The United States launched the first
weather satellite, the 270-pound (120 kg)
TIROS-1, from
Cape Canaveral at 6:40 a.m. EST. The name was an acronym for Television Infra-Red Observation Satellite.[1][2] The same evening, satellite weather photos were introduced to the world, on television, for the first time. Taken from an altitude of 450 miles (720 km), the pictures of cloud cover confirmed the spiral pattern of winds in a storm.[3]
R Griggs & Co. began the production of
Dr. Martens boots under licence in the UK. Known as style 1460, the original product is still in production today.[4][5]
Sikiru Kayode Adetona was crowned as Ogbagba Anikilaya II, the Awujale of Ijebuland. As of 2012, Adetona was the longest ruling of the traditional
Nigeria monarchs.[9]
A treaty was signed by France and nationalists in Madagascar, assuring the independence of the
Malagasy Republic, which followed in June of the same year.[10]
Born:Linford Christie, Jamaican-born British track athlete who won the 1992 Olympic gold medal and the 1993 world championships in the 100 meter dash; in
Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica
The
Charismatic Movement, also referred to as the "Charismatic Renewal", began when Episcopal Priest
Dennis Bennett told his congregation at St. Mark's in
Van Nuys, California, that he had experienced Spirit baptism accompanied by speaking in tongues. The media soon covered the event as the intrusion of
Pentecostalism into a main line church.[12]
The
Space Task Group (STG) notified the
Ames Research Center that preliminary planning for the modification of the Mercury spacecraft to accomplish controlled
reentry had begun, and Ames was invited to participate in the study. Preliminary specifications for the modified spacecraft were to be ready by the end of the month. This program was later termed Mercury Mark II and eventually
Project Gemini.[6]
Choosing between two U.S. Senators, voters in
Wisconsin overwhelmingly favored
John F. Kennedy of
Massachusetts over
Hubert Humphrey from neighboring
Minnesota, by a margin of 478,118 to 372,034 in the first major primary for the Democratic nomination. Vice-President Nixon was unopposed for the Republican nomination.[13]
Alberto Lleras Camargo, the
President of Colombia, addressed a joint session of Congress as part of a 13-day state visit to the United States. Lleras was given a ticker-tape parade in New York on April 11.[2]
The
Short SC.1 VTOL aircraft made its first transition from vertical to horizontal flight and back.
In an event described as "unique in world postal history", the governments of 70 nations simultaneously issued stamps to commemorate World Refugee Year.[17]
Project Ozma, under the direction of astronomer
Frank Drake at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in
Green Bank, West Virginia, commenced and was the first modern
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) experiment.[18] After detecting nothing from
Tau Ceti, Drake steered the telescope toward
Epsilon Eridani and picked up signals at precisely eight times per second. As rumors spread that the Project had picked up signs of intelligent life, Drake was forced to say that he had no comment. The source was later traced to an airplane.[19]
South Africa's Prime Minister
Hendrik Verwoerd was shot and seriously wounded by David Pratt, a white farmer, in
Johannesburg.[21] Verwoerd survived, but would be stabbed to death in 1966.
