1966 - What happened in 1966 ?

January 1966

Monday 03:

The first Acid Test at the Fillmore, San Francisco, California.

Saturday 08:

Operation Crimp of the Vietnam War.

Wednesday 12:

Batman the TV series debuts on ABC.

Wednesday 26:

The Beaumont Children go missing from Glenelg Beach in Adelaide, South Australia.

Saturday 29:

The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opens at the Palace Theatre in New York City.

February 1966

Thursday 03:

The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.

Friday 04:

All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 jet plunges into Tokyo Bay killing 133

Monday 07:

Paul Williams created the rock music magazine Crawdaddy!

Monday 14:

Australian currency is decimalised.

Saturday 26:

Apollo Program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket

March 1966

Tuesday 01:

John Kerry officially leaves active duty in Vietnam.

Friday 04:

John Lennon says, "We (The Beatles) are more popular than Jesus" which sparks controversy in the United States.

Saturday 05:

In Luxembourg, Udo Jürgens wins the eleventh Eurovision Song Contest for Austria.

Tuesday 08:

A bomb planted by young Irish protesters destroys Nelson's Pillar in Dublin.

Thursday 17:

Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.

April 1966

Thursday 21:

Rastafari movement: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as Grounation Day.

Saturday 30:

Anton LaVey founds the Church of Satan.

May 1966

Friday 06:

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are sentenced to life imprisonment for the Moors Murders in England.

Thursday 12:

Busch Memorial Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals major league baseball team, opens in St. Louis, Missouri.

Saturday 21:

Cassius Clay beat Henry Cooper in the sixth round at the Arsenal football ground, North London.

Wednesday 25:

Explorer program: Explorer 32 launches.

Thursday 26:

British Guiana gains independence, becoming Guyana.

June 1966

Thursday 02:

Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarumon the Moon, becoming the first US spacecraft to soft land on another world.

Monday 06:

James Meredith, civil rights activist, is shot while trying to march across Mississippi.

Monday 13:

The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

Monday 20:

Canada sells 336 million bushels (9.14 teragrams) of wheat to Soviet Union.

Monday 27:

The first broadcast of Dark Shadows aired on ABC-TV.

July 1966

Friday 01:

First colour television transmission in Canada, from Toronto.

Friday 08:

King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi was deposed by his son Prince Charles Ndizi.

Monday 18:

Gemini 10 launched.

Tuesday 26:

Lord Gardiner issues the Practice Statement in the House of Lords stating that the House is not bound to follow its own previous precedent.

Saturday 30:

At Wembley Stadium, host England wins the Football World Cup, beating Germany 4 to 2.

August 1966

Monday 01:

Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official People's Republic of China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Sunday 07:

Race riots occur in Lansing, Michigan.

Friday 12:

John Lennon apologizes at a Chicago news conference for saying the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus."

Tuesday 23:

Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.

Monday 29:

Execution of Sayyid Qutb, a leading theoretician of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

September 1966

Saturday 03:

The last new episode of the television series The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet airs.

Tuesday 06:

In Cape Town, South Africa, the architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death during a parliamentary meeting.

Wednesday 07:

The final new episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show airs (the first episode aired on October 3, 1961).

Thursday 15:

The spaceship Gemini XI, with astronauts Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon aboard, returns to earth.

Friday 16:

The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City to the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera, Antony and Cleopatra.

October 1966

Tuesday 04:

Basutoland becomes independent from the United Kingdom and is renamed Lesotho.

Friday 14:

The city of Montreal inaugurates its metro system (see Montreal Metro).

Saturday 15:

US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill creating the United States Department of Transportation.

Monday 17:

A fire at a building in New York, New York kills 12 firefighters.

Friday 21:

Aberfan disaster: A coal tip falls on the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren

November 1966

Friday 04:

Two-thirds of Florence, Italy is submerged as the Arno and Po rivers flood; 113 people die, 30,000 are rendered homeless, and countless Renaissance artworks and books are destroyed.

Tuesday 08:

Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate.

Friday 11:

NASA launches spaceship Gemini 12.

Sunday 20:

Cabaret opens at the Imperial Theatre, New York

Wednesday 30:

Barbados becomes independent.

December 1966

Wednesday 07:

A fire at an army barracks in Erzurum, Turkey kills 68 people.

Friday 16:

Mao's Little Red Book is published in Beijing

Sunday 18:

Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker, and then lost for 12 years

Saturday 24:

A Canadair CL44 chartered by the United States military crashes into a small village in South Vietnam, killing 129.

Monday 26:

The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach