1963: That Was the Year That Was (eBook)

Timeline

JANUARY

•    14 January – George C. Wallace becomes governor of Alabama. In his inaugural speech, he defiantly proclaimed, ‘segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!’

•    14 January – The locomotive the Flying Scotsman makes its last scheduled run

•    18 January – Labour Leader Hugh Gaitskell dies

•    29 January – French President Charles de Gaulle vetoes the UK’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC)

FEBRUARY

•    11 February – The Beatles record their debut album ‘Please Please Me’ in a single session

•    14 February – Harold Wilson is elected Leader of the Labour Party

MARCH

•    4 March – In Paris, six people are sentenced to death for conspiring to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle pardons five of them, but the leader of the plot is executed by firing squad a few days later

•    21 March – The Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay closes. The last twenty-seven prisoners are transferred elsewhere on the orders of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy

•    27 March – Dr Beeching issues a report calling for huge cuts to the UK’s rail network

APRIL

•    6 April – Polaris Sales Agreement signed with the USA

•    9 April – Sir Winston Churchill becomes honorary citizen of the USA

•    12 April – Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth and others are arrested in a Birmingham, Alabama protest for ‘parading without a permit’

•    15 April – 70,000 marchers arrive in London from Aldermarston to demonstrate against nuclear weapons

•    16 April – Martin Luther King issues his Letter from Birmingham Jail

MAY

•    2 May – Thousands of African-Americans, many of them children, are arrested while protesting against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor later unleashes fire hoses and police dogs on the demonstrators

•    8 May – Dr No, the first James Bond film, is released in the USA

•    9 May – The Army of the Republic of Vietnam opens fire on Buddhists who defy a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag

•    11 May – Everton win the Football League Championship

•    15 May – Tottenham Hotspur win the European Cup Winners’ Cup by beating Athletico Madrid 5-1 in the final

•    25 May – Manchester United win the FA Cup by beating Leicester City 3-1 at Wembley

JUNE

•    5 June – War Minister John Profumo resigns from the government and Parliament

•    11 June – In Saigon, a Buddhist monk commits self-immolation in protest against the oppression of Buddhists by the government of Ngo Dinh Diem

•    11 June – Governor George C. Wallace stands in the door of the University of Alabama to protest against integration, before stepping aside and allowing African-Americans James Hood and Vivian Malone to enroll

•    11 June – President John F. Kennedy delivers an historic Civil Rights address, in which he promises a Civil Rights Bill

•    16 June – Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova is the first woman in space on board Vostok 6

•    21 June – Pope Paul VI succeeds Pope John XXIII as the 262nd pope

•    26 June – John F. Kennedy gives his ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech in West Berlin

JULY

•    7 July – Kim Philby is named as the ‘Third Man’ in the Burgess and Maclean spy ring. His defection to the Soviet Union is confirmed

•    12 July – Pauline Reade, 16, is abducted and murdered by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady in Manchester

•    30 July – The Soviet government announce that Kim Philby has been granted political asylum

AUGUST

•    5 August – The USA, UK and Soviet Union sign a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

•    8 August – The Great Train Robbery takes place at Cheddington, Buckinghamshire

•    18 August – American Civil Rights Movement: James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi

•    21 August – Cable 243: in the wake of the Xa Loi Pagoda raids, the Kennedy Administration orders the US Embassy in Saigon to explore alternative leadership in South Vietnam, opening the way for a coup against Diem

•    28 August – Martin Luther King delivers his ‘I have a dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

SEPTEMBER

•    5 September – Model Christine Keeler is arrested for perjury. On 6 December she is sentenced to nine months in prison

•    15 September – American Civil Rights Movement: The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama kills four and injures twenty-two

•    17 September – RAF Fylingdales, the ballistic missile early warning radar station on the North Yorkshire Moors, becomes operational

•    23 September –The Robbins Report on Higher Education is published; it recommends that university places should be available to all those who are qualified for them by ability and attainment

•    24 September – The US Senate ratifies the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

•    25 September – The Denning Report on the Profumo Affair is published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO)

OCTOBER

•    10 October – Prime Minister Harold Macmillan announces that he will resign as soon as a successor has been chosen

•    10 October – The second James Bond film, From Russia with Love, opens in London

•    19 October – Sir Alec Douglas Home succeeds Harold Macmillan as prime minister

NOVEMBER

•    2 November – South Vietnamese coup: South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated following a military coup

•    6 November – Vietnam War: coup leader General Duong Van Minh takes over as leader of South Vietnam

•    22 November – The Beatles’ second album, With The Beatles, is released

•    22 November – President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the thirty-sixth president

•    23 November – John Kilbride, 12, is abducted and murdered by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady in Manchester

•    23 November – The first episode of the BBC television series Doctor Who is broadcast

•    24 November – President Kennedy’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, is shot dead by Jack Ruby in Dallas, Texas on live national television

•    24 November – President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms that the USA intends to continue supporting South Vietnam militarily and economically

•    25 November – John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery

•    29 November – President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy

DECEMBER

•    3 December – The Warren Commission begins its investigation

•    21 December – Cyprus Emergency: inter-communal...