March 1961

The following events occurred in March 1961:

March 1, 1961 (Wednesday)

• Uganda became self-governing by holding its first general elections a year in advance of full independence. With 90% of the 1.3 million eligible voters participating, the Democratic Party, led by Benedicto Kiwanuka, won 43 of the 81 seats in the National Assembly. The Uganda People's Congress received more votes overall, but won only 35 seats.^[1]
• Executive Order 10924.^[2]

March 2, 1961 (Thursday)

• Algerian nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas announced in Rabat, Morocco, that the FLN had agreed to French President Charles de Gaulle's proposal to begin peace talks on Algerian independence. By then, the Algerian War was in its seventh year.^[3]
• Twenty-two coal miners were killed in an underground explosion at the Viking Coal Company near Terre Haute, Indiana.^[4]
• At the age of 79, artist Pablo Picasso married 35-year-old Jacqueline Roque. The two would remain together until his death in 1973.^[5]
• Congolese soldiers killed 44 civilians in the city of
  Kasai province.^[6]
• Died: Olaf Hagerup, 71, Danish botanist

March 3, 1961 (Friday)

• Elsie May Batten, a 59-year-old shop assistant and wife of sculptor Mark Batten, was found stabbed to death with an antique dagger at the London curiosity shop where she worked.^[7] Her killer, Edwin Bush, was the first British murderer to be caught by use of the Identikit facial composite system.^[8]
• Factory roll-out inspection of Atlas launch vehicle No. 100-D was conducted at Convair-Astronautics. This launch vehicle was allocated for the Mercury-Atlas 3 mission.^[9]
• The
  U.S. Air Force successfully launched the first of its "economy" rockets, the RM-90 Blue Scout II, designed to put payloads into space at a lower cost.^[10][11]
• Hassan II was formally enthroned as King of Morocco, one week after his father's death.^[12]
• Born: Tom Emmer, Majority Whip for the Democrats in the United States House of Representatives since 2023, after being a U.S. Representative for Minnesota since 2005; in South Bend, Indiana^[13]
• Died: Paul Wittgenstein, 73, Austrian-born pianist

March 4, 1961 (Saturday)

• The Soviet Union made its first successful test of its V-1000
  Kazakh SSR.^[14]
• The centennial of the presidential inauguration of Abraham Lincoln was observed with a re-enactment at the east front of the U.S. Capitol. A crowd of 20,000 people watched, twice as many as had witnessed the actual event in 1861.^[15]
• Former U.S. President
  General of the Army.^[16]
• INS Vikrant was commissioned as the Indian Navy's first aircraft carrier.^[17]
• Born:
  Duk Koo Kim as well as being the WBA lightweight champion form 1982 to 1984); in Youngstown, Ohio
• Died: Pudge Wyman, 65, American pro football player credited with the first NFL touchdown. Wyman played for the Rock Island Independents in their 45-0 win over the Muncie Flyers on October 3, 1920.

March 5, 1961 (Sunday)

• At a press conference at Andrews Air Force Base, spokesmen for the U.S. Air Force Research and Development command announced that they had developed an atomic clock "so accurate that its biggest error would not exceed one second in 1271 years", and, at 62 pounds (28 kg), light enough that it could be used on aircraft in place of the existing system of crystal oscillators. Conventional atomic clock units, though more accurate, weighed over 600 pounds (270 kg) and were impractical for flight.^[18]
• The crash of a U.S. Air Force
  Boeing KB-50 refueling plane killed all ten men on board.^[19]
• Born: Marcelo Peralta, Argentinian musician; in Buenos Aires (d. 2020)
• Died: Kjeld Abell, 59, Danish playwright, shortly after finishing his last work, Skriget (The Scream)

March 6, 1961 (Monday)

• The phrase "affirmative action" was first used to refer to a governmental requirement to promote equal opportunity by giving preferences in order to remedy prior discrimination. President Kennedy used the term with the issuance of Executive Order 10925.^[20] The original context was in Section 301 of the order, providing that federal government contracts include a provision that "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."^[21]
• The British soap opera Coronation Street was fully networked by ITV, with a new schedule of Monday and Wednesday evenings at 19:30.
• Born: Bill Buchanan, Scottish academic, computer scientist, cryptographer, first person to receive an OBE for services to Cyber Security at the 2017 Birthday Honours; in Falkirk, Stirlingshire
• Died:
  George Formby, Jr., 56, British singer, comedian and actor, died of his second heart attack in two months.^[22]

March 7, 1961 (Tuesday)

