1966

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Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar.

Events of 1966

January

• January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, taking out President David Dacko.
• January 2 - A strike of public transportation workers in New York City begins (it will end January 13).
• January 3 - The first Acid Test is conducted at the Fillmore, San Francisco.
• January 4 - A military coup occurs in Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso).
• January 4 - The prime ministers of India and Pakistan meet in Moscow.
• January 4 - A gas leak fire at the Feyzin oil refinery near Lyon, France kills 18 and injures 84.
• January 10 - Pakistani-Indian peace negotiations end successfully in Tashkent.
• January 10 - The French paper L'Express publishes a story of Georges Figon, who took part in the kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka.
• January 11 - A conference on Rhodesia begins in Lagos, Nigeria.
• January 11 - The first SR-71 Blackbird spy plane goes into service at Beale AFB.
• January 12 - United States President Lyndon Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.
• January 13 - Robert C. Weaver becomes the first African American Cabinet member, by being appointed United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
• January 15 - A violent military coup is staged in Nigeria.
• January 17 - The Nigerian coup is overturned.
• January 17 - A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares, and 1 into the sea, in the Palomares hydrogen bombs incident.
• January 17 - Carl Brashear, the first African American United States Navy diver, is involved in an accident during the recovery of a lost h-bomb which results in the amputation of his leg.
• January 18 - French police announce that Georges Figon committed suicide, prior to his arrest for the kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka.
• January 18 - About 8,000 U.S. soldiers land in South Vietnam; U.S. troops now total 190,000.
• January 19 - Indira Gandhi is elected Prime Minister of India; she is sworn in January 24.
• January 20 - Demonstrations occur against high food prices in Hungary.
• January 21 - Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro resigns due to a power struggle in his party.
• January 22 - The military government of Nigeria announces that ex-prime minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was killed during the coup.
• January 22 - The Chadian Muslim insurgent group FROLINAT is founded in Sudan, starting the Chadian Civil War.
• January 26 - Harold Holt becomes Prime Minister of Australia when Robert Menzies retires.
• January 26 - Beaumont children disappearance: Three children disappear on their way to Glenelg Beach, South Australia, never to be seen again.
• January 27 - The British government promises the U.S. that British troops in Malaysia will stay until more peaceful conditions occur in the region.

• January 29 - The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opens at the Palace Theatre in New York City.
• January 31 - The United Kingdom ceases all trade with Rhodesia.

February

• February 1 - West Germany procures some 2,600 political prisoners from East Germany.
• February 3 - The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.
• February 4 - All Nippon Airways Flight 60 plunge into Tokyo Bay (133 dead).
• February 6 - Fidel Castro blames China for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda among Cuban soldiers.
• February 10 - Soviet writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky are sentenced to 5 and 7 years, respectively, for 'anti-Soviet' writings.
• February 11 - The Belgian government resigns.
• February 14 - The Australian dollar is introduced at a rate of 2 dollars per pound, or 10 shillings per dollar.
• February 19 - The naval minister of the United Kingdom, Christopher Mayhew, resigns.
• February 20 - While Soviet author and translator Valery Tarsis is abroad, the Soviet Union negates his citizenship.
• February 23 - A military coup in Syria replaces the previous government with a Ba'athist regime.
• February 24 - A military coup in Ghana raises sacked General Ankrah to power while president Kwame Nkrumah is abroad.
• February 26 - A curfew is declared in Jakarta, Indonesia.
• February 28 - U.S. astronauts Charles Bassett and Elliott See are killed in an aircraft accident in St. Louis, Missouri.

