AS

Prime Minister Smith of British Rhodesia unilaterally declares independence from the United Kingdom

United States. Clair Cameron Patterson publishes the article “Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man,” in which he denounces lead contamination in the modern environment, citing years of experiments he conducted. His evidence ultimately prevails, and in 1973, the United States begins to progressively reduce

The entire world’s computing power, including all human beings and all (few) electronic devices, will be surpassed, half a century later, by a modern laptop computer of the early 21st century.

Olivetti produces the P101 (Programma 101), with a futuristic design by Mario Bellini: it is perhaps the first personal computer in the world

USSR. On December 30, 1964, the decision was made to build 16 N-1 rockets. The first mock-up of an N-1 arrived on the launch pad on November 25, 1967, and was photographed by a CORONA spy satellite just two weeks later. The first N-1 was

Friz Freleng draws the Pink Panther

The Enrico Fermi Provincial Technical Institute of Modena, initially located on Via Barozzi, is moving to its new location on Via Luosi.

Palmiro Togliatti dies. Born in Genoa in 1893 to a Piedmontese family, he was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, becoming its undisputed leader after Gramsci’s arrest. He served as secretary from August 8, 1945, until his death. Togliatti died of a

United States. The House of Representatives approves the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by a vote of 414 to 0. The Senate approves the resolution by a vote of 88 to 2. This gives the president the green light to escalate the military situation in Vietnam.

Gulf of Tonkin, Indochina. A second attack on an American naval vessel by North Vietnam is reported to President Johnson. The first could have been a mistake, but two were not, so a military escalation is decided. It will be discovered later that the second

A North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. destroyer in international waters off Vietnam sparks an escalation in the war on the Indochina peninsula.

Gulf of Tonkin, Indochina. Captain George Morrison, commanding the aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard, is informed that the destroyer Maddox has been attacked by North Vietnamese naval units. This incident, a few days later, will lead the United States to decide on military escalation in

A third Soviet R-7 rocket is launched in the RD-108 configuration (in place of the less powerful RD-109 engine). It carries into orbit a Vostok modified to be a military spy satellite called Zenit-4.

In the Kilby vs. Noyce case, which pitted Texas Instruments against Fairchild Semiconductors over the first patent on integrated circuits, begun in 1959, the patent was granted to Kilby and his priority was recognized. Then, in February 1967, the final verdict confirmed this position. Fairchild

The Enrico Fermi nuclear reactor at the Trino Vercellese power plant in Italy (the third) is turned on; Italy becomes the world’s third-largest nuclear power plant in terms of nuclear power generation (after the USA and the UK, and ahead of the Soviet Union and

Four separate Soviet attempts to launch Venera-Moniya missions fail at launch

First Gemini Missions (two men aboard)

Nikolaj Kardasev proposes to classify extraterrestrial civilizations based on their energy consumption: Type I, i.e. planetary (10^16W), Type II, i.e. stellar (10^26W), Type III, i.e. galactic (10^36W); we are Type 0.7; with the information in our possession in 2005 we believe that there are no

Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre refuses the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The first Local Area Network (LAN) is developed at Lawrence Livermore Labs.

IBM announces System 360

Japan surpasses the United States in the production of discrete transistors, while the United States leads the world in the production of complex chips.

First plasma display prototype completed in the United States

Louis Leakey coined the name Homo Abilis because it was the first hominid to use tools.

The “Fitch-Cronin Experiment”, involving reactions with K-mesons (strange and anti-down or down and anti-strange quarks), demonstrates that not even the CP (Charge-Parity) symmetry is conserved: we are moving towards the CPT (Charge-Parity-Time) transformation.

JP Gordon of AT&T Labs conjectures that qubits (properties of a quantum object) may have hidden information that can be manipulated but not read unless it is collapsed to 0 or 1.

Roger Penrose uses his own topological methods to prove the theory of black hole singularities.

