1964

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Events

January

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January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople meet in Jerusalem.
January 6 – A British firm, the Leyland Motor Corp., announces the sale of 450 buses to the Cuban government, challenging the United States blockade of Cuba.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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January 8: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty

January 9 – Martyrs' Day: Armed clashes between United States troops and Panamanian civilians in the Panama Canal Zone precipitate a major international crisis, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and 4 U.S. soldiers.
January 11 – United States Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to one's health (the first such statement from the U.S. government).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
January 22 – Kenneth Kaunda is inaugurated as the first Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia.<ref>"Kaunda Named First Premier of N. Rhodesia", Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1964, p1</ref>
January 28 – A U.S. Air Force jet training aircraft that strays into East Germany is shot down by Soviet fighters near Erfurt; all three crewmen are killed.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
January 29 – February 9 – The 1964 Winter Olympics are held in Innsbruck, Austria.
January 29
- The Soviet Union launches two scientific satellites, Elektron I and II, from a single rocket.
- Ranger 6 is launched by the US space agency NASA, on a mission to carry television cameras and crash-land on the Moon.
January 30 – General Nguyễn Khánh leads a bloodless military coup d'état, replacing Dương Văn Minh as Prime Minister of South Vietnam.

February

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February 4 – The Government of the United States authorizes the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, outlawing the poll tax.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
February 5 – India backs out of its promise to hold a plebiscite in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In 1948, India had taken the issue of Kashmir to the United Nations Security Council and offered to hold a plebiscite in the held Kashmir under UN supervision.
February 9 – The Beatles perform for the first time for an American audience on The Ed Sullivan Show to a record television audience of 73 million people, launching Beatlemania in the United States, as part of The British Invasion.
February 10 – Melbourne–Voyager collision: 82 Australian sailors die when a Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier and a destroyer collide off New South Wales, Australia.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
February 11
- Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- The Republic of China severs diplomatic relations with France because of French recognition of the People's Republic of China.
February 17 – Gabonese president Léon M'ba is toppled by a military coup and his arch-rival, Jean-Hilaire Aubame, is installed in his place. However, French intervention restores M'ba's government the next day.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
February 25 – Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) beats Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, Florida, and is crowned the heavyweight champion of the world.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
February 27 – The Italian government asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

March

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March 6
- Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King Paul.
- American boxer Cassius Clay announces the change of his name to Muhammad Ali.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
March 18 – 1964 Moscow protest: Approximately 50 Moroccan students break into the embassy of Morocco in the Soviet Union and stage an all-day sit-in protesting against sentencing of eleven people to death for the alleged assassination attempt of King Hassan II of Morocco.
March 20–June 6 – The first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development takes place.
March 20 – The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
March 21 – Non ho l'età (music by Nicola Salerno, text by Mario Panzeri), sung by Gigliola Cinquetti, wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1964 (staged in Copenhagen) for Italy.
March 27 (Good Friday) – The Great Alaskan earthquake, the second-most powerful known (and the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history) at a magnitude of 9.2, strikes Southcentral Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
March 28 – King Saud of Saudi Arabia abdicates.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His brother, Prince Faisal, does not officially assume the throne until November.
March 31 – The military overthrows Brazilian President João Goulart in a coup, starting 21 years of dictatorship in Brazil, lasting until 1985.

April

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File:Gemini 1.jpg

April 8: Gemini 1 launched

April 8 – The U.S. Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft.
April 9 – The United Nations Security Council adopts by a 9–0 vote a resolution deploring a British air attack on a fort in Yemen 12 days earlier, in which 25 persons were reported killed.
April 11 – The Brazilian Congress elects Field Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco as President of Brazil.
April 13 – At the 36th Academy Awards ceremony, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award in the category Best Actor in a Leading Role in Lilies of the Field.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
April 16 – In the Assize Court at Buckingham, England, sentences totalling 307 years are passed on twelve men who stole £2,600,000 in used bank notes, after holding up the night train from Glasgow to London in August 1963 – a heist that becomes known as the Great Train Robbery.<ref name="Goldman2013">Template:Cite book</ref>
April 17 – Jerrie Mock completes the first around-the-world airplane flight by a woman. Her solo flight in the Spirit of Columbus, which took 29 1/2 days, took off and landed at the Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio.
April 19 – In Laos, the coalition government of Prince Souvanna Phouma is deposed by a right-wing military group, led by Brig. Gen. Kouprasith Abhay. Not supported by the United States, the coup is ultimately unsuccessful, and Souvanna Phouma is reinstated, remaining as Prime Minister until 1975.
April 20
- U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in New York, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, simultaneously announce plans to cut back production of materials for making nuclear weapons.
- Nelson Mandela makes his "I Am Prepared to Die" speech at the opening of the Rivonia Trial, a key event for the anti-apartheid movement.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- In the UK, BBC Two television starts broadcasting for the first time.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- British businessman Greville Wynne, imprisoned in Moscow since 1963 for spying, is exchanged for Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
April 25 – Thieves steal the head of the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, Denmark. Although the attack is attributed to Jørgen Nash, the Danish media blame painter Henrik Bruun, who never confesses to the crime.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
April 26 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

