June 1958


The following events occurred in June 1958:

June 1, 1958 (Sunday)

June 2, 1958 (Monday)

June 3, 1958 (Tuesday)

  • By a vote of 350 to 161, France's parliament approved a constitutional law to empower the government of new premier Charles de Gaulle to draft a new constitution and to grant de Gaulle and his cabinet a six month period allowing the government to rule by decree, with some exceptions for basic rights of citizens. De Gaulle had threatened to resign immediately if the emergency power was not granted. The upper house of the parliament, the Council of the Republic voted, 256 to 30, to yield the power to reform the constitution to the De Gaulle government. The new constitution would create the French Fifth Republic, a system of government providing for more power to an elected president.
  • Voters in the city of Los Angeles approved "Proposition B" the donation of of land in the Chavez Ravine to Brooklyn National League Club, Inc., which had already moved the Brooklyn Dodgers team to Los Angeles prior to the start of the 1958 season, for purposes of building a new stadium. With all votes counted, the site for Dodger Stadium was approved by a margin of 345,435 to 321,142.
  • Born: Donatella Damiani, Italian film actress and supermodel; in Naples

June 4, 1958 (Wednesday)

June 5, 1958 (Thursday)

June 6, 1958 (Friday)

June 7, 1958 (Saturday)

  • In a landmark date in medical imaging, the British medical journal The Lancet published the paper "Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound", by obstetricians Dr. Ian Donald and John MacVicar, and medical physicist T. G. Brown detailing the first use of medical ultrasound for diagnosing problems of an unborn child still in the womb.
  • Tim Tam, the thoroughbred racehorse who had won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, seemed poised to be the first winner of U.S. horse racing's Triple Crown as the favorite in the Belmont Stakes, but broke a sesamoid bone and went lame a quarter of a mile before the finish line. Tim Tam, whose racing career was ended, placed second to Cavan, who had not run in the Derby or the Preakness.
  • After an angry meeting with officials in Stockholm, the People's Republic of China withdrew from FIFA, the governing body for soccer, in protest of FIFA's admission of a team from Taiwan. The Chinese team had last played in FIFA competition on June 2, 1957, when it lost to Indonesia, 2-0, in the World Cup qualification tournament.
  • Berry Gordy Jr. founded the recording company "Tamla Records" in Detroit. On April 14, 1960, Tamla would be incorporated as the Motown Record Corporation, a portmanteau of Detroit's automotive manufacturing reputation as "The Motor Town".
  • The was launched from the Great Lakes Engineering Works shipyard at River Rouge, Michigan. At in length, she would be the largest freighter on the North American Great Lakes for more than a dozen years, but eventually go down with her crew of 29 in 1975.
  • Born: Prince, American rock musician, inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; in Minneapolis, Minnesota

June 8, 1958 (Sunday)

  • Burma's prime minister U Nu survived a motion of no confidence in his government by a margin of only eight votes, 127 to 119. Nu would remain in office a little more than four months before resigning on October 27 to transfer power to Burmese Army General Ne Win.
  • Voting was held for 160 of the 320 seats of France's Conseil de la République, the upper house of the French parliament during the Fourth French Republic.
  • Rear Admiral Americo Thomaz was elected president of Portugal, defeating Air Force General Humberto Delgado, who had pledged to fire the most powerful person in Portugal, Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar. In the election, believed by several independent observers to have been fraudulent, Thomaz won by a 3 to 1 margin over the popular Delgado. After the 1958 election, Salazar decreed that the president would be elected by the National Assembly rather than by direct popular vote.
  • David Isom broke the color line by swimming at Florida's Spa pool. The pool was "white only", so he, a black man, was not allowed to swim there. The manager drained the pool and closed the facility.
  • Born: Larisa Kislinskaya, Russian journalist and newspaper columnist who went from cultural reports for the Soviet Union to becoming an investigative reporter

June 9, 1958 (Monday)

  • All 24 people aboard an Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-12 airliner were killed in Russia when the plane flew into the side of a hill as it was making its approach to Magadan at the end of a flight from Okhotsk.
  • Died:
  • *Robert Donat, 53, English film star and 1939 Academy Award winner for Best Actor for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, died from cerebral thrombosis caused by a brain tumor.
  • *Fido, 16, celebrated Italian dog known for his loyalty in waiting more than 14 years for his deceased owner to return home; a monument in his honor was erected in the town of Borgo San Lorenzo

