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
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