March 1960

March 1, 1960 (Tuesday)

• NASA established an Office of Life Sciences to work on exobiology, based on Dr. Joshua Lederberg's ideas that space vehicles should be sterilized before and after their missions in order to prevent the possibility of contamination of outer space or of the Earth by microbes.

  March 2, 1960 (Wednesday)

• During a visit to Montevideo, the President of the United States was among the people who fell victim to tear gas, used by the Uruguayan police to disperse rioting university students. Dwight D. Eisenhower and his host, newly inaugurated Uruguayan President Benito Nardone, could be seen rubbing their eyes as their motorcade passed shortly after the gas was used.
• Lufthansa, the German national airline, entered the jet age with the flight of its first.
• Born: Hector Calma Filipino basketball player, in Manila
• Died: Stanisław Taczak, 85, Polish General

  March 3, 1960 (Thursday)

• Pope John XXIII elevated seven bishops to the College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, bringing the number of members to a record of 85. Laurean Rugambwa of Tanganyika became the first Black cardinal, while Peter Tatsuo Doi and Rufino Santos were the first cardinals from Japan and the Philippines, respectively.
• Lucille Ball filed for a divorce from Desi Arnaz. Television's Lucy and Ricky had filmed their last show together three weeks earlier. While I Love Lucy had ended in 1957, the couple had appeared later in 13 one-hour specials airing under the title The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour. The final episode would air on April 1.
• After 28 years as a nationally known radio political commentator, Walter Winchell left the airwaves, making his final broadcast on the Mutual network.

  March 4, 1960 (Friday)

• At 3:10 pm, the French cargo ship La Coubre, carrying 70 tons of munitions from Belgium, exploded in Havana Harbor while it was being unloaded. A second explosion happened while aid was being rendered. Seventy-six people were killed, all but six of them bystanders, and more than 200 were injured.
• Born:
• *John Mugabi, Ugandan boxer, and WBC World Junior Middleweight champion, 1989–90, in Kampala
• *Mykelti Williamson, American actor, as Michael T. Williamson in St. Louis.
• Died: American opera singer Leonard Warren, 48, suffered a heart attack while performing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

  March 5, 1960 (Saturday)

• The iconic image of Che Guevara was taken by photographer Alberto Korda, who was on assignment from the Cuban government newspaper Revolucion to cover a protest rally the day after the explosion of the freighter La Coubre. The photo attained worldwide popularity in 1968 after Korda gave a copy to Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.
• Staff Sergeant Elvis Presley was honorably discharged from active service in the United States Army, nearly two years after being drafted into the service on March 24, 1958. After departing from Fort Dix in New Jersey, Presley remained in the U.S. Army reserve for four additional years until completing his military obligations.
• The Gao-Guenie meteorite, weighing more than one ton, landed near the village of Gao in the African nation of Upper Volta. The sound of the impact was heard 100 km away.

  March 6, 1960 (Sunday)

• Four Russian soldiers who had been adrift in the Pacific Ocean since January 17, were rescued after a 49-day search. The American aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kearsarge picked up the four men—Sgt. Viktor Zygonschi, and his men, Antony Kruckhowske, Filip Poplavski, and Feodor Ivan—who had survived seven weeks.
• President Eisenhower announced that 3,500 American troops would be posted to South Vietnam.
• President Sukarno of Indonesia dissolved that nation's elected parliament. The legislature would be replaced later that month by a body appointed by Sukarno himself.
• The Food Additives Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act took effect. Prior to the amendment, there was no requirement for government approval of additives to food sold in the United States.

  March 7, 1960 (Monday)

• The 14,000 member Screen Actors Guild called a strike for the first time in its history, bringing to a halt the filming of eight major motion pictures and several minor ones.
• The first 20 Soviet cosmonauts were selected in preparation for manned spaceflight.
• Born:
• *Ivan Lendl, Czech pro tennis player, in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia
• *Joe Carter, American MLB outfielder, in Oklahoma City

  March 8, 1960 (Tuesday)

• The New Hampshire primary, first of the nominating primary elections, saw U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy win the state's Democratic Party delegates, and U.S. Vice-President Richard M. Nixon win on the Republican ticket, each with a record number of registered voters from their parties. Other major candidates had declined to participate in New Hampshire. Kennedy defeated Chicago businessman Paul Fisher, 42,969 to 6,784 and Nixon's 65,077 votes were matched by write-ins for four candidates, including 8,428 for New Hampshire Governor Wesley Powell.