The last successful American
U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union took place, as a pilot passed near the missile range at
Tyuratam. The
S-75 Dvina missile batteries that could have downed the plane had not been alerted of the intrusion in time, and several Soviet senior commanders were fired. On May 1, a U-2 plane flown by
Francis Gary Powers would be struck down.[23]
A fisherman in
Masan,
South Korea, discovered the mutilated body of Kim Chu Yol, a high school student who had been killed during March protests against the fraudulent presidential election. A police tear gas shell was visible in Kim's eye socket, and the outrage against the government's brutality triggered a riot. The violence in Masan was then followed by rioting in other South Korean cities.[24]
The
International Court of Justice, more popularly known as the World Court, resolved a dispute between
Portugal and India after more than four years, in Portugal's favor, ruling 11–4 that Portuguese officials could cross over India's territory to reach its colonies in
Goa,
Daman and Diu. The victory was short-lived, as India annexed all three territories the following year.[26]
Eric Peugeot, the four-year-old grandson of French automotive tycoon Jean-Pierre Peugeot of
Peugeot, was kidnapped from a playground at
Saint-Cloud, near
Paris.[28] Eric was released three days later, in exchange for a ransom of $300,000.[29]
East Germany's Communist
SED completed "Socialist Spring in the Countryside" ("Socialistische Frühling in der Land") its
collective farming project, to finish the creation of the Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft (agricultural production cooperative). The "socialist spring" had been the seizure by the East German government of privately owned farms and businesses, prompting thousands of business owners and farm owners to flee to the West.[32]
The first underwater launching of the
Polaris missile took place. The unarmed weapon was fired from the ballistic submarine
USS George Washington, off of the coast of California.[34]
The
Sino-Soviet split widened as the Chinese Communist Party journal Red Flag published the editorial Long Live Leninism, an assertion that began with the premise that the Soviet Union had, by pursuing peaceful change, deviated from Lenin's thesis that "so long as imperialism exists, war is inevitable".[37]
The "
New Realism" artistic movement was founded by art critic
Pierre Restany with the publication of his Manifeste des Nouveaux Réalistes.[38]
Died:Eddie Cochran, 21, American rock musician who wrote and recorded the classic "
Summertime Blues", of injuries received the previous day when he, his fiancée
Sharon Sheeley, and his fellow musician,
Gene Vincent, were involved in a taxi accident. The three Americans were driving through the town of
Chippenham, UK, when their car blew a tyre and crashed into a lamp post. Cochran, who would be inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, would have a posthumous hit with the ironically-titled "Three Steps to Heaven".[39]
Fabrication of the crewed
environmental-control-system training spacecraft for
Project Mercury was essentially completed and a test program on the equipment was started at McDonnell. This test was completed on April 25, 1960.[6]
More than 100,000 students in
South Korea marched in
Seoul in protest over election fraud committed by President
Syngman Rhee in the voting of March 15, beginning the "
April Revolution". Police fired into the crowds, killing 140 protesters.[43]
Lloyd Aereo Colombiano S.A. (LACSA) Flight 503 crashed on landing in
Bogota in
Colombia after a multi-stop flight that had originated in
Miami. All but one of the seven-member crew, and 31 of the 44 passengers, were killed.[44]
China's Prime Minister
Zhou Enlai was welcomed in
New Delhi by India's Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru to discuss the countries' border dispute, but the talks ended without progress.[45]
The South West Africa People's Organization (
SWAPO) was formed, with
Sam Nujoma as its first president, eventually securing independence for
Namibia.[46]
From April 20 to 22, the
Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, NASA, and the
RAND Corporation sponsored a Manned Space Stations Symposium featuring leading aeronautical and aerospace scientists and engineers from across the country. This conference marked one of the focal points in American
space station thinking up to that time.[51]
Rebels led by General Jose Maria Castro León seized control of the Venezuelan state of
Táchira and its capital,
San Cristóbal, and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade other military garrisons to revolt against the government of President
Rómulo Betancourt. The uprising was quickly put down.[52]
Elvis Presley returned to Hollywood for the first time since his return from military service in Germany, to begin filming G.I. Blues.
After a week in which 6,000 East Germans fled to
West Berlin, several DDR police crossed the border and began searching luggage at railroad stations. West Berlin police arrested two of the DDR police, while others fled. The exodus of thousands came after the East German government "collectivized" private farms and businesses and directed landowners and shopkeepers to become employees of state-owned cooperatives.[54]
PresidentJuscelino Kubitschek dedicated the city of
Brasilia, three years after he had directed construction to begin on a new capital city for
Brazil. Located 600 miles (970 km) inland, the city was designed by architect
Oscar Niemeyer and urban planner
Lucio Costa at a cost of ten billion dollars.[55]
The crash of a Belgian DC-4 airliner into a mountainside in
Congo killed all 28 passengers and seven crew.[56] The flight had originated in
Brussels the night before, with a final destination of
Lubumbashi (at the time, called Elisabethville) with stops at Rome, Cairo and
Bunia. The plane descended for its approach to Bunia through low clouds and impacted a peak in the
Virunga Mountains.
