February 1962


The following events occurred in February 1962:

[February 1], 1962 (Thursday)

  • U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered "the first presidential message entirely devoted to public welfare", proposing that federal aid to the poor be extended to include job training programs and day care for children of working parents.
  • NASA Headquarters announced that John Glenn's Mercury 6 mission would be launched no earlier than February 13, and that repair of the Atlas launch vehicle fuel tank leak would be completed well before that time.
  • The Soviet Union and Ghana ratified a $42,000,000,000 trade pact, with Soviet engineers to assist in the construction of new industries and railroad lines in the West African nation.
  • Born: Takashi Murakami, Japanese contemporary artist; in Tokyo
  • Died: Westropp Bennett, 95, Irish politician

[February 2], 1962 (Friday)

  • John Uelses became the first person to surpass 16 feet in the pole vault, clearing the mark by at the Millrose Games in New York City. Uelses was assisted by use of a pole made of fiberglass. Prior to 1930, existing techniques limited the maximum height of vaulting to. After Cornelius Warmerdam cleared in 1942, the barrier had been pursued for more than twenty years.
  • Three U.S. Air Force officers were killed when their Fairchild C-123 Provider became the first USAF plane to be lost in Vietnam, as the U.S. carried out Operation Ranch Hand. The cause of the crash was not determined, although the concern, that it was shot down by Communist insurgents, led to orders that the defoliant spraying aircraft receive a fighter escort.
  • The Soviet Union conducted its very first underground nuclear test. Previously, the Soviets had conducted all of their atomic and hydrogen bomb explosions in the atmosphere, including more than fifty since ending a moratorium on testing.
  • Pope John XXIII announced the date for "Vatican II", the first worldwide conclave of the Roman Catholic Church in almost 100 years, to begin in Rome on October 11.
  • The last underground shift was worked at the colliery in Radcliffe, Northumberland, England.
  • Died: Alexander Lion, 91, co-founder of the German scout movement

[February 3], 1962 (Saturday)

[February 4], 1962 (Sunday)

  • The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital opened in Memphis, Tennessee. American comedian Danny Thomas, the hospital's founder, told a crowd of 9,000 that "If I were to die this minute, I would know why I was born... Anyone may dream, but few have realized a dream as gargantuan as this one." Thomas said that he had made a vow in 1937, when he was unemployed and penniless, that he would build a shrine to Saint Jude Thaddaeus "if I made good". After becoming successful, he began raising funds in 1951. Fifty years later, the hospital was treating 7,800 children per year at no cost, and funding cancer research worldwide.
  • The Sunday Times became the first paper in the United Kingdom to print a colour supplement. At the time that the Colour Section was introduced, such supplements "were already commonplace in North America".
  • Gnostic Philosopher Samael Aun Weor declared February 4, 1962, to be the beginning of the "Age of Aquarius", heralded by the alignment of the first six planets, the Sun, the Moon, and the constellation Aquarius.
  • Born: Clint Black, American country music singer; in Long Branch, New Jersey
  • Died: Jacob Kramer, 69, UK-based Ukrainian painter

[February 5], 1962 (Monday)

  • Hours before the Beatles were scheduled to play at the Cavern Club, drummer Pete Best told his fellow musicians that he was ill and would be unable to appear. Determined not to cancel the show, the group called around for a replacement and Ringo Starr, whose group had the day off, appeared in Best's place.
  • During a solar eclipse, an extremely rare grand conjunction of the classical planets occurred, for the first time since 1821. It included all 5 of the naked-eye planets plus the Sun and Moon), all of them within 16° of one another on the ecliptic. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Venus were on one side of the Sun, while Mercury and Earth were on the opposite side. When the Moon crossed between the Earth and the Sun, the eclipse was visible over India, where predictions of the world's end had been made.
  • According to famous psychic Jeane Dixon, a child was born "somewhere in the Middle East", who would "revolutionize the world and eventually unite all warring creeds and sects into one all-embracing faiths", and who would bring peace on Earth by 1999. The prediction, which did not come true as scheduled, was published in A Gift of Prophecy, the 1965 biography of Dixon by Ruth Montgomery.
  • French President Charles de Gaulle informed the nation that he was negotiating with the FLN for the independence of Algeria, conditional on a guarantee of the rights of "the minority of European origin in Algerian activities", and "an effective association" between Algeria and France.
  • In the Five Nations rugby union championship, England defeated Ireland 16–0 at Twickenham. Willie John McBride made his international debut in the match.
  • Born: Jennifer Jason Leigh, American actress and daughter of actor Vic Morrow and screenwriter Barbara Turner; as Jennifer Leigh Morrow in Hollywood
  • Died: Jacques Ibert, 71, French composer

