July 1960


The following events occurred in July 1960:

[July 1], 1960 (Friday)

[July 2], 1960 (Saturday)

  • Former U.S. President Harry S. Truman said at a news conference in Independence, Missouri, that Democratic Party frontrunner John F. Kennedy lacked the maturity to be president, and that Kennedy should decline the nomination. Kennedy responded two days later, saying "I have encountered and survived every kind of hazard and opposition, and I do not intend to withdraw my name now, on the eve of the convention."
  • A riot broke out during the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, after a crowd of about 3,000 people, mostly white, were angry about a lack of seating for the concerts. Order was not restored until three companies of the state National Guard were sent in.
  • Born: Joanna Helbin, Polish archer; in Prudnik

[July 3], 1960 (Sunday)

[July 4], 1960 (Monday)

  • For the first time, a 50-star flag of the United States was hoisted, raised at, at the Fort McHenry National Monument in Baltimore, and at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. At the time, there were only seven places in the United States where the national flag was permitted to be flown during hours of darkness.

[July 5], 1960 (Tuesday)

[July 6], 1960 (Wednesday)

[July 7], 1960 (Thursday)

  • In one of the most shocking cases in the history of Australia, 8-year-old Graeme Thorne was kidnapped and murdered by Stephen Bradley. He demanded a ransom of £25,000 after his parents, Bazil and Freda, won in a lottery over a month prior. On August 16, nearly six weeks after the kidnapping, Sydney police would discover Thorne's body wrapped around a blue tartan picnic blanket and tied with string. On October 10, Bradley was captured by two Sydney policemen, Sergeants Brian Doyle and Jack Bateman, who were waiting for him on the SS Himalaya while it was docked at Colombo, Ceylon. He was extradited back to Australia where he was sentenced to penal servitude for life. Bradley would later die of a heart attack in 1968 in the Goulburn Correctional Centre while playing in a gaol tennis competition.
  • The Antarctica Service Medal was established by the United States Congress under Public Law 600 of the 86th Congress.
  • Police fired on a crowd of Italian demonstrators in Reggio Emilia, killing five people and injuring 30.

[July 8], 1960 (Friday)

[July 9], 1960 (Saturday)

  • Rodger Woodward, a seven-year-old boy, became the first person known to survive an accidental plunge over Niagara Falls. Roger had been a passenger in a boat on the Niagara River when the outboard motor failed. He fell over the Falls, but sustained only minor bruises and a cut, and was released from a hospital two days later.
  • The nuclear submarine was launched. It would be lost in 1963.
  • Major General Leighton I. Davis was appointed Department of Defense representative for Project Mercury support, replacing Major General Donald N. Yates.
  • As the Congo Crisis continued, the Belgian national airline Sabena began airlifting Belgian citizens out of the Congo. Over the next three weeks, 25,711 flew home.

[July 10], 1960 (Sunday)

[July 11], 1960 (Monday)

[July 12], 1960 (Tuesday)

[July 13], 1960 (Wednesday)

[July 14], 1960 (Thursday)

[July 15], 1960 (Friday)

[July 16], 1960 (Saturday)

  • The Soviet Union completed the Sino-Soviet split by notifying the government of the People's Republic of China that all 1,390 Soviet advisors and experts there would be withdrawn. Over the next month, the Soviets cancelled twelve economic and technological agreements, and 200 joint projects.
  • The phrase "New Frontier", which would be used to describe the policies of John F. Kennedy, was first used in Kennedy's acceptance of the Democratic presidential nomination in Los Angeles. After referring to the American West, Kennedy said that "we stand today on the edge of a new frontier— the frontier of the 1960s".
  • Died:
  • *Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, 74, German Luftwaffe leader
  • *John P. Marquand, 66, American author

[July 17], 1960 (Sunday)

[July 18], 1960 (Monday)

[July 19], 1960 (Tuesday)

[July 20], 1960 (Wednesday)

  • Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world's first elected female head of government, after her Sri Lanka Freedom Party won a majority in elections in Ceylon. Mrs. Bandaranaike, whose husband S.W.D. Bandaranaike had been prime minister until his assassination in 1959, took office as Prime Minister of Ceylon the next day, and assumed the jobs of Defense Minister and External Affairs Minister as well.
  • The first launch of a rocket from underwater into the air was made by the U.S. Navy submarine, with the firing of an unarmed Polaris missile while the sub was submerged at a depth of.
  • All 23 passengers and crew were killed on Aeroflot Flight 613 when their Ilyushin Il-14 airliner encountered turbulence and broke apart in midair during a flight from Leningrad to the smaller city of Syktyvkar. The passengers were all members of the 75th Squadron of the Soviet Civil Air Fleet; the plane was cleared to descend to an altitude of and its crew acknowledged the directive. The wreckage was found on July 31, in a forest south of Lake Kenozero, about from its destination.
  • President Eisenhower announced that the United States had a budget surplus of at the end of the 1960 fiscal year, a dramatic turnaround from the $12,426,000,000 deficit at the end of the 1959 fiscal year.
  • Born: Prvoslav Vujcic, Serbian Canadian writer; in Požarevac, Yugoslavia

[July 21], 1960 (Thursday)

[July 22], 1960 (Friday)

[July 23], 1960 (Saturday)

[July 24], 1960 (Sunday)

  • An accident killed 30 Japanese tourists and injured 16 others who were on a chartered sightseeing bus, on their way back down from visiting the Buddhist shrine at Mount Hiei, after sideswiping another bus and plunging off of a mountain road into a ravine. Reportedly, the tourist bus "shot 60 yards straight down and then rolled over for another 100 yards before crashing." The persons on the other bus were uninjured.
  • Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev retired as chief of the Warsaw Pact, and was replaced by another Soviet military man, Marshal Andrei Grechko. Marshal Grechko would become the Soviet Minister of Defense in 1967, and would be replaced as Warsaw Pact commander by Marshal Ivan Yakubovsky on July 8, 1967.
  • Died:
  • *Jacques Jaccard, 73, American silent film director in the 1910s and 1920s
  • *Hans Albers, 68, leading man of German film in the 1930s and early 1940s

[July 25], 1960 (Monday)

  • The lunch counter at the Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the "Greensboro Four" had started the first sit-in in January, began service to African-American customers at Integration of Greensboro's other restaurants did not happen until 1963.

[July 26], 1960 (Tuesday)

  • Fifteen months after U.S. President Eisenhower had proposed that the Soviet Union and the United States be allowed to inspect their opponents' missile sites, the Soviets made a counteroffer "to allow international inspection teams to carry out three on-site inspections annually on its territory." The U.S. and its allies considered the number to be inadequate, but saw it as the basis for negotiations. Actual inspections would not take place until more than 25 years later.
  • The opening title sequence of The Andy Griffith Show, showing Andy Griffith and Ron Howard preparing to go fishing, was filmed in advance of the show's October 3 premiere. The Franklin Canyon Reservoir in Los Angeles served as Myers Lake on the outskirts of Mayberry, North Carolina, for purposes of the show.
  • Died:
  • *Cedric Gibbons, 67, pioneering Irish-American film art director
  • *Maud Menten, 81, Canadian biochemist

[July 27], 1960 (Wednesday)

[July 28], 1960 (Thursday)

  • The Soviet Union launched the first of six Vostok 1K animal flight missions, with two space dogs, Chayka and Lisichka. An explosion destroyed the spacecraft shortly after launch, killing both dogs, and the mission was not publicized, nor given a name afterward.

[July 29], 1960 (Friday)

[July 30], 1960 (Saturday)

[July 31], 1960 (Sunday)