June 1958

June 12, 1958 (Thursday)

• The Legislative Assembly of
  United Nations trust territory in West Africa under the administration of France, approved a resolution asking the government of France to accord independence. On November 12, France would ask the UN to grant independence and end the Trusteeship, and French Cameroon (which would later unify with the British Southern Cameroons
  colony) would become an independent nation on January 1, 1960.
• The
  Kondemenos, had been released by the British authorities in the town of Gönyeli, a Turkish Cypriot town on the Turkish side of the island.^[36]
• Members of the lower house of Japan's parliament, the Shūgiin, voted along party lines to re-elect Nobusuke Kishi as Prime Minister of Japan.^[37]
• The Italian Republic's third parliament opened its session with 596 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 246 members of the Italian Senate. The legislature would continue to meet until May 15, 1963.
• The English Tiddlywinks Association (ETwA) was created by students at Christ's College within the University of Cambridge to serve as the supreme rulemaking and tournament-coordinating body of the game of tiddlywinks.^[38]
• The Vikings, an action and historical film that was released by Curtleigh Productions (owned by actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, premiered at New York City at the Astor Theatre and the Victoria Theatre, and became a worldwide hit after its general release in August.^[39]

June 13, 1958 (Friday)

• A treaty was signed between the Communist nations of Czechoslovakia and Poland to permanently end the border conflicts that had existed since World War II after Czechoslovakian territory, transferred to Polish control in 1938, was returned to Czechoslovakia. The two nations agreed to the boundaries that had existed on January 1, 1938, before the Munich Agreement had divided Czechoslovakia along ethnic lines. Poland dropped claims to Cieszyn Silesia (Slask Cieszynski, now part of the Czech Republic), as well as the Slovakian territories of Arva (Orawa) and Spiš (Spisz), while Czechoslovakia dropped claims to Kłodzko and Racibórz. Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki signed on behalf of the Polish People's Republic and his counterpart, Václav David signed for the Czechoslovak Republic.
• Died: Pierre-Étienne Flandin, 69, former Prime Minister of France 1934-1935 and then for two months in 1940-1941 for Nazi-occupied Vichy France^[40]

June 14, 1958 (Saturday)

• The People's Republic of China released two imprisoned American Roman Catholic priests, Reverend Joseph P. McCormack and Reverend Cyril P. Wagner, after both had served five years' incarceration on convictions of espionage. A third priest, James Edward Walsh, had been given an exit visa but refused to leave because he wanted to continue his ministry in Shanghai, and would remain until 1970. McCormack and Wagner departed China on a British ship, Changsha, on June 18. Four other Americans, John T. Downey, Hugh F. Redmond, Richard C. Facteau, and Robert E. Cann, remained incarcerated.^[41]
• Britain's BBC television network began showing The Black and White Minstrel Show,^[42] a popular variety show that would run for 20 seasons,^{[43][unreliable source?]} despite its use of white singers in blackface (billed as "The Mitchell Minstrels") and no players of African descent. The show's comedy was based on American minstrel shows and featured stereotypes of African-American speech and manners.
• Born: Eric Heiden, American speed skater with five Olympic gold medals; in Madison, Wisconsin^[44]

June 15, 1958 (Sunday)

• The
  S. L. Benfica at the Estádio Nacional in the Lisbon suburb of Oeiras. Porto had finished second and Benfica third during the Primeira Divisão
  soccer football league season.
• Born:
  • Wade Boggs, American baseball third baseman and inductee to Baseball Hall of Fame; in Omaha, Nebraska
  • Yvonne Fletcher, London Metropolitan Police officer who lost her life in 1984 after being shot by a gunman who had fired from inside the Libyan Embassy; in Semley, Wiltshire
    (d. 1984)