  March 9, 1960 (Wednesday)

• The Scribner shunt, a flexible Teflon tube that could be permanently implanted to connect an artery to a vein, was first implanted into a human patient. For the first time, persons with kidney failure could receive dialysis on a regular basis. Prior to the shunt's invention by Dr. Belding H. Scribner, glass tubes had to be inserted into blood vessels every time that dialysis was given. As one observer noted, "Scribner took something that was 100% fatal and overnight turned it into a condition with a 90% survival." The historic operation took place at the University of Washington hospital, and 39-year-old machinist Clyde Shields was the first beneficiary. At the same time, a new issue in bioethics was created, since decisions had to be made about which patients would be selected to receive the lifesaving treatment.
• The journal Physical Review Letters received the paper "Apparent Weight of Photons" from physicists Robert V. Pound and Glen A. Rebka, Jr., reporting the first successful laboratory measurement of the gravitational redshift of light, described later as a key event in proving the theory of general relativity.
• Died:
• *U.S. Senator Richard L. Neuberger, 47. Senator Neuberger was in the final year of his first term. His widow, Maurine Neuberger, had only two days to file as a candidate in the Democratic primary, and was elected as U.S. Senator in 1960, serving until 1967.
• *Jack Beattie, 75, Northern Ireland Labour Party leader, 1929–33 and 1942–43

  March 10, 1960 (Thursday)

• The first mitral valve replacement was performed on a 16-year-old girl, who had implanted in her a prosthesis, made of polyurethane and Dacron, and designed by Drs. Nina Braunwald and Andrew Morrow. The girl survived the operation, but died 60 hours later. The next day, a 44-year-old woman received the valve and made a full recovery eight weeks later.
• The first implantation of the caged ball heart valve, developed by Drs. Dwight E. Harken and William C. Birtwell, was made on Mary Richardson, who survived for 30 years after the surgery.
• Eight persons were pulled alive from the rubble of Agadir, ten days after the deadly earthquake that had killed 12,000 people in Morocco.

  March 11, 1960 (Friday)

• At five seconds after 8:00 a.m., EST, Pioneer V was launched from Cape Canaveral as the third man-made object to become a "planetoid" in solar orbit. Unlike the Soviet and American probes launched previously, Pioneer V would orbit between the Earth and Venus.
• Died: Roy Chapman Andrews, 76, American explorer, adventurer and naturalist

  March 12, 1960 (Saturday)

• At the age of 21, Prince Constantine Bereng Seeiso of Basutoland formally became the Paramount Chief, and, upon the African nation's independence from the United Kingdom in 1966, King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho. He reigned until his death in an auto accident in 1996.

  March 13, 1960 (Sunday)

• Author Ian Fleming was a dinner guest at the home of future American President John F. Kennedy, and described to the assemblage some humorous suggestions for how James Bond would get rid of Fidel Castro, including causing Castro's beard to fall out. CIA official John Bross, another dinner guest, called agency director Allen Dulles afterward and reported Fleming's "ideas", some of which were tried later.
• A total lunar eclipse afforded astrophysicist Richard W. Shorthill the opportunity to make the first infrared pyrometric scans of the lunar surface, and led to his discovery of the first lunar "hot spot" observed from Earth. Shorthill found that the temperature of the floor of the Tycho crater was 216° Kelvin, significantly higher than the 160°K in the area around the crater.
• Born:
• *Adam Clayton, Irish rock bassist, in Chinnor, Oxfordshire, England
• *Joe Ranft, American animator and Pixar voice actor, in Pasadena

  March 14, 1960 (Monday)