May

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May 1 – At 4:00 a.m., John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz run the first computer program written in BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), an easy to learn high level programming language which they have created.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> BASIC is eventually included on many computers and even some games consoles.
May 2
- Vietnam War: Attack on USNS Card – An explosion caused by Viet Cong commandos causes carrier USNS Card to sink in the port of Saigon.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- Some 400–1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, and another 700 in San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. Smaller marches also occur in Boston, Seattle, and Madison, WI.
- Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, hitchhiking in Meadville, Mississippi, are kidnapped, beaten and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their badly decomposed bodies are found by chance in July during the search for missing activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.
May 7
- Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.
- At a mail rockets demonstration by Gerhard Zucker on Hasselkopf Mountain near Braunlage (Lower Saxonia, Germany), three people are killed by a rocket explosion.
May 9 – South Korean President Park Chung Hee reshuffles his Cabinet, after a series of student demonstrations against his efforts to restore diplomatic and trade relations with Japan.
May 12 – Twelve young men in New York City publicly burn their draft cards to protest against the Vietnam War, the first such act of war resistance.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
May 23 – Madeline Dassault, 63, wife of a French plane manufacturer and politician, is kidnapped while leaving her car in front of her Paris home; she is found unharmed the next day in a farmhouse Template:Convert from Paris.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
May 24–25 – The crowd at a football match in Lima, Peru, riots over a referee's decision in the Peru-Argentina game; 319 are killed, 500 injured.
May 27 – The ongoing Colombian conflict starts, with an assault by 1,000 Colombian soldiers, backed by fighter planes and helicopters, against about 50 guerrillas in the community of Marquetalia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
May 28 – The Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is released by the Arab League.
May 29 – Having deposed them in a January coup, South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Khanh has rival Generals Tran Van Don and Le Van Kim convicted of "lax morality".<ref name="nyttrial">Template:Cite news</ref>

June

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June 3 – South Korean President Park Chung Hee declares martial law in Seoul, after 10,000 student demonstrators overpower police.
June 11
- Greece rejects direct talks with Turkey over Cyprus.
- Cologne school massacre: In Cologne, West Germany, Walter Seifert attacks students and teachers in an elementary school with a flamethrower, killing 10 and injuring 21.
June 12 – Nelson Mandela and 7 others are sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa, and sent to the Robben Island prison.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
June 14 – Freedom Summer, a volunteer Civil Rights project in the United States intended to promote voter registration for as many African Americans as possible in Mississippi, begins with orientation sessions for the 300 volunteers at Western College for Women, Oxford, Ohio.<ref>Later part of Miami University. Template:Cite book</ref>
June 20 – The Ford GT40 makes its first appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Its first victory will come 2 years later in 1966.
June 21 – Spain beats the Soviet Union 2–1 to win the 1964 European Nations Cup.
June 26 – Moise Tshombe returns to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from exile in Spain.

