July 1959

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July 17, 1959: Homo habilis remains unearthed after 1,750,000 years in Olduvai Gorge
July 24, 1959: Nixon and Khrushchev debate in kitchen exhibit
July 5, 1959: Sukarno decrees "Guided Democracy", creates totalitarian state in Indonesia

The following events occurred in July 1959:

July 1, 1959 (Wednesday)

  • A new standard for the yard and for the inch was adopted by the United States and Britain. The yard was formally defined as 0.9144 meters, and, as 1/36 of a yard, the inch was 0.0254 m or 2.54 centimeters.[1]
  • "World Refugee Year" began for the United Nations, running until June 30, 1960. At that time, the UN estimated that 15,000,000 people were
    refugees, and campaigned for private contributions and increased government spending.[2]
  • At 12:01 a.m., the consumption of opium in
    Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat sent the military on a nationwide crackdown on the opium trade.[3]
  • Heinrich Lübke was elected the second President of West Germany, succeeding Theodor Heuss. Lübke had 517 of the 1038 electoral votes, 3 shy of a majority, while Carlo Schmid had 385 and Max Becker 104 on the first ballot in the electoral college. Lübke won on the second round.[4]
  • The order for Jupiter launch vehicles in support of Project Mercury was canceled because the same or better data could be obtained from Atlas flights.[5]
  • On July 1 and 2, a
    B. F. Goodrich Company, and International Latex Company. Four subjects participated in the tests.[5]

July 2, 1959 (Thursday)

July 3, 1959 (Friday)

July 4, 1959 (Saturday)

Alaska's first two U.S. Senators, Ernest Gruening (left) and Bob Bartlett (right), holding the 49-star U.S. flag
  • The 49th star was added to the American flag on the first
    Fred Seaton raised the banner (seven stars in seven staggered rows) at 12:01 a.m over Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key wrote about the Star Spangled Banner.[13]

July 5, 1959 (Sunday)

  • Guided Democracy" (Demokrasi Terpimpin), with the assistance of General Abdul Haris Nasution.[14]
  • David Ben-Gurion resigned as Prime Minister of Israel and new elections were called for the Knesset. Ben-Gurion's Israel Workers' Party would win a majority of seats in the November election.[15]
  • German jurisdiction over Saarland, and its one million residents, became effective at 12:01 am after a period of transition that had begun on January 1, 1957. France had administered the region since the end of World War II, and Saarlanders were given five days to exchange 117 francs for each deutschmark.[16]

July 6, 1959 (Monday)

  • A
    C-124 Globemaster cargo plane, carrying nuclear weapons, crashed on takeoff from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The crew of seven survived, and safety devices functioned properly, but one weapon was destroyed in the fire that followed.[17]
  • Born: Richard Dacoury, French National Team basketball player

July 7, 1959 (Tuesday)

July 8, 1959 (Wednesday)

July 9, 1959 (Thursday)

  • After a 16-month break, the United States secretly resumed U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union. Pilot Marty Knutson flew into Soviet airspace to photograph the missile site at
    Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.[27]
  • Al Sharpton preached his first sermon, at the age of four, at the Washington Temple Church of God in Christ in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.[28]
  • Born:

July 10, 1959 (Friday)

  • A memorial for
    passport control officer at Britain's embassy in Nazi Germany, Foley flouted strict rules in order to help as many as 10,000 German Jews to leave the country.[30]
  • Black Muslim movement, the show instead gave national celebrity to Malcolm X and Wallace Muhammad. Prior to the program, the Black Muslim sect had 30,000 members, and within a few weeks the number had doubled.[31]
  • E. C. Braley and Laurence K. Loftin Jr., sponsored a conference at
    rendezvous in space; and evaluating techniques for terrestrial and astronomical observation and how a human crew could enhance those techniques in space. Participants saw the study as the first step toward landing humans on the Moon between 1969 and 1974.[32]

July 11, 1959 (Saturday)

July 12, 1959 (Sunday)

  • More than 100 people were killed during a 15-hour-long rebellion in the
    Ramon Villeda Morales.[36]

July 13, 1959 (Monday)

July 14, 1959 (Tuesday)

