August 2, 1958: U.S. makes first successful launch of an ICBM, the Atlas-B rocketAugust 3, 1958: U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus is first to sail under the North Pole (shown arriving in New York City for August 25 welcome celebration)
The following events occurred in August 1958:
August 1, 1958 (Friday)
As part of its Operation Hardtack tests, the United States detonated a 3.88 megaton hydrogen bomb directly above the test site at Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean, due to an error that exploded the Redstone missile before it could reach a point over the ocean 6 miles (9.7 km) away. The blast, occurring at an altitude of 252,000 feet (47.7 miles (76.8 km)), was witnessed by thousands of people in the parts of the U.S. territory of the Hawaiian Islands 700 miles (1,100 km) away at 12:52 a.m. Hawaii time (1052 UTC, 11:52 p.m. July 31 at the test site).[1]
Trial for 91 South Africans accused of high treason (57 black, 16 white, 16 of India ancestry and two mixed race), on charges of conspiring to overthrow the government, began in Pretoria. The original indictment had been for 156 people arrested 19 months earlier in December 1956.[2]
Royal assent was given to the State of Singapore Act 1958, providing for internal self-government for the British colony of Singapore and an eventual transition to independence.
With his guerrilla troops surrounded by the Cuban Army after the Battle of Las Mercedes and facing an end to his Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro asked General Eulogio Cantillo for a seven-day ceasefire so that surrender negotiations could be pursued. A truce was agreed upon and, during the time when Castro and Cantillo were negotiating, the 300 26th of July Movement guerrillas gradually retreated every night back into the hills. When General Cantillo attempted to attack on August 8, Castro's forces could not be found. General Castillo then signed a secret agreement with Castro to call off further fighting.[3]
The United States made its first successful test of its most powerful rocket, the three-engine Atlas-Bintercontinental ballistic missile. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral in Florida took place at 5:16 in the afternoon local time. The first attempt at launching the Atlas-B, made on July 19, failed when the rocket blew apart while in flight.[5]
U.S. Army Sergeant James R. Nettles became the first American soldier to die in combat in the Middle East. The 20-year-old resident of Olustee, Florida, was struck by a sniper's bullet while riding in a patrol of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Sgt. Nettles was the fifth U.S. serviceman to die in the American invasion of Lebanon, after four had died in separate accidents.[6]
The Arab Federation, created on February 14 by the uniting of the nations of Iraq and Jordan into a new country, was formally dissolved by Jordan's King Hussein less than six months after it had been created. On July 14, the Iraqi Army had assassinated Hussein's cousin, King Faisal II of Iraq, abolished the monarchy and declared a republic.[7]
A Sabena airliner that had strayed into the airspace of Czechoslovakia, during a thunderstorm, was forced by two Czechoslovakian Air Force MiG fighters to land at an air force base in České Budějovice. Rather than keeping the group captive, as other Communist nations like East Germany and the Soviet Union had done with airplanes that had come into their airspace, the Czechoslovakians released the Belgian passengers and crew after four hours, during which the group was "entertained with a good dinner."[8]
Born:Show Hayami (stage name for Ohama Yasushi), prolific Japanese voice actor for anime; in Takasago, Hyōgo,
Died: Dr. Michele Navarra, 53, Italian member of the Sicilian Mafia and boss of the Corleone gang, was ambushed and killed along with a passenger, Dr. Giovanni Russo, while driving on a country road in Sicily. The hit began a series of reciprocal murders that would continue for five years.
August 3, 1958 (Sunday)
The nuclear-powered submarine USS Nautilus and its crew of 111 U.S. Navy servicemen (13 commissioned officers and 98 non-commissioned men) and five American civilian scientific observers, became the first vessel to sail underneath the North Pole, whose ice cap is impenetrable by surface ships.[9] The accomplishment was announced five days later when the voyage of Nautilus was revealed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a ceremony presenting Commander William R. Anderson with the Legion of Merit at the White House. "Nautilus" had also been the name of the submarine, used by British explorer Hubert Wilkins, that came within 600 miles (970 km) of its attempt to sail to the North Pole,[10] and of the fictional submarine in Jules Verne's 1869 novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, which included a chapter of Captain Nemo sailing under the ice of Antarctica.[11]
Collins in his car in Modena, 1957
Peter Collins, 26, British race car driver and 1958 British Grand Prix winner, was killed in a crash during the German Grand Prix in Nürburgring in West Germany. Collins, who, along with Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn, was one of the "Big Three" of British sports car racing, was traveling past Adenau on the 11th lap of the 15-lap race when his Ferrari racer went off the track and rolled over. He was being flown by a West German Army helicopter to a hospital for emergency surgery for a fractured skull and brain injuries and died en route.[12]
The record for attendance at the 67,205-seat Yankee Stadium was set when 123,707 people came to the Jehovah's Witnesses International Convention. A commemorative plaque remained after the demolition of the structure following the construction of the new Yankee Stadium.[13]
A team of two mountaineers from Japan (Masao Fujihira and Kazumasa Hirai) became the first persons to reach the top of the 37th-highest mountain in the world, the 25,112-foot (7,654 m) high Chogolisa II peak in the Karakoram range. Professor Takeo Kuwabara wrote later that Fujihira and Hirai reached the top of Chogolisa, "Bride Peak", at 4:30 in the afternoon local time and that "the top was too small to be occupied by the two."[14][15]
A team of three mountaineers from Austria (Heinrich Roiss, Stefan Pauer and Franz Mandl) became the first persons to reach the top of the 67th-highest mountain in the world, the 24,308-foot (7,409 m) Haramosh Peak in the Himalayas. Roiss would later write that the group reached the summit at about 2:00 in the afternoon local time, 13 hours after setting off from their camp, but "We were much too weary to enjoy that moment, to which we had so long been looking forward. We cowered down on the summit, which is no bigger than a table, and our only thought was rest and recuperation."[16]
