August 1964

• With the acceptance by voters of a new constitution, the former Belgian Congo officially changed its name from the "Republic of the Congo" to the "Democratic Republic of the Congo". Since 1960, both the former French Congo and the former Belgian Congo had referred to themselves as "Republic of the Congo" and had been distinguished as "Congo-Brazzaville" and "Congo-Léopoldville", respectively. • Emancipation Day was first observed in Barbados, Bermuda, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Jamaica – as a celebration of the end of slavery during the British colonial era in the Caribbean. • The final Looney Tune cartoon, Señorella and the Glass Huarache (a stereotypical portrayal of a "Mexican version" of the fairy tale of Cinderella), was released. Jack L. Warner would subsequently shut down the Warner Bros. Cartoon Division. ==August 2, 1964 (Sunday)==

• The Gulf of Tonkin incident took place when the destroyer engaged three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron, while performing a signals intelligence patrol as part of DESOTO operations. Accounts from both sides agreed that the North Vietnamese fired first, with Commander Nguyen Van Tu of T-336 giving the order to launch the first torpedo, followed by the T-339 and the T-333. According to the U.S. Navy, the Maddox evaded two torpedoes at 4:08 in the afternoon local time, and at 4:21 the Maddox and a third Viet boat exchanged gunfire. During the battle, the Maddox spent over 280 three-inch and five-inch shells, and in which four U. S. Navy F-8 Crusader jet fighter bombers strafed the torpedo boats. One American aircraft was damaged, one 14.5 mm round hit the destroyer, four North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed and six wounded. • Swimmers broke two world records on the final day of the Amateur Athletic Union's national championships in Los Altos, California, in a meet where competitors had set 10 new world bests. Murray Rose of Australia swam the men's 1,500-meter freestyle in 17 minutes, 1.8 seconds, and 15-year-old Sharon Stouder set a new mark for the women's 200-meter butterfly at 2 minutes, 26.4 seconds. • The wreckage of a plane piloted by popular singer Jim Reeves was found near Brentwood, Tennessee, 42 hours after it crashed. Reeves' body had been thrown from the aircraft, while the body of his manager, Dean Manuel, was found inside the plane. • British driver John Surtees won the 1964 German Grand Prix. • Born: Mary-Louise Parker, American stage, television and film actress; in Fort Jackson, South Carolina • Died: Carel Godin de Beaufort, 30, Dutch nobleman and motorsport driver; from injuries from crash during practice for the German Grand Prix ==August 3, 1964 (Monday)==

• Followers of Alice Lenshina and the Lumpa sect attacked the town of Lundazi in Zambia and indiscriminately murdered residents they found on the streets, using hatchets, spears, arrows and gunfire. They then marched northward from Lundzi and attacked seven villages. At least 150 people were killed in the attack. Zambian troops and riot police counterattacked at the Lumpa village of Chipoma and killed 74 of the rebels, and Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda outlawed the Lumpa church. Lenshina would be captured, alive, 8 days later. • The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party issued decree number 655–268, directing Vladimir Chelomey of the OKB-52 bureau to proceed on building rockets for a crewed landing on the Moon. The decree slowed the progress of the OKB-1 rocket design program headed by Sergei Korolev for a Soyuz lunar mission. • Lyman Frain Sr., aged 80, became the oldest person to complete a transcontinental bicycle ride across the United States, arriving at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco after a journey of 86 days and . Frain had taken up the sport at the age of 72. • At NASA, the Ad Hoc Astronomy Panel of the Orbiting Research Laboratory (ORL) issued its preliminary report about the opinion of American scientists on the validity of astronomical research by humans in space, and to define astronomy objectives for the ORL mission. The panel concluded that although sounding rocket and satellite exploration had merit, broader goals required having humans in space. Although Earth-orbiting labs were the next step, the panel studied the eventual possibility of observatories on the Moon. The ad hoc panel noted the main rationale for humans in space astronomy was because of the need to assemble, maintain, repair, modify and directly monitor equipment in space and data immediately during specialized operations. • Born: • Abhisit Vejjajiva, English-born Prime Minister of Thailand from 2008 to 2011; as Mark Abhisit Vejjajiva in Wallsend, Northumberland • Ralph Knibbs, English rugby union centre for Bristol RFC from 1983 to 1996; in Bristol • Lucky Dube, South African reggae musician (d. 2007); as Philip Lucky Dube in Ermelo • Died: Flannery O'Connor, 39, American novelist, died of lupus. ==August 4, 1964 (Tuesday)==