March

• March 1 - Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashes on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.
• March 1 - The Ba'ath Party takes power in Syria.
• March 2 - Kwame Nkrumah arrives in Guinea and is granted asylum.
• March 4 - The Beatles: In an interview published in The London Evening Standard, John Lennon comments, "We're more popular than Jesus now," eventually sparking a controversy in the United States.
• March 5 - A massive theft of nuclear materials is revealed in Brazil.
• March 5 - Merci Chérie by Udo Jürgens (music by Udo Jürgens, text by Udo Jürgens and Thomas Hörbiger) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1966 for Austria.
• March 7 - Charles De Gaulle asks U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson for negotiations about the state of NATO equipment in France.
• March 8 - Anti-communist demonstrations occur at the Indonesian Foreign Ministry.
• March 8 - Vietnam War: Australia announces it will substantially increase its number of troops in Vietnam.
• March 8 - An Irish Republican Army bomb destroys Nelson's Pillar in Dublin.
• March 9 - Ronnie Kray murders George Cornell in East London's Blind Beggar pub, a crime for which he is finally convicted in 1969.
• March 10 - Crown Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands marries Claus von Amsberg. Some spectators demonstrate against the groom because he is German.
• March 11 - Indonesian President Sukarno gives all executive powers to General Suharto (see Transition to the New Order and Supersemar).
• March 11 - French President Charles De Gaulle states that French troops will be taken out of NATO and that all French NATO bases and HQ's must be closed within a year.
• March 12 - Bobby Hull of the Chicago Black Hawks sets the NHL single season scoring record against the New York Rangers with his 51st goal.
• March 16 - Gemini 8 (David Scott, Neil Armstrong) docks with an Agena target vehicle.
• March 17 - More anti-communist demonstrations occur in Indonesia.
• March 17 - Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the DSV Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.

Archbishop of Canterbury meeting the Catholic Pope

• March 19 - The Texas Western Miners defeat the Kentucky Wildcats with 5 black starters, ushering in desegregation in athletic recruiting.
• March 20 - World Cup Trophy the "Jules Rimet" is stolen at an exhibition, it is later found by a dog named "Pickles" and his owner David Corbett.
• March 22 - In Washington, DC, General Motors President James M. Roche appears before a Senate subcommittee, and apologizes to consumer advocate Ralph Nader for the company's intimidation and harassment campaign against him.
• March 23 - Pope Paul VI and Arthur Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, meet in Rome.
• March 26 - Demonstrations are held across the United States against the Vietnam War.
• March 27 - In South Vietnam, 20,000 Buddhists march in demonstrations against the policies of the military government.
• March 28 - Indira Gandhi visits Washington, DC.
• March 29 - The 23rd Communist Party Conference is held in the Soviet Union; Leonid Brezhnev demands that U.S. troops leave Vietnam, and announces that Chinese-Soviet relations are not satisfying.
• March 31 - The Labour Party under Harold Wilson wins the British General Election.
• March 31 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.

April

• April 2 - The Indonesian army demands that the country rejoin the United Nations.
• April 4 - Luna 10 enters orbit around the Moon.
• April 7 - The United Kingdom asks the UN Security Council for authority to use force to stop oil tankers that violate the embargo against Rhodesia. Authority is given April 10.
• April 8 - Buddhists in South Vietnam protest against the fact that the new government has not set a date for free elections.
• April 9 - Norwich City F.C. captain Barry Butler is killed in a car accident.
• April 13 - United States president Lyndon Johnson signs the 1966 Uniform Time Act act dealing with daylight saving time.
• April 14 - The South Vietnamese government promises free elections in 3–5 months.
• April 15 - An anti-Nasser conspiracy is exposed in Egypt.
• April 18 - China declares that it will stop economic aid to Indonesia.
• April 18 - 38th Academy Awards ceremony
• April 21 - An artificial heart is installed in the chest of Marcel DeRudder in a Houston, Texas hospital.
• April 21 - The opening of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is televised for the first time.
• April 21 - Haile Selassie visits Jamaica for the first time, meeting with Rastafarian leaders.
• April 21 - Ian Brady and Myra Hindley go on trial at Chester Crown Court, for the murders of three children who vanished between November 1963 and October 1965.
• April 27 - Pope Paul VI and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko meet in the Vatican (the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and the Soviet Union).
• April 28 - In Rhodesia, security forces kill 7 ZANLA men in combat; Chimurenga, the ZANU rebellion, begins.
• April 29 - U.S. troops in Vietnam total 250,000.
• April 30 - Regular hovercraft service begins over the English Channel (discontinued in 2000 due to the Channel Tunnel).
• April 30 - The Church of Satan is formed by Anton Szandor LaVey in San Francisco
• April 30 - Uniform daylight saving time first observed in most parts of North America.

May

• May 1 - Floods occur on the Finnish coast.
• May 3 - Swinging Radio England and Britain Radio commence broadcasting on AM, with a combined potential 100,000 watts, from the same ship anchored off the south coast of England in international waters.
• May 4 - Fiat signs a contract with the Soviet government to build a car factory in the Soviet Union.
• May 6 - The Moors Murderers ends with Ian Brady being found guilty on all three counts of murder and sentenced to three concurrent terms of life imprisonment. Myra Hindley is convicted on two counts of murder and of being an accessory in the third murder committed by Brady and receives two concurrent terms of life imprisonment and a seven-year fixed term for being an accessory.
• May 12 - African members of the UN Security Council say that the British army should blockade Rhodesia.
• May 12 - Opening of the Busch Memorial Stadium in St Louis, Missouri.
• May 12 - Radio Peking claims that U.S. planes have shot down a Chinese plane over Yunnan (the U.S. denies the story the next day).
• May 14 - Turkey and Greece intend to start negotiations about the situation in Cyprus.
• May 15 - Indonesia asks Malaysia for peace negotiations.
• May 15 - The South Vietnamese army besieges Da Nang.
• May 15 - Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators again picket the White House, then rally at the Washington Monument.
• May 16 - A seamen's strike is called in Britain.
• May 16 - The legendary album Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys is released.
• May 16 - Bob Dylan's seminal album, Blonde on Blonde is released in the USA.
• May 16 - In New York City, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his first public speech on the Vietnam War.
• May 19 - Gertrude Baniszewski is found guilty of murdering and torturing Sylvia Likens and is sentenced to life in prison. Released on parole in December 1985.
• May 24 - Ugandan army troops arrest Mutesa II of Buganda and occupy his palace.
• May 24 - The Nigerian government forbids all political activity in the country (until January 17, 1969).
• May 25 - Explorer program: Explorer 32 is launched.
• May 25 - In St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall dedicate the Gateway Arch, as part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
• May 26 - Guyana achieves independence.
• May 28 - Fidel Castro delcares martial law in Cuba because of a possible U.S. attack.
• May 28 - The Indonesian and Malayan governments declare that the Indonesian Confrontation is over (a treaty is signed on August 11).
• May 31 - The Philippines reestablishes diplomatic relations with Malaysia.

June

• June 1 - The final new episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show airs (the first episode aired on October 3, 1961).
• June 2 - Éamon de Valera is re-elected as Irish president.
• June 2 - Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first spacecraft to soft-land on another world.
• June 2 - Four former cabinet ministers are executed in Zaire, for alleged involvement in a plot to kill Mobutu Sese Seko.
• June 3 - Joaquín Balaguer is elected president of the Dominican Republic.
• June 5 - Gemini 9: Gene Cernan completes the second U.S. spacewalk (2 hours, 7 minutes).
• June 6 - Civil rights activist James Meredith is shot while trying to march across Mississippi.
• June 8 - An XB-70 Valkyrie prototype is destroyed in a mid-air collision with a F-104 Starfighter chase plane during a photo shoot. NASA pilot Joseph A. Walker and USAF test pilot Carl Cross are both killed.
• June 8 - Topeka, Kansas is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita Scale: the first to exceed US $100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed. [1]
• June 13 - Miranda v. Arizona: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
• June 14 - The Vatican abolishes the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (index of banned books).
• June 17 - An Air France personnel strike begins.
• June 18 - CIA chief William Raborn resigns - Richard Helms becomes his successor.
• June 20 - French President Charles De Gaulle starts visit to the Soviet Union.
• June 21 - Opposition leader Arthur Calwell is shot after attending a political meeting in Mosman, Sydney, Australia.
• June 28 - In Argentina, a junta deposes president Arturo Umberto Illia in a coup, and appoints General Juan Carlos Ongania to lead.
• June 29 - A sailors' strike, organised by the National Union of Seamen, ends in the United Kingdom.
• June 29 - Vietnam War: U.S. planes begin bombing Hanoi and Haiphong.
• June 30 - France formally leaves NATO.
• June 30 - The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded in Washington, DC.