On the island of Cyprus, a truce between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots was announced by Greek Army Colonel Georgios Grivas, leader of the underground group EOKA, which sought for Cyprus to become a part of Greece. The ceasefire came after appeals to both sides by the Prime Ministers of Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom.[17]
The Billboard Hot 100, Billboard magazine's weekly documentation of the most popular recorded songs in the United States, regardless of musical genre, was published for the first time, with rankings based on the averaging of surveys of best-selling and most played songs. While Billboard had ranked songs since 1945 in three separate charts for surveys best sales from stores, most played on radio stations and most played on jukeboxes, the "Hot 100" was the first to consolidate the results into a single, definitive endorsement of popularity. The first number one hit on the Hot 100 was Ricky Nelson's recording of the song "Poor Little Fool", written by Sharon Sheeley.[18]
The last television program of the DuMont Television Network in the U.S., Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena, was telecast on five stations in the U.S. that had once been part of the DuMont network, which had given up most of its programming two years earlier but was still under contract to broadcast boxing. The last fight pitted lightweight Lenny Matthews against Steve Ward.[19][20]
A U.S. District Judge in Richmond, Virginia issued an order allowing the public school system of Prince Edward County, Virginia, an unprecedented seven years to accomplish racial desegregation, with black and white students to be educated in separate schools until the beginning of the 1965-1966 school year. Judge Charles Sterling Hutcheson justified the seven-year delay based on language in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that desegregation should be accomplished "with all deliberate speed", even if done 11 years after the decision.[21]
Died: Archbishop Mario Zanin, 68, Italian Roman Catholic cleric and diplomat for the Vatican who served as its Apostolic Delegate to China (1933–1946), and Apostolic Nuncio to Chile (1947–1953) and Argentina (1953–1958)
August 5, 1958 (Tuesday)
East German Army Lieutenant Colonel Siegfried Dombrowski, the deputy director of intelligence administration for the Communist nation's military intelligence agency, drove across the border into West Berlin along with his wife and children and 71,000 West German marks, and asked the U.S. Army to give him asylum. Over the next several weeks, he would disclose what information he knew to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.[23]
A retired U.S. Army general's editorial caused an internal investigation in the U.S. Department of Defense, when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a column from its military analyst, retired U.S. Army General Thomas R. Phillips, headlined "Question of When U.S. Should Surrender in All-Out Nuclear Attack Studied for Pentagon; Scientists Are Proceeding on Assumption Russia Has Achieved, or Is Rapidly Gaining, Intercontinental Superiority With Missiles" [24] General Phillips wrote, "Three non-profit scientific agencies working for the Defense Department or the services are making studies as to whether the United States can survive and continue to fight after an all-out nuclear attack. One is studying the conditions when surrender would be advisable, rather than to continue a war that is already lost." Three days later, Missouri's U.S. Senator, Stuart Symington, read the article into the Congressional Record and when word reached U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (who was a retired U.S. General of the Army), Eisenhower ordered a "top-to-bottom Pentagon investigation" of the source of the article. An unidentified U.S. Senator told the Associated Press, "I've never seen the President so mad... he turned everything upside down in the Pentagon getting to the bottom of it."[25][26] The U.S. Senate voted, 88 to 2, to amend an appropriations bill to prohibit the use of federal funds "to support any study of possible United States surrender to an enemy in a future nuclear war", an action that President Eisenhower called "too ridiculous for further comment."[27]
August 6, 1958 (Wednesday)
Herb Elliott at the 1960 Olympics
In Ireland, Australian athlete Herb Elliott clipped almost three full seconds off the world record for the mile run at Santry Stadium in Dublin. Elliott beat the record set by Derek Ibbotson of the UK (3:57.2 in London on July 19, 1957) with a time of 3 minutes 54.5 seconds. At the time, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had still not certified Ibbotson's time because of charges that the record had been achieved with the aid of another athlete pacing him, so the record was still 3:58.0 set by John Landy on June 21, 1954.[28] Three other runners also bested Landy's record in the same meet: Australia's Merv Lincoln (3:55.9); and Ireland's Ron Delany and New Zealand's Murray Halberg, both at 3:57.5.
Walter Bonatti on top of the 17th highest mountain on Earth
The South American nation of Colombia returned to civilian rule as General Gabriel París Gordillo, chairman of the military junta that had ruled the nation since 1957, stepped down for the inauguration of the President Alberto Lleras Camargo.[32]
A fiery ship collision killed 18 crew on the oil tanker SS Gulfoil and seriously injured 19 others on the Gulfoil and 14 on the gasoline tanker it collided with, MV S.E. Graham. Both ships were sailing in a fog at the U.S. harbor of Newport, Rhode Island. The Gulfoil had unloaded its cargo at Providence and was sailing out of the harbor when it struck the port bow of the S.E. Graham, which was inbound with 650,000 U.S. gallons of gasoline, and the Gulfoil subsequently exploded.[33]
Died: Herbert Yardley, 69, American cryptographer who directed the cryptanalysis bureau of the American Black Chamber, a U.S. government agency financed by both the War Department and the State Department and broke the code used by the Japanese Empire, and later revealed the existence top secret agency.[34]
August 8, 1958 (Friday)
In India, Sheikh Abdullah, the "Lion of Kashmir", was re-arrested seven months after having been released from house arrest on January 8. Abdullah had been indicted along with 23 other people accused of sedition by the Indian government in what became known as the Kashmir Conspiracy Case, and charged with plotting to make India's Jammu and Kashmir an independent nation. His arrest came exactly five years after he had been dismissed as Chief Minister of the province. He would remain incarcerated until the dismissal of the case in 1964.
