July 1963

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 US, 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.^[1] Postal zones had been used since 1943 in large cities, but the ZIP code was nationwide. Use became mandatory in 1967 for bulk mailers.^[2]
• Kim Philby was named by the Government of the United Kingdom as the 'Third Man' in the Burgess and Maclean Soviet spy ring.^[3]
• Died: Abdullah bin Khalifa, 53, Sultan of Zanzibar; he was succeeded by his son, Jamshid bin Abdullah, the last to hold the title.

July 2, 1963 (Tuesday)[]

• Mohawk Airlines Flight 121, a Martin 4-0-4, crashed on takeoff into a heavy thunderstorm at Rochester, New York, in the United States, killing seven of the 43 people on board and injuring all 36 survivors.^[4]
• Brian Sternberg, the world record holder for the pole vault, broke his neck after falling from a trampoline, and was left a quadriplegic.^[5]
• Baseball pitchers Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants, and Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves faced off against each other in a National League baseball game that one author would later call "the greatest game ever pitched".^[6] Tied 0-0 after nine innings, the game was won in the 16th by the Giants on a home run by Willie Mays.^[7]
• Liberace and Barbra Streisand open a run of shows at the Riviera in Las Vegas, Nevada.
• While visiting East Berlin, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev endorsed the idea for the first time of a treaty to ban atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.^[8]
• The 13th Berlin International Film Festival concluded. The Golden Bear was jointly awarded to Il diavolo by Gian Luigi Polidoro and Bushidô zankoku monogatari by Tadashi Imai.
• Died: Alicia Patterson, American editor and publisher who founded the newspaper Newsday in 1940

July 3, 1963 (Wednesday)[]

• National Airways Corporation Flight 441, a Douglas DC-3C, flew into a vertical rock face in New Zealand's Kaimai Ranges near Mount Ngatamahinerua, killing all 23 people on board.^[9]
• The 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, turning point of the American Civil War, was celebrated with a re-enactment of Pickett's charge.^[10]
• Died: Povl Baumann, 74, Danish architect

July 4, 1963 (Thursday)[]

• The Constitution of Austria was amended to ease the 1919 act that had declared that "In the interest of the security of the Republic the former holders of the Crown and other members of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen are banished from the country", providing an exception for descendants of the former monarchs if they elected to "expressly renounce their membership of this House".^[11]
• Born:
  • Christopher G. Kennedy, U.S. businessman, in Boston, to Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, the eighth of their eleven children
  • Ute Lemper, German singer and actress, in Münster
  • Jan Mølby, Danish footballer, in Kolding
• Died: Bernard Freyberg, 74, Governor-General of New Zealand 1946–1952

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.^[12] 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.^[13]
• Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Leone received a vote of confidence in the Italian Senate, 133–110.^[14]
• The sale of liquor, by the drink, was legal in 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.^[15]
• 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.^[16]

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 was not revealed until May 2, 1964.^[17]
• The Vanoise National Park, located in the department of Savoie in the French Alps, was designated France's first National Park.^[18]
• 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.^[19]
• A partial lunar eclipse took place.^[20]
• 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.^[21] 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.^[22]
• Double Seven Day scuffle: 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.
• 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 a 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.^[23]
• 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)[]

• The British comic strip Fred Basset was introduced, starting with its first appearance in the Daily Mail.^[24] 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.^[25]
• The British cargo ship Patrician collided with the US ship Santa Emilia and sank off Gibraltar. Thirty-four of the 37 crew were rescued by Santa Emilia, with three reported as missing.^[26]

July 9, 1963 (Tuesday)[]

• The 20-point agreement, submitted by North Borneo, was signed by the UK government and representatives of Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore in the run-up to the creation of the Federation of Malaysia.^[27]

July 10, 1963 (Wednesday)[]

• 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.^[28]
• A Vostok-2 launched by the USSR failed shortly after take-off.
• Project Emily, the deployment of American-built PGM-17 Thor Intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the United Kingdom, was disbanded.
• 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.^[29]

July 11, 1963 (Thursday)[]

• Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy, President of Ecuador, was ousted by a military coup, and succeeded by naval commander Ramón Castro Jijón. After surrendering the presidential palace, Arosemena was placed on an Ecuadorian Air Force plane and flown to Panama.^[30] The "final straw" for the coup leaders had been a state dinner the night before, "when the obviously inebriated president made disparaging remarks about the United States" while talking to the American ambassador.^[31]
• In South Africa, 19 ANC and MK leaders, including Arthur Goldreich and Walter Sisulu, were arrested at Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, the headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe.^[32]
• The Argentine ferry Ciudad de Asunción caught fire and sank in the River Plate between Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Uruguay.^[33] At least 53 of the 420 people on board were killed.^[34]
• Born: Al MacInnis, Canadian NHL defenceman who played in 1,416 games from 1982 to 2003; in Port Hood, Nova Scotia