• West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer met with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, the first time a German leader had conferred with a leader of the Jewish state. Two weeks earlier, the two countries had secretly negotiated German financial and military aid to Israel.
• Richard Bissell, who oversaw the CIA's U-2 spy plane program, was warned by his aide, USAF Col. William Burke, that the Soviets had developed the missile capability to shoot down the high altitude U-2. Nevertheless, the spy flights continued, and on May 1, 1960, a U-2 would be downed in Soviet territory.
• Born:
• *Kirby Puckett, Minnesota Twins infielder, Baseball Hall of Famer, in Chicago; ;
• *Fateh Kamel, al-Qaida terrorist leader, in El Harrach, Algeria.

  March 15, 1960 (Tuesday)

• Government forces in Masan, South Korea, arrested students protesting against rigged elections. Although President Syngman Rhee's re-election to a fourth term had been ensured when his opponent died of an illness, separate elections for Vice-President would determine the 85-year-old Rhee's successor. With the aid of government measures, including the stuffing of ballot boxes, Rhee's running mate, Lee Ki Poong, officially received 79.2% of the votes in what was expected to be a close race against opponent Chang Myun. Over the next weeks, students in other cities followed the example of Masan, and Rhee was forced to resign.
• Police in Orangeburg, South Carolina arrested 389 African-American protesters who had converged upon the town's lunch counters at the noon hour. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, 77 students were arrested after beginning sit-ins at government offices.

  March 16, 1960 (Wednesday)

• Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan Africanist Congress, gave advance notice to South Africa's police commissioner that, beginning on March 21, the PAC would stage five days of non-violent protests against national laws that required all black South Africans to carry passes. What was intended as a peaceful demonstration would become the Sharpeville Massacre.
• At a cave in Starved Rock State Park near Ottawa, Illinois, the bodies of three women were found. All three, residents of Riverside, Illinois, and the wealthy wives of Chicago business executives, had been beaten to death two days before, during an afternoon of birdwatching. A dishwasher at the park later confessed to killing the women after attempting to rob them. Chester Weger, convicted of the murder, was sentenced to life imprisonment, and was denied parole as recently as December 2009.

  March 17, 1960 (Thursday)

• Northwest Airlines Flight 710 crashed, killing all 63 persons on board. The wings fell off of the Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop airplane at an altitude of 18,000 feet while the flight was en route from Chicago to Miami, and crashed into a soybean field near Cannelton, Indiana at, leaving a crater.
• Following a 2:30 meeting at the White House with Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell of the CIA, President Eisenhower authorized the agency to train and equip Cuban exiles to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro, an operation which would become, in 1961, the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
• Sculptor Jean Tinguely introduced the first piece of "autodestructive art" at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Homage to New York, composed of bicycle wheels and motors, was activated at and destroyed itself within an hour.

  March 18, 1960 (Friday)

• The "Snark missile" began its brief service as a nuclear tipped American ICBM. Designed by Northrop and named after the Lewis Carroll poem, "The Hunting of the Snark", the 30 missiles were deployed at Presque Isle Air Force Base in Maine as part of the 702d Strategic Missile Wing. Fifteen months later, the Snarks were declared to be obsolete, and deactivated by order of President Kennedy.

  March 19, 1960 (Saturday)

• In parliamentary elections in Ceylon, the Ceylon Democratic Party headed by Prime Minister Wijayananda Dahanayake was voted out of its majority. The United National Party of Ceylon formed a new government, and Dudley Senanayake became the new Premier.
• A portion of the Great Wall of China was opened for visitors after repairs that had first been suggested in 1952 by Guo Moruo, an official in the Communist Chinese government. The section near Badaling was originally set aside for visits by foreign diplomats, and its first guest was Nepal's Foreign Minister. In 1972, television viewers in the West would see the wall at Badaling during a visit by President Nixon of the United States, and the area is now open to tourists.
• Ohio State University won the NCAA basketball championship by upsetting the defending champion, the University of California, 75–55.
• The University of Denver won the 1960 NCAA ice hockey championship, 5–3 over Michigan Tech, after John MacMillan scored two goals in the final 63 seconds of the game.
• Dallas Rangers general manager Tex Schramm announced that the new NFL team was going to change its name to avoid a conflict with the minor league baseball team of the same name. "It seems Dallas is becoming big league in baseball as well as in football", Schram said, "and since both 'Rangers' will be around here for a long time, and since the baseball club had the name first, we're changing ours." The new name selected was the Dallas Cowboys.