Barbara Wootton became the first woman to be appointed to serve in Britain's House of Lords under the new Life Peerages Act 1958, being given the new title of Baroness Wootton of Abinger.
At 8:00 a.m. local time, New York City began a crackdown on jaywalking, the oft-violated law against walking a street at a point other than a posted crosswalk, after a two-month warning period, including a 30-day interval of stopping and warning violators that, beginning August 8, they would be subject to a fine of two dollars, equivalent to $20 USD sixty years later. On the first day of the enforcement, 479 summonses were issued, with more than half (255 in Manhattan), 93 in Brooklyn, 98 in Queens, 31 in the Bronx and two in Richmond Heights (which had only one "Don't Walk" signal).[36]
A memorandum from the U.S. Secretary of the Army to the U.S. Secretary of Defense recommended Project Adam for a human spaceflight program. This plan proposed a ballistic suborbital flight using existing Redstone hardware as a national political-psychological demonstration. This memo proposed that funds in the amount of $9 million and $2.5 million for fiscal years 1959 and 1960, respectively, be approved for program execution.[4]
Born:Akihiro Nishimura, Japanese soccer football midfielder with 49 appearances of the Japan national team; in Osaka
Died:
Viscount Bracken, 57, the United Kingdom's Minister of Information during World War II from 1941 to 1945, and leader of the merger of the Financial Times and the Financial News into one of the largest financial newspapers in the world, died of throat cancer.[37]
The crash of Central African Airways Flight 890 killed 36 of the 54 people on board. The Vickers Viscount 745D turboprop was on the fifth leg of a multistop flight from Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) to London's Heathrow Airport, and was approaching Benghazi in Libya when it crashed into a hillside while attempting to land.[39][40]
Died: Felipe Boero, 74, Argentine operatic composer
August 10, 1958 (Sunday)
Castro (center) and Rodriguez (far right) in East Berlin in 1972 alongside Lt. General Arthur Kunath
Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, leader of Cuba's Communist party, the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP), completed three weeks of meetings with Cuban rebel Fidel Castro in the hills of the Sierra Maestra, and reversed the PSP's original policy dismissing Castro's guerrilla warfare against the regime of Fulgencio Batista. From the agreement came the alliance of Castro's 26th of July Movement and Rodriguez's Communist party structure, and the subsequent support of Castro by the Soviet Union.[41]
All 33 people on All Nippon Airways Flight 25 were killed as the Douglas DC-3 was flying from Tokyo to Nagoya. The right engine of the twin-engine airplane failed an hour into the flight.[44] The airliner plunged into the Pacific Ocean 17 miles (27 km) from the island of Toshima.[45]
The Argentine Navy landed 80 troops on Snipe island, an uninhabited islet, located in the Beagle Channel and claimed by both Argentina and Chile.[46] The incursion was the latest in a series of events that began on January 12 when the Chilean Navy transporter Micalvi erected a small lighthouse for navigation. In April, Argentina's Commander of Naval Operations sent the patrol boat ARA Guarani to destroy the Chilean building and replaced by an Argentine structure; the Chilean patrol boat Lientur destroyed the Argentine building on May 11 and installed another building on June 8; the Argentine destroyer ARA San Juan fired artillery to destroy the Chilean house the next day, and Argentina's next move was to build a permanent settlement on the otherwise uninhabitable rock.[47]
As part of his "Great Leap Forward" program approved in January, Chairman Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party, the de facto leader of the People's Republic of China, reviewed the success of a model collective farm commune that had been created at Chayashan in Henan Province. Chairman Mao issued an order to apply the model of Chayashan, where individual farming plots were not allowed and all members of the commune were required to dine at a communal kitchen, to all farms nationwide.[49] A report in the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily (Jenmin Jihpao) reported that the communes covered wide areas, with the largest comprising 95,000 people in the Liaoning province, and another one of 21,000 in Henan province.[50]
Died:
Jack Cole, 43, American cartoonist and comic book artist who had created the character Plastic Man for Quality Comics in 1941, and then later worked for Playboy magazine, shot himself to death less than three months after he had created a new comic strip, Betsy and Me, for the Chicago Tribune.
