July 1963

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The following events occurred in July 1963:

July 1, 1963: The ZIP Code is introduced in the U.S.
July 19, 1963: Joe Walker flies X-15 jet into outer space on first airplane flight above 100 km altitude
July 26, 1963: Syncom 2 becomes first geosynchronous satellite

July 1, 1963 (Monday)

  • ZIP Codes were introduced in the United States, as the U.S. Department of the Post Office kicked off a massive advertising campaign that included the cartoon character "Mr. ZIP", and the mailing that day of more than 72,000,000 postcards to every mailing address in the United States, in order to inform the addressees of their new five digit postal code. Postal zones had been used since 1943 in large cities, but the ZIP code was nationwide. Use became mandatory in 1967 for bulk mailers.
  • Kim Philby was named by the Government of the United Kingdom as the 'Third Man' in the Burgess and Maclean Soviet spy ring.
  • The crash of a Varig DC-3 airliner in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state killed 15 of the 18 people on board. The flight was approaching the airport at Passo Fundo on the second-leg of a scheduled trip from Porto Alegre when it impacted trees.
  • Died: Abdullah bin Khalifa, 53, Sultan of Zanzibar since 1960, died two days after undergoing emergency surgery. He was succeeded by his son, Jamshid bin Abdullah, the last to hold the title.

July 2, 1963 (Tuesday)

July 3, 1963 (Wednesday)

July 4, 1963 (Thursday)

July 5, 1963 (Friday)

  • A delegation from the People's Republic of China, led by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, departed from Beijing on a train bound for Moscow, to attend talks in an effort to repair the poor relations between the Chinese Communists and Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The talks, intended to mend the Sino-Soviet split, would break down on July 14 when the Soviets published a rebuttal to Chinese charges that the Soviets had departed from the Communist ideology.
  • Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Leone received a vote of confidence in the Italian Senate, 133–110.
  • The U.S. Senate set a new record for briefest session by meeting at 9:00 am, and then adjourning three seconds later. There were only two Senators present for the meeting. The previous record for brevity had been a five-second meeting on September 4, 1951.
  • McDonnell Aircraft Corporation began the first phase of Spacecraft Systems Tests (SST) on the instrumentation pallets to be installed in Gemini spacecraft No. 1. The first engineering prototype Gemini inertial guidance system computer underwent integration and compatibility testing with a complete guidance and control system at McDonnell. All spacecraft wiring was found to be compatible with the computer, and the component operated with complete accuracy.
  • The sale of liquor, by the drink, was legal in the U.S. state of Iowa for the first time in more than 40 years, with "a restaurant in the lakes resort area in northwest Iowa" becoming the site of the first legal drink.

July 6, 1963 (Saturday)

  • The Roman Catholic Church relaxed the ban on cremation as a funeral practice, when Pope Paul VI issued the Instruction that "the burning of the body, after all, has no effect on the soul, nor does it inhibit Almighty God from re-establishing the body", although the decision would not be revealed until May 2, 1964.
  • The Vanoise National Park, located in the department of Savoie in the French Alps, was designated France's first National Park.
  • Elections were held in Jordan for the 80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies of the National Assembly. All of the candidates were independent, in that political parties were banned at the time, and the results, as with most of the elections in Jordan to that time, were "poorly documented" and not officially published.
  • A partial lunar eclipse took place.
  • Died: George, Duke of Mecklenburg, 63, head of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz since 1934. He was succeeded by his son Georg Alexander.

