May 1962


The following events occurred in May 1962:

[May 1], 1962 (Tuesday)

[May 2], 1962 (Wednesday)

[May 3], 1962 (Thursday)

[May 4], 1962 (Friday)

  • U.S. Ambassador to Canada Livingston Merchant, in his final month as envoy, made a final visit to Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in Ottawa. At the meeting Diefenbaker angrily brought out an American memorandum that had been left behind during President Kennedy's visit in May 1961. The President's handwritten notes in the margin included the letters "OAS", "but Diefenbaker read Kennedy's handwriting as 'SOB'," and threatened to use the memo in the upcoming June 18 elections. After conferring with his superiors, the ambassador later told Diefenbaker that he was personally reluctant to report "anything which could be construed as a threat" and that publication of the memo would "make difficult future relations". The memo was never used, but Kennedy and Diefenbaker never trusted each other again.
  • Dr. Masaki Watanabe of Japan performed the very first arthroscopic surgery to repair a meniscus tear, a common injury for athletes. The first patient to receive the procedure was a 17-year-old basketball player, who was returned to playing six weeks after the meniscectomy and resection of his right knee by Dr. Watanabe.
  • During the El Carupanazo revolt against Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt, Venezuelan Air Force aircraft began a two-day attack on rebel positions at Carúpano.
  • Scott Carpenter, designated as the primary pilot for the Mercury-Atlas 7 crewed orbital flight, completed a simulated MA-7 mission exercise.

[May 5], 1962 (Saturday)

[May 6], 1962 (Sunday)

[May 7], 1962 (Monday)

  • Three officials of the Central Intelligence Agency met with U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and implored him to stop investigation of Mafia crime boss Sam Giancana. For the first time, the CIA revealed that it had offered $150,000 to several organized criminals to carry out a "hit" against Cuba's Prime Minister, Fidel Castro. The secret meeting would become public in 1975, with the release of the Rockefeller Commission's report on an investigation of the CIA.
  • The six-member township council of Centralia, Pennsylvania, voted in favor of improving the new landfill at the edge of town, in time for Memorial Day ceremonies. Every year, the contents of the city dump would be set afire, despite a state law prohibiting the practice, and the May 27 burning would prove to be the end of Centralia.
  • Detroit became the first city in the United States to use traffic cameras and electronic signs to regulate the flow of traffic. The pilot program began with 14 television cameras along a stretch of the John C. Lodge Freeway, between the Davison Expressway and Interstate 94.
  • NASA announced that the Mercury 7 flight would be delayed several days due to problems with the Atlas rocket. Scott Carpenter would be launched on May 24.
  • The 1962 Cannes Film Festival opened.

[May 8], 1962 (Tuesday)

[May 9], 1962 (Wednesday)

[May 10], 1962 (Thursday)

  • Pravda, the official newspaper for the Soviet Communist Party, printed the official response to pleas to prevent the continued tearing down of Moscow's monasteries and churches. The plea had been in an editorial in the magazine Moskva about the urban renewal decisions of the Architectural Planning Administration. The editorials were unsigned, but apparently approved by First Secretary Khrushchev. The day before, three of the journalists from Moskva were informed that the article was anti-Soviet.
  • The Japanese monster film Mothra opened in the United States, after having premiered in Japan on July 30, 1961.
  • NASA's John C. Fischer, Jr. of Lewis Research Center, proposed a two-phased plan for a U.S. space station program. The first phase, which would take at least four years, would be to send a fully equipped station into orbit with a crew, while the second phase would have regular supply by placing an inflatable structure into orbit to be resupplied by ferry vehicles.
  • Gemini Project Office directed McDonnell to determine what special pressure suit features would be required to allow crew members to take a "walk in space" of up to 15 minutes outside of an orbiting capsule. During all Gemini flights, measurements would be made of each crewmember's blood pressure, heart activity, galvanic skin response, and body temperature. The bioinstrumentation devices would add per crewmember, with a total power consumption of about. A postlanding survival kit weighing would be provided for each crew member.
  • Born: John Ngugi, Kenyan athlete and 1988 Olympic gold medalist in the 5000 metre race; in Nyahururu

[May 11], 1962 (Friday)

[May 12], 1962 (Saturday)

  • The Philippines continued to distance itself from its past as an American protectorate, changing its name on postage and coinage to Pilipinas.
  • In the U.S., nine men on a fishing trip were killed by sharks after their boat sank off the coast of Newport Beach, California. Chester McMain of Norwalk was taking the Happy Jack on its first voyage when it ran into rough weather. Though the men were wearing life jackets, the sharks apparently pulled them underwater. Searchers on the fishing boat Mardic located six bodies the next day and found sharks swimming around the group.
  • James E. Webb, the new Administrator of NASA, found that Project Gemini cost estimates had exceeded the original $250,000,000 estimate and almost tripled to $747,000,000. Spacecraft cost rose from $240 to $391 million; Titan II GLV rockets from $113 to $162 million; Atlas-Agena targets from $88 to $106 million; and supporting development from $29 to $37 million. Estimated operations costs had declined from $59.0 to $47.8 million.
  • Archie Moore gave up his world light heavyweight boxing title to move up to the heavyweight division. His successor was Harold Johnson.
  • Born: Emilio Estevez, American actor, to then-TV actor Martin Sheen and Janet Templeton Sheen; in Staten Island, New York
  • Died: Frank Jenks, 59, American film comedian