• The successful test firing of the engines of a
  missile silo. An actual launch from the silo would not take place until May 3.^[23]
• Flying a North American X-15 airplane, U.S. Air Force Captain Robert White became the first person to travel faster than Mach 4, reaching Mach 4.43, or 2,650 miles per hour (4,260 km/h).^[24] White would become the first person to break Mach 5 on June 23, and Mach 6 on November 9.^[25]
• Redstone launch vehicle number 5 was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury-Redstone Booster Development flight that would be launched on March 24 as the last space shot before the launch of the first U.S. astronaut, Alan Shepard, on Mercury 3.^[9]
• Spacecraft number 11 was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury 4 mission, flown by Gus Grissom, on July 21, 1961.^[9]
• Born: Martina Schettina, Austrian painter; in Vienna
• Died:
  Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh
  from 1946 to 1954

March 8, 1961 (Wednesday)

• The first U.S.
  USS Patrick Henry sailed past protesters and in alongside its tending ship, USS Proteus, to begin a two-year mission.^[26]
• Max Conrad, "the Flying Grandfather", circumnavigated the Earth in 8 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes, setting a new world record for a light airplane, breaking the previous mark, set in 1959, of 25 days.^[27]
• Mercury spacecraft number 10 was accepted and delivered to the
  orbital-flight environmental test.^[9]
• Died:
  • Sir
    Royal Philharmonic
    orchestras
  • Gala Galaction, 81, Romanian author

March 9, 1961 (Thursday)

• Sputnik 9 was launched by the USSR from Baikonur LC1, carrying "Ivan Ivanovich" (the nickname for a mannequin cosmonaut), the dog Chernushka, some mice, and a guinea pig. The spaceship made several orbits of the Earth at an average altitude of 135 miles (217 km), and then was recovered. NASA spokesman George M. Law said that the test showed that the Russians were "about ready to put a man up" into outer space.^[28]
• An underground fire killed 71 Japanese coal miners at the Ueda Mine Company at Kawara, Fukuoka Prefecture, in Japan's worst coal mine disaster since World War II.^[29]
• Born:
  • Andrei Ivanțoc, Moldovan union leader and presidential candidate; in Opaci, Moldavian SSR, Soviet Union
  • Rick Steiner (ring name for Robert Rechsteiner), American pro wrestler; in Bay City, Michigan
  • Mike Leach, American college football coach; in Susanville, California

March 10, 1961 (Friday)

• The first definite proof that a signal could be sent to Venus and returned to Earth, using
  Goldstone Tracking Station in California at a 2,388 megacycle frequency, traveling 35 million miles to Venus and then back to Earth, in a little more than six minutes. Signals had been bounced off of Venus before, but never received back clearly enough to be "immediately detectable".^[30]
• Richard Sullivan, a staffer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, delivered a feasibility study to the Authority, entitled "A World Trade Center in the Port of New York", outlining the justification for building what would become the Twin Towers and five other buildings in the World Trade Center complex.^[31]
• Born:
  • Laurel Clark, NASA astronaut, medical doctor, United States Navy captain, and Space Shuttle mission specialist who was killed along with her six fellow crew members in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003; in Ames, Iowa^[32]
  • Greg Kolodziejzyk, Canadian cyclist and holder of world records on recumbent bicycles; in Fort St. John, British Columbia
  • Van Nuys, California

March 11, 1961 (Saturday)

• Plans for an invasion of
  Richard M. Bissell, Jr. for the approval of President Kennedy. In a meeting attended by the President, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, Bissell outlined the proposed "Operation Trinidad", with an invasion force storming the beaches of Trinidad, Cuba by sea and by air. Kennedy rejected the plan as "too spectacular", and directed Bissell to come up with a less obvious placement of troops. Only four days later, Bissell had drawn up a new plan, with the force to strike at the Bay of Pigs within a month. "The Kennedy team was impressed," one historian would say later, "when they should have been incredulous."^[33]
• "
  American International Toy Fair in New York City.^[34]
• Died: William A. Morgan, 33, former American soldier who later became an advisor to Fidel Castro, was executed by a firing squad in Havana after being found guilty of conspiring against the government.^[35]

March 12, 1961 (Sunday)

• Miami mobster
  Miami Beach. Roselli would testify before the U.S. Senate, 14 years later, about the delivery of money and poisoned pills for the contact to place in Castro's food. Columnist Jack Anderson would break the story in his column of January 18, 1971.^[36] The CIA would acknowledge its involvement 46 years after the fact, with the declassification of documents in 2007.^[37]
• The long-running BBC radio music show Your Hundred Best Tunes moved to the 9–10 p.m. Sunday night timeslot with which it would be associated for the next 45 years.