July

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July 2 – The United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 is enacted.
July 6 – Malawi receives its independence from the United Kingdom.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
July 18
- Six days of race riots begin in Harlem, New York, United States, apparently prompted by the shooting of a teenager.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- Judith Graham Pool publishes her discovery of cryoprecipitate, a frozen blood clotting product made from plasma primarily to treat hemophiliacs around the world.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
July 19 – Vietnam War: At a rally in Saigon, South Vietnamese Prime Minister and military leader Nguyễn Khánh calls for expanding the war into North Vietnam.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
July 20
- Vietnam War: Viet Cong forces attack a provincial capital, killing 11 South Vietnamese military personnel and 40 civilians (30 of which are children).
- The National Movement of the Revolution is established in the Republic of the Congo, becoming the country's sole legal political party.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
July 21 – Race riots begin in Singapore between ethnic Chinese and Malays.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
July 22 – The second meeting of the Organisation of African Unity is held.
July 24 – A minor criticality accident takes place at a United Nuclear Corporation Fuels recovery plant in Wood River Junction, Rhode Island, United States, causing the death of one worker.
July 27 – Vietnam War: The U.S. sends 5,000 more military advisers to South Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
July 31 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound telescopes).

August

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August 2 – Vietnam War: United States destroyer Maddox is attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga sinks one gunboat, while the other two leave the battle.
August 5
- Vietnam War: Operation Pierce Arrow – Aircraft from carriers USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes against U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.
- The Simba rebel army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo captures Stanleyville, and takes 1,000 Western hostages.
August 7 – Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
August 8 – A Rolling Stones gig in Scheveningen gets out of control. Riot police end the gig after about fifteen minutes, upon which spectators start to fight the riot police.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
August 13 – The last judicial hanging in the United Kingdom takes place when murderers Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen are executed at Walton Prison in Liverpool.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
August 16 – Vietnam War: In a coup, General Nguyễn Khánh replaces Dương Văn Minh as South Vietnam's chief of state and establishes a new constitution, drafted partly by the U.S. Embassy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
August 18 – The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from the Tokyo Olympics on the grounds that its teams are racially segregated.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
August 20 – The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat) began to work.
August 22 – Goalkeeper Derek Foster of Sunderland becomes the youngest-ever player to play in the English Football League, aged 15 years and 185 days.
August 24–27 – The Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City nominates incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson for a full term, and U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate.
August 27 – Walt Disney's Mary Poppins has its world premiere in Los Angeles. It will go on to become Disney's biggest moneymaker, and winner of 5 Academy Awards, including a Best Actress for Julie Andrews. It is the first Disney film to be nominated for Best Picture.
August 28–30 – Philadelphia 1964 race riot: Tensions between African American residents and police lead to 341 injuries and 774 arrests.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

September

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September 2 – Indian Hungry generation poets, including Malay Roy Choudhury, are arrested on charges of conspiracy against the state and obscenity in literature.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
September 4 – The Forth Road Bridge opens over the Firth of Forth in Scotland.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
September 10 – The African Development Bank (AfDB) is founded.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
September 11 – In Jacksonville, Florida, during a tour of the United States, John Lennon announces that the Beatles will not play to a segregated audience.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
September 14
- The third period of the Second Vatican Council opens.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- The London Daily Herald ceases publication, replaced by The Sun.
September 18 – In Athens, King Constantine II of Greece marries Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, who becomes Europe's youngest Queen at age 18 years, 19 days.
September 21 – The island of Malta obtains independence from the United Kingdom.
September 24 – The Warren Commission, the first official investigation of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, submits its written report.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
September 25 – The Mozambican War of Independence is launched by FRELIMO.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

October

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File:Tokyo 1964 Summer Olympics logo.svg

October 10–24: The 1964 Summer Olympics begins

October – Robert Moog demonstrates the prototype Moog synthesizer.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
October 1
- Three thousand student activists at the University of California, Berkeley, surround and block a police car from taking a CORE volunteer arrested for not showing his ID, when he violated a ban on outdoor activist card tables. This protest eventually explodes into the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
- The Shinkansen high-speed rail system, the world's first such system, is inaugurated in Japan, for the first sector between Tokyo and Osaka.
October 5
- Twenty-three men and thirty-one women escape to West Berlin through a narrow tunnel under the Berlin Wall.
- Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh begin an 8-day visit to Canada.
October 10–24 – The 1964 Summer Olympics are held in Tokyo, Japan, the first in an Asian country.
October 12 – The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits. The flight is cut short and lands again on October 13 after 16 orbits.
October 14 – American civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States.
October 14–15 – Nikita Khrushchev is deposed as leader of the Soviet Union; Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin assume power.
October 15 – 1964 United Kingdom general election: The Labour Party wins a narrow victory over Sir Alec Douglas-Home's Conservative Party, which has been in power for 13 years. The new prime minister is Harold Wilson.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
October 17 – 596 (nuclear test): The People's Republic of China explodes an atomic bomb in Sinkiang.
October 22
- Canada: A Federal Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects a design to become the new official Flag of Canada.
- A 5.3 kiloton nuclear device is detonated at the Tatum Salt Dome, Template:Convert from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as part of the Vela Uniform program. This test is the Salmon phase of the Atomic Energy Commission's Project Dribble.
October 24 – Northern Rhodesia, a former British protectorate, becomes the independent Republic of Zambia, ending 73 years of British rule.
October 26 – Eric Edgar Cooke becomes the last man executed in Western Australia, for murdering 8 citizens in Perth between 1959 and 1963.
October 27 – In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rebel leader Christopher Gbenye takes 60 Americans and 800 Belgians hostage.
October 29 – A collection of irreplaceable gemstones, including the Template:Convert Star of India, is stolen from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

