March 1961


The following events occurred in March 1961:

[March 1], 1961 (Wednesday)

[March 2], 1961 (Thursday)

[March 3], 1961 (Friday)

[March 4], 1961 (Saturday)

[March 5], 1961 (Sunday)

  • At a press conference at Andrews Air Force Base, spokesmen for the U.S. Air Force Research and Development command announced that they had developed an atomic clock "so accurate that its biggest error would not exceed one second in 1271 years", and, at, light enough that it could be used on aircraft in place of the existing system of crystal oscillators. Conventional atomic clock units, though more accurate, weighed over and were impractical for flight.
  • The crash of a U.S. Air Force Boeing KB-50 refueling plane killed all ten men on board.
  • Born: Marcelo Peralta, Argentinian musician; in Buenos Aires
  • Died: Kjeld Abell, 59, Danish playwright, shortly after finishing his last work, ''Skriget''

[March 6], 1961 (Monday)

  • The phrase "affirmative action" was first used to refer to a governmental requirement to promote equal opportunity by giving preferences in order to remedy prior discrimination. President Kennedy used the term with the issuance of Executive Order 10925. The original context was in Section 301 of the order, providing that federal government contracts include a provision that "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."
  • The British soap opera Coronation Street was fully networked by ITV, with a new schedule of Monday and Wednesday evenings at 19:30.
  • Born: Bill Buchanan, Scottish academic, computer scientist, cryptographer, first person to receive an OBE for services to Cyber Security at the 2017 Birthday Honours; in Falkirk, Stirlingshire
  • Died: George Formby, Jr., 56, British singer, comedian and actor; of his second heart attack in two months

[March 7], 1961 (Tuesday)

[March 8], 1961 (Wednesday)

[March 9], 1961 (Thursday)

[March 10], 1961 (Friday)

[March 11], 1961 (Saturday)

  • Plans for an invasion of Cuba were presented by CIA official Richard M. Bissell, Jr. for the approval of President Kennedy. In a meeting attended by the President, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, Bissell outlined the proposed "Operation Trinidad", with an invasion force storming the beaches of Trinidad, Cuba by sea and by air. Kennedy rejected the plan as "too spectacular", and directed Bissell to come up with a less obvious placement of troops. Only four days later, Bissell had drawn up a new plan, with the force to strike at the Bay of Pigs within a month. "The Kennedy team was impressed," one historian would say later, "when they should have been incredulous."
  • "Ken", a doll to accompany the popular Barbie that had been brought out by the Mattel toy company introduced on March 9, 1959, was introduced at the annual American International Toy Fair in New York City.
  • Died: William A. Morgan, 33, former American soldier who later became an advisor to Fidel Castro, was executed by a firing squad in Havana after being found guilty of conspiring against the government.

[March 12], 1961 (Sunday)

  • Miami mobster John Roselli, who was assisting the CIA in its plans to assassinate Fidel Castro, met with a Cuban contact at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. Roselli would testify before the U.S. Senate, 14 years later, about the delivery of money and poisoned pills for the contact to place in Castro's food. Columnist Jack Anderson would break the story in his column of January 18, 1971. The CIA would acknowledge its involvement 46 years after the fact, with the declassification of documents in 2007.
  • The long-running BBC radio music show Your Hundred Best Tunes moved to the Sunday night timeslot with which it would be associated for the next 45 years.

[March 13], 1961 (Monday)

[March 14], 1961 (Tuesday)

[March 15], 1961 (Wednesday)

[March 16], 1961 (Thursday)

[March 17], 1961 (Friday)

[March 18], 1961 (Saturday)

  • Little Joe 5A, the sixth in the series of Little Joe missions, was launched from Wallops Island to demonstrate the structural integrity of the spacecraft and escape system during an escape maneuver initiated at the highest dynamic pressure anticipated during an Atlas launch for orbital flight. LJ-5A lifted off normally, but 19 seconds later the escape tower fired prematurely, a situation resembling the Little Joe 5 flight in November 1960. The signal to initiate the abort maneuver was given, and the launch vehicle-adapter clamp ring was released, but the spacecraft remained on the launch vehicle since the escape motor was already expended. The separation was effected by using the retrorockets, but this command was transmitted before the flight had reached its apex, where separation had been planned. Therefore, the separation was rather violent. The parachutes deployed at about, and after recovery it was found that the spacecraft had incurred only superficial structural damage. This spacecraft was used for the subsequent Little Joe 5B flight test. Test objectives of LJ-5A were not met.
  • "Nous les amoureux", sung by Jean-Claude Pascal, won the Eurovision Song Contest 1961 for Luxembourg.

[March 19], 1961 (Sunday)

  • Tornadoes swept through four districts of East Pakistan, killing more than 250 people. The dead included 32 people who had taken refuge in a Catholic church in Dacca after attending Sunday mass.
  • Died: Ada Cornaro, 79, Argentinian tango dancer and actress

[March 20], 1961 (Monday)

  • Phase III of testing of the Mercury spacecraft airdrop program was conducted and lasted for four weeks, until April 13. Primary objectives of the drops were to study further the spacecraft suitability and flotation capability after water impact. Six drops were made, but later the tests were extended for two additional drops to monitor hard-surface landing effects.

