January 6 – A British firm, the
Leyland Motor Corp., announces the sale of 450 buses to the Cuban government, challenging the United States blockade of
Cuba.[2]
January 9 – Martyrs' Day: Armed clashes between United States troops and Panamanian civilians in the
Panama Canal Zone precipitate a major international crisis, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and 4 U.S. soldiers.
January 28 – A U.S. Air Force jet training aircraft that strays into
East Germany is shot down by Soviet fighters near
Erfurt; all three crewmen are killed.[5][6]
February 5 – India backs out of its promise to hold a
plebiscite in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In 1948, India had taken the issue of Kashmir
to the United Nations Security Council and offered to hold a plebiscite in the held Kashmir under UN supervision.
Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King
Paul.
American boxer
Cassius Clay announces the change of his name to Muhammad Ali.[13]
March 10 –
Soviet military forces shoot down an unarmed reconnaissance bomber that has strayed into
East Germany; the 3 U.S. flyers parachute to safety.
March 18 –
1964 Moscow protest: Approximately 50 Moroccan students break into the embassy of Morocco in the Soviet Union and stage an all-day
sit-in protesting against sentencing of eleven people to death for the alleged assassination attempt of King
Hassan II of Morocco.
March 19 – The American
Jerrie Mock sets out to become the first woman to fly solo around the world, completing her flight on April 17.
March 20 – The precursor of the
European Space Agency,
ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
April 8 – The U.S.
Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft.
April 9 – The
United Nations Security Council adopts by a 9–0 vote a resolution deploring a British air attack on a fort in
Yemen 12 days earlier, in which 25 persons were reported killed.
April 16 – In the Assize Court at Buckingham, England, sentences totalling 307 years are passed on twelve men who stole £2,600,000 in used bank notes, after holding up the night train from
Glasgow to
London in August 1963 – a heist that becomes known as the
Great Train Robbery.[17][18]
April 19 – In
Laos, the coalition government of Prince
Souvanna Phouma is deposed by a right-wing military group, led by Brig. Gen.
Kouprasith Abhay. Not supported by the United States, the coup is ultimately unsuccessful, and Souvanna Phouma is reinstated, remaining as Prime Minister until
1975.
U.S. President
Lyndon Johnson in New York, and Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, simultaneously announce plans to cut back production of materials for making
nuclear weapons.
The
1964 New York World's Fair opens to celebrate the 300th anniversary of New Amsterdam being taken over by British forces and being renamed New York after the Duke of York (later
King James II) in 1664. The fair runs until October 18, 1964, and reopens April 21, 1965, finally closing October 17, 1965. Although not internationally sanctioned, due to being within ten years of the
Seattle World's Fair in
1962, so that some countries decline to attend, many have pavilions with exotic crafts, art and food.
April 25 – Thieves steal the head of the
Little Mermaid statue in
Copenhagen, Denmark. Although the attack is attributed to
Jørgen Nash, the Danish media blame painter Henrik Bruun, who never confesses to the crime.[22]
Some 400–1,000 students march through
Times Square, New York, and another 700 in
San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. Smaller marches also occur in Boston, Seattle, and Madison, WI.
Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashes near
San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the
FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.
At a
mail rockets demonstration by
Gerhard Zucker on Hasselkopf Mountain near
Braunlage (Lower Saxonia, Germany), three people are killed by a rocket explosion.
May 9 – South Korean President
Park Chung Hee reshuffles his Cabinet, after a series of student demonstrations against his efforts to restore diplomatic and trade relations with
Japan.
May 12 – Twelve young men in New York City publicly
burn their draft cards to protest against the Vietnam War, the first such act of war resistance.[26][27]
May 23 – Madeline Dassault, 63, wife of a French plane manufacturer and politician, is kidnapped while leaving her car in front of her Paris home; she is found unharmed the next day in a farmhouse 27 miles (43 km) from Paris.[28]
June 20 – The
Ford GT40 makes its first appearance at the
24 Hours of Le Mans. It does not see its first victory, however, until 2 years later in
1966. At the same event, the
AC Cobra wins its class in its second Le Mans appearance.