July 12, 1963 (Friday)[]

• The first "Gambit" military reconnaissance satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:44 p.m., and the film recovered proved it to be a major advancement in observation. The new system had "exceptional pointing accuracy" in aiming its cameras, and the pictures obtained had a resolution of 3.5 feet.^[35]
• Pauline Reade, 16, was abducted and murdered by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady in Manchester, England, in the first of the "Moors murders". Reade's remains would not be discovered until July 1, 1987.^[36]
• The Congress of the Philippines approved a land reform program that had been proposed by President Diosdado Macapagal. Among other things, the law outlawed sharecropping and provided for a means of large estates to be gradually turned over to the persons who farmed them.^[37]
• Died: Slatan Dudow, 60, Bulgarian film director and screenwriter

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.^[38]
• The Roman Catholic Diocese of Santiago de Veraguas was erected.
• A major riot took place at the Pulau Senang prison in Singapore. Superintendent Daniel Dutton and several prison officers were murdered by inmates and the prison was burned to the ground.^[39]
• 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.
• Died: Blessed Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Santiago, 44, first layperson in the history of the United States to be beatified.^[40] (cancer)

July 14, 1963 (Sunday)[]

• U.S. Undersecretary of State W. Averell Harriman arrived in Moscow in order to negotiate the nuclear test ban treaty, and brought with him three tons of American telephone and telex equipment to set up the Moscow–Washington hotline agreed upon by the Americans and Soviets on June 20.^[41]
• France's Jacques Anquetil won the 50th Tour de France.
• Died: Sivananda Saraswati, 75, Hindu spiritual leader

July 15, 1963 (Monday)[]

• The Kingdom of Tonga issued the first round postage stamps in history.^[42] The stamps (which were also the first to be made of gold foil rather than paper)^[43] were designed to commemorate the first gold coins in Polynesia.
• Born: Brigitte Nielsen, Danish model and actress, in Rødovre
• Died: Rear Admiral Gilbert Jonathan Rowcliff, 81, U.S. Navy officer and former Judge Advocate General of the Navy

July 16, 1963 (Tuesday)[]

• The Peerage Act 1963 was approved by the House of Lords, 105-25.^[44]
• Tom Cornell and Chris Kearns led the first protest against the Vietnam War.
• Born:
  • Paul Hipp, American actor and musician, in Philadelphia
  • Phoebe Cates, American actress, in New York City
  • Norman Cook ("Fatboy Slim"), English musician, as Quentin Leo Cook, in Bromley
  • Srečko Katanec, Slovenian football player and manager, in Ljubljana

July 17, 1963 (Wednesday)[]

• The final launch was made from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 21.
• 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. 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".^[45]
• The final of the Greek Cup football competition was won by Olympiacos F.C..
• Born: Marc Girardelli, Austrian alpine ski racer, in Lustenau

July 19, 1963 (Friday)[]

• American test pilot Joe Walker, flying the X-15, reached an altitude of 65.8 miles (105.9 kilometers), achieving a sub-orbital spaceflight by recognized international standards (which define outer space as beginning 100 kilometers above the Earth).^[46]
• 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.^[47]
• A 25-pound 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.^[48]
• Died: Guy Scholefield, 86, New Zealand archivist who compiled the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography

July 20, 1963 (Saturday)[]

• For the first time since June 30, 1954, a total solar eclipse was visible from North America, and was "the most scientifically observed eclipse in history" up to that time". A chartered DC-8 jet airplane flew a group of astronomers along the path of the eclipse so that the totality could be observed for 44 seconds longer than for persons on the ground.^[49] The point of greatest eclipse was in Canada's Northwest Territory, near its border with Alberta.
• An attempt to reconcile the differences between the Soviet Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party ended in failure, after more than a week of conferences in Moscow.^[50]
• The first Yaoundé Convention was signed in the capital of Cameroon by 18 African nations that had gained independence relatively recently, and would take effect on June 1, 1964 and be operative for five years. Parties to the agreement were Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), the Republic of the Congo (Leopoldville), Dahomey, Gabon, the Ivory Coast, the Malagasy Republic, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Togo, and Upper Volta. After the expiration on May 31, 1969, a new convention would be signed at Yaoundé on July 29 of that year.^[51]
• The 1963 U.S. Women's Open was won by Mary Mills.
• The International Trot harness racing event on Long Island was won by Su Mac Lad, bringing his career winnings to $687,549, the most of any pacer or trotter as of that date.^[52]

July 21, 1963 (Sunday)[]

• The Bermudan bulk carrier Tritonica collided with the British ship Roonagh Head and sank in the St Lawrence River 55 nautical miles (102 km) from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Thirty-three crew were lost.^[53][54]

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.^[55]
• 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".^[56]

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.^[57]
• Victor Marijnen became the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands, replacing Jan de Quay.
• Born: Karl Malone, American NBA basketball player nicknamed "The Mailman", 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").^[58] Lieutenant Commander Crandall 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,^[59] and remained after the group had been reduced to 27 and then 12 before seven were selected by NASA.