March 13, 1961 (Monday)

• One hundred forty-five people in
  Ukrainian SSR. The disaster was not reported in the Soviet press until March 31, when it was mentioned in Pravda.^[38]
• The team of Barry Bishop, Mike Ward, Mike Gill]], and Wally Romanes made the first ascent of the 22,349-foot (6,812 m) high Himalayan mountain Ama Dablam.^[39]
• Cyprus joined the Commonwealth of Nations, becoming the first small nation in the British Commonwealth.^[40]
• U.S. President John F. Kennedy proposed a long-term "Alliance for Progress" between the United States and Latin America.^[41]
• Born: Vasily Ignatenko, Soviet firefighter who was among the first responders to the Chernobyl disaster; in Sperizh'e, Brahin District (d. 1986)^[42]

March 14, 1961 (Tuesday)

• The first phase of the creation of the New English Bible, begun in 1946 by the Joint Committee on the New Translation of the Bible, was completed with the publication of the revised New Testament. Relying on a re-examination of the oldest texts and conveyance of original meanings into modern English, the "new New Testament" was released to coincide with the 350th anniversary of the March 1611 publication of the King James Version of the Bible.^[43][44]
• A B-52F-70-BW Stratofortress bomber, with two nuclear weapons, crashed 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Yuba City, California after its crew bailed out.^[45] The two nuclear bombs were torn from the aircraft on impact, but did not detonate.
• The patent application for the lifesaving opioid antidote
  Narcan) was filed by Jack Fishman and Mozes J. Lewenstein. U.S. Patent #3,254,088 was granted on May 31, 1966.^[46]
• Atlas launch vehicle 100-D was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury-Atlas 3 mission.[9]
• Born:
  Research In Motion; in Istanbul

March 15, 1961 (Wednesday)

• The
  Union of Peoples of Angola, led by Holden Roberto, crossed over from the Congo into Angola, and murdered European and African residents living near the northern border of the Portuguese colony.^[47] Portuguese forces killed tens of thousands of African residents in retaliation and the war continued for 14 years.^[48]
• At a meeting in London of the prime ministers of the British Commonwealth, Hendrik Verwoerd announced that South Africa was withdrawing its membership, due to continued criticism of apartheid, "the racial policy of the Union Government".^[49]
• The World Chess Championship 1961 between former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik and titleholder Mikhail Tal, began in Moscow.^[50]
• Died:
  Sir Walter Womersley, 1st Baronet
  , 83, British M.P.; as Minister of Pensions from 1939 to 1945, he was the only British government minister to hold the same post throughout World War II.

March 16, 1961 (Thursday)

• The Absent-Minded Professor, a Disney comedy science fiction film starring Fred MacMurray, was released nationwide^{[51][unreliable source?]} and became one of the most popular movies of the year.
• The Space Task Group advised the Goddard Space Flight Center that for all Mercury orbital missions, beginning with Mercury-Atlas 3, trajectory data would be required for postflight analysis.^[9]
• Mercury spacecraft No. 10 was withdrawn from the flight program and was allocated to a ground test simulating orbital flight environmental conditions at the McDonnell plant site.^[9]
• The 18th Golden Globe Awards were held. Winners included Burt Lancaster (Best Actor – Drama), Greer Garson (Best Actress – Drama) and Spartacus (Best Film – Drama).
• The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center was officially dedicated in Greenbelt, Maryland.^[52]

March 17, 1961 (Friday)

• Albert DeSalvo was arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while trying to break into a house. Confessing to be a sexual predator who had been nicknamed "the Measuring Man", DeSalvo spent a year in jail. For 18 months following his release, thirteen local women were sexually assaulted and murdered. DeSalvo, arrested later in 1964, confessed to being the "Boston Strangler".^[53]
• Israel staged a dress rehearsal for a military parade in the Israeli-occupied part of Jerusalem, in which heavy military armament took part. Following a complaint by Jordan about the display of military might, the Mixed Armistice Commission decided that "this act by Israel is a breach of the General Armistice Agreement."^{[citation needed]}
• Born:
  • Mauricio Pimiento, Colombian politician involved in the Colombian parapolitics scandal; in Bucaramanga
  • Marcus Dillistone, award-winning British film director; in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent
• Died: Susanna M. Salter, 101, first woman mayor in the United States; in 1887, she was elected to a two-year term as mayor of the small town of Argonia, Kansas, after being placed on the ballot as a prank.