July 27 –
Vietnam War: The U.S. sends 5,000 more military advisers to South Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
July 31 –
Ranger program:
Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound
telescopes).
August 8 – A
Rolling Stones gig in
Scheveningen gets out of control. Riot police end the gig after about fifteen minutes, upon which spectators start to fight the riot police.[40]
August 27 –
Walt Disney's Mary Poppins has its world premiere in Los Angeles. It will go on to become Disney's biggest moneymaker, and winner of 5 Academy Awards, including a
Best Actress. It is the first Disney film to be nominated for
Best Picture.
Three thousand student activists at the
University of California, Berkeley, surround and block a police car from taking a
CORE volunteer arrested for not showing his ID, when he violated a ban on outdoor activist card tables. This protest eventually explodes into the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
The Shinkansenhigh-speed rail system, the world's first such system, is inaugurated in Japan, for the first sector between Tokyo and
Osaka.
October 12 – The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth
orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without
space suits. The flight is cut short and lands again on
October 13 after 16 orbits.
Canada: A Federal Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects a design to become the new official
Flag of Canada.
A 5.3
kiloton nuclear device is detonated at the Tatum Salt Dome, 21 miles (34 km) from
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as part of the
Vela Uniform program. This test is the Salmon phase of the Atomic Energy Commission's Project Dribble.
October 24 – Northern
Rhodesia, a former British protectorate, becomes the independent Republic of
Zambia, ending 73 years of British rule.
November 1 – Mortar fire from North Vietnamese forces rains on the
Bien Hoa Air Base, killing four U.S. servicemen, wounding 72, and destroying five
B-57 jet bombers and other planes.
Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Police arrest about 800 students at the
University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover of and massive sit-in at the Sproul Hall administration building. The sit-in most directly protested the U.C. Regents' decision to punish student activists for what many thought had been justified civil disobedience earlier in the conflict.[57]
The Danish football club
Brøndby IF is founded as a merger between the two local clubs Brøndbyøster Idrætsforening and Brøndbyvester Idrætsforening. The club wins the national championship
Danish Superliga 10 times, and the
Danish Cups six times, after joining the Danish top-flight football league in 1981.
December 18 – The
Christmas flood of 1964 begins in the United States, affecting the Pacific Northwest and some of Northern California. It will continue until January 7, resulting in 19 deaths, serious damage to buildings, roads and bridges, and the loss of 4,000 head of livestock.[60]
December 24 –
The Brinks Hotel in Saigon, Vietnam, is bombed by the
Viet Cong, resulting in the deaths of two US soldiers and injuries to a further 60 people, including civilians.[63]
^Cheng, Adeline Low Hwee (2001). "The past in the present: Memories of the 1964 'racial riots' in Singapore". Asian Journal of Social Science. 29 (3): 431–455.
doi:
10.1163/156853101X00181.
^Eden, Paul, ed. (2004), "General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark/EF-111 Raven", Encyclopedia of Modern Military Aircraft, London: Amber Books, p. 197,
ISBN1-904687-84-9
^"Movie Star Alan Ladd, 50, Found Dead in His Home: Alan Ladd, 50 Movie Actor, Dies in Home Star Won Fame as Film Gunman". Chicago Tribune. January 30, 1964. p. 1.
^American University (Washington, D.C.). Foreign Areas Studies Division (1964).
U.S. Army Area Handbook for Liberia. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 7.
^Sander, August (1996). August Sander : "In photography there are no unexplained shadows!": an exhibition organised by the August Sander Archive, Kulturstiftung Stadtsparkasse, Cologne, and shown at the National Portrait Gallery, London. London: National Portrait Gallery. p. 255.
ISBN9781855142152.
^Lane, Grayson Harris (1999). Passantino, Erika D. (ed.). The Eye of Duncan Phillips : a collection in the making. New Haven [u.a.]: Yale University Press. p. 441.
ISBN0-300-08090-5.
^Macintyre, Stuart. "Latham, Sir John Greig (1877–1964)".
Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University – via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
^Gordon, Sarah (December 8, 2015) [Originally published July 10, 2002].
"Flannery O'Connor". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Georgia Humanities Council.