All 99 people aboard KLM Flight 607-E were killed when the Super Constellation jet airliner crashed into Atlantic Ocean after taking off from Shannon Airport in Ireland to travel to Gander, Newfoundland in Canada as part of a multi-stop flight from Amsterdam to New York City. The loss of life was the highest, up to that time, in a commercial aviation disaster.[52]
The term "missile gap" was coined by U.S. Senator (and future U.S. President) John F. Kennedy to describe a perceived difference between the size of the American arsenal of ballistic missiles and a possibly superior number of missiles available to the Soviet Union.[53] Kennedy was specifically referring to "the period from 1960 to 1964", described by experts at the Pentagon, "in which this country's missile development is expected to lag so far behind the Russians as to cause a grave threat to our national existence."[54]
Died:
Frédéric Joliot-Curie, 58, French physicist and co-winner (with his wife Irène Joliot-Curie) of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of production of artificial radioactive elements and a member of the French Communist Party's Central Committee, died of an internal hemorrhage resulting from cancer of the liver.[55]
All 64 passengers and crew on Aeroflot Flight 4 in the Russian SFSR were killed when the Tupolev Tu-104 jet airliner crashed half an hour after taking off from Khabarovsk toward Irkutsk as a stop on a flight to Moscow. At 3:18 in the afternoon (0518 UTC), the pilot indicated that the jet was in distress and, a few minutes later, the aircraft crashed into a dense forest 134 miles (216 km) from Khabarovsk.[56]
The crash of Northeast Airlines Flight 258 in the United States killed 25 of the 34 people on board after the Convair 240 twin-engine piston-powered airliner was cleared for the approach to Nantucket, Massachusetts.[57] At 11:34 at night (0334 UTC 16 August), the flight, which had departed from La Guardia Airport in New York, impacted the ground 1,700 feet (520 m) from Runway 24 while attempting to land in a dense fog. The nine survivors had all been passengers.[58][59]
A diver from Yugoslavia, Božo Dimnik, discovered the wreckage of the Austro-Hungarian passenger ship SS Baron Gautsch, which sank in the Adriatic Sea 44 years and two days earlier, on August 13, 1914, after striking a minefield laid by the Austro-Hungarian Navy shortly after the outbreak of World War I.
The Soviet Union announced the further demotion of former Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin, who had been removed in March from his post as head of the Soviet government and transferred temporarily to the still-important position as the chairman of Gosbank, the national banking agency of the Soviet Union. Bulganin's new assignment was to fill a vacancy in a Sovnarkhoz, one of the 105 regional economic councils in the U.S.S.R., for the area around Stavropol, a city in the Caucasus Mountains of southeastern Russia and almost 800 miles (1,300 km) from Moscow.[60]
Paraguay's dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner, was inaugurated to a new five-year term as President of the South American nation after an election in which he was the only candidate on the ballot, and all 40 members of the Chamber of Deputies belonged to Stroessner's Colorado Party.[61]
The defending NFL champion Detroit Lions suffered a humiliating defeat in the Chicago College All-Star Game, an annual preseason exhibition football game for charity where the NFL champion was matched against college football players who had graduated. The win was the second-to-last for college players, whose representatives lost 31 of the 42 games against the NFL champion before the series was discontinued after 1976.[62]
The French Ministry of the Overseas announced that France would grant full internal autonomy to the West African colony of the French Cameroons, after having a request from the colonial parliament, with a transition to full independence by 1960. France continued to be responsible for the Cameroons' foreign affairs and defense, but would turn over control of the court system, public liberties and currency.[64]
The TV game show Dotto, so popular in the United States at one time that it was shown on both the CBS and NBC networks, was canceled abruptly by its sponsor, the Colgate-Palmolive Company, in the wake of accusations by a former contestant that the show's producers had supplied answers in advance to players. People who tuned in to CBS at 11:30 on Monday morning found that Top Dollar, which had run on Saturday evenings, was the abrupt replacement for Dotto.[65]
Wolcott Gibbs, 56, American playwright, drama critic and humorist, died of a sudden heart attack while reviewing an advance copy of his latest book More in Sorrow.[66]
Paul Panzer (stage name for Paul Wolfgang Panzerbeiter), 85, German-born American film actor who appeared in 330 films from 1905 to 1952
August 17, 1958 (Sunday)
The first try at a lunar probe
The first attempt from Earth to send a rocket to the Moon was made by the U.S. Air Force, which used a Thor intermediate range missile as the first stage of a rocket that had the Able portion of a Vanguard rocket as its second stage. The first "Thor-Able" rocket carried Able 1, a U.S. space probe designed to orbit, record and transmit data from lunar orbit, as its payload. After lifting off at 8:18 in the morning (1218 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the rocket failed 73.6 seconds later at an altitude of 15,200 metres (49,900 ft), when the first stage of the Thor booster exploded. Air Force officials had cautioned the general public that "the chances of a complete success on this first try are about one in ten."[67][68] During the rest of the year, six attempts to send a rocket to the Moon were made by the Soviets (on September 23, October 11, and December 4) and the Americans (October 11, November 8, and December 6), and all failed to reach orbit. The first success would be the Soviet Luna 1 on January 2, 1959.[69]
Bonar Colleano (stage name for Bonar William Sullivan), 34, American-born British stage and film actor, was killed in the crash of his sports car. Colleano was returning home from Liverpool hours after playing the lead role in the final scheduled performance of the play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?.[70]
John Marshall, 82, British archaeologist who oversaw the excavations in the 1920s of the ancient Indus Valley civilization with expeditions to Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan.
August 18, 1958 (Monday)
Vladimir Nabokov's bestselling, but controversial novel Lolita was published in the United States, after a censored version had been published in France. A book critic for The New York Times wrote that Lolita "is undeniably news in the world of books. Unfortunately, it is bad news. There are two equally serious reasons why it isn't worth any adult reader's attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive."[71]
In the U.S., the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal judge's decision in Cooper v. Aaron, which had allowed the school board of Little Rock, Arkansas to resume the barring of black students from white schools, specifically Central High, where nine African-American students had been allowed to attend during the 1957-1958 school year under federal government protection.[72] On June 21, U.S. District Judge Harry J. Lemley had found a delay of more than two years (until the 1961-1962 school year) to be acceptable under U.S. Supreme Court precedent. The 10th Circuit stayed the reintegration until an appeal could be made to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would uphold the principle that states must abide by the decisions of the high court under the terms of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Brojen Das from East Pakistan swam across the English Channel in a competition, the first Asian (and the first Bangali) to ever do it, and finished in first place ahead of 38 other competitors.