July

• July 1 - Joaquin Balaguer becomes president of the Dominican Republic.
• July 3 - Rene Barrientos is elected president of Bolivia.
• July 4 - North Vietnam declares general mobilization.
• July 4 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act, which goes into effect the following year.
• July 6 - Malawi becomes a republic.
• July 7 - A Warsaw Pact conference ends with a promise to support North Vietnam.
• July 8 - King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi is deposed by his son Ntare V, who is in turn deposed by prime minister Michel Micombero.
• July 11 - The 1966 FIFA World Cup begins in England.
• July 12 - Indira Gandhi visits Moscow.
• July 12 - Zambia threatens to leave the Commonwealth of Nations because of British peace overtures to Rhodesia.
• July 12 - U.S. Lieutenant Major W.H. Whalen is arrested for spying.
• July 14 - Israeli and Syrian jet fighters clash over the Jordan River.
• July 14 - Richard Speck murders 8 student nurses in their Chicago dormitory. He is arrested on July 17.
• July 14 - Gwynfor Evans becomes member of Parliament for Carmarthen, the first Plaid Cymru MP in the UK.
• July 16 - British Prime Minister Harold Wilson flies to Moscow to try to start peace negotiations about the Vietnam War (the Soviet government refutes his ideas).
• July 18 - Gemini 10 (John Young, Michael Collins) launched. After docking with an Agena target vehicle, they then set a world altitude record of 474 miles (763 km).
• July 18 - The Hough Riots break out in Cleveland, Ohio, the city's first race riot.
• July 19 - A Chinese delegate in the Netherlands, Liu en-Tsiu, is declared persona non grata because of the death of a Chinese engineer in unclear circumstances; there are claims that he was kidnapped and taken to the delegate's office.
• July 22 - The Chinese government declares Dutch delegate G. J. Jongejans persona non grata, but tells him not to leave the country before a group of Chinese engineers has left the Netherlands.
• July 23 - Katangese troops in Stanleyville, Congo, revolt for several weeks in support of the exiled minister Moise Tshombe.
• July 24 - U.N. Secretary General U Thant visits Moscow.
• July 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.
• July 28 - The U.S. announces that a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance plane has disappeared over Cuba.
• July 29 - The Nigerian army rebels and executes head of state General Aguiyi-Ironsi.
• July 29 - Bob Dylan is injured in a motorcycle accident near his home in Woodstock, New York. He is not seen in public for over a year.
• July 30 - England beat West Germany 4–2 to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup at Wembley after extra time.

August

• August 1 - Sniper Charles Whitman kills 13 people and wounds 31 from atop the University of Texas at Austin Main Building tower, after earlier killing his wife and mother.
• August 1 - A military coup occurs in Nigeria; General Yakubu Gowon takes over.
• August 2 - The Spanish government forbids overflights of British military aircraft.
• August 5 - Martin Luther King Jr. leads a civil rights march in Chicago, during which he is struck by a rock thrown from an angry white mob.
• August 5 - The Beatles release the legendary Revolver album in the United Kingdom.
• August 6 - Braniff Airlines Flight 250 crashes in Falls City, Nebraska, killing all 42 on board.
• August 6 - Rene Barrientos takes office as the president of Bolivia.
• August 6 - The Tagus River Bridge opens in Lisbon, Portugal.
• August 7 - Race riots occur in Lansing, Michigan.
• August 10 - An East German court sentences Günter Laudahn to life imprisonment for spying for the United States.
• August 10 - Lunar Orbiter 1, the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit another world, is launched.
• August 11 - The Beatles hold a press conference in Chicago, during which John Lennon apologizes for his "more popular than Jesus" remark, saying, "I didn't mean it as a lousy anti-religious thing."
• August 12 - Massacre of Braybrook Street: Harry Roberts, John Duddy and Jack Witney shoot dead 3 plainclothes policemen in London; they are later sentenced to life imprisonment.
• August 13 - In the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong begins the Cultural Revolution to purge and reorganize China's Communist Party.
• August 13 - An earthquake in Turkey kills 2,394 and injures 10,000.
• August 15 - Syrian and Israeli troops clash over Lake Genesaret for 3 hours.
• August 15 - It is announced that the New York Herald Tribune will not resume publication.
• August 16 - Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee starts investigating Americans who have aided the Viet Cong, with the intent to make these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 are arrested.
• August 17 - Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Republic begin negotiations in Kuwait to end the war in Yemen.
• August 18 - Vietnam War: D Company, 6th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, meets and defeats a Viet Cong force estimated to be 4 times larger, at the Battle of Long Tan in Phuoc Tuy Province, Republic of Vietnam.
• August 19 - An earthquake in eastern Turkey destroys whole cities.
• August 21 - Seven men are sentenced to death in Egypt, for anti-Nasser agitation.
• August 22 - The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), predecessor of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), is formed.
• August 26 - Riots occur in French Somaliland.
• August 29 - The Beatles play their very last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California.
• August 30 - France offers independence to French Somaliland.