[May 13], 1962 (Sunday)

[May 14], 1962 (Monday)

[May 15], 1962 (Tuesday)

  • The last execution of an American for armed robbery, without homicide, took place in Huntsville, Texas as an African-American man, 20-year-old Herbert Lemuel Bradley of Dallas, was put to death in the electric chair. Bradley, who had shot an elderly grocer six times in the robbery, told reporters before he died, "I have no complaints. A man has to die sometime, but I don't think this has been fair," noting that he shared the prison with convicts serving terms of 5 to 25 years for armed robbery. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had upheld the death sentence on February 28, noting that the victim was still in the hospital more than a year after being shot four times in the stomach during a gunfight.
  • Born:
  • *Julie Otsuka, American author; in Palo Alto, California
  • *Amit Chaudhuri, Indian author; in Calcutta
  • Died: Michael Dillon, 47, English physician, who, in 1946, became the first person to undergo female-to-male transsexual phalloplasty

[May 16], 1962 (Wednesday)

  • The first 1,800 United States Marines dispatched to Southeast Asia, troops of the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, arrived at Bangkok to guard Thailand's border with Laos. The Thai government had given permission for 5,000 American troops to stay.
  • Representatives of McDonnell Aircraft and the Gemini Project Office decided to develop more powerful retrograde rocket motors for the Gemini spacecraft, with three times more thrust level to permit retrorocket aborts at altitudes as low as. Development of the new motors was expected to cost $1,255,000.

[May 17], 1962 (Thursday)

[May 18], 1962 (Friday)

  • British soldiers erected a barbed wire barricade along Hong Kong's border with the People's Republic of China. The purpose was to block refugees from fleeing China into Hong Kong. At the time, as many as 4,000 people were attempting to flee Communist China into the British colony. The next day, British administrators imposed penalties on any Hong Kong resident attempting to assist a refugee's escape.
  • McDonnell subcontracted the parachute landing system for Gemini to Northrop Ventura for $1,829,272. The Gemini Project Office had decided in April on using a system of one diameter ring-sail parachute, but now decided to add an ring-sail drogue parachute to the system. McDonnell proposed deploying the drogue at. NASA would concur on May 24.
  • The Panchen Lama, leader of the Tibetan people since the nation's conquest by Communist China, presented a 70,000-word petition to visiting Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, pleading for relief for the suffering of Tibetans under Communist rule. Repression of Tibetan Buddhists eased to some extent after the Panchen Lama's bold move.
  • Al Oerter became the first person to throw the discus more than, setting a mark of at Los Angeles.
  • Born:
  • *Sandra, German pop singer who achieved international fame in the 1980s and 1990s; in Saarbrücken, West Germany
  • *Karel Roden, Czech actor; in České Budějovice

[May 19], 1962 (Saturday)

  • Marilyn Monroe made her last significant public appearance, singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at a birthday party for President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. The event was part of a fundraiser to pay off the Democratic Party's four million-dollar debt remaining from Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign. Monroe was stitched into a $12,000 dress "made of nothing but beads" and wore nothing underneath as she appeared at the request of Peter Lawford; President Kennedy thanked her afterward, joking, "I can now retire from politics after having had 'Happy Birthday' sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way."
  • Mercury 7 was postponed a third time because of irregularities in the temperature control device on a heater in the Atlas flight control system.
  • Died: Gabriele Münter, 85, German expressionist painter

[May 20], 1962 (Sunday)

[May 21], 1962 (Monday)

[May 22], 1962 (Tuesday)

  • All 45 people on board Continental Airlines Flight 11 were killed when the Boeing 707 was destroyed by dynamite while at an altitude of. The airliner was flying from Chicago to Kansas City when the explosion occurred in the rear lavatory while the jet was over Centerville, Iowa near the border between the U.S. states of Iowa and Missouri. The fuselage came down from Centerville on a farm near Unionville, Missouri. Contact was lost at 9:15 p.m. and the plane had disappeared from radar at 9:40 after leaving behind a line of debris, including a briefcase with the initials "T.G.D."; Thomas G. Doty, one of the passengers, had been on his way to Kansas City to face criminal charges for armed robbery. He had taken out a $300,000 life insurance policy payable to his wife and had bought sticks of dynamite at a hardware store before carrying out the murder-suicide.
  • Victoria Bell of Little Rock, Arkansas and her 11 children arrived in Hyannis, Massachusetts, as part of a pernicious initiative orchestrated by Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, to send the family to a northern state. This move was viewed by many as an attempt by Faubus to challenge the Northern states' stance on racial integration. The family's relocation garnered nationwide media attention and heightened tensions surrounding the civil rights movement. John A. Volpe, Governor of Massachusetts, denounced the move as "Trafficking in misery", affirming the state's commitment to supporting the Bells and two other families. This event was part of a broader initiative called the "Reverse Freedom Rides," which aimed to disrupt northern civil rights efforts.
  • American composer Richard Rodgers became the first "EGOT" when he received the Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music for Television, as composer of music for the ABC television show Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years. He had won an Oscar in 1945 for Best Original Song, his first Tony Award in 1950, and his first Grammy Award in 1961.
  • Born:
  • *Brian Pillman, American football player and professional Wrestler who worked for WCW and the WWF ; in Cincinnati
  • *John Sarbanes, American politician and U.S. Representative for Maryland's 3rd district since 2007, son of longtime Congressman and Senator Paul Sarbanes; in Baltimore