• In Hungary, former Prime Minister Imre Nagy, former Defense Minister Pál Maléter, journalist Miklós Gimes, and Lieutenant Colonel József Szilágyi were all executed for treason for their roles in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The trial, verdict and sentences were not announced until afterward. Four other persons received prison sentences ranging from 5 to 12 years, and a life sentence was meted out for author Sándor Kopácsi.^[45] According to later reports, Nagy, Gimes and Szilagyi were all hanged while General Maleter was shot.^[46]
• The Wham-O toy company began marketing of the "Hula hoop", a 110 cm (42 in) diameter hoop made from Marlex plastic, with the earliest known advertisement for the "Hula-Hoop by Wham-O" being placed by "The Broadway" chain of department stores in Los Angeles, for sale for $1.98 ^[47] (equivalent to $20 more than 60 years later). With giveaways, national marketing and retailing, a fad would spread eastward across the United States.^[48]
• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Kent v. Dulles, 5 to 4, that the U.S. State Department could not withhold issuing passports to Americans based on suspicion of disloyalty to the U.S., invalidating a federal regulation on grounds that it was not authorized by Congress. The Court avoided the question of whether such a regulation would be unconstitutional.^[49] The State Department responded to the Kent decision on June 24 by removing questions about Communist Party membership from its passport applications and issuing passports to those persons who had left the answer blank.^[50]
• A Cruzeiro do Sul airliner in Brazil crashed, killing all but five passengers out of a total of 26 people on board. The Convair CV-440 was approaching Curitiba at the end of a flight from Florianópolis. The dead included former President Nereu Ramos, who had served as the interim president for 10 weeks in 1955 and 1956.

June 17, 1958 (Tuesday)

• Chinua Achebe's landmark novel Things Fall Apart was released by the British publisher Heinemann.^[51]
• In Canada, the collapse of the Second Narrows Bridge in Vancouver killed 19 ironworkers after several spans fell into the waters of the Burrard Inlet and drowned.^[52] Another 80 workers fell in the collapse but survived.
• Danish protesters in Copenhagen smashed the windows of the Soviet Union's Embassy to Denmark in protest over the execution of former Hungarian premier Imre Nagy. A counterdemonstration was made three days later by Russian protesters who smashed windows at Denmark's embassy in Moscow, with no intervention from local police.^[53] More violent protests took place later between the Soviet and West German embassies in Moscow and Bonn.
• Born:
  • Jello Biafra (stage name for Eric Boucher), American punk rock musician for the Dead Kennedys; in Boulder, Colorado
  • K. M. Joseph, Indian jurist and Supreme Court of India Judge since 2014; in Kottayam, Kerala state
• Died:
  • Juan Ferrero, 40, Spanish bodybuilder who had won the professional Mr. Universe competition in 1952, was killed in a car accident in Bordeaux in France when the automobile he was riding in overturned on a curve.
  • Patriarch Alexandros III, 87, spiritual leader of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East since 1928.^[54] He would be succeeded by Theodosius VI on November 14, 1958.

June 18, 1958 (Wednesday)

• A major change in the Soviet Union's agricultural policy regarding collective farms was approved by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party at the direction of General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. In addition to forgiving all outstanding debts owed to the government by farms for equipment, the Party eliminated the policy of "compulsory deliveries" of a percentage of produce at nominal prices and paying the same price to farms at the same rate of all "state purchases".^[55]
• People's Republic of China
  .
• The first supermarket in New Zealand was opened, as grocers Tom Ah Chee, Norman Kent, and John Brown introduced an American-style grocery store to launch Foodtown, with the first store opening at the Auckland suburb of Otahuhu. The supermarkets would be rebranded in 2011 as part of the Countdown chain of discount groceries.
• The Trans Canada Microwave communications relay system of 139 towers from coast to coast transmitted its first telephone and television signals, and was declared fully operational on July 1.
• Benjamin Britten's one-act opera Noye's Fludde premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival.^[56]
• Died: Douglas Jardine, 57, English cricketer and captain of the England national team in The Ashes in 1932 and 1933, died of cancer

June 19, 1958 (Thursday)

• In India, the top of the Himalayan mountain Mrigthuni was reached for the first time. Mountaineer Gurdial Singh and four other members of the Indian team reached the summit of 22,490 feet (6,850 m).
• Born:
  Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
• Died: Jack Westrope, 40, American thoroughbred jockey later inducted to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, was fatally injured in the running of the Hollywood Oaks at Hollywood Park near Los Angeles. Westrope was moving into the lead on the filly Well Away when the horse struck the inner rail and he was hurled at high speed onto the structure.^[57]

