1963

Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

Years: 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 - 1963 - 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

Events

• January 11 - The Whiskey-a-Go-Go night club in Los Angeles, the first disco in the USA, is opened.
• January 14 - George Wallace becomes governor of Alabama.
• January 22 - Elysée treaty between France and Germany
• February 8 - Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.
• February 11 - CIA Domestic Operations Division is created.
• March 4 - In Paris six people are sentenced to death for conspiring to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle.
• March 18 - Court decides poor must have lawyers (Gideon vs. Wainwright Supreme Court trial)
• March 21 - Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, closes.
• March 27 - In Britain Dr Beeching issues report calling for huge cuts to the UK's rail network See Beeching axe.
• April 7 - Yugoslavia is proclaimed to be a Socialist republic and Josip Broz Tito is named President for life.
• April 22 - Lester B. Pearson becomes Canada's fourteenth prime minister.
• May 15 - Mercury program: NASA launches the last mission of the program, Mercury 9 (on June 12 NASA Administrator James Webb told Congress the program was complete).
• May 25 - In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organisation of African Unity is established.
• June 16 - Valentina Tereshkova (USSR) becomes the first woman in space.
• June 22 - Pope Paul VI is elected by College of Cardinals.
• August 5 - United States, Great Britain, and Soviet Union sign a nuclear test ban treaty.
• August 8 - The Great Train Robbery takes place in Buckinghamshire, England
• August 18 - American civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
• August 28 - Martin Luther King delivers his "I have a dream" speech on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
• September 15 - American civil rights movement: The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing results in 4 deaths and 22 injuries.
• September 29 - Opening of second period of Second Vatican Council in Rome.
• October 9 - Uganda becomes a republic.
• October 9 - In northeast Italy, over 2,000 people are killed when the Vaiont Dam breaks after a large landslide behind the dam causes water to overtop it.
• November 2 - South Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem is assassinated following a military coup.
• November 6 - Vietnam War: Following the November 1 coup and murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem, coup leader General Duong Van Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam.
• November 7 - Wunder von Lengede: In Germany, 11 miners are rescued from a collapsed mine after 14 days.
• November 9 - 1963 Miike coal-mine explosion: In Japan, a coal mine explosion kills 458 and sends 839 carbon monoxide poisoning victims to the hospital.
• November 22 - John F. Kennedy assassination: In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated, Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded, and US Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn-in as the 36th President of the United States.
• November 24 - John F. Kennedy assassination: Alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is mortally shot by Jack Ruby in Dallas, Texas on live national television.
• November 24 - Vietnam War: Newly sworn in US President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam militarily and economically.
• November 25 - John F. Kennedy assassination: The late US President John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
• November 29 - John F. Kennedy assassination: US President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
• November 29 - A Douglas DC-8 carrying Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 831 crashes into a wooded hillside after taking-off from Dorval Airport near Montreal, killing all 118 on board (for many years this was the worst air disaster in Canada's history).
• December 4 - Closing of second period of Second Vatican Council.
• End of the Mercury program of United States manned spaceflight
• Frisch and Smith prove radioactive decay of mesons is slowed by their motion. (See Einstein's Special Relativity and General Relativity).
• Syncom, the world's first geostationary (synchronous) satellite is orbited by NASA.
• Full deployment of SAGE, the semi-automated ground environment.
• TAT-3 cable goes into operation.
• Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane coins the word "clone".
• Arecibo radio telescope officially begins operation.
• Ostankino Tower in Moscow begins construction.
• The divorce case of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll causes scandal in Great Britain

Year in topic

1963 is the year dubbed "Annus Mirabilis" by British poet Philip Larkin.