[May 23], 1962 (Wednesday)

  • The first successful reattachment of a severed limb was accomplished by Dr. Ronald A. Malt at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Everett Knowles, a 12-year-old boy, had had his right arm severed at the shoulder by a freight train. A year after the limb was saved, Everett could move all five fingers and bend his wrist, and by 1965, he was again playing baseball and tennis.
  • Former French Army General Raoul Salan, founder of the French terrorist Organisation armée secrète, was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason, after initially being given a death sentence in absentia. General Salan would be pardoned by President Charles de Gaulle on June 15, 1968, after more than six years' incarceration at the prison in Tulle.
  • U.S. President Kennedy signed a Presidential Directive waiving the quota against accepting immigrants from China. Since 1943, the quota for Chinese immigrants had been only 105 per year. Within three years, President Lyndon Johnson would put the quota for Asian nations at the same level as that for European nations.
  • Drilling for the first subway in Montreal commenced at 8:00 a.m., as a crew began to bore a long tunnel under Berri Street, to run between Metropolitan Boulevard and Jean Talon Street.
  • Avco Manufacturing Corporation presented a proposal to MSC on a proposal for an orbiting space station, with a primary purpose of determining the effects of zero-g on the crew's ability to stand reentry. Avco proposed a station with three separate tubes about in diameter and long, to be launched separately and then joined into a triangular shape in orbit.
  • Ernst Krenek's opera What Price Confidence? premièred at Saarbrücken, seventeen years after its composition.
  • Ames Research Center began the first wind tunnel test of the Paraglider Development Program.
  • Died: Rubén Jaramillo, 61, Mexican activist for land reform, along with his wife and three of his four children, after being arrested by Mexican soldiers at his home in Xochicalco.

[May 24], 1962 (Thursday)

  • Scott Carpenter orbited the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule, then splashed down off course in the Atlantic Ocean. He was located and rescued by the aircraft carrier. The Mercury 7 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:45 a.m. local time, went around the Earth three times, then began its return at 1:30 p.m.. Instead of being tilted 34° toward the horizon, the capsule was inclined at 25° and overshot its mark, landing at 1:41 p.m. The mission achieved all objectives. Only one critical component malfunction occurred, a random failure of the pitch horizon scanner, which provided a reference point to the attitude gyroscopes. To compensate, the spacecraft was allowed to drift for 77 additional minutes and the flight lasted 4 hours and 56 minutes. Splashdown happened northeast of Puerto Rico. The overshoot was traced to a 25° yaw error when the retrograde rockets were fired, about three seconds late, which caused of the overshoot. Carpenter, who had deployed a rubber raft, floated for 2 hours and 59 minutes before being rescued by helicopter.
  • The string quartet piece ST/10=1, 080262, the first classical music composed using a computer, was premiered. Greek composer Iannis Xenakis had created the work with the aid of an IBM 7090 computer.
  • The U.S. Embassy in Moscow renewed the passport of Lee Harvey Oswald and approved the entry of his wife and daughter into the United States.
  • North American Aviation began testing the emergency parachute system for the Gemini flight test vehicle.

[May 25], 1962 (Friday)

  • The new Coventry Cathedral, also known as St Michael's Cathedral, was consecrated in Coventry, West Midlands, for the Church of England, more than 20 years after the November 14, 1940 destruction of the 500-year-old Cathedral by German Luftwaffe bombers during World War II. The new cathedral, symbolic of forgiveness and rebirth, stands next to the ruins of the old one.
  • A group of students at Haigazian University in Beirut launched the first rocket in what would become the Lebanese space program, sending the HCRS-7 Cedar rocket to an altitude of under the supervision and protection of the Lebanese Army, which arranged for the clearing of airspace around the launch area.
  • Died:
  • *David Ogle, 40, English automobile designer who had founded his own sports car company, was killed while driving his Ogle Mini GT sports to a race circuit where he was going to demonstrate the vehicle. He was on the A1 highway at Digswell, Hertfordshire and traveling at when he collided with a van and the car burst into flame.
  • *Simone Tanner Chaumet, 45, French humanitarian honored for her role in saving hundreds of Jewish children in France during World War II, and later a peace activist in Algeria, was murdered in the Algiers suburb of Bouzaréah.

[May 26], 1962 (Saturday)

[May 27], 1962 (Sunday)

[May 28], 1962 (Monday)

[May 29], 1962 (Tuesday)

[May 30], 1962 (Wednesday)

[May 31], 1962 (Thursday)