June 20, 1958 (Friday)

• Baluchistan
  to be an independent nation. Ahmedzai's rebellion would last only three months, before his arrest on October 6 by local police.
• Voting was held for both houses of the Bolivian Congress, with 34 of the 68 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and six of the 18 Bolivian Senate seats at stake. The Revolutionary Nationalist Movement won all but two deputy races and all six of the Senate seats.
• Born: U.S. Army General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2015 to 2019; in Winchester, Massachusetts
• Died:
  • Kurt Alder, 55, German chemist and 1950 Nobel prize in Chemistry laureate for his work in discovering the Diels–Alder reaction
  • Herbert Bayard Swope, 76, U.S. newspaper journalist and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting, later an editor for the New York World^[58]

June 21, 1958 (Saturday)

• A U.S. District Court judge in Arkansas issued an order allowing the school board of Little Rock a two-and-a-half year delay in implementing racial desegregation of its schools, allowing Central High School to revert to its all-white status for the 1958-1959, 1959-1960 and 1960-1961 school years. The seven remaining African-American students at Central High were to be denied from returning to the school in the autumn. Judge Harry J. Lemley wrote, "... While the Negro students at Little Rock have a personal interest in being admitted to the public schools on a nondiscriminatory basis as soon as practicable, that interest is only one factor of the equation," adding "there is also another public interest involved, eliminating or at least ameliorating the unfortunate racial strife and tension which existed in Little Rock during the past year and still exists there."^[59]
• The Astrological Association of Great Britain was founded.
• Born:
  Bombay
  (now Mumbai); (d. of heart attack, 2017)
• Died:
  • Herbert Brenon, 78, Irish-born U.S. film director noted for 1928's Beau Geste and Neptune's Daughter ^[60]
  • Yvonne Dubel, 76, French operatic soprano

June 22, 1958 (Sunday)

• The first
  King Olav V, who had ascended the throne on September 21, had convinced the government of Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen that an event should be held to acknowledge the King's commencement of duties as head of the Church of Norway, if not the nation's monarch. For the "Signing til kongsgjerning" ("Blessing of the King's Reign"), King Olav sat upon the coronation throne in Trondheim to listen to a sermon, after which he knelt as Bishop Arne Fjellbu
  recited a prayer while placing a hand upon the King's head. No crown was used.
• Born:
  • Rocío Banquells, Mexican pop singer and actress; in Monterrey, Nuevo León^[61]
  • Rodion Cămătaru, Romanian soccer football striker with 73 caps for the Romanian National Team; in Strehaia
  • Bruce Campbell, American film and TV actor; in Royal Oak, Michigan^[62]
• Died:
  • Frances Kyle, 64, Northern Irish barrister and the first woman (along with Averil Deverell) to practice law in the United Kingdom, being admitted to the Bar of Ireland in 1921, and in 1922 to Great Britain.
  • Reverend A. E. Robertson, 87, Scottish minister and mountain climber

June 23, 1958 (Monday)

• Almost 100 people were killed in the explosion of two fireworks stands in a crowded outdoor market in the Brazilian city of Santo Amaro, Bahia and 300 injured as people were preparing to celebrate "O Nascimento de João Batista", or St. John's Day, the June 24 honoring of the nativity of John the Baptist.^[63]
• A mob of hundreds of rioters in Moscow attacked West Germany's Embassy in the Soviet Union, in apparent retaliation for demonstrations against the Soviet Union in West Germany's capital, Bonn, a week earlier. The crowd smashed 40 large windows and hurling stones, bricks, chunks of iron, bottles and burning rags at the building. The attack went on for two hours with no intervention by police.^[64]
• In a 7 to 2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court published Miller v. United States, holding that a person cannot lawfully be arrested in one's home without the officers first giving notice of their authority and purpose. Because evidence seized in the raid by federal agents in the home of an accused drug dealer, 17-year-old William Miller of Washington D.C., was done without a warrant or an announcement of why the law enforcement agents were at his home, the evidence seized from Miller and two of his partners was not admissible and the charges were dismissed.^[65]