Ex-Defense Minister Peng
  • Marshal Peng Dehuai, China's Minister of Defense, handed Chairman Mao Zedong a letter summarizing problems with the Great Leap Forward. Mao was furious, and two days later printed copies of the letter to distribute to the Luzhang Conference participants. Peng was fired and soon became the focus of the "Anti-Right Deviation Movement".[40]
  • In
    Kirkuk Massacre.[41] On the same day, Iraq became the first Arab nation to appoint a woman to a ministerial post, with Dr. Naziha ad-Dulaimi becoming Minister of Rural Affairs.[42]
  • The first nuclear warship, the USS Long Beach, was launched from Quincy, Massachusetts.[43]
  • The French Community, France's version of the British Commonwealth of Nations, was organized in Paris.[44]
  • Born:
    Susana Martínez, American politician and Governor of New Mexico from 2011 to 2019; in El Paso, Texas

July 15, 1959 (Wednesday)

July 16, 1959 (Thursday)

July 17, 1959 (Friday)

  • Sixty-eight people, 51 of whom were children under the age of 10, were killed in South Korea when a sudden downpour and rapidly rising waters caused a panic and a stampede at the Busan Municipal Stadium, where an art show was being staged before a crowd of 70,000 people.[48] The sudden storm came in conjunction with Typhoon Billie, the first typhoon officially monitored by meteorologists at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
Mary Leakey
  • Anthropologist
    Zinjanthropus, that would lead to a rethinking of the origins of human beings. Discovered at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where Louis Leakey had found prehistoric tools 28 years earlier. Zinjanthropus (now Australopithecus boisei) is not considered a direct human ancestor, but another Olduvai discovery from 1960, the mandible with teeth of "OH 5" (Olduvai Hominid 5), the toolmaking Homo habilis, some 1.75 million years old, is believed to be.[49][50][51]
  • New York TV station WPIX made an early experiment in instant replay, after a hit by Jim McAnany of the White Sox ended a no-hitter by the Yankees' Ralph Terry. Since the game was being videotaped, broadcaster Mel Allen asked director Terry Murphy to play a tape of McAnany's hit over the air soon afterward.[52]
  • Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, with Cary Grant, premiered.[53][unreliable source?]
Billie Holiday
  • Died: Singer Billie Holiday, 44, died at 3:20 a.m. at New York's Metropolitan Hospital, where she had been admitted on May 31 for heart failure. Thousands of mourners turned out for her wake and her funeral.[54]

July 18, 1959 (Saturday)

Ex-President Urrutia
  • Manuel Urrutia. On July 17, Castro had announced his resignation as Prime Minister and his plans to address the nation at 7:00 p.m. Urrutia, who had disagreed with Castro's confiscation of private farmland, resigned three hours into Castro's speech and made plans to flee the country.[55]

July 19, 1959 (Sunday)

July 20, 1959 (Monday)

  • Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev called off a tour of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The Scandinavian visit had been slated to start on August 15 with a visit to Stockholm, but was criticized by newspapers in all three countries.[57]
  • Negotiations for construction of the Mercury tracking network were started with the Western Electric Company and their subcontractors (
    Bell Telephone Laboratories, and Burns and Roe). A letter contract was signed on July 30, 1959, for the entire range that included radar tracking, telemetry receiving, recording, and display, communications to spacecraft and surface stations; and computing and control facilities.[5]
  • New York City's popular Four Seasons Restaurant began 60 years of service, opening at the Seagram Building at 99 East 52nd Street in Manhattan.[58]
Admiral Leahy
  • Died: Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, 84, highest ranking American naval officer during World War II

July 21, 1959 (Tuesday)

  • Two milestones in the erosion of censorship happened on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In the United States, federal judge Frederick van Pelt Bryan enjoined the U.S. Postmaster General from stopping the delivery of the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover,[59] while in Britain, the Obscene Publications Act 1959 was passed, marking what John Sutherland would describe as "the great liberation for printed literature".[60]
  • The Boston Red Sox became the last Major League Baseball team to integrate, twelve years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line. In the eighth inning of a game at Chicago, Pumpsie Green entered the lineup as a pinch runner, then played the ninth inning as a shortstop in a 2–1 win over the White Sox.[61] Green was called up from the Minneapolis Millers club after Bobby Ávila was traded to the Braves.[62]
  • Alterations to Building "S" at Cape Canaveral for Project Mercury support were discussed in a meeting at Cape Canaveral. A target date of December 1, 1959, was set for project completion. Project Vanguard activities would have to be phased out of the building.[5]

