January •
January 1 – The
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. •
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. : 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). •
January 22 –
Kenneth Kaunda is inaugurated as the first Prime Minister of
Northern Rhodesia. •
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. •
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 •
February 4 – The
Government of the United States authorizes the
Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, outlawing the
poll tax. •
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. •
February 11 • Greeks and Turks begin fighting in
Limassol,
Cyprus. • 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. •
February 25 –
Cassius Clay (later
Muhammad Ali) beats
Sonny Liston in
Miami Beach, Florida, and is
crowned the heavyweight champion of the world. •
February 27 – The Italian government asks for help to keep the
Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over.
March •
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. •
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. •
March 28 – King
Saud of Saudi Arabia abdicates. 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 •
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. •
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. •
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. • In the UK,
BBC Two television starts broadcasting for the first time. • British businessman
Greville Wynne, imprisoned in
Moscow since 1963 for
spying, is exchanged for Soviet spy
Gordon Lonsdale. •
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. •
April 26 –
Tanganyika and
Zanzibar merge to form
Tanzania.
May •
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. 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. • 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, Wisconsin. •
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. •
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 from Paris. •
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. •
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".
June •
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. •
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. •
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 •
July 2 – The United States
Civil Rights Act of 1964 is enacted. •
July 6 –
Malawi receives its independence from the United Kingdom. •
July 16 –
Six days of race riots begin in
Harlem, New York, United States, apparently prompted by the shooting of a teenager. •
July 18 –
Judith Graham Pool publishes her discovery of
cryoprecipitate, a frozen blood clotting product made from plasma primarily to treat
hemophiliacs around the world. •
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. •
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. •
July 21 –
Race riots begin in
Singapore between ethnic Chinese and Malays. •
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 •
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. •
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. •
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. •
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. •
August 18 – The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from the
Tokyo Olympics on the grounds that its teams are racially segregated. •
August 20 – The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (
Intelsat) began to work. •
August 22 – Goalkeeper
Derek Forster 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.
September •
September 2 – Indian
Hungry generation poets, including
Malay Roy Choudhury, are arrested on charges of conspiracy against the state and obscenity in literature. •
September 4 – The
Forth Road Bridge opens over the
Firth of Forth in Scotland. •
September 10 – The
African Development Bank (AfDB) is founded. •
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. •
September 14 • The third period of the
Second Vatican Council opens. • 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. •
September 25 – The
Mozambican War of Independence is launched by
FRELIMO.
October • October –
Robert Moog demonstrates the prototype
Moog synthesizer. •
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. •
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, 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
Star of India, is stolen from the
American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
November •
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. •
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. • The
Verrazano–Narrows Bridge across
New York Bay opens to traffic (the world's longest
suspension bridge at this time). •
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 •
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. • 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. •
December 11 –
Che Guevara addresses the
United Nations General Assembly. 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. •
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. •
December 22 • A cyclone in the
Palk Strait destroys the Indian town of
Dhanushkodi, killing 1800 people. • 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. •
December 30 – The
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is established as a permanent organ of the
UN General Assembly.
Date unknown • Spring – First recognition of
cosmic microwave background radiation as a detectable phenomenon. •
Jerome Horwitz synthesizes
zidovudine (AZT), an
antiviral drug which will later be used in treating
HIV. •
Farrington Daniels becomes an early advocate of
solar energy in his book ''Direct Use of the Sun's Energy'', published by
Yale University Press in the United States. •
Rudi Gernreich designs the original
monokini topless swimsuit in the U.S. • The
Vishva Hindu Pariṣad is founded in India. ==Births==