March 18, 1961 (Saturday)

• Little Joe 5A, the sixth in the series of Little Joe missions, was launched from Wallops Island to demonstrate the structural integrity of the spacecraft and escape system during an escape maneuver initiated at the highest dynamic pressure anticipated during an Atlas launch for orbital flight. LJ-5A lifted off normally, but 19 seconds later the escape tower fired prematurely, a situation resembling the Little Joe 5 flight in November 1960. The signal to initiate the abort maneuver was given, and the launch vehicle-adapter clamp ring was released, but the spacecraft remained on the launch vehicle since the escape motor was already expended. The separation was effected by using the retrorockets, but this command was transmitted before the flight had reached its apex, where separation had been planned. Therefore, the separation was rather violent. The parachutes deployed at about 40,000 feet (12,000 m), and after recovery it was found that the spacecraft had incurred only superficial structural damage. This spacecraft was used for the subsequent Little Joe 5B flight test. Test objectives of LJ-5A were not met.^[9]
• "Nous les amoureux", sung by Jean-Claude Pascal (music by Jacques Datin, lyrics by Maurice Vidalin), won the Eurovision Song Contest 1961 for Luxembourg.

March 19, 1961 (Sunday)

• Tornadoes swept through four districts of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh, killing more than 250 people. The dead included 32 people who had taken refuge in a Catholic church in Dacca after attending Sunday mass.^[54]
• Died: Ada Cornaro, 79, Argentinian tango dancer and actress

March 20, 1961 (Monday)

• Phase III of testing of the Mercury spacecraft airdrop program was conducted and lasted for four weeks, until April 13. Primary objectives of the drops were to study further the spacecraft suitability and flotation capability after water impact. Six drops were made, but later (April 24–28, 1961) the tests were extended for two additional drops to monitor hard-surface landing effects.^[9]

March 21, 1961 (Tuesday)

• Ion Gheorghe Maurer, formerly the ceremonial Romanian head of state as President of the Presidium of the Great National Assembly, assumed the office of head of government as Prime Minister of Romania, and would remain the premier until 1974. During Maurer's rule, he would serve the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and later Nicolae Ceaușescu.
• The Beatles— John, Paul, George and Stu (Stuart Sutcliffe)— began the first of nearly 300 regular performances at The Cavern Club in Liverpool. Sutcliffe left the band three months later. Continuing with Ringo Starr, the group's final appearance at the Cavern Club was on August 3, 1963.^[55]
• The press agency United News of India dispatched its first reports to subscribers.^[56][57]

March 22, 1961 (Wednesday)

• Dwight D. Eisenhower was restored to the United States Army and to his rank as a five-star General of the Army, two months after completing his term as the 34th President of the United States.^[58] General Eisenhower had resigned his commission on July 18, 1952, after accepting the Republican Party nomination for the Presidency.^[59]
• Died: Gideon Mer, 66, Israeli physician and scientist who guided the eradication of malaria in the Jewish state

March 23, 1961 (Thursday)

• The Soviet Union lifted censorship restrictions for foreign news correspondents that had been in place since 1917. Except for two occasions in 1939 and 1946, non-Soviet reporters had been required to have their dispatches reviewed before transmission. Foreign office press director Mikhail Kharlamov cautioned that, although pre-approval of reports would no longer be required, foreigners were still required to keep copies of all dispatches for future review, and that persons who "circulated unfounded rumors about the Soviet Union" were still subject to expulsion.^[60]
• An American
  POW of the Vietnam Era. He would be released on August 15, 1962.^[62]
• President John F. Kennedy advised
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration to those of the military.^[9]
• Born:
  Philadelphia
  (murdered, 2009)
• Died:
  • cosmonaut, was burned to death in a training accident. His death would be concealed by the Soviet government for more than 25 years, finally being revealed in 1986 in an article in the daily newspaper Izvestia.^[63][64]
  • Heinrich Rau, 61, East German politician and Minister of Foreign Trade

March 24, 1961 (Friday)

• The Mercury-Redstone BD (Mercury-Redstone Booster Development) rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral on one final test flight to certify its safety for human transport. As with earlier Soviet tests, the American space capsule carried a test dummy. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 115 miles (185 km) and was recovered in the Atlantic 8 minutes after launch.^[9][65] Stopped by Wernher von Braun from going, Alan Shepard had volunteered to take the flight, and would have become the first human to travel into outer space. Less than three weeks later, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin would reach the milestone on April 12. Shepard would reach space, though not orbit, on May 5.^[66]

March 25, 1961 (Saturday)