France's President
Charles De Gaulle was given an enthusiastic welcome by 200,000 people upon his arrival in
Washington, D.C., on the fifth day of his tour of the Western Hemisphere. President De Gaulle spoke to a joint session of Congress on April 25, urging nuclear disarmament, and was cheered by more than a million people the next day at a ticker-tape parade in New York.[2]
When more than 100 black protesters marched on to a "
whites only" beach in
Biloxi, Mississippi, for a "
wade-in" to force desegregation, they were attacked by several hundred white people, while Harrison County sheriff's deputies at the scene stood by. The violence then spilled over into the most violent riot in Mississippi history. A U.S. Department of Justice suit ended beach segregation the following month.[58][59]
One of the first widely publicized stories of
hysterical strength happened in
Tampa,
Florida, when Mrs. Florence Rogers, a 123-pound (56 kg) woman, lifted one end of a 3,600-pound (1,600 kg) car that had fallen off of a jack and onto her 16-year-old son, Charles Trotter. Mrs. Rogers, an LPN, fractured several vertebrae in the process.[60][61][62]
Syngman Rhee resigned as
President of South Korea after 12 years of dictatorial rule, after a week-long uprising in which 145 students had died.[66] Rhee and his wife were flown out of the country by the United States, and he lived in exile in Hawaii until his death in 1965. Until a new President could be elected, Rhee was replaced in the interim by a former Mayor of Seoul,
Heo Jeong.[67]
Born:Affectionately, thoroughbred racehorse and one of only two female horses to earn more than half a million dollars in prize winnings. Between 1962 and 1965, she would win 18 major stakes races, and would later be inducted into the
National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame (d. 1979)
The West African country of
French Togoland, a
UN trust territory, became independent, as the
Togolese Republic was proclaimed at 12:10 a.m. local (and GMT) in
Lomé.
Sylvanus Olympio became the new nation's first President. The symbolic first raising of the new flag was confounded by tangled ropes and the problem was not resolved until later in the hour.[69][70]
Various
gamma ray detectors were carried aboard
Explorer XI on its orbital flight. These detectors found a directional flux of gamma radiation in space and thereby provided serious evidence against one formulation of the
"steady state" cosmological theory.[6]
The
Ghanaian constitutional referendum resulted in a vote in favour of replacing the constitutional monarchy with a republic led by a president.
USS Tullibee (SSN-597), the first nuclear-powered electric-drive submarine, was launched from Groton, Connecticut.[71][72]
The construction of what would become
Shea Stadium, at
Flushing,
Queens, was approved by New York City's Board of Estimate, 20–2, giving the proposed
Continental League the chance to launch. The Continental League never played, but the stadium gave the National League the impetus to return to the city, with the
New York Mets.
Died:Lee Ki-poong, former Vice-President of South Korea, died along with his wife and two sons as part of a suicide pact. Lee, and President Syngman Rhee, had resigned two days earlier in the wake of the
April Revolution.
Italy's new government, led by
Fernando Tambroni of the Christian Democrats, narrowly won a vote of confidence, 128–110, in the
Italian Senate. Tambroni had quit on April 11, shortly after taking office.[2]
^Trotter, Charles (August 28, 1960). "My Mother Saved My Life". Family Weekly. As told to John M. Ross. pp. 12–13.
^David S. Goldstein, M.D. (2006). Adrenaline and the Inner World: An Introduction to Scientific Integrative Medicine.
Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 71.
^Dommen, Arthur J. (2001). The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
Indiana University Press. p. 386.