June 10, 1958 (Tuesday)

June 11, 1958 (Wednesday)

  • The Daily News, New York City's most-read newspaper, broke the story that White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams was under investigation by a U.S. House of Representatives Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight. Two days later, U.S. president Eisenhower's press secretary, James C. Hagerty, was asked about rumors that Adams had accepted expensive gifts from a friend, Bernard Goldfine, despite federal law prohibiting the practice. According to the New York Daily News, Adams had accepted a $2,400 Oriental rug. Another reporter asked about a $700 vicuna wool coat and $2,000 of bills that Goldfine had paid for Adams for stays at Boston's Sheraton Plaza hotel. The scandal would force Adams, who had been the chief aide from the start of Eisenhower's presidency, to resign.
  • United Nations Security Council Resolution 128 was passed, 10 votes to none, bringing the UN into the civil war in Lebanon. The resolution authorized the creation of the United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon, a nonmilitary international group to verify that outside aid was not being provided to either side from beyond Lebanon's borders. A military intervention by the U.S. would follow on July 15.
  • The capital of the French colony and future West African republic of Senegal was moved from Saint-Louis to Dakar.
  • The Vikings, an action and historical film that was released by Curtleigh Productions, premiered at New York City at the Astor Theatre and the Victoria Theatre, and became a worldwide hit after its general release in August.

June 12, 1958 (Thursday)

June 13, 1958 (Friday)

June 14, 1958 (Saturday)

  • The People's Republic of China released two imprisoned American Roman Catholic priests, Reverend Joseph P. McCormack and Reverend Cyril P. Wagner, after both had served five years' incarceration on convictions of espionage. A third priest, James Edward Walsh, had been given an exit visa but refused to leave because he wanted to continue his ministry in Shanghai, and would remain until 1970. McCormack and Wagner departed China on a British ship, Changsha, on June 18. Four other Americans, John T. Downey, Hugh F. Redmond, Richard C. Facteau, and Robert E. Cann, remained incarcerated.
  • Britain's BBC television network began showing The Black and White Minstrel Show, a popular variety show that would run for 20 seasons, despite its use of white singers in blackface and no players of African descent. The show's comedy was based on American minstrel shows and featured stereotypes of African-American speech and manners.
  • Born: Eric Heiden, American speed skater with five Olympic gold medals; in Madison, Wisconsin

June 15, 1958 (Sunday)

June 16, 1958 (Monday)

  • In Hungary, former prime minister Imre Nagy, former Defense Minister Pál Maléter, journalist Miklós Gimes, and Lieutenant Colonel József Szilágyi were all executed for treason for their roles in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The trial, verdict and sentences were not announced until afterward. Four other persons received prison sentences ranging from 5 to 12 years, and a life sentence was meted out for author Sándor Kopácsi. According to later reports, Nagy, Gimes and Szilagyi were all hanged while General Maleter was shot.
  • The Wham-O toy company began marketing of the "Hula hoop", a diameter hoop made from Marlex plastic, with the earliest known advertisement for the "Hula-Hoop by Wham-O" being placed by "The Broadway" chain of department stores in Los Angeles, for sale for $1.98 . With giveaways, national marketing and retailing, a fad would spread eastward across the United States.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Kent v. Dulles, 5 to 4, that the U.S. State Department could not withhold issuing passports to Americans based on suspicion of disloyalty to the U.S., invalidating a federal regulation on grounds that it was not authorized by Congress. The Court avoided the question of whether such a regulation would be unconstitutional. The State Department responded to the Kent decision on June 24 by removing questions about Communist Party membership from its passport applications and issuing passports to those persons who had left the answer blank.
  • A Cruzeiro do Sul airliner in Brazil crashed, killing all but five passengers out of a total of 26 people on board. The Convair CV-440 was approaching Curitiba at the end of a flight from Florianópolis. The dead included former president Nereu Ramos, who had served as the interim president for 10 weeks in 1955 and 1956.

June 17, 1958 (Tuesday)

June 18, 1958 (Wednesday)

  • A major change in the Soviet Union's agricultural policy regarding collective farms was approved by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party at the direction of General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. In addition to forgiving all outstanding debts owed to the government by farms for equipment, the Party eliminated the policy of "compulsory deliveries" of a percentage of produce at nominal prices and paying the same price to farms at the same rate of all "state purchases".
  • Ceylon, established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China.
  • The first supermarket in New Zealand was opened, as grocers Tom Ah Chee, Norman Kent, and John Brown introduced an American-style grocery store to launch Foodtown, with the first store opening at the Auckland suburb of Otahuhu. The supermarkets would be rebranded in 2011 as part of the Countdown chain of discount groceries.
  • The Trans Canada Microwave communications relay system of 139 towers from coast to coast transmitted its first telephone and television signals, and was declared fully operational on July 1.
  • Benjamin Britten's one-act opera Noye's Fludde premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival.
  • Died: Douglas Jardine, 57, English cricketer and captain of the England national team in The Ashes in 1932 and 1933, died of cancer

June 19, 1958 (Thursday)

June 20, 1958 (Friday)

June 21, 1958 (Saturday)

  • A U.S. District Court judge in Arkansas issued an order allowing the school board of Little Rock a two-and-a-half year delay in implementing racial desegregation of its schools, allowing Central High School to revert to its all-white status for the 1958-1959, 1959-1960 and 1960-1961 school years. The seven remaining African-American students at Central High were to be denied from returning to the school in the autumn. Judge Harry J. Lemley wrote, "... While the Negro students at Little Rock have a personal interest in being admitted to the public schools on a nondiscriminatory basis as soon as practicable, that interest is only one factor of the equation," adding "there is also another public interest involved, eliminating or at least ameliorating the unfortunate racial strife and tension which existed in Little Rock during the past year and still exists there."
  • The Astrological Association of Great Britain was founded.
  • Born: Reema Lagoo, Indian stage and film actress; in Bombay ;
  • Died:
  • *Herbert Brenon, 78, Irish-born U.S. film director noted for 1928's Beau Geste and Neptune's Daughter
  • *Yvonne Dubel, 76, French operatic soprano

June 22, 1958 (Sunday)

  • The first coronation ceremony in Norway was held in more than 50 years after being eliminated by an amendment of the constitution in 1908. King Olav V, who had ascended the throne on September 21, had convinced the government of Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen that an event should be held to acknowledge the King's commencement of duties as head of the Church of Norway, if not the nation's monarch. For the "Signing til kongsgjerning", King Olav sat upon the coronation throne in Trondheim to listen to a sermon, after which he knelt as Bishop Arne Fjellbu recited a prayer while placing a hand upon the King's head. No crown was used.
  • Born:
  • *Rocío Banquells, Mexican pop singer and actress; in Monterrey, Nuevo León
  • *Rodion Cămătaru, Romanian soccer football striker with 73 caps for the Romanian National Team; in Strehaia
  • *Bruce Campbell, American film and TV actor; in Royal Oak, Michigan
  • Died:
  • *Frances Kyle, 64, Northern Irish barrister and the first woman to practice law in the United Kingdom, being admitted to the Bar of Ireland in 1921, and in 1922 to Great Britain.
  • *Reverend A. E. Robertson, 87, Scottish minister and mountain climber

June 23, 1958 (Monday)

  • Almost 100 people were killed in the explosion of two fireworks stands in a crowded outdoor market in the Brazilian city of Santo Amaro, Bahia and 300 injured as people were preparing to celebrate "O Nascimento de João Batista", or St. John's Day, the June 24 honoring of the nativity of John the Baptist.
  • A mob of hundreds of rioters in Moscow attacked West Germany's Embassy in the Soviet Union, in apparent retaliation for demonstrations against the Soviet Union in West Germany's capital, Bonn, a week earlier. The crowd smashed 40 large windows and hurled stones, bricks, chunks of iron, bottles and burning rags at the building. The attack went on for two hours with no intervention by police.
  • In a 7 to 2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court published Miller v. United States, holding that a person cannot lawfully be arrested in one's home without the officers first giving notice of their authority and purpose. Because evidence seized in the raid by federal agents in the home of an accused drug dealer, 17-year-old William Miller of Washington D.C., was done without a warrant or an announcement of why the law enforcement agents were at his home, the evidence seized from Miller and two of his partners was not admissible and the charges were dismissed.