[March 21], 1961 (Tuesday)

[March 22], 1961 (Wednesday)

[March 23], 1961 (Thursday)

  • The Soviet Union lifted censorship restrictions for foreign news correspondents that had been in place since 1917. Except for two occasions in 1939 and 1946, non-Soviet reporters had been required to have their dispatches reviewed before transmission. Foreign office press director Mikhail Kharlamov cautioned that, although pre-approval of reports would no longer be required, foreigners were still required to keep copies of all dispatches for future review, and that persons who "circulated unfounded rumors about the Soviet Union" were still subject to expulsion.
  • An American C-47 transport plane with eight men aboard disappeared over the war-torn nation of Laos after taking off from Vientiane toward Saigon. The U.S. Air Force did not announce the incident until two days later. The sole survivor, Major Lawrence R. Bailey, Jr., was captured and became the first American POW of the Vietnam Era. He would be released on August 15, 1962.
  • President John F. Kennedy advised Representative Overton Brooks that he had no intention "to subordinate" the space activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to those of the military.
  • Born: George Weber, American radio personality; in Philadelphia
  • Died:
  • *Valentin Bondarenko, 24, Russian cosmonaut, was burned to death in a training accident. His death would be concealed by the Soviet government for more than 25 years, finally being revealed in 1986 in an article in the daily newspaper Izvestia.
  • *Heinrich Rau, 61, East German politician and Minister of Foreign Trade

[March 24], 1961 (Friday)

  • The Mercury-Redstone BD rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral on one final test flight to certify its safety for human transport. As with earlier Soviet tests, the American space capsule carried a test dummy. The spacecraft reached an altitude of and was recovered in the Atlantic 8 minutes after launch. Stopped by Wernher von Braun from going, Alan Shepard had volunteered to take the flight, and would have become the first human to travel into outer space. Less than three weeks later, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin would reach the milestone on April 12. Shepard would reach space, though not orbit, on May 5.

[March 25], 1961 (Saturday)

[March 26], 1961 (Sunday)

[March 27], 1961 (Monday)

  • Nine African-American students from Mississippi's Tougaloo College made the first effort of passive resistance to end segregation in the state capital, Jackson, by walking into the whites-only main branch of the municipal public library. After beginning the "read-in", the students declined to leave and were arrested by police. The next day, black students at Jackson State College marched to the city jail to protest the arrest of the "Tougaloo Nine", and more demonstrations followed.
  • In a NASA Headquarters note to editors of magazines and newspapers, procedures and a deadline were established for submitting the applications of accredited correspondents to cover the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission. As of April 24, 1961, the deadline date, 350 correspondents were accredited to cover the launch, the first crewed suborbital flight of Project Mercury.
  • Thunderball, Ian Fleming's ninth James Bond novel, was first published, in a hardback British edition by Jonathan Cape.

[March 28], 1961 (Tuesday)

  • U.S. President John F. Kennedy informed Congress that, as part of the proposed $43.8 billion defense budget, he was cancelling the Pye Wacket project, an experimental lenticular-form air-to-air missile, and the B-70 nuclear-powered airplane. Kennedy declared that "As a power which will never strike first, our hopes for anything close to an absolute deterrent must rest on weapons which come from hidden, moving, or invulnerable bases which will not be wiped out by a surprise attack," and lobbied instead for ten additional Polaris nuclear submarines and an increased Minuteman nuclear arsenal.
  • All 52 people aboard ČSA Flight 511, a Czechoslovak State Airlines Ilyushin-18 airplane, died when it crashed near Russelbach in East Germany after an onboard explosion. The flight was on its way from Prague to Bamako, the capital of Mali, taking technicians and their families, half of them from the Soviet Union, to jobs in Africa.
  • Air Afrique was founded by agreement of ten West African nations that had gained independence from France. The airline operated until 2001, when its fleet and routes were acquired by Air France.
  • The Factories Act 1961 was introduced into the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
  • Died:
  • *Powel Crosley Jr., 74, American inventor and owner of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team
  • *Chatta Singh, 74, Indian VC recipient

[March 29], 1961 (Wednesday)

[March 30], 1961 (Thursday)

  • Actor Ronald Reagan, in the course of his work as a conservative public relations man for the General Electric Company, first gave "The Speech", officially titled "Encroaching Control". In the address to the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce at the Thunderbird Room of the Hotel Westward Ho, Reagan expressed his concern that socialized medicine, federal aid to education and farm subsidies marked the gradual transition of the United States to socialism. The speech in Arizona attracted the attention of conservative Republican leaders, including U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater. As one historian would note later, "Reagan's skillful presentation of 'the Speech' brought him to the attention of the most conservative officials of the Republican Party and their supporters" who were impressed by "his admirable and unquestioned power of persuasion", and would lead to Reagan's selection to deliver the speech in a 30-minute nationwide broadcast in support of Goldwater's candidacy for U.S. president on October 27, 1964, beginning "the political journey that carried him to two terms as governor of California and, ultimately, to election and reelection as president of the United States."
  • The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was signed at New York City. The pact would enter into force on December 13, 1964, and now applies to 149 nations.
  • Redstone launch vehicle No. 7 was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury 3 mission.
  • Died:
  • *Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, leader of Iran's Shiite Muslims, died at the age of 86. Borujerdi's death led the way to the ascension of the 58-year-old Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who in 1979 would become the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
  • *Former Brigadier General Mengistu Neway, 41, was hanged after the unsuccessful coup attempt against the Ethiopian government in December 1960.
  • *Armand Robin, 49, French poet and journalist; three days after his arrest following an altercation in a bar

[March 31], 1961 (Friday)

  • NASA's worldwide Mercury tracking network, designed by the Western Electric Company at a cost of $60,000,000 became fully operational. Western Electric would turn over the global network of 18 ground tracking stations to NASA in a formal ceremony later in the year. Electronics on two ships in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were used to close gaps between ground stations.
  • The last train ran on Ireland's Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway.
  • Died: Paul Landowski, 85, French monumental sculptor