Britain and the World 1964

BRITAIN AND THE WORLD SINCE 1953

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	1964
Jan9	22 Panamanians died during riots that began after U.S. residents of the Panama Canal zone denied them hoisting their flag there.
Feb7	The Beatles began their first American tour as they arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Feb25	Cassius Clay won his first world heavyweight boxing title today beating the previous champion Sonny Liston (Liston refused to continue the fight at the start of the seventh round). Clay soon changed his name to Muhammad Ali and after losing and then regaining the world championship belt on two further occasions, ended up as "The Greatest"
Mar6	King Paul 1 of Greece dies - his successor is Crown Prince Konstantine. On August18 he marries Anne-Marie of Denmark in Athens
Mar13	38 people watched and listened as Queens, New York, resident Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in the courtyard of her apartment complex. Though she screamed for help for an hour and a half, no one called the police until the attack was over.
	The actress Elizabeth Taylor married actor Richard Burton in Montreal. It was her fifth marriage and his second
	A jury in Dallas, Texas, found Jack Ruby guilty of killing John F Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The shooting, witnessed by millions on television, was the first live broadcast of a homicide in history. His death-sentence conviction was overturned but Ruby died before another trial could be arranged. Ironically, JFK, Oswald and Ruby were all pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital.
Mar27	Radio Caroline begins broadcasting from offshore. It was also the last broadcast of BBC's Childrens' Hour
Apr4	The Beatles held the top five places in the US singles chart
Apr5	Douglas MacArthur dies
Apr9	First Greater London Council (GLC) elections
Apr16	The West German Geraldin Monk is the first woman to fly around the world
	Twelve members of the Great Train Robbery gang were sentenced to a total of 307 years in jail.
Apr21	BBC2 TV starts national broadcasting
Apr22	Greville Wynn, British businessman imprisoned in Moscow in 1963 for spying, was exchanged for Russian spy Gordon Lonsdale
Apr25	Thieves stole the head from the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. In 1997 a man called Henrik Bruun confesses
May1	First BASIC program run on a computer - Dartmouth
May24	The crowd at a football match in Lima Peru riot over a referee's decision, a riot that leads to the death of 300 people through crushing
May27	Prime Minster Nehru of India dies suddenly at the age of 74 and is succeeded by Lal Shastri. Shastri died on 11th Jan 1966 and was succeeded by Mrs Indira Ghandi, Nehru's daughter
Jun12	Nelson Mandela and seven others are sentenced to life imprisonment and are sent to the Robben Island prison
Jun25	The Vatican issues a condemnation of the female contraceptive pill
Jul6	Malawi, formerly Nyasaland, became an independent state within the Commonwealth, having been a British protectorate since 1891. Malawi became a republic on the same day two years later
Aug2	Gulf of Tonkin incident
Aug4	Federal Marshals find missing civil rights workers Michael H. Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi. They were later found to be the victims of white supremists who were aided and abetted in the following cover up by the "law enforcement agencies"i.e. affiliates of the KKK
Aug5	USA commences the saturation bombing of North Vietnam
Aug12	The author and creator of James Bond Ian Fleming dies. The novel You Only Live Twice is published posthumously
Aug13	Peter Allen (Liverpool) and Gwynne Evans (Manchester) are the last two people to hang in Great Britain for a murder in Preston
Sep4	Forth Road Bridge opens over the Firth of Forth
Sep14	In the U.K. the Daily Herald ceases publication and is followed a day later by the first issue of The Sun
Sep21	Malta gains independence from Britain
Sep27	The Warren Commission report concluded that there was no conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone
Oct10	Eighteenth modern Olympics open in Tokio Japan
Oct15	Brezhnev and Kosygin replace Nikita S. Krushchev as leaders of the USSR
Oct16	Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister after defeating the incumbent Conservative government of Sir Alec Douglas-Hume. It was a return to government for the Labour Party after 13 years in opposition. The margin of victory of four seats was hardly an overwhelming endorsement of Labour policies
	China detonates its first atomic bomb
	The King of Saudi-Arabia Saud is forced to abdicate and is replaced by his brother Crown Prince Feisal
Nov3	Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) is elected U.S. President by a huge margin over the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater.
Nov22	Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turned down the honour. He said at the time: "A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honourable form."
Dec31	Donald Campbell (UK) sets world water speed record (276.33 mph)

Last Updated 13/08/08 11:13

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