November 1958


The following events occurred in November 1958:

November 1, 1958 (Saturday)

  • The crash of Cubana de Aviación Flight 495 killed 17 of the 20 people aboard, after being hijacked by rebels during its flight from Miami in the U.S. to the vacation resort of Varadero in Cuba. The Vickers Viscount 755 apparently ran out of fuel and crashed on a beach at Punta Tabaco as it was approaching the airport for the village of Preston in Cuba.
  • A court in Havana refused to suspend the November 3 presidential elections in Cuba, after candidate Carlos Márquez Sterling asked that voting be delayed in the provinces of Oriente and Las Villas because of violence.
  • One day after the U.S. and British moratorium on nuclear testing had gone into effect, the Soviet Union exploded a "relatively low yield" atomic weapon at its test site, and followed with another one two days later. U.S. President Eisenhower responded by statement that "We shall continue suspension of such tests for the time being, and we understand that the United Kingdom will do likewise. We hope that the Soviet Union will also do so. If there is not shortly a corresponding renunciation by the Soviet Union, the United States will be obliged to reconsider its position."

November 2, 1958 (Sunday)

  • Thailand's dictator, Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, issued Proclamation No. 21 as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and commander of the Revolutionary Council that had overthrown the civilian prime minister in 1957. Proclamation 21 was directed against the anthaphan in urban areas, thousands of people identified by the council as hooligans, with the goal of removing "a menace to society and the common people" in order to "promote the happiness of the people." The proclamation soon extended to the round up of nonconformist young people who had long hair or "flashy clothes", who could be among those detained for 30 days and, if deemed necessary, sent to reform institutions.
  • The splitting of "Ice Island Alpha", an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean, stranded 21 members of the U.S. International Geophysical Year exploration team on a "drifting island" for four days without supplies. After delays for bad weather, a U.S. Air Force C-123 cargo plane sent from the Thule Air Base in Greenland rescued the group.
  • Pakistan's former president, Iskander Mirza, went into exile six days after he was forced to resign in favor of General Mohammed Ayub Khan. Mirza and his wife boarded a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight at the airport in Karachi and moved to the United Kingdom, where he would receive two pensions.
  • Died: Jean Couzy, 35, French mountaineer, was killed when he was struck on the head in a rock fall while climbing in the Dévoluy Mountains in the French Alps.

November 3, 1958 (Monday)

November 4, 1958 (Tuesday)

  • Iraqi Army Colonel Abdul Salam Arif, who had led the [14 July Revolution|bloody coup d'état on July 14] that had included the assassination of the King, the royal family and the prime minister, was arrested in Baghdad on orders of Premier Abd al-Karim Qasim.
  • The coronation of Pope John XXIII took place in Rome after his throne was carried into St. Peter's Basilica.
  • In midterm elections in the United States, the Democratic Party fell slightly short of a two-thirds majority in Congress. The Democrats, led by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, gained 13 seats and increased their 49 to 47 lead to a 62 to 34 majority in the Senate. The elections were the last for a 48-state United States. Led by Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, the Democrats increased a 234–201 lead to 1958 [United States House of Representatives elections|a 283 to 153 majority in the House of Representatives].
  • The CBS television network in the U.S. announced the immediate cancellation of its once-popular quiz show The $64,000 Question, which had last been shown on November 2. Vice President for TV programming Hubbell Robinson Jr. said in a statement, "Although the integrity of the first big quiz show was not an issue in the replacement, The $64,000 Question has nevertheless become a victim of declining quiz show audiences."
  • Died: Sam Zimbalist, 53, Russian-born American film producer and editor, died of a heart attack in Rome during the production of Ben-Hur, which would win 11 Academy Awards.

November 5, 1958 (Wednesday)

November 6, 1958 (Thursday)

  • Under the leadership of Dr. Maurice E. Müller, the AO Foundation was founded by a meeting of 13 orthopedic surgeons at the Elite Hotel in Biel, near Bern in Switzerland. The creation by the surgeons of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Osteosynthesefragen, has been described as a "small gathering that would someday... cause a worldwide revolution in trauma care, and spawn a global industry for the manufacturing of the necessary implants and related surgical tools" for open reduction internal fixation to mend broken bones with screws and plates, intramedullary rods and other metallic devices.
  • An 8.3 magnitude earthquake off of the coast of the Soviet island of Iturup and injured 51 people.

November 7, 1958 (Friday)

November 8, 1958 (Saturday)

November 9, 1958 (Sunday)

  • All 36 people aboard an Aero-Topográfica Martin PBM-5 Mariner disappeared and were presumed dead after the flying boat airplane experienced trouble during the Portuguese airliner's flight from Lisbon to Funchal while over the North Atlantic Ocean. The last transmission was an international Morse code distress signal, "QUG", meaning ""I am forced to land immediately."
  • The wreckage of the B-24 Liberator bomber nicknamed Lady Be Good, was found in the Libyan Desert more than 15 years after it had crashed on April 4, 1943. An oil exploration team from the British Petroleum company had accidentally discovered the airplane debris. The remains of the crew, who had bailed out from the airplane and then died of thirst days later, would not be found until 1960.