• In
  Bobby Knight had kept OSU from losing in regulation by scoring the basket that tied the game, 61–61.^[67]
• The day after the U.S. launch of a test dummy into space, the Soviets made one final launch of their own Ivan Ivanovich dummy into space, along with the last dog in space, Zvezdochka. Both went up on Korabl-Sputnik 5 (called "Sputnik 10" in the West), which made one orbit and safely returned to Earth.^[68]
• Born:
  Nintendo of America, the North American branch of the Japanese video game company Nintendo, from 2006 to 2019; in New York City

March 26, 1961 (Sunday)

• In rugby union, France defeated Wales 8–6 at the Stade Colombes to assure themselves of overall victory in the 1961 Five Nations Championship.^[69]
• The
  Snetterton Motor Racing Circuit, England, and was won by Jack Brabham
  in a Cooper T53.
• Born:
  • William Hague, Baron Hague of Richmond, British politician and life peer who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1997 to 2001; in Rotherham, South Yorkshire
  • Billy Warlock, American TV soap opera actor; in Gardena, California
  • Leigh Bowery, Australian performance artist; in Melbourne (d. 1994)
• Died: Carlos Duarte Costa, 72, founder of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church

March 27, 1961 (Monday)

• Nine African-American students from Mississippi's
  Jackson State College marched to the city jail to protest the arrest of the "Tougaloo Nine", and more demonstrations followed.^[70]
• In a NASA Headquarters note to editors of magazines and newspapers, procedures and a deadline were established for submitting the applications of accredited correspondents to cover the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission. As of April 24, 1961, the deadline date, 350 correspondents were accredited to cover the launch, the first crewed suborbital flight of Project Mercury.^[9]
• Thunderball, Ian Fleming's ninth James Bond novel, was first published, in a hardback British edition by Jonathan Cape.^[71]

March 28, 1961 (Tuesday)

• U.S. President John F. Kennedy informed Congress that, as part of the proposed $43.8 billion defense budget, he was cancelling the Pye Wacket project, an experimental lenticular-form air-to-air missile, and the B-70 nuclear-powered airplane.^[72] Kennedy declared that "As a power which will never strike first, our hopes for anything close to an absolute deterrent must rest on weapons which come from hidden, moving, or invulnerable bases which will not be wiped out by a surprise attack," and lobbied instead for ten additional Polaris nuclear submarines and an increased Minuteman nuclear arsenal.^[73]
• All 52 people aboard
  Russelbach in East Germany after an onboard explosion.^[74] The flight was on its way from Prague to Bamako, the capital of Mali, taking technicians and their families, half of them from the Soviet Union, to jobs in Africa.^[75]
• Air Afrique was founded by agreement of ten West African nations that had gained independence from France.^[76] The airline operated until 2001, when its fleet and routes were acquired by Air France.^[77]
• The Factories Act 1961 was introduced into the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
• Died:
  • Powel Crosley Jr., American inventor and owner of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team
  • Chatta Singh, 74, Indian VC recipient

March 29, 1961 (Wednesday)

• The
  Topeka, the Kansas House of Representatives, in a hastily called session, made that state the 38th. Arkansas was the only state to reject the proposal, which gave the District 3 electoral votes starting with the 1964 election.^[78]
• Born: Amy Sedaris, American actress, comedienne, and writer; in Endicott, New York

March 30, 1961 (Thursday)

• Actor Ronald Reagan gave a speech entitled "Encroaching Control" to the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. This speech was considered by some historians to be his finest and the moment his political career truly began.^{[citation needed]}
• The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was signed at New York City. The pact entered into force on December 13, 1964, and now applies to 149 nations.^[79]
• Redstone launch vehicle No. 7 was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury 3 mission.^[9]
• Died:
  • Ayatollah
    Iran's Shiite Muslims, died at the age of 86. Borujerdi's death led the way to the ascension of the 58-year-old Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
    , who in 1979 would become the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
  • Former Brigadier General Mengistu Neway, 41, was hanged after the unsuccessful coup attempt against the Ethiopian government in December 1960.
  • Armand Robin, 49, French poet and journalist, three days after his arrest following an altercation in a bar.^[80]

March 31, 1961 (Friday)

• NASA's worldwide
  Western Electric Company at a cost of $60,000,000 became fully operational. Western Electric would turn over the global network of 18 ground tracking stations to NASA in a formal ceremony later in the year.^[9]
  Electronics on two ships in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were used to close gaps between ground stations.
• The last train ran on Ireland's Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway.^{[citation needed]}
• Died: Paul Landowski, 85, French monumental sculptor

References