Died: Fritz Wagner, 68, celebrated German cinematographer, was killed when he fell off of a mobile unit in Göttingen, West Germany, during the filming of a scene in Ohne Mutter geht es nicht.
August 19, 1958 (Tuesday)
Launch of USS Triton
USS Triton, the largest submarine ever built up to that time and the eighth U.S. atomic sub, was launched from the Electric Boat Company shipyard in Groton, Connecticut in front of a crowd of 34,000 people, with a notable exception.[73]Triton remains the only U.S. submarine to be powered by two nuclear reactors.
The Katz Drug Store sit-in began in Oklahoma City in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, where businesses were allowed by law to refuse service to African-Americans. Schoolteacher Clara Luper, her daughter and 11 students sat down at the drug store's lunch counter and ordered 13 soft drinks and, after being refused service, stayed at the counter for hours before leaving. They came back the next day, and on the third day, when the restaurant finally relented, prompting a series of sit-ins at other restaurants in the state's capital. The sit-in began one month after a similar campaign began to desegregate a chain of lunch counters in Kansas.[74]
The Beamer Resolution, creating the Driver License Compact for U.S. states to enter into collectively in order to exchange traffic violation information without having to make individual agreements, was signed into law.
U.S. President Eisenhower signed the Reciprocal Trade Renewal Act into law, calling it "a firm, forward step on the road to a stronger America in a world at peace" and giving the U.S. president authority to make agreements with other nations for mutual reduction of tariffs.
Walter Schumann, 44, American music composer for film, television and theater, known for creating the instrumental theme for the radio and television show Dragnet, died of complications following open heart surgery.[77]
U.S. President Eisenhower announced a conditional one-year moratorium on nuclear testing.[79] The move came one day after a conference of international scientists in Geneva concluded that it would be possible to detect whether a nuclear explosion was taking place.[80] Previously, the Soviet Union had agreed to halt its own testing if other nations with the atomic bomb did the same. Eisenhower's offer of a moratorium, conditional on the Soviets and the British halting testing as well, was made with the offer that it would take effect in 70 days, effective on October 31. During the rest of August, September and October, the three nations rushed to test as many weapons as possible.[81]
The popular Czech language science fiction film Vynález zkázy), directed by Karel Zeman and starring Lubor Tokoš, premiered in Czechoslovakia and was redubbed in nations around the world, including the United States in 1961, where it was titled Invention for Destruction.
President Eisenhower also signed legislation that granted lifelong government pensions for the first time to former presidents of the United States and to their widows. The only two living ex-presidents, Herbert Hoover and Harry S. Truman, received $25,000 per year (equivalent to $250,000 sixty years later), and two living presidential widows, Edith Galt Wilson and Eleanor Roosevelt got $10,000 pensions. The recipients also received furnished offices, a paid government assistant, and free postage on any correspondence or packages sent within the U.S.[83]
France's President Charles de Gaulle spoke at an assembly in Brazzaville in the African colony of French Congo and outlined his plan for all French colonies in Africa to make the transition to full independence, and that a referendum would be held for the adult citizens in each of the future nations on September 28 on whether to join.[85] A majority in each nation except for Guinea voted "yes" in the referendum.
In the Turkish city of Bursa, a fire that began accidentally in a bookbinding shop destroyed 2,200 small businesses along with surrounding dwellings, and threatened the 500-year-old Grand Mosque. Cavit Chenrek, the owner of a small store where the fire began, said that papers had been ignited by a kerosene lamp that he used to heat glue and that he had been unable to extinguish it.[86] Chenrek was subsequently arrested for the blaze, estimated to have caused one billion Turkish lira (equivalent to US$110 million) in damage.
The United States launched the Explorer 5 satellite into orbit at 2:17 in the morning from Cape Canaveral but signals ceased after a few minutes and the satellite failed to reach orbit.[87]
United Press International reported that, earlier in the week at the city of Taez in Yemen, thousands of person watched the execution of Alwi Shah, who had beheaded hundreds of convicted prisoners in the Middle Eastern kingdom, including family members of the nation's ruler, the Imam Ahmad. Alwi Shah, convicted of the murder of a Taez man, died by decapitation in a public execution.[88][89]
Instant noodles, commonly referred to as "ramen noodles", went on sale for the first time after Japanese entrepreneur Momofuku Ando developed a process for dehydrating noodles and packaging them as a block for future rehydration at home in boiling water.[90][91] Ando's company, Nissin Foods, sold the packages under the name Chikin Ramen for 35 Japanese yen, equivalent at the time to about 12.5 cents in the United States.[92]
FLN (Front de libération nationale) the Algerian Arab independence group, took the Algerian War to France itself. At 2:30 in the morning, FLN saboteurs carried out simultaneous attacks in 20 locations, targeting oil refineries near Marseilles and Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon, gasoline storage tanks at Narbonne, Salbris and Carcassonne, a munitions factory in Paris, a railroad signal post and a truck manufacturer, and other locations in suburbs of Paris.[93] The attacks killed at least seven people across France (including three policemen in France) and injured 21 others.
The U.S. TV game show Concentration, which combined matching pairs of cards with solving a rebus puzzle, premiered on the NBC television network and began a run of more than 14½ years. The original host was Hugh Downs, later better-known as a newsman hosting NBC's Today show and ABC's 20/20.