Archived from the original on March 14, 2016. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
January 6 – A British firm, the
Leyland Motor Corp., announces the sale of 450 buses to the Cuban government, challenging the United States blockade of
Cuba.[2]
January 9 – Martyrs' Day: Armed clashes between United States troops and Panamanian civilians in the
Panama Canal Zone precipitate a major international crisis, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and 4 U.S. soldiers.
January 28 – A U.S. Air Force jet training aircraft that strays into
East Germany is shot down by Soviet fighters near
Erfurt; all three crewmen are killed.[5][6]
February 5 – India backs out of its promise to hold a
plebiscite in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In 1948, India had taken the issue of Kashmir
to the United Nations Security Council and offered to hold a plebiscite in the held Kashmir under UN supervision.
Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King
Paul.
American boxer
Cassius Clay announces the change of his name to Muhammad Ali.[13]
March 10 –
Soviet military forces shoot down an unarmed reconnaissance bomber that has strayed into
East Germany; the 3 U.S. flyers parachute to safety.
March 18 –
1964 Moscow protest: Approximately 50 Moroccan students break into the embassy of Morocco in the Soviet Union and stage an all-day
sit-in protesting against sentencing of eleven people to death for the alleged assassination attempt of King
Hassan II of Morocco.
March 19 – The American
Jerrie Mock sets out to become the first woman to fly solo around the world, completing her flight on April 17.
March 20 – The precursor of the
European Space Agency,
ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
April 8 – The U.S.
Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft.
April 9 – The
United Nations Security Council adopts by a 9–0 vote a resolution deploring a British air attack on a fort in
Yemen 12 days earlier, in which 25 persons were reported killed.
April 16 – In the Assize Court at Buckingham, England, sentences totalling 307 years are passed on twelve men who stole £2,600,000 in used bank notes, after holding up the night train from
Glasgow to
London in August 1963 – a heist that becomes known as the
Great Train Robbery.[17][18]
April 19 – In
Laos, the coalition government of Prince
Souvanna Phouma is deposed by a right-wing military group, led by Brig. Gen.
Kouprasith Abhay. Not supported by the United States, the coup is ultimately unsuccessful, and Souvanna Phouma is reinstated, remaining as Prime Minister until
1975.
U.S. President
Lyndon Johnson in New York, and Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, simultaneously announce plans to cut back production of materials for making
nuclear weapons.
The
1964 New York World's Fair opens to celebrate the 300th anniversary of New Amsterdam being taken over by British forces and being renamed New York after the Duke of York (later
King James II) in 1664. The fair runs until October 18, 1964, and reopens April 21, 1965, finally closing October 17, 1965. Although not internationally sanctioned, due to being within ten years of the
Seattle World's Fair in
1962, so that some countries decline to attend, many have pavilions with exotic crafts, art and food.
April 25 – Thieves steal the head of the
Little Mermaid statue in
Copenhagen, Denmark. Although the attack is attributed to
Jørgen Nash, the Danish media blame painter Henrik Bruun, who never confesses to the crime.[22]
Some 400–1,000 students march through
Times Square, New York, and another 700 in
San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. Smaller marches also occur in Boston, Seattle, and Madison, WI.
Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashes near
San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the
FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.
At a
mail rockets demonstration by
Gerhard Zucker on Hasselkopf Mountain near
Braunlage (Lower Saxonia, Germany), three people are killed by a rocket explosion.
May 9 – South Korean President
Park Chung Hee reshuffles his Cabinet, after a series of student demonstrations against his efforts to restore diplomatic and trade relations with
Japan.
May 12 – Twelve young men in New York City publicly
burn their draft cards to protest against the Vietnam War, the first such act of war resistance.[26][27]
May 23 – Madeline Dassault, 63, wife of a French plane manufacturer and politician, is kidnapped while leaving her car in front of her Paris home; she is found unharmed the next day in a farmhouse 27 miles (43 km) from Paris.[28]
June 20 – The
Ford GT40 makes its first appearance at the
24 Hours of Le Mans. It does not see its first victory, however, until 2 years later in
1966. At the same event, the
AC Cobra wins its class in its second Le Mans appearance.