The United States launched the first
weather satellite, the 270-pound (120 kg)
TIROS-1, from
Cape Canaveral at 6:40 a.m. EST. The name was an acronym for Television Infra-Red Observation Satellite.[1][2] The same evening, satellite weather photos were introduced to the world, on television, for the first time. Taken from an altitude of 450 miles (720 km), the pictures of cloud cover confirmed the spiral pattern of winds in a storm.[3]
R Griggs & Co. began the production of
Dr. Martens boots under licence in the UK. Known as style 1460, the original product is still in production today.[4][5]
Sikiru Kayode Adetona was crowned as Ogbagba Anikilaya II, the Awujale of Ijebuland. As of 2012, Adetona was the longest ruling of the traditional
Nigeria monarchs.[9]
A treaty was signed by France and nationalists in Madagascar, assuring the independence of the
Malagasy Republic, which followed in June of the same year.[10]
Born:Linford Christie, Jamaican-born British track athlete who won the 1992 Olympic gold medal and the 1993 world championships in the 100 meter dash; in
Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica
The
Charismatic Movement, also referred to as the "Charismatic Renewal", began when Episcopal Priest
Dennis Bennett told his congregation at St. Mark's in
Van Nuys, California, that he had experienced Spirit baptism accompanied by speaking in tongues. The media soon covered the event as the intrusion of
Pentecostalism into a main line church.[12]
The
Space Task Group (STG) notified the
Ames Research Center that preliminary planning for the modification of the Mercury spacecraft to accomplish controlled
reentry had begun, and Ames was invited to participate in the study. Preliminary specifications for the modified spacecraft were to be ready by the end of the month. This program was later termed Mercury Mark II and eventually
Project Gemini.[6]
Choosing between two U.S. Senators, voters in
Wisconsin overwhelmingly favored
John F. Kennedy of
Massachusetts over
Hubert Humphrey from neighboring
Minnesota, by a margin of 478,118 to 372,034 in the first major primary for the Democratic nomination. Vice-President Nixon was unopposed for the Republican nomination.[13]
Alberto Lleras Camargo, the
President of Colombia, addressed a joint session of Congress as part of a 13-day state visit to the United States. Lleras was given a ticker-tape parade in New York on April 11.[2]
The
Short SC.1 VTOL aircraft made its first transition from vertical to horizontal flight and back.
In an event described as "unique in world postal history", the governments of 70 nations simultaneously issued stamps to commemorate World Refugee Year.[17]
Project Ozma, under the direction of astronomer
Frank Drake at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in
Green Bank, West Virginia, commenced and was the first modern
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) experiment.[18] After detecting nothing from
Tau Ceti, Drake steered the telescope toward
Epsilon Eridani and picked up signals at precisely eight times per second. As rumors spread that the Project had picked up signs of intelligent life, Drake was forced to say that he had no comment. The source was later traced to an airplane.[19]
South Africa's Prime Minister
Hendrik Verwoerd was shot and seriously wounded by David Pratt, a white farmer, in
Johannesburg.[21] Verwoerd survived, but would be stabbed to death in 1966.