[February 6], 1962 (Tuesday)

[February 7], 1962 (Wednesday)

[February 8], 1962 (Thursday)

[February 9], 1962 (Friday)

[February 10], 1962 (Saturday)

[February 11], 1962 (Sunday)

[February 12], 1962 (Monday)

[February 13], 1962 (Tuesday)

  • A crowd of at least 150,000 people, and perhaps as many as 500,000 marched in Paris in the first massive protest against the continuing Algerian War, which had gone into its eighth year. The occasion was the funeral ceremony for five of the nine people who had been killed by police in the Charonne metro station the previous Thursday. With many of the participants walking off of their jobs to protest, business in Paris and much of France was brought to a halt.
  • Born: May Sweet, Myanmar singer and actress; in Rangoon, Burma
  • Died: Hugh Dalton, 74, Welsh politician and former British Chancellor of the Exchequer

[February 14], 1962 (Wednesday)

  • A Tour of the [White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy], produced by CBS News and hosted by American First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and CBS reporter Charles Collingwood, was broadcast on television by CBS and on NBC at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time. Attracting 46,000,000 TV viewers, or three out of every four households in America, it was the highest rated television program up to that time. ABC television, which did not wish to share the $100,000 production cost for the commercial-free special, showed Naked City instead, and ran the program the following Sunday.
  • Unfavorable weather conditions caused John Glenn's space launch to be postponed.

[February 15], 1962 (Thursday)

[February 16], 1962 (Friday)

  • Voting in India's national parliamentary election commenced, with 210 million voters going to the polls. There were 14,744 candidates for the 494 seats in the Lok Sabha and the 2,930 seats in the legislatures of 13 Indian states. The final result was that 119,904,284 eligible voters participated, and the Indian National Congress, led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, won 361 of the seats. The Communist Party of India was a distant second with 29 seats.
  • U.S. President Kennedy issued nine Executive Orders, numbered 10095 to 11105, delegating "emergency preparedness functions" for various federal agencies and departments, to be implemented in the event of a national emergency that required a declaration of martial law.
  • Walter C. Williams, Project Mercury Operations Director, announced that because of weather conditions February 20 would be the earliest date that the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission could be launched.
  • Rioters in British Guiana set fire to much of the capital city of Georgetown, as Guianans of African descent attacked those of Indian descent. British troops were sent in to restore order.

[February 17], 1962 (Saturday)

[February 18], 1962 (Sunday)

[February 19], 1962 (Monday)

[February 20], 1962 (Tuesday)

  • John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut to be launched into orbit, as Mercury 6 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 9:47 a.m. local time and attained orbit at 9:59. An estimated 60 million persons viewed the launch on live television. After three circuits of the Earth, Glenn's spacecraft left orbit at 2:20 p.m., landed in the Atlantic Ocean at 2:43 about southeast of Bermuda, and was recovered by the destroyer at 3:04, after being in the water for 21 minutes. Glenn would return to outer space more than 35 years later, on October 29, 1998, at the age of 77, becoming the oldest human to orbit the Earth.
  • During the flight two major problems were encountered. A yaw attitude control jet apparently clogged, forcing the Glenn to abandon the automatic control system and to use the manual "fly-by-wire" controls, and a faulty switch in the heat shield circuit indicated, incorrectly, that the clamp holding the shield had been prematurely released. During reentry, however, the retropack was not jettisoned but retained as a safety measure to hold the heat shield in place in the event it had loosened.
  • The basic objectives of Project Mercury had been to place a human being into Earth orbit, to observe his reactions to space environment, and to safely return him to Earth to a point where he could be readily found. While there had been concern before the flight about the psychological effects of prolonged weightlessness, Glenn was neither harmed nor debilitated, and reported that zero gravity conditions were handy in performing his tasks. He said he felt exhilarated during his four and a half hours of weightlessness. One of the interesting sidelights of the Glenn flight was his report of "fire flies" when he entered the sunrise portion of an orbit. For several months, the phenomenon remained a mystery, until the May 24 Mercury 7 mission when Scott Carpenter accidentally tapped the spacecraft wall with his hand, releasing many of the so-called "fire flies." The source was determined to be frost from the reaction control jets.
  • Five days after making both rape and attacks on police subject to capital punishment, the Soviet Union restored the death penalty for persons convicted of accepting bribes. Females were exempt from the death penalty under any circumstances, as were men who had reached the age of 60 by the time of their sentencing.

