• April 8 – Puppet on a String by Sandie Shaw wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1967 for the United Kingdom.
• April 9 – The first Boeing 737 takes its maiden flight.
• April 10 – The AFTRA strike is settled just in time for the 39th Academy Awards ceremony to be held, hosted by Bob Hope. Best Picture goes to A Man for All Seasons.
• April 15 – Large demonstrations are held against US involvement in the Vietnam War in New York City and San Francisco. The march, organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, from Central Park to the United Nations drew hundreds of thousands of people, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, James Bevel, and Dr. Benjamin Spock, who marched and spoke at the event. A simultaneous march in San Francisco is attended by Coretta Scott King.
• April 20
• * The Surveyor 3 probe lands on the Moon.
• * A Globe Air Bristol Britannia turboprop crashes at Nicosia, Cyprus, killing 126 people.
• April 21
• * Greece suffers a military coup by a group of military officers, who establish a military dictatorship led by Georgios Papadopoulos; future-Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou remains a political prisoner till December 25. The dictatorship ends in 1974.
• * An outbreak of tornadoes strikes the upper Midwest section of the United States.
• April 23 – A group of young leftist radicals are expelled from the Nicaraguan Socialist Party. This group goes on to found the Socialist Workers Party.
• April 24 – Soyuz 1: Vladimir Komarov becomes the first Soviet cosmonaut to die, when the parachute of his space capsule fails during re-entry.
• April 27 – Montreal, Quebec, Expo 67, a World's Fair to coincide with the Canadian Confederation centennial, officially opens with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson igniting the Expo Flame in the Place des Nations.
• April 28
• * In Houston, Texas, United States, boxer Muhammad Ali refuses military service. He is stripped of his boxing title and barred from professional boxing for the next three years.
• * Expo 67 opens to the public, with over 310,000 people attending. Al Carter from Chicago is the first visitor as noted by Expo officials.
• * The U.S. aerospace manufacturer McDonnell Douglas is formed through a merger of McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft.
• April 29 – Fidel Castro announces that all intellectual property belongs to the people and that Cuba intends to translate and publish technical literature without compensation.
• April 30 – Moscow's 537 m tall TV tower is finished.

  May

• May 1
• * Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu are married in Las Vegas.
• * GO Transit, Canada's first interregional public transit system, is established.
• May 2
• * The Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup. It is their last Stanley Cup and last finals appearance to date. It will turn out to be the last game in the Original Six era. Six more teams will be added in the fall.
• * British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announces that the United Kingdom has decided to apply for EEC membership.
• May 4 – Lunar Orbiter 4 is launched by the United States.
• May 6
• * Zakir Husain is the first Muslim to become president of India.
• * Hong Kong 1967 riots: Clashes between striking workers and police kill 51 and injure 800.
• May 8 – The Philippine province of Davao is split into three: Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, and Davao Oriental.
• May 9 – A partial solar eclipse took place.
• May 10 – The Greek military government accuses Andreas Papandreou of treason.
• May 11 – The United Kingdom and Ireland apply officially for European Economic Community membership.
• May 15 – The Waiting period leading up to the Six-Day War begins.
• May 17
• * Syria mobilizes against Israel.
• * President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt demands withdrawal of the peacekeeping UN Emergency Force in the Sinai. U.N. Secretary-General U Thant complies.
• May 18
• * Tennessee Governor Ellington repeals the "Monkey Law".
• * In Mexico, schoolteacher Lucio Cabañas begins guerrilla warfare in Atoyac de Alvarez, west of Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero.
• * NASA announces the crew for the Apollo 7 space mission : Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele, and R. Walter Cunningham.
• May 19 – Yuri Andropov becomes KGB chief in the Soviet Union.
• May 20 – The Spring Mobilization Conference, a gathering of 700 antiwar activists is held in Washington D.C. to chart the future moves for the U.S. antiwar movement
• May 22 – The Innovation department store in the centre of Brussels, Belgium, burns down. It is the most devastating fire in Belgian history, resulting in 323 dead and missing and 150 injured.
• May 23
• * A significant worldwide geomagnetic flare unfolded. Radio emissions coming from the Sun jammed military surveillance radars.
• * Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, blockading Israel's southern port of Eilat, and Israel's entire Red Sea coastline.
• 25 May – Celtic F.C. defeat Inter Milan 2–1 in Lisbon to win the European Cup, becoming the first British football club to win the competition. The team, later nicknamed the Lisbon Lions, was composed entirely of players born within 30 miles of Glasgow.
• May 26 – The Beatles release the groundbreaking album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the United Kingdom. It becomes one of the most influential albums in popular music history.
• May 27
• * Naxalite Guerrilla War: Beginning with a peasant uprising in the town of Naxalbari, this Marxist/Maoist rebellion sputters on in the Indian countryside. The guerrillas operate among the impoverished peasants, fighting both the government security forces and private paramilitary groups funded by wealthy landowners. Most fighting takes place in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.
• * The Australian referendum, 1967 passes with an overwhelming 90% support, removing, from the Australian Constitution, 2 discriminatory sentences referring to Indigenous Australians. It signifies Australia's first step in recognising Indigenous rights.
• May 30 – Biafra, in eastern Nigeria, announces its independence, which is not recognized.