The last successful American
U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union took place, as a pilot passed near the missile range at
Tyuratam. The
S-75 Dvina missile batteries that could have downed the plane had not been alerted of the intrusion in time, and several Soviet senior commanders were fired. On May 1, a U-2 plane flown by
Francis Gary Powers would be struck down.[23]
A fisherman in
Masan,
South Korea, discovered the mutilated body of Kim Chu Yol, a high school student who had been killed during March protests against the fraudulent presidential election. A police tear gas shell was visible in Kim's eye socket, and the outrage against the government's brutality triggered a riot. The violence in Masan was then followed by rioting in other South Korean cities.[24]
The
International Court of Justice, more popularly known as the World Court, resolved a dispute between
Portugal and India after more than four years, in Portugal's favor, ruling 11–4 that Portuguese officials could cross over India's territory to reach its colonies in
Goa,
Daman and Diu. The victory was short-lived, as India annexed all three territories the following year.[26]
Eric Peugeot, the four-year-old grandson of French automotive tycoon Jean-Pierre Peugeot of
Peugeot, was kidnapped from a playground at
Saint-Cloud, near
Paris.[28] Eric was released three days later, in exchange for a ransom of $300,000.[29]
East Germany's Communist
SED completed "Socialist Spring in the Countryside" ("Socialistische Frühling in der Land") its
collective farming project, to finish the creation of the Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft (agricultural production cooperative). The "socialist spring" had been the seizure by the East German government of privately owned farms and businesses, prompting thousands of business owners and farm owners to flee to the West.[32]
The first underwater launching of the
Polaris missile took place. The unarmed weapon was fired from the ballistic submarine
USS George Washington, off of the coast of California.[34]
The
Sino-Soviet split widened as the Chinese Communist Party journal Red Flag published the editorial Long Live Leninism, an assertion that began with the premise that the Soviet Union had, by pursuing peaceful change, deviated from Lenin's thesis that "so long as imperialism exists, war is inevitable".[37]
The "
New Realism" artistic movement was founded by art critic
Pierre Restany with the publication of his Manifeste des Nouveaux Réalistes.[38]
Died:Eddie Cochran, 21, American rock musician who wrote and recorded the classic "
Summertime Blues", of injuries received the previous day when he, his fiancée
Sharon Sheeley, and his fellow musician,
Gene Vincent, were involved in a taxi accident. The three Americans were driving through the town of
Chippenham, UK, when their car blew a tyre and crashed into a lamp post. Cochran, who would be inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, would have a posthumous hit with the ironically-titled "Three Steps to Heaven".[39]
Fabrication of the crewed
environmental-control-system training spacecraft for
Project Mercury was essentially completed and a test program on the equipment was started at McDonnell. This test was completed on April 25, 1960.[6]
More than 100,000 students in
South Korea marched in
Seoul in protest over election fraud committed by President
Syngman Rhee in the voting of March 15, beginning the "
April Revolution". Police fired into the crowds, killing 140 protesters.[43]
Lloyd Aereo Colombiano S.A. (LACSA) Flight 503 crashed on landing in
Bogota in
Colombia after a multi-stop flight that had originated in
Miami. All but one of the seven-member crew, and 31 of the 44 passengers, were killed.[44]
China's Prime Minister
Zhou Enlai was welcomed in
New Delhi by India's Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru to discuss the countries' border dispute, but the talks ended without progress.[45]
The South West Africa People's Organization (
SWAPO) was formed, with
Sam Nujoma as its first president, eventually securing independence for
Namibia.[46]
From April 20 to 22, the
Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, NASA, and the
RAND Corporation sponsored a Manned Space Stations Symposium featuring leading aeronautical and aerospace scientists and engineers from across the country. This conference marked one of the focal points in American
space station thinking up to that time.[51]
Rebels led by General Jose Maria Castro León seized control of the Venezuelan state of
Táchira and its capital,
San Cristóbal, and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade other military garrisons to revolt against the government of President
Rómulo Betancourt. The uprising was quickly put down.[52]
Elvis Presley returned to Hollywood for the first time since his return from military service in Germany, to begin filming G.I. Blues.
After a week in which 6,000 East Germans fled to
West Berlin, several DDR police crossed the border and began searching luggage at railroad stations. West Berlin police arrested two of the DDR police, while others fled. The exodus of thousands came after the East German government "collectivized" private farms and businesses and directed landowners and shopkeepers to become employees of state-owned cooperatives.[54]
PresidentJuscelino Kubitschek dedicated the city of
Brasilia, three years after he had directed construction to begin on a new capital city for
Brazil. Located 600 miles (970 km) inland, the city was designed by architect
Oscar Niemeyer and urban planner
Lucio Costa at a cost of ten billion dollars.[55]
The crash of a Belgian DC-4 airliner into a mountainside in
Congo killed all 28 passengers and seven crew.[56] The flight had originated in
Brussels the night before, with a final destination of
Lubumbashi (at the time, called Elisabethville) with stops at Rome, Cairo and
Bunia. The plane descended for its approach to Bunia through low clouds and impacted a peak in the
Virunga Mountains.