November

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November 1 – Mortar fire from North Vietnamese forces rains on the Bien Hoa Air Base, killing four U.S. servicemen, wounding 72, and destroying five B-57 jet bombers and other planes.
November 3
- 1964 United States presidential election: Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Republican challenger Barry Goldwater with over 60 percent of the popular vote.
- The Bolivian government of President Víctor Paz Estenssoro is overthrown by a military rebellion led by General Alfredo Ovando Candía, commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
November 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 3 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy but fails.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
November 10 – Australia partially reintroduces compulsory military service due to the Indonesian Confrontation.
November 19 – The United States Department of Defense announces the closing of 95 military bases and facilities, including Fort Jay, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Brooklyn Army Terminal.
November 21
- Second Vatican Council: The third period of the Catholic Church's ecumenical council closes. Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, is promulgated.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge across New York Bay opens to traffic (the world's longest suspension bridge at this time).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
November 24 – Belgian paratroopers and mercenaries capture Stanleyville, but a number of hostages die in the fighting, among them American Evangelical Covenant Church missionary Paul Carlson.
November 28
- Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.
- Vietnam War: United States National Security Council members, including Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and Maxwell Taylor, agree to recommend a plan for a 2-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam, to President Lyndon B. Johnson.
- France performs an underground nuclear test at In Ecker, Algeria.

December

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December 1 – Gustavo Díaz Ordaz takes office as President of Mexico.
December 3
- Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Police arrest about 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover of and massive sit-in at the Sproul Hall administration building. The sit-in most directly protested the U.C. Regents' decision to punish student activists for what many thought had been justified civil disobedience earlier in the conflict.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- The Danish football club Brøndby IF is founded as a merger between the two local clubs Brøndbyøster Idrætsforening and Brøndbyvester Idrætsforening. The club wins the national championship Danish Superliga 10 times, and the Danish Cups six times, after joining the Danish top-flight football league in 1981.
December 5 – Australian Senate election, 1964: The Liberal/Country Coalition Government led by Prime Minister Robert Menzies hold their status quo, while the Labor Party led by Arthur Calwell lose one seat to the Democratic Labor Party, who hold the balance of power in the Senate alongside independent Reg Turnbull.
December 10 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
December 11 – Che Guevara addresses the United Nations General Assembly.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> A bazooka attack is launched at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City.
December 12 – Jamhuri Day: Kenya becomes a republic, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first President.
December 14 – Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (379 US 241 1964): The U.S. Supreme Court rules that, in accordance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, establishments providing public accommodation must refrain from racial discrimination.
December 18 – The Christmas flood of 1964 begins in the United States, affecting the Pacific Northwest and some of Northern California. It will continue until January 7, resulting in 19 deaths, serious damage to buildings, roads and bridges, and the loss of 4,000 head of livestock.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
December 21 – The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark supersonic attack aircraft, developed for the U.S. Air Force, makes its first flight, at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
December 22
- A cyclone in the Palk Strait destroys the Indian town of Dhanushkodi, killing 1800 people.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird makes its first flight at Palmdale, California.
December 24 – The Brinks Hotel in Saigon, Vietnam, is bombed by the Viet Cong, resulting in the deaths of two US soldiers and injuries to a further 60 people, including civilians.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
December 30 – The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is established as a permanent organ of the UN General Assembly.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>