June 24, 1958 (Tuesday)

• Inventor Marus C. Logan of the Thomas & Betts electrical supply company applied for the patent for the first "zip tie", which would be marketed under the brand name Ty-Rap. Logan was awarded U.S. patent #3,022,557 on February 27, 1962.
• Born:
  • Tommy "Tiny" Lister, American film actor and professional wrestler; in Marina del Rey, California (d. 2020 from a heart attack)^[66]
  • John "Jean" Caret, Canadian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Canada for three months in 1993 and later as Premier of Quebec from 2003 to 2012; in Sherbrooke, Quebec
• Died: George Orton, 85, Canadian distance runner and the first athlete to overcome a disability to win an Olympic medal, winning the gold medal in the 1900 Olympic 2,500-meter steeplechase after getting the bronze in the 400-meter hurdles.

June 25, 1958 (Wednesday)

• The
  Neil A. Armstrong, would reach outer space in a rocket, and none of the others would be picked for the NASA Astronaut Corps. Two others, Robert M. White and Joseph A. Walker, would fly the experimental North American X-15 spaceplane above 100 kilometres (62 mi). Captain Iven C. Kincheloe
  , was killed in a plane crash 31 days after his selection was announced. The MISS program was canceled on August 1 after the creation of NASA.
• Prime Minister of Suriname
  .
• Two people were killed and 35 seriously injured in a fiery collision on the East River of a cargo vessel and an oil tanker, and the Manhattan Bridge in New York City was damaged.^[67][68] Shortly after midnight, the Swedish freighter Nebraska was traveling south and the tanker Empress Bay was headed north with a cargo of 280,000 U.S. gallons of gasoline from a refinery when the tanker made a sudden right turn into the path of the freighter and was struck, causing the tanker to explode and then to sink.^[69] All 42 of the crew of the Nebraska were able to escape to safety by jumping to the FDNY fireboat Gaynor that had come to the rescue.
• Born:
  Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union

• In the North Sulawesi province, Indonesian Army troops recaptured the city of Manado, capital of the rebel government set up by Permesta, two days after the rebel government had evacuated the city following eight days of fierce fighting.^[70] The rebels relocated their capital to the city of Tomohon.^[71]
• Surya Wonowidjojo founded the Indonesian cigarette manufacturer Gudang Garam Tbk, which he would build into a multi-million-dollar operation. Wonowidjojo's son, Rachman Halim, became the Gudang Garam CEO in 1984 and expanded it into a conglomerate, eventually becoming a billionaire and the richest man in Indonesia.
• The small city of Riehen, located Basel-Stadt canton, broke centuries of tradition and became the first locality in Switzerland to allow women the right to vote. On September 29, Trudy Späth-Schweizer would become the first Swiss woman elected to public office, serving on the city council.
• Gaston Eyskens formed a new government as Prime Minister of Belgium, replacing Achille Van Acker after Van Acker's Socialist-Liberal coalition had lost its plurality of seats in the June 1 elections.^[72]
• Cuban rebels led by Raúl Castro began the taking of North American hostages, kidnapping 10 American and two Canadian mining company employees.^[73] The next day, the Cubans kidnapped 24 U.S. servicemen who had been on leave from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.^[74] All the hostages were treated well, and would ultimately be released, starting with four American civilians and one Canadian civilian on July 2.^[75]
• The 71-year-old iron
  Peruvian sailing ship and freighter that had been built in Liverpool in 1887 as the British ship Drumcliff, sank after springing a leak. As the world's last full-rigged ship trading under sail alone, the ship sank while carrying a cargo of guano from the Pachacamac Islands for Huacho. The ship's captain, Juan Anibal Escobar Hurtado, was accused by the Peruvian government of deliberately sinking the ship and was never cleared, despite his efforts to show that the sinking was due to the ship's age and poor maintenance.^[76]
• Born:
  • Pedro Cateriano, Prime Minister of Peru for three weeks in 2020; in Lima
  • Suresh Gopi, Indian film actor and National Film Award winner; in Kollam, Kerala state

June 27, 1958 (Friday)