The journal Chemical Abstract publishes an article on tobacco mosaic virus. It is probably the molecule with the longest name ever pronounced (and some even say it’s the longest word): a whopping 1,185 letters. It is C785H1220N212O248S2, better known as: “glutaminylphenylalanylvalylphenylalanylleucylserylseryl valyltryptophylalanylaspartylprolylisoleucylglutamylleucylleucylasparaginylvalylcysteinylthreonylserylseryl leucylglycylasparaginylglutaminylphenylalanylglutaminylthreonylglutaminylglutaminylalanylarginylthreo nylthreonylglutaminylvalylglutaminylglutaminylphenylalanylserylglutaminylvalyltryptophyllysylprolylphenyla lanylprolylglutaminylserylthreonylvalylarginylphenylalanylprolylglycylaspartylvalyltyrosyllysylvalyltyrosylargin

United States. During the presidential campaign, President Lyndon Johnson aired the famous Daisy Advertisement, in which a little girl plucks the petals of a daisy and counts them to 10. Then, a metallic, adult male voice begins counting down, and at zero, the frightening flash

The United States has 30,751 nuclear weapons (the most ever); the USSR has 5,221.

Chile. The general election yielded a large majority for centrist candidate Eduardo Frei. Fear of Marxist movements led many right-wingers to support Frei. Frei quickly moved to buy 51% of the US copper mines in Chile. In the medium to long term, Frei proved too

Farnborough, England. Carbon fiber is invented.

Arnol’d (Kolmogorov’s student) proves that the approximate series that solves the 3-body problem converges or not depending on the initial conditions.

Moro, Leone, Rumor, Colombo, and Andreotti governments (DC-PRI-PSI-PSDI-PLI)

Chuck Yeager makes an excursion to the edge of space aboard his modified F-104A (the episode is mentioned in the film “The Right Stuff”). But the first to make excursions to the edge of space are other F-104 pilots, such as Thompson (April 13, 1959),

A Soviet R-7 rocket is launched in the RD-108 configuration (instead of the less powerful RD-109 engine). It carries into orbit a Vostok modified to be a military spy satellite called Zenit-4.

McNamara implements the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) strategy: in the event of a sudden Soviet attack, the United States must be able to destroy at least 30% of the Soviet population, 50% of its industrial capacity, and 150 of its cities. No military investments are

United States. First version of the Clean Air Act.

President Lyndon Johnson presents the Fermi Award to Robert Oppenheimer and a $50,000 prize. Nine years after the verdict suspending access to classified material, this marks a public reconciliation between the government and the scientist. Robert delivers a speech in which he says: “…we are

Sunday. Dallas, Texas. 11:21 a.m. Sunday morning, the decision is made to transfer Lee Oswald to the county jail, sending him through the basement to avoid the crowds of onlookers. Despite this, there are at least 30 journalists in the basement. Jack Ruby approaches him

Friday. Dealey Plaza, approximately 1:00 PM, Dallas, Texas. Doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital have no choice but to pronounce President Kennedy dead. Meanwhile, a sketch of the attacker has been distributed to all patrol cars: they’re looking for a black-haired man, approximately five feet tall.

Friday. Dealey Plaza, 12:29 p.m., Dallas, Texas. President Kennedy orders the top off the Lincoln. (So not even Oswald knew exactly what he was facing.) The presidential car has just turned and is heading down the railroad overpass. Suddenly, a shot is heard—a firecracker, or

Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas: he is succeeded by his vice president: Lyndon Johnson

John Kennedy is visiting Cape Canaveral. Rocco Petrone explains to him the potential of the Saturn V, which will be launched from the launch pad under construction. Kennedy emphasizes that he must inform the press, adding the names of the most skeptical journalists he needs

Vietnam. The authoritarian South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and his powerful brother are assassinated in a coup approved by US President John Kennedy. Johnson considers it a mistake, knowing Diem personally and appreciating his political skills. In Johnson’s opinion, he should have been given

Deke Slayton calls Mike Collins. He’ll be part of the third group of astronauts, The Fourteen (Apollo – and Gemini…). The others are The Seven (Mercury) and The Nine (Gemini).

Konrad Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) resigns as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany after 14 years in office. Adenauer’s Germany (in office from 1949 to 1963) chose to anchor its internal democracy in its Catholic regions and in ecumenical Christian

ATOLL (Acceptance Test or Launch Language) was invented as the standard language to be used in software programming for the Apollo test and launch missions for the Saturn V.