July 7, 1963 (Sunday)

  • In the first round of Argentina's presidential election, Dr. Arturo Illia won a 25 percent plurality of the popular votes (2,441,064) and 169 of the 476 Electoral College votes, seventy short of a majority. Another physician, Dr. Oscar Alende, finished with 16.4%, and former General Pedro Aramburu was third. On July 31, electors for several of the other parties would vote for Illia, giving him 270 electoral votes. Dr. Illia's Radical Civic Union (UCR) Party (UCR) won only 72 of the 192 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and Illia did not try to forge a coalition with the other parties.
  • Seven people, including four children, were killed, and 17 injured, when a pilotless FJ-4 Fury jet fighter crashed into gatherers at a family reunion at the Green Hills Day Camp in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The pilot had ejected after plane malfunctioned while he was attempting to land at the nearby Willow Grove Naval Air Station, and the jet crashed into a baseball field, killing one man, then skidded into a bathhouse where 50 people had been swimming or standing around the pool.
  • In a fight between South Vietnamese government police and U.S. reporters, secret police loyal to Ngô Đình Nhu, brother of President Ngô Đình Diệm, attacked American journalists including Peter Arnett and David Halberstam at a demonstration during the Buddhist crisis.
  • Died: Frank P. Lahm, 85, U.S. aviation pioneer who became, in 1909, the first military aviator after being selected by the U.S. Army to receive instruction on the Wright Flyer by Wilbur Wright

July 8, 1963 (Monday)

  • Three crewmen of the British cargo ship Patrician were killed after it collided with the U.S. ship Santa Emilia and sank off Gibraltar. Thirty-four of the 37 crew were rescued by Santa Emilia.
  • The British comic strip Fred Basset was introduced, starting with its first appearance in the Daily Mail. Created by Scottish cartoonist Alex Graham, the strip, about the adventures of a basset hound, is syndicated worldwide.
  • Members of the 1963 American Everest Expedition team were awarded the Hubbard Medal by U.S. President John F. Kennedy for their achievement.
  • McDonnell warned Gemini Project Office that the capacity of the Gemini Guidance Computer was in danger of being exceeded. The original function of the computer had been limited to providing rendezvous and reentry guidance. Other functions were subsequently added, and the computer's spare capacity no longer appeared adequate to handle all of them. McDonnell requested an immediate review of computer requirements. In the meantime, it advised International Business Machines to delete one of the added functions, orbital navigation, from computers for spacecraft Nos. 2 and 3.

July 9, 1963 (Tuesday)

July 10, 1963 (Wednesday)

  • Project Emily, the deployment of American-built PGM-17 Thor Intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the United Kingdom, was disbanded.
  • The brief partnership of "Rodgers and Lerner" was dissolved, and production of the first Rodgers-Lerner musical, I Picked a Daisy, was halted permanently. Composer Richard Rodgers had successfully collaborated with lyricist Lorenz Hart (Babes in Arms), and then with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (The Sound of Music), while lyricist Alan Jay Lerner had a successful team with composer Frederick Loewe (My Fair Lady). The two were unable to work together successfully beyond "half a dozen" songs for Daisy.
  • The all-white University of South Carolina was ordered to admit its first African-American student, Henri Monteith, by order of U.S. District Judge J. Robert Martin. On the same day, Judge Martin ordered the desegregation of all 26 of South Carolina's state parks.
  • A Vostok-2 rocket launched by the USSR failed shortly after take-off.
  • Coordination between NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in crewed space station studies was reported by a panel to be inadequate, especially at the technical level.

July 11, 1963 (Thursday)

July 12, 1963 (Friday)

July 13, 1963 (Saturday)

  • The Legislative Assembly of the Cook Islands voted unanimously to reject an offer by New Zealand to be granted independence, and chose instead to become a self-governing Associated State with its residents to remain New Zealand citizens.
  • The Pulau Senang prison riot took place at the experimental offshore penal colony in Singapore. Superintendent Daniel Dutton and several prison officers were murdered by inmates and the prison was burned to the ground.
  • In the Soviet Union, 33 of the 35 persons on Aeroflot Flight 012 were killed when the plane crashed as it was approaching a landing at the Irkutsk Airport in Siberia. The Tupolev Tu-104 had departed Beijing in China, bound for Moscow, with one scheduled stop in Irkutsk.
  • Bob Charles defeated Phil Rodgers in a 36-hole playoff to win the British Open. Charles became the first left-handed golfer to win one of golf's major championships.
  • The Roman Catholic Diocese of Santiago de Veraguas was erected.
  • Died: Blessed Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago, 44, first layperson in the history of the United States to be beatified. (cancer)