[February 21], 1962 (Wednesday)

  • Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev first danced together, in a Royal Ballet performance of Giselle at Covent Garden in London, creating one of the greatest partnerships in the history of dance. Nureyev had defected from the USSR almost eight months earlier on June 16, 1961. He and Fonteyn received 23 curtain calls from the audience.
  • On the day after John Glenn's historic flight, Soviet Premier Khrushchev sent a telegram to U.S. President Kennedy, proposing that the two nations co-operate on their space program. The first joint venture would take place in 1975.
  • A metal fragment, identified by numbers stamped on it as a part of the Atlas that boosted Mercury-Atlas 6 into orbit, landed on a farm in South Africa after about 8 hours in orbit.
  • Former Soviet Foreign Minister Dmitri Shepilov was expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, in retaliation for his role in a 1957 attempt to oust Nikita Khrushchev from power.
  • The first Samos-F satellite, also referred to as a "ferret satellite" because of its purpose of monitoring Soviet missiles and seeking out information, was launched from Cape Canaveral.

[February 22], 1962 (Thursday)

[February 23], 1962 (Friday)

  • Astronaut John Glenn arrived in Cape Canaveral to a hero's welcome and was reunited with his family for the first time since before going into space. U.S. President John F. Kennedy, for whom Cape Canaveral would be renamed temporarily during the 1960s and early 1970s, greeted Glenn and personally awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal to Glenn and Robert R. Gilruth. Kennedy praised Glenn for "professional skill, unflinching courage and extraordinary ability to perform a most difficult task under physical stress." It was then that Glenn revealed in an interview that the heat shield on his capsule began to break up upon re-entry, the loss of which would have been fatal. Glenn calmly said, "it could have been a bad day for everybody".
  • Born: Lise Haavik, Norwegian singer; in Narvik
  • Died: James Halliday McDunnough, 84, Canadian entomologist who identified almost 1,500 different species of butterflies in North America

[February 24], 1962 (Saturday)

[February 25], 1962 (Sunday)

  • The Judy Garland Show, a one-off special, appeared on the United States TV channel CBS and received a 49.5 rating, the highest rating CBS had for a variety show to that time. The success of the special led to a weekly series in 1963, which CBS cancelled after a year because of low ratings.
  • Inspection of Atlas launch vehicle 107-D, designated for the May 24 Mercury 7 mission of Scott Carpenter, was conducted at the Convair Division of General Dynamics in San Diego.
  • Born: Birgit Fischer, German kayaker; Olympic gold medalist in 1980 and 1988, and world champion in 1978–79, 1981–83, 1985 and 1987 for East Germany; Olympic gold medalist in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004 and world champion in 1993–95, 1997–98 for united Germany; in Brandenburg an der Havel

[February 26], 1962 (Monday)

[February 27], 1962 (Tuesday)

  • Sublieutenant Nguyễn Văn Cử and Lt. Phạm Phú Quốc, two South Vietnamese members of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force, diverted from their combat mission south of Saigon and dropped bombs upon the presidential palace in an attempt to assassinate South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm. One of the bombs landed in the room where the President and his advisers were but failed to detonate because it had been dropped from too low an altitude to arm itself. Quốc was arrested after being forced to land, while Cử fled to neighboring Cambodia. Both men would be reinstated to the Air Force after Diem's assassination in 1963.
  • After getting word that U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was preparing to fire him from his job as Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover gave the Attorney General a memorandum of an FBI investigation of Judith Exner, noting that she had made phone calls to the private line of Robert's brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Hoover remained FBI Director until his death in 1972.
  • The United Kingdom's House of Commons voted 277–170 in favor of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, designed to limit the immigration into Great Britain by residents of India, Pakistan, and the West Indies.
  • An explosion at the Tito Coal Mine in Banovici, in the Bosnia republic of Yugoslavia, trapped 177 miners underground. Rescuers were able to save 123 of the men, but 54 were trapped inside and died.

[February 28], 1962 (Wednesday)