Died:Leo Blech, 87, German opera composer and director[94]
August 26, 1958 (Tuesday)
Voters in the U.S. Territory of Alaska overwhelmingly favored becoming residents of the 49th state of the United States in a referendum with three questions on the ballot.[95] On the first question, "Shall Alaska immediately be admitted into the Union as a state?", the result was 40,452 in favor, and 8,010 against.[96]
The first nationwide labor strike in Paraguay was called by the South American nation's labor union, the Confederación Paraguaya de Trabajadores (CPT or Paraguayan Confederation of Workers) to demand as much as 30% increase in salaries, the end of the state of emergency declared by President Alfredo Stroessner, freedom to organize, and a declaration of amnesty to all labor union members criminally charged for violating emergency regulations. Stroessner's government originally offered a 15% increase, which a CPT committee rejected. The government then sent police and the Paraguayan Army to surround CPT headquarters, and 200 CPT trade union leaders were arrested.[97]
The Soviet Union accomplished the first successful return of animal passengers from a rocket launch, after sending two dogs to an altitude of 281 miles (452 km) without killing them. According to the TASS news agency, the dogs were named "Belyanka" ("Whitey") and "Pestraya" ("Many Colors").[99] Aerospace scientist A. M. Kasatkin said that the sealed capsule with the dogs had been on a rocket stage that had "special aerodynamic brakes and parachutes."[100]
After completing nuclear testing in the South Pacific Ocean, the United States began nuclear tests over the South Atlantic Ocean with the launch of Operation Argus.
Born: Kathy Hochul, American politician and the first female Governor of New York, taking office in 2021 following the resignation of Andrew Cuomo, after having been Lieutenant Governor of New York since 2015; as Kathleen Courtney in Buffalo, New York
In Poland, 56 coal miners were killed in an explosion and fire at the Makoszowy Colliery near Zabrze. Another 52 miners were saved by rescuers. Police arrested two Makoszowy employees and charged them with deliberately starting the fire.[102]
Anticipating the Boeing 707 and other jet airplanes going into service at high altitudes, the Civil Aeronautics Board of the U.S. issued an order, effective September 1, that all airliners in the U.S. needed to be equipped with a supply of oxygen and oxygen masks for all passengers. The new rule went into effect as the 707 became the first jet airliner to be authorized to fly as high as 4,000 feet (1,200 m).[103]
Soviet Premier Khrushchev announced that the U.S.S.R. would meet with the U.S. and the UK on October 31 to formally agree for all three nations (at the time, the only ones on Earth that had nuclear weapons) to begin the voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing.[104] With more than two months to continue testing before October 31, the three nuclear powers all scheduled multiple tests, including the U.S., which announced that it would conduct ten low-yield tests, most of them one kiloton or less.[105]
The school board of Norfolk, Virginia voted, reluctantly, to integrate its schools and to assign 17 black children to previously all-white high schools and junior high schools. The move came after federal judge Walter E. Hoffman had indicated that he would hold the board members in contempt of court if they ignored his orders.[106]
Three days of race riots began between white and black Britons in Notting Hill, London.[107]Majbritt Morrison, a white author from Sweden, was attacked by a group of white Britons (who called themselves "The Teddy Boys") and who had learned the night before that she was married to a black man from Jamaica, Raymond Morrison. London Police arrested her for obstruction of justice after she refused to leave the scene. When night fell, a mob of more than 300 white people began attacking the homes of black residents from the West Indies.[108] Soon the number of people involved grew to 2,000.[109] The disturbances continued every night until September 5, and 140 people were arrested. Nine young white men would later be convicted of crimes of violence and sentenced to five years in prison.[110]
Éric de Bisschop, 66, French ocean explorer, was killed when his balsa-wood raft, Tahiti Nut II, struck a reef near the Cook Islands, and broke up. The other four members of the crew were rescued.[112]
August 31, 1958 (Sunday)
As Iceland prepared to extend its territorial waters from four nautical miles 4.604 miles (7.409 km) to 12 13.812 miles (22.228 km), four Royal Navy warships arrived within the new off-limits area to protect fishing trawlers.[113]
Died: George Fingold, 49, American politician and Republican candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, died of a heart attack the day after he resumed campaigning to unseat incumbent Governor Foster Furcolo. Fingold, unopposed for the nomination on the September 9 Republican primary, had been believed by political observers to be likely to defeat Furcolo in the November election.[114]
References
^"A-Bomb in Missile Exploded in Test Miles Above Sea— Pacific Blast Called Part of Hunt for ICBM Defense — Hawaii Sights Flash". The New York Times. August 2, 1958. p. 1.
^"Mass Trial Opens in South Africa; 91 Face Charges of Treason". The New York Times. August 2, 1958. p. 4.
^"Atlas Is Launched Successfully; ICBM Climbs on All 3 Engines". The New York Times. August 3, 1958. p. 1.
^Lawrence, W. H. (August 3, 1958). "Sniper Kills an American Soldier— More Troops on Way". The New York Times. p. 1.
^Welles, Benjamin (August 3, 1958). "Iraq-Jordan Union Is Formally Ended; Amman Still Tense". The New York Times. p. 1.
^"Czechs Release Airliner After Forcing It Down". The New York Times. August 3, 1958. p. 6.
^Belair, Felix Jr. (August 9, 1958). "Nautilus Sails Under the Pole and 1,830 Miles of Arctic Icecap in Pacific-To-Atlantic Passage; Four-Day Voyage— New Route to Europe Pioneered". The New York Times. p. 1.