July 14, 1963 (Sunday)

July 15, 1963 (Monday)

July 16, 1963 (Tuesday)

  • The Peerage Act 1963 was approved by the House of Lords, 105 to 25. The change of rules, which received royal assent on July 31, cleared the way for hereditary peers within the House of Lords to disclaim their peerages in order to be allowed to run for and take a seat in the elected House of Commons. Tony Benn, who lost his seat in Commons in 1960 when he inherited the title of Viscount Stansgate and automatically became a member of the House of Lords, disqualified himself under the new law and successfully ran for office under in a by-election.
  • At Seattle, five men began a 30-day engineering test of life support systems for a crewed space station in The Boeing Company space chamber. Designed and built for NASA's Office of Advanced Research and Technology, the chamber was first in the U.S. to include all life-support equipment for a multi-person, long-duration space mission (including environmental control, waste disposal, and crew hygiene and food techniques). In addition to the life support equipment, a number of crew tests simulated specific problems of spaceflight. Five days into the 30-day test, however, the simulated mission was halted because of a faulty reactor tank.
  • Born:

July 17, 1963 (Wednesday)

  • For the first time in history, a U.S. federal court issued ordered a change in the size of the legislature of a U.S. state, decreasing the number of seats in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 120 to 100. The court also ordered a reapportionment of both the House and the state Senate on a strict population basis. The decision was the first to rely on the U.S. Supreme Court case of Baker v. Carr, decided on March 26, 1962, holding that federal courts could review state legislative apportionment.
  • Born: King Letsie III of Lesotho; as David Mohato Bereng Seeiso in Morija, Basutoland colony

July 18, 1963 (Thursday)

  • Colonel Jassem Alwan of the Syrian army, backed by financing from President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, led an attempt to overthrow the government of Syria in order to establish a pro-Nasser government that would reunite with the United Arab Republic. The coup attempt came only 30 minutes after President Lu'ay al-Atassi had departed from Damascus on an invitation from President Nasser for a meeting in Egypt. After Alwan seized the Damascus radio station and the Syrian Army headquarters, Interior Minister Amin al-Hafiz, "sub-machinegun in hand", directed the Ba'ath Party National Guard on a counterattack and regained control. Hundreds of people were killed in the battle; Alwan was able to escape, but 27 officers who had participated in the coup were executed by firing squad, marking an end of "the time-honoured tradition whereby losers were banished to embassies abroad". President Atassi would resign on July 27 in protest over the brutal treatment of the coup leaders.
  • Olympiacos F.C. won the final of the Greek Cup football competition, 3 to 0 over Pierikos.
  • Born: Marc Girardelli, Austrian Olympic alpine ski racer; in Lustenau

July 19, 1963 (Friday)

  • American test pilot Joseph A. Walker, flying the X-15, reached an altitude of 65.8 miles (105.9 km), achieving a sub-orbital spaceflight by recognized international standards (which define outer space as beginning 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth).
  • An artificial heart pump was placed inside a human being for the first time, at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas University of Houston by a team led by Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. The unidentified patient survived for four days before dying of complications from pneumonia.
  • A 25-pound (11 kg) bomb was dropped on downtown San Francisco, inadvertently, by a U.S. Navy Reserve pilot on a routine exercise flight. The unarmed bomb fell at the intersection of Market Street and Front Street, bounced over the eight-story tall IBM building and damaged another building three blocks away, but nobody was injured.
  • Died: Guy Scholefield, 86, New Zealand archivist who compiled the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography

July 20, 1963 (Saturday)

July 21, 1963 (Sunday)

July 22, 1963 (Monday)

  • Sarawak was granted conditional independence from the British Empire pending the establishment of the Federation of Malaysia.
  • World heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston retained his title in a rematch fight against former champion Floyd Patterson, whom he had defeated ten months earlier, on September 20, 1962. In the first bout, he knocked out Patterson in the first round in two minutes, six seconds. In the rematch at Las Vegas, Liston took four seconds longer.
  • Please Please Me became the first record album by The Beatles to be released in the United States. Vee Jay Records deleted two of the songs that had appeared on the British version introduced on March 22, including the title song, "Please Please Me".