November 10, 1958 (Monday)

  • Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said in a speech in Moscow that the Potsdam Agreement of 1945, which had provided for control of Berlin by the U.S., the UK, France and the U.S.S.R. after World War II, was "out of date" and accused the three western powers of consistently violating the agreement, thereby having "abolished the legal basis on which their stay in Berlin rested." The statement would be followed days later by an ultimatum giving the three NATO members six months to withdraw from West Berlin.
  • Former Iraqi Premier Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali, former Armed Forces Chief of Staff Rafiq Arif and former Deputy Chief of Staff Ghazi Mohammed Daghistani, were all sentenced to death by a five-man military tribunal in Baghdad. All three had served under King Faisal II and Prime Minister Nuri as-Said, and would be released in 1960.
  • The bossa nova was born in Rio de Janeiro, with João Gilberto's recording of Chega de Saudade.

  • Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution. His jewelry dealership, "Harry Winston, Inc.", had purchased the allegedly cursed gem from the estate of Evalyn Walsh McLean in 1949, sent it by mail from New York on November 8, and a presentation ceremony was made two days later. While the Hope Diamond had a reputation for being followed by tragedy to its owners over 300 years, including Mrs. McLean, a reporter noted that "As far as Mr. Winston could make out, it has brought him no bad luck. And as of Monday, if anyone it is hexed, it will not be he, but the staff of the Smithsonian Institution."
  • The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Dominique Pire, a Belgian Dominican friar who had helped thousands of displaced persons and refugees after World War II.

November 11, 1958 (Tuesday)

  • The first bone marrow transplant to a human recipient from an unrelated donor was performed in Paris by Dr. Georges Mathé, a French oncologist and surgeon. Frenchman Marcel Pabion volunteered for a graft of his bone marrow to Yugoslavian engineer Radojko Maksić, who had been irradiated in a nuclear accident at the Vinča Nuclear Institute on October 15. Maksić and four other patients would recover from being irradiated, while a sixth one failed to survive.
  • Argentina's President Arturo Frondizi imposed a 30-day state of siege and the suspension of constitutional rights in the South American republic, using his powers under Article 23 of the Constitution for internal disorder. More than 700 Peronists, Communists and Nationalists were arrested. Vice President Alejandro Gómez was accused the next day of plotting Frondizi's overthrow with members of the armed forces and opposition political leaders. Gomez initially refused calls to quit, then resigned on November 18 after a confrontation in his office by an angry mob.
  • The supernatural comedy romance film Bell, Book and Candle premiered in Los Angeles at the Warner Beverly Theatre, with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. Based on a 1950 Broadway play, the film about a witch and the victim of a love spell, would later be cited by TV producer Sol Saks as one of two inspirations for the sitcom Bewitched.
  • Born:
  • *Kathy Lette, Australian-born British novelist; in Sydney
  • *Scott Plank, American TV and film actor; in Washington, D.C.
  • Died: André Bazin, 40, French film critic, died of leukemia.

November 12, 1958 (Wednesday)

November 13, 1958 (Thursday)

  • Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced an ambitious seven year plan to increase industrial production in the Soviet Union by 80% by the end of the year 1965, including a goal of having more than half of the world's industrial output be produced by the Communist nations. Khrushchev presented the plan before the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party the day before, for adoption at the Party Congress in 1959.
  • William A. Shea, a New York City lawyer who was chairman of a committee organized by Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. to bring a new National League baseball franchise to the city, announced plans to organize a third major league so compete against the established National League and American League. Shea said in a press conference that the city would be prepared to build a new stadium for the league's New York team, and that the plan, for what would later be promoted as the Continental League, had become necessary because Shea had "become convinced the National League has no intention at this time of expanding into a ten-club circuit."
  • The first computerized wargaming system in the United States, the Naval Electronic Warfare Simulator, was installed by Vice Admiral Stuart H. Ingersoll, president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

November 14, 1958 (Friday)

November 15, 1958 (Saturday)

  • In the west African Dominion of Ghana, 43 people were indicted on charges of being members of the underground terrorist organization "Zenith 7" and of plotting to poison Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and officials of his ruling Convention People's Party.
  • Died: Tyrone Power, 44, popular American film actor, died of a massive heart attack while filming an action scene for the movie Solomon and Sheba in Spain, where he had been cast in the lead role as Solomon. Filming was two-thirds complete when Power died, and the part was recast the next day with Yul Brynner for re-filming of Power's scenes.