^Sullivan, Walter (August 9, 1958). "Transpolar Plan Was Failure in '31; Wilkins, in a Submarine Also Named Nautilus, Had to Abandon Expedition". The New York Times. p. 7.
^Bracker, Milton (August 9, 1958). "Jules Verne's Fictional Nautilus Sailed Under Antarctic Icecap". The New York Times. p. 7.
^"Collins Dies After Car Crashes— Briton Overshoots Track in German Grand Prix Race— Briton Overshoots Track in German Grand Prix Race". The New York Times. August 4, 1958. p. 27.
^"New Faces Set For Ring Wars— Matthews Faces Ward in St. Nicholas Ring". The Morning Herald. Uniontown, Pennsylvania. AP. August 4, 1958. p. 9. The match at St. Nick's, incidentally, will be the last, at least until Aug. 25. With the termination of the television (DuMont) contract Aug. 4, the ancient arena will take a vacation of at least two weeks.
^Castleman, Harry; Podrazik, Walter J. (1982). Watching TV: Four Decades of American Television. McGraw-Hill. pp. 109–115.
^"Integration Off in Virginia Area— Judge Gives Prince Edward County a Tentative 7-Year Delay on Mixing Pupils". The New York Times. August 5, 1958. p. 17.
^Nichols, Joseph C. (August 5, 1958). "Bold Ruler Is Retired From Racing Competition Because of Ankle Injury— Wheatley to Put Star Cold in Stud". The New York Times. p. 31.
^"Dombrowski, Siegfried (1916–1977)", in Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence, by Jefferson Adams (Scarecrow Press, 2009) pp. 87–88
^"Gen. Phillips" column, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 5, 1958, p. 1B
^"President Angered By Surrender Study", AP report in The New York Times, August 14, 1958, p. 1
^"Report of U. S. Surrender Study Arouses Angry Debate in Senate", by Allen Drury, The New York Times, August 15, 1958, p. 1
^"Senate Rejects Surrender Fund", by Allen Drury, The New York Times, August 16, 1958, p. 1
^"Elliott Runs Record 3:54.5 Mile— Winner and Next 3 in Dublin Better World Standard of 3:58 Set by Landy", The New York Times, August 7, 1958, p. 1
^"Colombia Inaugurates Lleras As President on 'Peace' Basis; Liberal Takes Post Under Two-Party Plan to Bring End to Civil Strife", The New York Times, August 8, 1958, p. 2
^"15 Die as Tankers Collide in a Fog", The New York Times, August 8, 1958, p. 1
^"'Herbert Yardley, Cryptographer, Dies; Broke Japan's Diplomatic Code in 1921", The New York Times, August 8, 1958, p. 17
^Stengren, Bernard (August 9, 1958). "479 Get Jaywalking Summonses But Public Is Hailed on Response". The New York Times. p. 1.
^"Viscount Bracken Is Dead at 57; Wartime Information Minister— Conservative Party Leader Was Board Chairman of London's Financial Times". The New York Times. August 9, 1958. p. 13.
^"J. P. M'Evoy Dead; Author-Humorist". The New York Times. August 9, 1958. p. 13.
^de Onis, Juan (August 14, 1958). "Chile Withdraws Argentina Envoy— Note Protests Buenos Aires Seizure of Isle in Far South Claimed by Both Nations". The New York Times. p. 29.
^"Red China Sets Up Local Communes; They Will Be the Nation's Ultimate Basic Unit — Replace Cooperatives", The New York Times, September 4, 1958, p. 6
^"Malcolm Lockheed, Plane Pioneer, Dies; Co-Founder of Aircraft Concern Was 70", The New York Times, August 14, 1958, p. 29
^"99 on Dutch Airliner Lost Off Ireland on Trip Here; 51 of Victims Americans", The New York Times, August 15, 1958, p. 1
^"Who Ever Believed in the 'Missile Gap'?: John F. Kennedy and the Politics of National Security", by Christopher A. Preble, in Presidential Studies Quarterly (December 2003) pp. 801-826
^"Kennedy Urges Arms Cut Drive", The New York Times, August 15, 1958, p. 2
^"Joliot-Curie Dies; French Physicist— Famed Nuclear Scientist Won Nobel Prize With Wife —Communist Leader ", The New York Times, August 15, 1958, p. 21
^Jorden, William J. (August 16, 1958). "Bulganin Demoted To Provincial Post". The New York Times. p. 1.
^de Onis, Juan (August 16, 1958). "Stroessner Takes Oath in Paraguay; Reports Advance in Nation's Economy". The New York Times. p. 3.
^Sheehan, Joseph M. (August 16, 1958). "All-Stars Crush Pro Lions Before 70,000 Football Fans at Soldier Field; Collegians Rally for 35-19 Victory". The New York Times. p. 14.
^"Iran Quake Toll 135— Rescuers Say Scores Sleeping in Fields Escaped Injury", The New York Times, August 20, 1958, p. 3
^"Full Home Rule Granted To French Cameroons", The New York Times, August 17, 1958, p. 31
^"'Dotto' Canceled by Two Networks", by Val Adams, The New York Times, August 18, 1958, p. 39
^"Wolcott Gibbs, 56, Drama Critic, Dies", The New York Times, August 17, 1958, p. 1
^Witkin, Richard (August 17, 1958). "Countdown Starts For Firing Today Of Rocket to Moon". The New York Times. p. 1.
^Witkin, Richard (August 18, 1958). "Rocket Fails in Moon Shot, Blowing Up in 77 Seconds". The New York Times. p. 1.