  March 20, 1960 (Sunday)

• LeRoy Collins, the Governor of Florida, surprised the state and the rest of the world in a televised speech. Though he had been a defender of Florida's segregation laws, Governor Collins endorsed the goal of sit-in demonstrations to allow African-Americans to eat at lunch counters. "People have told me that our racial strife could be eliminated if the colored people would just stay in their place," said the Governor, "but friends, we can never stop Americans from struggling to be free."
• The Soviet Union's Council of Ministers adopted Resolution 241, directing urgent government funding for the oil exploration in western Siberia.
• Born: Norm Magnusson, American artist, founder of "funism"

  March 21, 1960 (Monday)

• The Sharpeville Massacre began at 1:20 p.m. when white police at the South African township of Sharpeville fired their guns into a crowd of unarmed black protesters, killing 69 people and wounding 180. Subsequent investigations would determine that two policemen had fired their guns, and that 50 others then began shooting into the crowd as they fled. Within 40 seconds, 705 rounds were fired. Of 155 bullets extracted from the dead and wounded, only 30 were frontal entry wounds. Most of the victims had been shot in the back as they ran. Of the dead, 31 were women, and 19 were children. Since the end of white minority rule, South Africa observes Human Rights Day annually on March 21.
• In Buenos Aires, Ricardo Klement brought a bouquet of flowers to his wife at their home at 16 Garibaldi Street, confirming to Mossad agents that the Argentine businessman was, as they suspected, Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The Israeli intelligence service was aware that Eichmann had married on March 21, 1935, while Eichmann was unaware that he had been found after 15 years on the run. The architect of Germany's "Final Solution" genocide, Eichmann eluded capture after the end of World War II. In May, he would be abducted and brought to Israel to stand trial.
• Born: Ayrton Senna, Brazilian race car driver, three time Formula One champion, in São Paulo; killed at 1994 San Marino Grand Prix
• Died: Polly Thomson, 75; after the death of Anne Sullivan in 1936, Thomson served as the interpreter for Helen Keller

  March 22, 1960 (Tuesday)

• Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles H. Townes of Bell Labs received U.S. patent No. 2,929,922 for an optical maser, now more commonly referred to as the laser. Other scientists, including Gordon Gould, were working on their own discoveries for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation", and legal battles between Gould and Bell Labs continued for 28 years.
• Died: José Antonio Aguirre, 56, leader-in-exile of the Basque people of Spain

  March 23, 1960 (Wednesday)

• The city of La Mirada, California, was incorporated as "Mirada Hills"
• Born: Nicol Stephen, Leader of Scottish Liberal Democrats, 2005–2008, in Aberdeen
• Died:
• *Franklin P. Adams, 78, American humorist and newspaper columnist who was universally known as "FPA"
• *Said Nursî, 81, Islamic philosopher
• *Marty Dalton, 91, inmate of the Rhode Island State Prison in Cranston, Rhode Island, since 1897. Dalton had refused parole in 1930 after serving 33 years for the killing of a New York businessman, and after a two-hour tour of the outside world, asked to stay because the prison was his only home.

  March 24, 1960 (Thursday)

• The Tupolev Tu-124 jet airliner, first ever to be powered by turbofans, made its first flight, at the test grounds in the Soviet Russian city of Zhukovsky. The Tu-124s were then manufactured in Kharkov, and were primarily used by Aeroflot and other Communist-bloc airlines.
• Born: Nena, German singer, as Gabriele Susanne Kerner, in Hagen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, West Germany

  March 25, 1960 (Friday)

• The severed head of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1653 to 1658, was reburied in an undisclosed location at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge after 300 years. Cromwell's body had been unearthed after his death in 1659, with the head displayed on a spike and the rest of the corpse dumped in the sea. After being passed among several owners, the head had been kept by several generations of a family since 1815.
• The Euromast, a 101 m structure designed by Hugh Maaskant, was dedicated in Rotterdam by Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands.