• The Indian Tamil language musical film Maalaiyitta Mangai premiered.
• A U.S. Air Force
  crossarm of a telephone pole. I have no doubt they were going to hang me." Shupe said that after he made it clear that he was an American, the mob backed off and Soviet soldiers took the U.S. men into custody, where they were treated well.^[79] The nine men would be released on July 7 and transported to the Iranian city of Astara
  on the border between the U.S.S.R.'s Azerbaijan SSR and Iran.
• The Peronist Party became legal again in Argentina.
• An attempt by the U.S. Air Force to set a world speed record for four
  Westover Air Force Base in Springfield, Massachusetts. The airplane stalled, skidded across the Massachusetts Turnpike, and burst into flames, killing all 15 persons aboard, six of whom were newspaper reporters assigned to cover the story.^[80][81]
• The last original episode of The Frank Sinatra Show was telecast on the ABC network in the U.S., after which the superstar singer retired permanently from weekly television shows. Sinatra had been given control over the show and split the 32 episodes into 23 variety shows (14 of them live) and nine dramatic plays, in some of which he acted. The final episode was a play called "The Seedling Doubt", presented by Sinatra as host, but not featuring him as an actor.^{[82][unreliable source?]}
• Billy Pierce, pitcher for the Chicago White Sox baseball team, prevented 26 batters from the Washington Senators from reaching first base and was within one batter of pitching a perfect game when pinch hitter Ed Fitz Gerald hit a double to ruin the achievement.^[83]
• Born:
  • Magnus Lindberg, Finnish classical music composer; in Helsinki
  • Ahmad Vahidi, Iran's Minister of Defense and later its Interior Minister; as Ahmad Shah Cheraghi in Shiraz

June 28, 1958 (Saturday)

• The government of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista launched Operation Verano, a 41-day offensive campaign to stop rebel Fidel Castro. The Operation would prove to be unsuccessful.
• Born: Félix Gray (pen name for Félix Boutboul), Tunisian-born French songwriter the known for the successful French language musical Don Juan; in Tunis
• Died:
  • British India
    as an independent nation in 1947.
  • Alfred Noyes, 77, English poet and playwright ^[84]

June 29, 1958 (Sunday)

• Solna. Sweden's Nils Liedholm scored the first goal four minutes into play, and Brazil's Vavá (Edvaldo Izidio Neto) tied it up five minutes later, then followed with another goal to make the score 2—1 at the half. In the second half, a 17-year-old forward, Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento), scored goals for Brazil at 55 minutes and in the 90th and final minute. Brazil's Mário Zagallo and Sweden's Agne Simonsson
  also contributed goals.
• Copa del Generalísimo, 2 to 0 over the regular season's top team, Real Madrid. 100,000 people watched the game at the Estadio Chamartín in Madrid. Bilbao had finished in sixth place in La Liga
  .
• Born:
  • Rosa Mota, Portuguese long-distance runner and winner of the Olympic women's marathon in 1988; in Porto^[86]
  • Hervé Tullet, French illustrator and children's author known for the bestselling book Press Here; in Avranches

June 30, 1958 (Monday)

• The U.S. Senate passed the Alaska Statehood Act, 64 to 20, after the U.S. House of Representatives had approved the proposition.^[87] Votes against Alaska's statehood came from 13 Democrats from nine southern states (including both Senators from Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia) and the Republicans of seven different states.^[88] U.S. President Eisenhower signed the bill into law on July 7, and Alaska would become the 49th state of the United States on January 3, 1959.
• Both houses of the U.S. Congress passed the US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement, which was signed by President Eisenhower on July 3.
• The Ifni War ended in the Spanish Sahara as the Moroccan Army of Liberation declared a ceasefire in accordance with the Treaty of Angra de Cintra signed on April 1.
• In Taiwan, Yu Hung-chun's resignation as Premier of the Republic of China was accepted by President Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang appointed Vice President Chen Cheng as the new Premier.^[89]
• Born:
  • Karl Friesen, Canadian-born German ice hockey goaltender; in Winnipeg, Manitoba
  • Esa-Pekka Salonen, Finnish conductor and composer; in Helsinki
  • USSR
    (d. 2022)

References