• 1963 in film
  • Tom Jones
  • Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds
  • Charade starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn
  • McLintock! starring John Wayne
• 1963 in literature
• 1963 in music
  • February 11 - The Beatles tape 10 tracks for their 1st album, including Please, Please Me (released on March 2).
• 1963 in sports
  • January 29 - First inductees into the "Pro Football" Hall of Fame are announced
• 1963 in television
  • May 15 - First television pictures transmitted from a U.S. manned space capsule ("Faith 7.") Due to the poor picture quality, only NBC carries the transmission, and on tape-delay, not live
  • September 2 ? CBS becomes first network to expand its evening network news from 15 to 30 minutes.
  • September 9 - NBC expands its evening network news program to 30 minutes
  • November 22 - regular television programming is suspended following news of John F. Kennedy's assassination
  • November 23 - first episode of Dr Who is broadcast in the UK.
  • November 24 - Jack Ruby murders John F. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald live on television.
  • The television remote control is authorized by the FCC.

Births

• January 14 - Steven Soderbergh, director
• January 21 - Hakeem Olajuwon, basketball
• January 23 - Gail O'Grady, actress
• January 26 - Andrew Ridgeley, musician
• February 9 - Travis Tritt, country music singer
• February 11 - Todd Benzinger, American baseball player
• February 17 - Michael Jordan, basketball legend
• February 19 - Seal, singer
• February 20 - Charles Barkley, American basketball player
• February 21 - William Baldwin, actor
• February 22 - Vijay Singh, golfer
• March 4 - Jason Newsted, former bassist of Metallica
• March 10 - Neneh Cherry, musician
• March 18 - Vanessa Williams, actress, singer, Miss America
• March 27 - Quentin Tarantino, actor, director, writer, producer
• March 27 - Xuxa, Brazilian television personality
• April 4 - Graham Norton, talk show host
• April 9 - Joe Scarborough, American cable news host
• April 18 - Conan O'Brien, American television entertainer
• April 26 - Jet Li, martial arts fighter, actor
• May 11 - Natasha Richardson, actress
• May 25 - Mike Myers, actor, comedian
• June 23 - Colin Montgomerie, golfer.
• June 25 - George Michael, singer
• July 24 - Karl Malone, basketball
• July 30 - Lisa Kudrow, American actress
• August 3 - James Hetfield, Metallica frontman and co-founder
• September 10 - Randy Johnson, baseball pitcher, five-time Cy Young Award winner
• October 10 - Daniel Pearl, journalist (d. 2002)
• October 26 - Natalie Merchant, singer/songwriter/musician
• November 18 - Dante Bichette, baseball player
• December 2 - John Kennedy Morrisey, entertainer/athlete/storyteller
• December 18 - Brad Pitt, actor

Deaths

• January 5 - Rogers Hornsby, Baseball Hall of Famer
• January 29 - Robert Frost, poet
• January 30 - Francis Poulenc, composer
• February 11 - Sylvia Plath, poet/novelist.
• March 4 - William Carlos Williams, writer
• March 5 - Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas, country music singers
• April 6 - Otto Struve, astronomer (b. 1897)
• may 31 - Edith Hamilton, educator and author
• June 3 - Pope John XXIII
• October 11 - Edith Piaf, French singer
• October 11 - Jean Cocteau, writer
• November 1 - Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam
• November 22 - John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald
• November 22 - Aldous Huxley, novelist
• November 22 - C.S. Lewis - novelist, Christian apologist, and English professor
• November 24 - Lee Harvey Oswald, shot by Jack Ruby
• December 1 - Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, American spy in WW II
• December 5 - Karl Amadeus Hartmann, composer
• December 28 - Paul Hindemith, German composer
• Suzanne Duchamp, Dada painter
• Theodore Roethke - American poet

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J. Hans D. Jensen
• Chemistry - Karl Ziegler, Giulio Natta
• Medicine - Sir John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, Andrew Fielding Huxley
• Literature - Giorgos Seferis
• Peace - International Committee of the Red Cross, League of Red Cross Societies

Miscellaneous

• Harvey Ball invents the ubiquitous smiley

Referenced By