July 27 –
Vietnam War: The U.S. sends 5,000 more military advisers to South Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
July 31 –
Ranger program:
Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound
telescopes).
August 8 – A
Rolling Stones gig in
Scheveningen gets out of control. Riot police end the gig after about fifteen minutes, upon which spectators start to fight the riot police.[40]
August 27 –
Walt Disney's Mary Poppins has its world premiere in Los Angeles. It will go on to become Disney's biggest moneymaker, and winner of 5 Academy Awards, including a
Best Actress. It is the first Disney film to be nominated for
Best Picture.
Three thousand student activists at the
University of California, Berkeley, surround and block a police car from taking a
CORE volunteer arrested for not showing his ID, when he violated a ban on outdoor activist card tables. This protest eventually explodes into the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
The Shinkansenhigh-speed rail system, the world's first such system, is inaugurated in Japan, for the first sector between Tokyo and
Osaka.
October 12 – The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth
orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without
space suits. The flight is cut short and lands again on
October 13 after 16 orbits.
Canada: A Federal Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects a design to become the new official
Flag of Canada.
A 5.3
kiloton nuclear device is detonated at the Tatum Salt Dome, 21 miles (34 km) from
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as part of the
Vela Uniform program. This test is the Salmon phase of the Atomic Energy Commission's Project Dribble.
October 24 – Northern
Rhodesia, a former British protectorate, becomes the independent Republic of
Zambia, ending 73 years of British rule.
November 1 – Mortar fire from North Vietnamese forces rains on the
Bien Hoa Air Base, killing four U.S. servicemen, wounding 72, and destroying five
B-57 jet bombers and other planes.
Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Police arrest about 800 students at the
University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover of and massive sit-in at the Sproul Hall administration building. The sit-in most directly protested the U.C. Regents' decision to punish student activists for what many thought had been justified civil disobedience earlier in the conflict.[57]
The Danish football club
Brøndby IF is founded as a merger between the two local clubs Brøndbyøster Idrætsforening and Brøndbyvester Idrætsforening. The club wins the national championship
Danish Superliga 10 times, and the
Danish Cups six times, after joining the Danish top-flight football league in 1981.
December 18 – The
Christmas flood of 1964 begins in the United States, affecting the Pacific Northwest and some of Northern California. It will continue until January 7, resulting in 19 deaths, serious damage to buildings, roads and bridges, and the loss of 4,000 head of livestock.[60]
December 24 –
The Brinks Hotel in Saigon, Vietnam, is bombed by the
Viet Cong, resulting in the deaths of two US soldiers and injuries to a further 60 people, including civilians.[63]
^Cheng, Adeline Low Hwee (2001). "The past in the present: Memories of the 1964 'racial riots' in Singapore". Asian Journal of Social Science. 29 (3): 431–455.
doi:
10.1163/156853101X00181.
^Eden, Paul, ed. (2004), "General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark/EF-111 Raven", Encyclopedia of Modern Military Aircraft, London: Amber Books, p. 197,
ISBN1-904687-84-9
^"Movie Star Alan Ladd, 50, Found Dead in His Home: Alan Ladd, 50 Movie Actor, Dies in Home Star Won Fame as Film Gunman". Chicago Tribune. January 30, 1964. p. 1.
^American University (Washington, D.C.). Foreign Areas Studies Division (1964).
U.S. Army Area Handbook for Liberia. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 7.
^Sander, August (1996). August Sander : "In photography there are no unexplained shadows!": an exhibition organised by the August Sander Archive, Kulturstiftung Stadtsparkasse, Cologne, and shown at the National Portrait Gallery, London. London: National Portrait Gallery. p. 255.
ISBN9781855142152.
^Lane, Grayson Harris (1999). Passantino, Erika D. (ed.). The Eye of Duncan Phillips : a collection in the making. New Haven [u.a.]: Yale University Press. p. 441.
ISBN0-300-08090-5.
^Macintyre, Stuart. "Latham, Sir John Greig (1877–1964)".
Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University – via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
^Gordon, Sarah (December 8, 2015) [Originally published July 10, 2002].
"Flannery O'Connor". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Georgia Humanities Council.
Archived from the original on March 14, 2016. Retrieved May 13, 2016.