September

• September 1 - United Nations Secretary-General U Thant declares that he will not seek re-election, because U.N. efforts in Vietnam have failed.
• September 1 - 98 British tourists die in an air crash in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia.
• September 6 - In Cape Town, the South African architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death by Dimitri Tsafendas during a parliamentary meeting.
• September 8 - Star Trek, the classic science fiction television series, debuts with its first episode, titled "The Man Trap."
• September 9 - NATO decides to move SHAPE headquarters to Belgium.
• September 12 - Gemini 11 (Richard Gordon, Pete Conrad) docks with an Agena target vehicle.
• September 12 - Balthazar Johannes Vorster becomes the new South African Prime Minister.
• September 13 - TASS reports on clashes between the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Guards.
• September 16 - In South Vietnam, Thich Tri Quang ends a 100-day hunger strike.
• September 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.
• September 18 - Valerie Percy, the 21-year-old daughter of Senator Charles H. Percy, is stabbed and bludgeoned to death in the family mansion on Chicago's North Shore.
• September 19 - Scotland Yard arrests Ronald Edwards, suspected of involvement in the Great Train Robbery.
• September 30 - Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer are released from Spandau Prison.
• September 30 - Botswana achieves independence.

October

• October - Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton found the Black Panther Party.
• October 1 - West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with eighteen fatal injuries and no survivors 5.5 miles south of Wemme, Oregon. This accident marks the first loss of a DC-9. ^[1]
• October 3 - Tunisia severs diplomatic relations with the United Arab Republic.
• October 4 - Israel applies for the outer membership of the EEC.
• October 4 - Basutoland becomes independent and takes the name Lesotho.
• October 5 - UNESCO signs the Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers. This event is now celebrated as World Teachers' Day.
• October 7 - The Soviet Union declares that all Chinese students must leave the country before the end of October.
• October 9 - The Baltimore Orioles defeat the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 4 of the World Series, 1–0, to sweep the series for their 1st World Championship.
• October 11 - France and the Soviet Union sign a treaty for cooperation in nuclear research.
• October 14 - The city of Montreal inaugurates its metro system (see Montreal Metro).
• October 15 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill creating the United States Department of Transportation.
• October 15 - U.S. Congress passes a bill for the creation of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to be created.
• October 15 - ABC-TV telecasts a highly-acclaimed ninety-minute television adaptation of the musical Brigadoon, starring Robert Goulet, Peter Falk, and Sally Ann Howes. It wins many Emmy Awards and inaugurates a short-lived series of special television adaptations of famous Broadway musicals on ABC. Goulet stars in all but one of these specials.
• October 16 - Grace Slick performs live for the first time with Jefferson Airplane.
• October 17 - Lesotho and Botswana are admitted to the United Nations.
• October 21 - The Aberfan disaster occurs in South Wales, United Kingdom.
• October 22 - British spy George Blake escapes from Wormwood Scrubs prison; he is next seen in Moscow.
• October 22 - Spain demands that the United Kingdom stop military flights to Gibraltar; Britain refuses the next day.
• October 24 - Negotiations about the Vietnam War begin in Manila, Philippines.
• October 25 - A military court in Jakarta sentences ex-foreign minister Subandrio to death.
• October 25 - Spain closes its Gibraltar border to non-pedestrian traffic.
• October 26 - NATO moves its HQ from Paris to Brussels.
• October 27 - The United Nations takes Namibia from South Africa.
• October 29 - The Guinean delegation to the OAU meeting in Ethiopia, become hostages of the Ghanaian government in Accra.