At the United Nations, President Kennedy proposed to the Soviets joint action in space exploration, including lunar exploration. The proposal was dropped by Khrushchev and rejected by the U.S. Congress. Khrushchev’s son declared in 1997 that his father had seriously considered it and that if

Washington, DC. March for Jobs and Freedom. Brings 300,000 people to the capital, including Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. And 34-year-old Martin Luther King. When he takes the stage, he walks calmly through his prepared notes, then from behind Mahalia Jackson shouts, “Tell him about

USA, USSR, UK sign treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, oceans and space

West Berlin. John Kennedy delivers his famous speech: “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova completed 48 orbits aboard Vostok 6; the flight was actually a disaster: Valentina was very ill, and the mission leader prevented her from touching the controls. Valentina was personally chosen by Khrushchev as a symbol of the communist ideal of womanhood. Her

The nuclear reactor at the Italian Garigliano power plant (the second) is switched on

Leroy Gordo Cooper is the last Mercury pilot: he completes 22 orbits and even manages to fall asleep for several hours. Gordon Cooper (in my opinion the most likeable of the Mercury Seven) thus successfully concludes the Mercury Program, paving the way for the Gemini

The USS Thresher submarine split in two during a deep-sea maneuver on its maiden mission; the investigation will last 10 years and include locating the wreck at a depth of 2,500 meters off Boston; significant investments in submarine safety will be decided.

A Soviet Moon mission crashes into the Pacific Ocean.

Russia, 37 km northeast of Moscow. Zelenograd (Russian: Зеленоград) receives city status and its name. Orders had been given in 1958 to establish the secret, nameless, and planned (i.e., non-spontaneous) city, which would later become Zelenograd on January 15, 1963. Its purpose was to become

A Soviet Moon mission gets stuck in Earth orbit by mistake.

NASA commissioned and received the study titled “Engineering Man for Space: The Cyborg Study.” In the early days of space exploration, the question arose as to whether it was best to surround humans with expensive, delicate, and cumbersome life support systems in space, or rather,

The continuum hypothesis is solved by Paul Cohen, or Hilbert’s first problem: it is impossible to prove that there exists a set of numbers with a dimension greater than fractional numbers and less than real numbers, and, at the same time, it is impossible to

Paul Cohen of Stanford University discovers specific questions in mathematics that are undecidable, in accordance with Gödel’s Theorem; one of these questions is the continuum hypothesis, which David Hilbert had included among the 23 most important problems in mathematics.

German Chancellor Adenauer resigns

Federico Fellini was invited to the Moscow Film Festival with his famous 8 1/2, but it was decided that he would never win. The jurors rebelled, so Khrushchev demanded to see the film. After five minutes, he was snoring profusely. When awakened at the end

French President de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s first attempt to join the European Community (the British had initially withdrawn from negotiations to form the European Community, only to see them unexpectedly succeed). He would also veto the second attempt, in 1967. It was not until de

Linus Pauling awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Edward Lorenz demonstrates the limits of predictability in meteorology (part of Chaos theory)

Edward Lorenz discovers strange attractors

At the Palomar Observatory (USA) the first 2 quasars were identified by Schmidt, Greenstein, Matthews

New Zealander Roy Kerr finds a set of solutions to the equations of general relativity that describe black holes that enjoy greater generality than the Schwarzschild equations.

Two Russian scientists, Evgenij Lifsitz and Isaac Khalatnikov, suggest that the Big Bang could be a simple peculiarity of the Friedman models and that a high-density (non-infinite) initial state would be more plausible.

Gell-Mann predicts the existence of the omega elementary particle composed of three strange quarks (sss); the prediction is quickly confirmed experimentally at Brookhaven National Lab.

The USSR had its own program for using nuclear explosions for engineering purposes to shape the terrain on a large scale: by 1986 it had carried out 175 explosions for this purpose; only the Chernobyl disaster led the authorities to interrupt the experiments.

The United States has two programs for the use of nuclear explosions for engineering purposes to shape the land on a large scale: the Chariot project and the Plowshire project (abandoned in 1974 after 15 test explosions) which among other things plans to dig a

The USSR conducts its last atmospheric nuclear test; from now on it will only conduct underground tests (494 until 1990).

The USSR detonates a 22 Mton thermonuclear device dropped from an airplane

The American probe Mariner 2 arrives at Venus

Second launch of Project Highwater: As part of the Apollo-Saturn program, the effect of releasing large quantities of liquid hydrogen and oxygen into the upper atmosphere is being tested.

Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda meets French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris and brings him a small gift: a transistor radio. De Gaulle comments to an aide that Japan doesn’t look like an economic powerhouse if its Prime Minister Ikeda appears to be a

The last American atmospheric nuclear test was “TightTrope”; from this point on, the Americans would only conduct underground experiments: 751 until 1992, plus 5 deliberately unconfined crater-forming tests, and 4 zero-power surface safety tests.