June 24, 1958 (Tuesday)

June 25, 1958 (Wednesday)

June 26, 1958 (Thursday)

  • In the North Sulawesi province, Indonesian Army troops recaptured the city of Manado, capital of the rebel government set up by Permesta, two days after the rebel government had evacuated the city following eight days of fierce fighting. The rebels relocated their capital to the city of Tomohon.
  • Surya Wonowidjojo founded the Indonesian cigarette manufacturer Gudang Garam Tbk, which he would build into a multi-million-dollar operation. Wonowidjojo's son, Rachman Halim, became the Gudang Garam CEO in 1984 and expanded it into a conglomerate, eventually becoming a billionaire and the richest man in Indonesia.
  • The small city of Riehen, located Basel-Stadt canton, broke centuries of tradition and became the first locality in Switzerland to allow women the right to vote. On September 29, Trudy Späth-Schweizer would become the first Swiss woman elected to public office, serving on the city council.
  • Gaston Eyskens formed a new government as Prime Minister of Belgium, replacing Achille Van Acker after Van Acker's Socialist-Liberal coalition had lost its plurality of seats in the June 1 elections.
  • Cuban rebels led by Raúl Castro began the taking of North American hostages, kidnapping 10 American and two Canadian mining company employees. The next day, the Cubans kidnapped 24 U.S. servicemen who had been on leave from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. All the hostages were treated well, and would ultimately be released, starting with four American civilians and one Canadian civilian on July 2.
  • The 71-year-old iron barque Omega, a Peruvian sailing ship and freighter that had been built in Liverpool in 1887 as the British ship Drumcliff, sank after springing a leak. As the world's last full-rigged ship trading under sail alone, the ship sank while carrying a cargo of guano from the Pachacamac Islands for Huacho. The ship's captain, Juan Anibal Escobar Hurtado, was accused by the Peruvian government of deliberately sinking the ship and was never cleared, despite his efforts to show that the sinking was due to the ship's age and poor maintenance.
  • Born:
  • *Pedro Cateriano, Prime Minister of Peru for three weeks in 2020; in Lima
  • *Suresh Gopi, Indian film actor and National Film Award winner; in Kollam, Kerala state

June 27, 1958 (Friday)

  • The Indian Tamil language musical film Maalaiyitta Mangai premiered.
  • A U.S. Air Force C-118 airplane, with nine crew aboard, flew into Soviet airspace after crossing the U.S.S.R.'s border with Turkey into the Armenian SSR and was captured in the Azerbaijan SSR near Yevlakh. According to a protest note delivered to the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, two Soviet fighters signaled the American plane to follow them to the nearest landing field and "The intruder did not comply." The plane finally landed "on Soviet territory from the place where it violated the state frontier of the Soviet Union and burned up", apparently from the crew's destruction of the plane after departing. Five of the U.S. airmen were beaten by angry Russian peasants shortly after parachuting to the ground and one, Major Bennie A. Shupe, was confronted by a lynch mob, commenting later that "They threw a rope over the crossarm of a telephone pole. I have no doubt they were going to hang me." Shupe said that after he made it clear that he was an American, the mob backed off and Soviet soldiers took the U.S. men into custody, where they were treated well. The nine men would be released on July 7 and transported to the Iranian city of Astara on the border between the U.S.S.R.'s Azerbaijan SSR and Iran.
  • The Peronist Party became legal again in Argentina.
  • An attempt by the U.S. Air Force to set a world speed record for four KC-135 tanker planes resulted in tragedy when the third of the four planes crashed on takeoff from Westover Air Force Base in Springfield, Massachusetts. The airplane stalled, skidded across the Massachusetts Turnpike, and burst into flames, killing all 15 persons aboard, six of whom were newspaper reporters assigned to cover the story.
  • The last original episode of The Frank Sinatra Show was telecast on the ABC network in the U.S., after which the superstar singer retired permanently from weekly television shows. Sinatra had been given control over the show and split the 32 episodes into 23 variety shows and nine dramatic plays, in some of which he acted. The final episode was a play called "The Seedling Doubt", presented by Sinatra as host, but not featuring him as an actor.
  • Billy Pierce, pitcher for the Chicago White Sox baseball team, prevented 26 batters from the Washington Senators from reaching first base and was within one batter of pitching a perfect game when pinch hitter Ed Fitz Gerald hit a double to ruin the achievement.
  • Born:
  • *Magnus Lindberg, Finnish classical music composer; in Helsinki
  • *Ahmad Vahidi, Iran's Minister of Defense and later its Interior Minister; as Ahmad Shah Cheraghi in Shiraz

June 28, 1958 (Saturday)

June 29, 1958 (Sunday)

June 30, 1958 (Monday)