November

• November 2 - The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
• November 4 - The Arno river floods Florence, damaging many art treasures.
• November 5 - Thirty-eight African states demand that the United Kingdom use force against the Rhodesian government.
• November 6 - Lunar Orbiter 2 is launched.
• November 8 - Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
• November 8 - Actor Ronald Reagan, a Republican, is elected Governor of California.
• November 9 - John Lennon meets Yoko Ono at the Indica Gallery
• November 11 - A mine kills 3 Israeli paratroopers on the West Bank border.
• November 11 - Spain declares general amnesty for crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War (effective only for the Falangists' side).
• November 15 - Gemini 12 (James A. Lovell, Buzz Aldrin), splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean, 600 km east of the Bahamas.
• November 15 - Harry Maurice Roberts, who killed 3 policemen in August, is caught near London.
• November 15 - A Boeing 727 carrying Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Berlin, Germany, killing all three people on board.
• November 16 - U.S. doctor Sam Sheppard is acquitted in his second trial for the murder of his pregnant wife in 1954.
• November 17 - The U.N. General Assembly decides to found the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.
• November 17 - A spectacular Leonid meteor shower passes over Arizona, at the rate of 2,300 a minute for 20 minutes.
• November 21 - In Togo, the army crushes an attempted coup.
• November 27 - The Washington Redskins defeated the New York Giants 72-41 in the highest scoring game in NFL history.
• November 28 - Truman Capote's Black and White Ball ('The Party of the Century') is held in New York City.
• November 30 - Barbados achieves independence.

December

• December 1 - Kurt Georg Kiesinger is elected Chancellor of West Germany.
• December 1 - British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Rhodesian Prime minister Ian Smith negotiate on HMS Tiger in the Mediterranean.
• December 2 - U Thant agrees to serve a second term as U.N. Secretary General.
• December 3 - Anti-Portuguese demonstrations occur in Macau; a curfew is declared the next day.
• December 7 - Syria offers weapons to rebels in Jordan.
• December 7 - Barbados is admitted to the United Nations.
• December 8 - The Typaldos Line's ferry Heraklion sinks in rough seas, in the Aegean Sea near Crete, leaving 217 dead.
• December 16 - The U.N. Security Council approves an oil embargo against Rhodesia.
• December 16 - The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights were adopted by the General Assembly by its resolution 2200 A (XXI).
• December 17 - South Africa does not join the trade embargo against Rhodesia.
• December 20 - Harold Wilson withdraws all his previous offers to the Rhodesian government, and announces that he will agree to independence only after the founding of a Black majority government
• December 22 - Prime Minister Ian Smith declares that Rhodesia is already a republic.
• December 23 - How the Grinch Stole Christmas, narrated by Boris Karloff, is shown for the first time on CBS. It will become an annual Christmas tradition.
• December 26 - The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies, at California State University, Long Beach.
• December 31 - East German Premier Walter Ulbricht discusses negotiations about German reunification.
• December 31 - Thieves steal millions worth of paintings from the Dulwich Art Gallery in London.
• December 31 - The Congolese government takes over the Union Minière du Haut Katanga.

Undated

• Konstantin Chernenko, later leader of Soviet Union, becomes candidate member of the Central Committee.
• Surrealist Movement in the United States founded by Franklin and Penelope Rosemont.
• Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn are awarded the Fermi Prize.
• Congress of the United States creates National Council for Marine Resources and Engineering Development.
• Martin Richards designs the BCPL programming language.
• The DKW automobile goes out of production.
• World Buddhist Sangha Council convened by Theravadins in Sri Lanka with the hope of bridging differences and working together.
• Long-term potentiation (LTP), the putative cellular mechanism of learning and memory, is first observed by Terje Lømo in Oslo, Norway.

Ongoing

• First Sudanese Civil War (1955–72)
• Guatemalan Civil War (1960–96)
• Indochina Wars
• Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation (1962–76)
• Laotian Civil War (1962–75)
• Marshall Plan
• North Yemen Civil War (1962–70)
• Portuguese Colonial War (1961–74)