  March 26, 1960 (Saturday)

• At the 12-hour endurance event at Sebring, Florida, race car driver Jim Hughes lost control of his car 23 minutes after the start, and his car rolled over onto George Thompson, a photographer for the Tampa Tribune. Both men were killed. The race was won by Olivier Gendebien, who had alternated with Hans Hermann.
• The Minneapolis Lakers played their last NBA game, losing in Game 7 of the Western Conference playoffs, 97–86, to the St. Louis Hawks. The Lakers would move to Los Angeles during the off-season.
• Various Ku Klux Klan groups burned crosses along highways in Alabama and South Carolina, apparently in retaliation for sit-ins by African-Americans at lunch counters.
• Born:
• *Marcus Allen, American NFL player, Hall of Famer; in San Diego
• *Jennifer Grey, American film and television actress, known for Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Dirty Dancing, and later for Dancing with the Stars; in Manhattan
• Died:
• *Dr. Emil Herman Grubbe, 85, the first person to be injured by radiation. After following Roentgen's work in x-rays in 1895, Grubbe underwent 93 operations for radiation-induced cancer on his hands and face
• *Ian Keith, 61, American actor

  March 27, 1960 (Sunday)

• Four students at St. Mary's University, Texas-Orion Knox, Jr., Al Brandt, Preston Knodell and Jo Cantu—discovered the Natural Bridge Caverns in Comal County, Texas. As the largest known cave system in that state, the caverns are now a tourist attraction.
• The last regularly scheduled service in America, of a passenger train powered by a steam engine, took place when Grand Trunk Western Railroad ran a steam locomotive for the last time, on a route between Detroit and Durand, Michigan.
• Born: Hans Pflügler, German National Team footballer, in Freising

  March 28, 1960 (Monday)

• Died: Russell V. Mack, U.S. Representative from Washington's 3rd congressional district, collapsed and died on the floor of the House of Representatives, apparently of a cerebral hemorrhage. The House had been completing a call for a quorum when Mack fell backward and struck his head on a seat. Three U.S. representatives who were also physicians-Thomas E. Morgan, Dale Alford, and Walter Judd attempted to render aid. Attending Physician of the United States Congress, Dr. George W. Calver, pronounced Mack dead a few minutes later.

  March 29, 1960 (Tuesday)

• The New York Times ran a full page advertisement on page L25, with the heading "Heed Their Rising Voices". Part of the ad referred to disturbances in Montgomery, Alabama and described actions by that city's police. One of the three City Commissioners of Montgomery, L.B. Sullivan, would bring a suit against the Times for libel and get a $500,000 judgment in an Alabama court. From the controversy came a landmark United States Supreme Court ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254.
• Dr. Melvin Cook received the first patent for a water-based explosive product. Water gel, slurry, and emulsion explosives are less sensitive to impact and shock and safer than dynamite, and are primarily used in industrial applications.

  March 30, 1960 (Wednesday)

• A state of emergency was proclaimed in South Africa by Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd at, nine days after the Sharpeville Massacre, and the government began arresting dissidents. On the same day, thirty thousand black South Africans marched through Cape Town in protest of the pass laws, the massacre, and the arrest of black leaders.
• In the United States, five thousand black Americans marched through Baton Rouge, the state capital of Louisiana, in protest over discrimination at lunch counters and arrests of protesters by the police.
• Died: Jamil Mardam Bey, 65, former Prime Minister of Syria

  March 31, 1960 (Thursday)

• Several hundred political prisoners, incarcerated since the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, were released as part of the second amnesty of the Kadar regime, including playwright Gyula Háy and novelist Tibor Dery.