November 16, 1958 (Sunday)

November 17, 1958 (Monday)

November 18, 1958 (Tuesday)

  • Thirty-three of the 35 crew of the lake freighter died when it broke up and sank in a storm on Lake Michigan. The night before, after having made its final scheduled delivery of the season, the ship had been on its way to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where it would have been placed in dry dock. Hours before it reached Manitowoc, the ship received an order from U.S. Steel to travel to Rogers City, Michigan for a last-minute order of limestone. At 5:35 in the afternoon, southwest of Michigan's Gull Island, while sailing in a storm, the ship exploded and broke in two. Neither of the two lifeboats on the stern half of the boat could be lowered to evacuate the 15 sailors who reached the stern side of the deck, and only four crew members were able to reach the life raft on the bow side. Of the four who got on the raft, two were thrown off into the sea by massive waves.
  • Born:
  • *Oscar Nunez, Cuban-born American TV actor known for NBC's The Office; in Colón, Matanzas Province
  • *Evelyn Cisneros-Legate, American dancer and prima ballerina for the San Francisco Ballet 1977–2000, known for being the first prima ballerina in the U.S. of Hispanic heritage; in Long Beach, California

November 19, 1958 (Wednesday)

  • The U.S. Department of Defense began the process of reducing the size of the 2.6-million member U.S. armed forces, trimming the 70,000 jobs over the course of seven months and reducing the quota for the draft call from 11,000 per month to 9,000 starting in January.
  • Kyriakos Matsis, the commander of the Greek Cypriot terrorist group EOKA, was killed by British Army security forces after being tracked to a hideout in Dikomo in the predominantly Turkish Cypriot part of the island in northern Cyprus. Matsis, being hunted for the November 8 killing by EOKA of two British soldiers, ordered his two EOKA comrades to give themselves up. After he refused to surrender and shouted "I'll come out firing!", the British tossed two grenades into the house and killed him instantly.
  • Born: Charlie Kaufman, American filmmaker and novelist known for Being John Malkovich and for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; in New York City
  • Died: General Vittorio Ambrosio, 79, former Chief of Staff of the Italian Armed Forces in 1943

November 20, 1958 (Thursday)

November 21, 1958 (Friday)

  • The [Universidad de Oriente|Universidad de Oriente Venezuela] was founded by Decree Law No. 459, to serve students in eastern Venezuela. The first classes would be held on February 12, 1959, in Cumaná in the state of Sucre, with 113 students enrolled.
  • In East Pakistan, Khwaja Hassan Askari became the sixth and final Nawab of Dhaka, the East Pakistani capital, upon the death of his father, Khwaja Habibullah Bahadur.
  • Caril Ann Fugate, a Nebraska teenager who had helped her boyfriend Charles Starkweather with 11 murders, was sentenced to life imprisonment. She would be paroled on June 20, 1976, after 18 years of incarceration.
  • Born: Ian Cognito, English stand-up comedian; in London
  • Died:
  • *Mel Ott, 49, former U.S. major league baseball star and inductee to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, died of injuries from a November 14 automobile accident.
  • *Janie Brady Jones, 92, widow of the railroad engineer referred to in "The Ballad of Casey Jones". Mrs. Jones, who was portrayed unfairly in the song's last verse as "Mrs. Casey" who told her children "you got another papa on the Salt Lake Line", outlived her husband by almost 60 years after he was killed on April 30, 1900.

November 22, 1958 (Saturday)

November 23, 1958 (Sunday)

  • The opening round of voting began in France as 2,978 candidates vied for the 465 National Assembly seats in the first elections under the new Fifth Republic constitution. Only 39 of the 465 races were decided in the first round, which required a candidate to win more than 50% of the vote.
  • The leaders of the nations of Ghana and Guinea, announced in Accra that they had signed an agreement to unite in a confederacy that would be the "nucleus of a union of West African states, subject to ratification by both nations' national assemblies.

November 24, 1958 (Monday)

November 25, 1958 (Tuesday)

November 26, 1958 (Wednesday)

  • The U.S. crewed satellite program was officially designated Project Mercury.
  • Space Task Group personnel presented a proposed program for Langley Research Center support in the Little Joe phase of Project Mercury. Langley was favorably inclined, and after a survey of manpower and facility availability, notified Space Task Group on December 5, 1958, of its willingness to support the program. Langley tasks involved contracting for engineering, construction, services, data processing, analysis, and reporting research results.
  • At Chennault Air Force Base, near Lake Charles, Louisiana, a USAF B-47 bomber with a nuclear weapon on board developed a fire while on the ground. The aircraft wreckage and the site of the accident were contaminated after a limited explosion of non-nuclear material. The fire, which killed the pilot and injured the navigator, started when a rocket-assist takeoff device exploded while the plane was parked and awaiting takeoff.

November 27, 1958 (Thursday)

November 28, 1958 (Friday)

November 29, 1958 (Saturday)

November 30, 1958 (Sunday)