July 25, 1963 (Thursday)[]

• Representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union initialed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the first agreement ever for the banning of nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, U.S. Undersecretary of State W. Averell Harriman, and the British Minister of Science, Lord Hailsham, gave their tentative approval at the Spiridonovka Palace in Moscow, in advance of the formal signing.^[60]
• South Korea introduced the Order of Diplomatic Service Merit for meritorious service to the extension of national prestige overseas and to the promotion of friendship with other nations.^[61]
• Died: Ugo Cerletti, 85, Italian neurologist and pioneer of electroconvulsive therapy in psychiatry.

July 26, 1963 (Friday)[]

• NASA launched Syncom 2, the world's first geostationary (synchronous) satellite. Synchronization would be achieved eight days later, on August 3, with Syncom 2 reaching a point 22,500 miles above Brazil, and then moving at 6,880 miles per hour in order to keep pace with the Earth's equatorial rotational movement of 1,040 miles per hour.^[62]
• An earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia (now in North Macedonia) killed 1,800 people. The earthquake struck at 5:17 a.m. local time.^[63]

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. "Analysis of Algorithms (AOFA).^[64]
• Died:
  • Garrett Morgan, 86, African-American inventor
  • Vasile Luca, 65, former Romanian Vice-Premier who had been imprisoned since 1952 following his purge from the Romanian Communist Party Politburo.

July 28, 1963 (Sunday)[]

• United Arab Airlines Flight 869, a de Havilland Comet 4C, crashed into the Arabian Sea on approach to Bombay-Santa Cruz Airport in Mumbai, India, in heavy rain and turbulence, killing all 63 people on board. Among the dead were 26 Boy Scouts from the Philippines on their way to the 11th World Scout Jamboree in Greece. The early morning accident happened at 1:50 a.m., local time (2020 on July 27 GMT).^[65] On July 19, 1962, another UAA Flight 869, also a de Havilland Comet 4C, had crashed on its approach to Bangkok, killing all 26 people on board.^[66]
• Fernando Belaúnde Terry was inaugurated as President of Peru. The former architect succeeded General Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who transferred power to the civilian government after elections were held. Belaúnde would be overthrown in a military coup on October 3, 1968, but would be elected President again in 1980, serving until 1985.^[67]
• Three days after the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was initialed in Moscow, the Soviet Defense Minister, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, published an announcement in Red Star and in Pravda, indicating the military's opposition to Premier Khrushchev's treaty with the "imperialist camp".^[68]
• George F. Kennan resigned as United States Ambassador to Yugoslavia because of the worsening state of relations between the two countries.^[69]
• Died: Carl F. W. Borgward, 72, German engineer and automobile manufacturer

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.^[70]
• 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.^[71]

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.^[72]
• Born: Lisa Kudrow, American actress, in Encino, California
• Died: Patrick J. Hurley, 80, U.S. Secretary of War 1929–1933

July 31, 1963 (Wednesday)[]

• The Peerage Act 1963 received royal assent in the United Kingdom, opening membership in the House of Lords to women, and to more than the 16 members of the peerage of Scotland. In addition, the Act allowed an hereditary peer to disclaim his automatic membership among the Lords, which would clear the way for Alec Douglas-Home to become a member of the House of Commons, then Prime Minister.^[44]
• The Tupamaros (officially, the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional or MLN), a terrorist organization seeking to overthrow the government of Uruguay and to rid the South American nation of American and Brazilian businesses, carried out their first attack, striking at a gun club in Montevideo.^[73]
• The Manila Accord of the Diosdado Macapagal initiative was signed by the Federation of Malaya, the Republic of Indonesia and the Republic of the Philippines.^[74]
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 180 was adopted, calling upon Portugal to recognize the right of the peoples of its colonial empire to self-determination and independence.^[75] The United Kingdom, the United States and France, three of the five permanent members of the Council, abstained.^[76]
• Paul Foytack of the California Angels became the first Major League Baseball pitcher to surrender four consecutive home runs, during the sixth inning of a 9-5 loss to the Cleveland Indians. Only one other player accomplished the feat, when Chase Wright of the New York Yankees gave up four homers in a row in a 7-6 loss to the Boston Red Sox on April 22, 2007.^[77]
• Dr. Arturo Illia was formally elected as President of Argentina by that nation's electoral college, receiving 261 of the 576 votes. Minutes later, former President Arturo Frondizi was released by the military government that had deposed him on March 29, 1962. Dr. Illia would be inaugurated on October 12.^[78]

References[]