^"Colleano, Actor, 34, Dies in Auto Crash". The New York Times. August 17, 1958. p. 19.
^Books of the Times, by Orville Prescott, The New York Times, August 18, 1958, p. 17
^
"Little Rock Integration Is Reinstated on Appeal; Circuit Court Vote Is 6-1", The New York Times, August 19, 1958, p. 1
^"Triton Launched; 8th Atomic Craft; Biggest Submarine, 447 Ft., Has Two Reactors — Will Perform Picket Duty", by Jacques Nevard, The New York Times, August 20, 1958, p. 1
^"Cuban Revolution", by Gates Brown and Spencer C. Tucker, in Encyclopedia of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A New Era of Modern Warfare: A New Era of Modern Warfare (ABC-CLIO, 2013) p. 127
^"The Carrier Enterprise Is Towed To Grave in Jersey Scrap Yard", by Edmond J. Bartnett, The New York Times, August 22, 1958, p. 23
^"Walter Schumann Dead at 44; Composer Led Choral Group— Writer of Scores for 'Movies and Stage Shows Won an Award for 'Dragnet' Theme", The New York Times, August 22, 1958, p. 21
^"Kurt Neumann Dies; Movie Director, 50", The New York Times, August 22, 1958, p. 40
^"U.S. and Britain Give Plan to Halt A-Tests if Soviet Will Confer on Controls— Oct. 31 Date Set", by Felix Belair, Jr., The New York Times, August 23, 1958, p. 1
^"180 Sites Urged for Atomic Check— East-West Experts Conclude Effective Police System on Ban Is Possible", The New York Times, August 22, 1958, p. 1
^"The Making of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1958–1963", by William Burr and Hector L. Montford (National Security Archive, 2003)
^"Chinese Communists Shell Quemoys in Record Attack; Taipei Reports 40,000 Enemy Shells Hit Offshore Islands — Taiwan Prepares for Possible Invasion Attempt", The New York Times, August 24, 1958, p. 1
^"Pension Accepted by Hoover, Truman", The New York Times, September 17, 1958, p. 30
^"Belgrade Hails the Advent of TV; Excited Crowds Surround the Few Sets — Opening of Fair Takes 2d Place", by Paul Underwood, The New York Times, August 24, 1958, p. 1
^"De Gaulle Hailed at Brazzaville", The New York Times, August 24, 1958, p. 1
^"Turkish Police Arrest Bursa Merchant After Fire Destroys 2,200 Small Shops", The New York Times, August 24, 1958, p. 4
^"Explorer V Is Fired But It Fails to Orbit", by Richard Witkin, The New York Times, August 24, 1958, p. 1
^"Headsman Is Beheaded— Executioner of Yemen Put to Death for Murder", UPI report in The New York Times, August 24, 1958, p. 14
^"The Executioner Beheaded", The Observer (London), August 24, 1958, p. 9
^Diamond Industria. Diamond Lead Company. 1983. p. 9.
^東京発: 日本の今を世界の視点で読む (From Tokyo: Read Japan's present from a global perspective) (Kodensha, 1989)
^"Ralph Vaughan Williams Dies; Dean of British Composers, 85— 'Grand Old Man of English Music' Completed His Ninth Symphony Last November", The New York Times, August 27, 1958, p. 1
^"Soviet Says It Recovered 2 Dogs Shot 281 Miles Up", The New York Times, August 30, 1958, p. 1
^"Soviet Credits Special Brakes and 'Chute For Return of 2 Dogs From a Rocket Trip", The New York Times, September 1, 1958, p.7
^"Dr. E. O. Lawrence, Physicist, 57, Dies", The New York Times, August 28, 1958, p. 1
^"56 Polish Miners Die— 52 Others Rescued in Fire and Two Are Arrested", The New York Times, August 29, 1958, p. 2
^"Oxygen Supply Ordered in Jets— Airliners Must Have Masks for Passengers in Case of High-Altitude Mishap", The New York Times, August 29, 1958, p. 44
^"Moscow Accepts Oct. 31 Meeting on Atom Test Ban— Khrushchev Agrees to Date Set by West for Parley— Favors Geneva Site", The New York Times, August 30, 1958, p. 1
^"U.S. Plans 10 Atom Blasts Before Proposed Test Ban— Scheduling of 'Low-Yield' Detonations at Nevada Grounds Announced Prior to News of Khrushchev Statement", by E. W. Kenworthy, The New York Times, August 30, 1958, p. 1
^"Norfolk Agrees to Put 17 Negroes in White Schools; Board Acts Under Protest—Court Asked to Delay Enrollment a Year; Closings Are Likely",by John D. Morris, The New York Times, August 30, 1958, p. 1
^Godár, Vladimír (2008). Alexander Albrecht, Túžby a spomienky: Úvahy a retrospektívne pohl'ady skladatel'a [Alexander Albrecht, Desires and Memories: Reflections and retrospective views of the composer] (in Slovak). Music Centere Slovakia. p. 308.
^"French Explorer Dies in Pacific; De Bisschop Is Lost When Raft Breaks on Island Reef". The New York Times. September 2, 1958. p. 11.
^"British Frigates Defying Iceland— Ire Sweeps Island as Craft Appear in 12-Mile Zone", by Werner Wiskari, The New York Times, September 1, 1958, p. 1
^"George Fingold Is Dead at 49; Massachusetts Attorney General— G.O.P.Candidate for Governor Had Campaigned Saturday", The New York Times, September 1, 1958, p. 13