July 22, 1959 (Wednesday)

  • The Japan–Paraguay Immigration Agreement was signed, providing for 85,000 Japanese citizens to immigrate to Paraguay over a 30-year period, settling on farmland purchased by Japan's government in Chavez, Fram, Alton Parana and Iguacu. In consideration for the agreement, Japan made a $3.8 million loan so that the Paraguayan Navy could purchase seven war ships. The plan failed, with fewer than 7,754 Japanese moving to Paraguay.[63]
  • B. F. Goodrich Company was selected to design and develop the Mercury astronaut pressure suit. In 1934, Goodrich had developed the first rubber stratosphere flying suit for attempts at setting altitude records.[5]
  • A successful pad abort flight was made of a boilerplate Mercury spacecraft with a production version of the escape tower and rocket. The escape rocket motor was manufactured by Grand Central Rocket Company, and the flight was the first operational test of the escape rocket.[5]
  • The Space Task Group, McDonnell, and the Air Force Chart and Information Center met to design a map to depict a Mercury spacecraft flight. The chart would cover an area of 40 degrees latitude above and below the equator and show oceans and continents by colors to match probable visual characteristics. Orbit numbers and time since launch would be depicted and traced.[5]
  • The
    U.S. Navy provided NASA with a list of reserve ships to direct support of Project Mercury. A little more than a year later, on July 28, 1959, specific information on the ships would be forwarded to NASA.[5]

July 23, 1959 (Thursday)

General Stewart
General Goldwater

July 24, 1959 (Friday)

  • The Kitchen Debate took place between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and American Vice-president Richard Nixon, at Moscow's Sokolniki Park, where the American National Exhibition was being held. At a display of a model kitchen, Khrushchev and Nixon argued, through interpreters, over the merits of communism and capitalism. Both recounted the incident years later, in Six Crises by Nixon, and in Khrushchev Remembers. Time magazine would later describe the first public discussion between the Soviet and American officials as "what may be remembered as peacetime diplomacy's most amazing 24 hours".[66]
  • Died: King
    Mutara III Rudahigwa, ruler of the Tutsi people in the Belgian colony of Rwanda, collapsed and died after being given a penicillin injection by a Belgian physician in Bujumbura. The death was believed by other doctors to be from anaphylactic shock from a penicillin allergy,[67] although other histories refer to the death as an assassination.[68] In the violence that followed, 20,000 Tutsi were killed and 150,000 fled the country over the next seven years.[69]

July 25, 1959 (Saturday)

July 26, 1959 (Sunday)

July 27, 1959 (Monday)

July 28, 1959 (Tuesday)

  • Lt. Col. William H. Rankin bailed out of his crippled F-8 fighter after it stalled at 47,000 feet (14,000 m). After a two-minute freefall, his parachute opened automatically at 10,000 feet (3,000 m), but it took him another 38 minutes to reach the ground. Rankin descended into a thunderstorm and was buffeted up and down by the winds until landing near Ahoskie, North Carolina. He told his story to the Associated Press from his hospital bed more than a week later.[76]
  • Voters in
    Hiram L. Fong and Oren E. Long
    .
  • A boilerplate Mercury spacecraft, instrumented to measure sound pressure level and vibration, was launched in the second beach abort test leading to the Little Joe test series. The instrumentation was set to measure the vibration and sound environment on the capsule during firing of the abort rocket.[5]

July 29, 1959 (Wednesday)

  • After passing both houses of Parliament, the Legitimacy Act of 1959, giving equal rights to children born out of wedlock, received royal assent in Britain.[77]
  • Australia entered the "Jet Age", when Qantas became the first airline outside the United States to inaugurate Boeing 707 services, flying from Sydney, Australia, to San Francisco.[78]
  • Born:
    Bombay (now Mumbai
    )

July 30, 1959 (Thursday)

July 31, 1959 (Friday)

  • Article 356 of the Constitution of India was invoked, providing for
    President's Rule of an Indian state, to depose the Communist government of the State of Kerala.[82]
  • Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque separatist organization, was founded in Spain. In its first 40 years, ETA's paramilitary attacks killed more than 800 people and wounded thousands.[83]
  • The
    aeromedical program for human flight, and evaluate spacecraft environmental control systems and bioinstrumentation under flight conditions.[5]

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