France's President
Charles De Gaulle was given an enthusiastic welcome by 200,000 people upon his arrival in
Washington, D.C., on the fifth day of his tour of the Western Hemisphere. President De Gaulle spoke to a joint session of Congress on April 25, urging nuclear disarmament, and was cheered by more than a million people the next day at a ticker-tape parade in New York.[2]
When more than 100 black protesters marched on to a "
whites only" beach in
Biloxi, Mississippi, for a "
wade-in" to force desegregation, they were attacked by several hundred white people, while Harrison County sheriff's deputies at the scene stood by. The violence then spilled over into the most violent riot in Mississippi history. A U.S. Department of Justice suit ended beach segregation the following month.[58][59]
One of the first widely publicized stories of
hysterical strength happened in
Tampa,
Florida, when Mrs. Florence Rogers, a 123-pound (56 kg) woman, lifted one end of a 3,600-pound (1,600 kg) car that had fallen off of a jack and onto her 16-year-old son, Charles Trotter. Mrs. Rogers, an LPN, fractured several vertebrae in the process.[60][61][62]
Syngman Rhee resigned as
President of South Korea after 12 years of dictatorial rule, after a week-long uprising in which 145 students had died.[66] Rhee and his wife were flown out of the country by the United States, and he lived in exile in Hawaii until his death in 1965. Until a new President could be elected, Rhee was replaced in the interim by a former Mayor of Seoul,
Heo Jeong.[67]
Born:Affectionately, thoroughbred racehorse and one of only two female horses to earn more than half a million dollars in prize winnings. Between 1962 and 1965, she would win 18 major stakes races, and would later be inducted into the
National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame (d. 1979)
The West African country of
French Togoland, a
UN trust territory, became independent, as the
Togolese Republic was proclaimed at 12:10 a.m. local (and GMT) in
Lomé.
Sylvanus Olympio became the new nation's first President. The symbolic first raising of the new flag was confounded by tangled ropes and the problem was not resolved until later in the hour.[69][70]
Various
gamma ray detectors were carried aboard
Explorer XI on its orbital flight. These detectors found a directional flux of gamma radiation in space and thereby provided serious evidence against one formulation of the
"steady state" cosmological theory.[6]
The
Ghanaian constitutional referendum resulted in a vote in favour of replacing the constitutional monarchy with a republic led by a president.
USS Tullibee (SSN-597), the first nuclear-powered electric-drive submarine, was launched from Groton, Connecticut.[71][72]
The construction of what would become
Shea Stadium, at
Flushing,
Queens, was approved by New York City's Board of Estimate, 20–2, giving the proposed
Continental League the chance to launch. The Continental League never played, but the stadium gave the National League the impetus to return to the city, with the
New York Mets.
Died:Lee Ki-poong, former Vice-President of South Korea, died along with his wife and two sons as part of a suicide pact. Lee, and President Syngman Rhee, had resigned two days earlier in the wake of the
April Revolution.
Italy's new government, led by
Fernando Tambroni of the Christian Democrats, narrowly won a vote of confidence, 128–110, in the
Italian Senate. Tambroni had quit on April 11, shortly after taking office.[2]
^Trotter, Charles (August 28, 1960). "My Mother Saved My Life". Family Weekly. As told to John M. Ross. pp. 12–13.
^David S. Goldstein, M.D. (2006). Adrenaline and the Inner World: An Introduction to Scientific Integrative Medicine.
Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 71.
^Dommen, Arthur J. (2001). The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
Indiana University Press. p. 386.