July 23, 1963 (Tuesday)

July 24, 1963 (Wednesday)

  • John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. President, hosted a group of American high school students who were part of the Boys Nation event sponsored by the American Legion, including 16-year-old Bill Clinton, who would become the 42nd U.S. President in 1993. Clinton would later use a film clip of him shaking hands with Kennedy as part of his 1992 campaign.
  • Victor Marijnen became the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands, replacing Jan de Quay.
  • Born: Karl Malone, American NBA basketball forward, nicknamed "The Mailman" for his reliable delivery of scores, NBA Most Valuable Player 1997 and 1999; in Summerfield, Louisiana
  • Died: U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Hal Russell Crandall, 34, one of 12 finalists for the selection of NASA Astronaut Group 1 (the first U.S. astronauts, known as the "Mercury Seven"), was killed in the crash of his F-8 Crusader into Subic Bay in the Philippines. In 1959, Crandall had been one of the 32 finalists for the Mercury program, and remained after the group had been reduced to 27 and then 12 before seven were selected by NASA.

July 25, 1963 (Thursday)

July 26, 1963 (Friday)

July 27, 1963 (Saturday)

  • The computer science study of analysis of algorithms was initiated by the publication of "Notes on Open Addressing", by Donald Knuth.
  • Syria's Lu'ay al-Atassi, whom rebels loyal to the United Arab Republic had attempted to overthrow on July 18, resigned as both the Chairman of the Syrian Revolutionary Council, equivalent to the president of the Middle Eastern republic and as Commander in Chief of the Syrian Army, and was replaced in both jobs by the Deputy Premier, Major General Amin al-Hafiz, who was also Minister of Defense and Minister of the Interior. Although no explanation was given at the time for Atassi's sudden departure, a later account said that he quit because of Hafiz's order of execution of 27 of the rebels by firing squad. brutal treatment of the coup leaders.
  • Died:

July 28, 1963 (Sunday)

July 29, 1963 (Monday)

  • The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner published its copyrighted story, "Black Muslim Founder Exposed as a White", that W. D. Fard, who had started the black nationalist organization in 1930, had actually been a white man named Wallace Dodd. The Herald-Examiner story included photographs supplied by the FBI, but Fard's successors at the Nation of Islam denied the story as a hoax.
  • The Tu-124A prototype, SSSR-45075, made its first flight.
  • West Indies defeated England in the 4th Test (cricket) by 221 runs, at Headingley, Leeds.

July 30, 1963 (Tuesday)

  • The Soviet newspaper Izvestia, and Radio Moscow, reported that Kim Philby, a double agent who had been spying for the Soviets while employed by Britain's MI5 spy agency, had been given asylum in Moscow. Philby had disappeared on January 23.
  • Maxime A. Faget, Engineering and Development Director for MSC's Space Vehicle Design Branch, enlisted North American Aviation to study modifications to the basic Apollo spacecraft that would extend its capabilities to function in orbit for a mission of up to 100 days— more than three months— without resupply. Faget's objective was a space laboratory for a three-person crew, with an orbital altitude of from 160 kilometres (99 mi) to 480 kilometres (300 mi), and of low enough weight to be launched on a Saturn IB rocket. Two separate vehicles were under consideration, an Apollo command module and a command module and separate mission module to be used as living quarters. The longest of the Apollo missions would be the final one, Apollo 17, which would last for a little more than 12 and one-half days.
  • Born: Lisa Kudrow, American TV actress and Emmy Award winner for portraying Phoebe on the TV series Friends; in Encino, California
  • Died: Patrick J. Hurley, 80, U.S. Secretary of War 1929–1933

July 31, 1963 (Wednesday)


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