• The second Gulf of Tonkin incident, which would propel the United States into a large-scale commitment to the Vietnam War, involved the commanders of two U.S. Navy destroyers believing that they had been victims of an attack that "probably never occurred". The USS C. Turner Joy and the USS Maddox reported during the evening that they were being attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson would authorize a retaliatory air strike from the carrier USS Ticonderoga and deliver a late-night televised address calling Congress to action. Three days later, Congress would overwhelmingly authorize American use of force to a war that would claim the lives of over 58,000 Americans and one million Vietnamese. Nearly 40 years later, declassified information would show that the President was skeptical about the second attack, and the National Security Agency concluded after analyzing 140 formerly secret documents that, although there was no doubt about the August 2 attack on the Maddox, there had never been a second attack. NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok concluded that, "In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August. SIGINT reports which suggested that an attack had occurred contained severe analytical errors, unexplained translation changes and the conjunction of two unrelated messages into one translation." The overall consensus is that "there was no attack on the American ships on August 4, but... Johnson believed that there had been an attack when he ordered retaliation." • The bodies of murdered civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were found at the site of an earthen dam on a farm near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where they had disappeared on June 21. Acting on a tip from an informer who was motivated by a $30,000 reward, FBI agents obtained a warrant to search the "Old Jolly Farm" with the assistance of road-grading equipment. After six hours, at 2:05 in the afternoon, the searchers "smelled decaying flesh" and began excavating with shovels. Schwerner's body was found 73 minutes later, followed by those of Goodman and Chaney. • Nine miners in a French limestone quarry were rescued alive after being trapped for eight days by a cave-in near Champagnole. Another five died beneath the surface. ==August 5, 1964 (Wednesday)==

• U.S. Navy Lieutenant Everett Alvarez Jr. became the first American serviceman to be taken prisoner in North Vietnam, when his A-4 Skyhawk was hit by ground-fire and he parachuted to safety over Hon Gai. Members of the local militia pulled him on to their boat after he landed in the water, and he would be held as a prisoner of war for eight and a half years until February 12, 1973. Alvarez's captivity would be second only to that of U.S. Army Captain Floyd "Jim" Thompson, who had been captured in South Vietnam four months earlier, on March 26. • The Simbas, the participants in the Simba rebellion, captured Stanleyville, the third largest city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and took several hundred Western hostages. Belgian paratroopers, airlifted into Stanleyville by the U.S. Air Force, would retake the city on November 24. During the siege, at least 120 hostages were killed. • The United States bombed North Vietnam for the first time as it launched Operation Pierce Arrow from the aircraft carriers and . The raid, conducted on the North Vietnamese PT boat bases and coastal installations, destroyed 90 percent of the oil storage facilities in the port of Vinh. • After taking off from the Constellation, U.S. Navy Lieutenant (jg) Richard C. Sather became the first American serviceman to be killed in North Vietnam (though many had died in South Vietnam), when his A-1 Skyraider was hit by anti-aircraft fire, and he crashed into the water off the shore of Thanh Hoa. • The Vietnam Era began for purposes of federal law pertaining to members of the United States Armed Forces, which defines the period of American involvement in the Vietnam War as "the period beginning on August 5, 1964, and ending on March 27, 1973". • Born: Adam "MCA" Yauch, American hip hop musician and founder of the Beastie Boys (d. 2012); in Brooklyn ==August 6, 1964 (Thursday)==

• The first North Vietnamese Air Force jet fighter unit, Fighter Regiment No. 921 (the "Red Star Squadron"), arrived in North Vietnam after training at the Mengzi airfield in the neighboring Yunnan province in the People's Republic of China, bringing 36 MiG-17 and MiG-19 fighters to Phúc Yên Air Base near Hanoi. • Born: Gary Valenciano, Filipino pop musician and singer; in Santa Mesa, Manila • Died: Sir Cedric Hardwicke, 71, English stage, film, radio and television actor ==August 7, 1964 (Friday)==

• By a unanimous (416 to 0) vote in the House of Representatives and an 88 to 2 vote in the Senate, the United States Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, endorsing President Lyndon B. Johnson's broad use of war powers to combat North Vietnamese and local Communist attacks in Vietnam. The approval would clear the way for a massive American commitment to the Vietnam War. The only two votes against the resolution came from Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon and Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska. U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York did not vote for or against the resolution, and chose to vote "present" during the roll call. The resolution authorized the president to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States" and "to assist any member" of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, but fell short of a declaration of war. The resolution would be repealed by both houses of Congress on June 24, 1970, although American combat operations would continue into 1973. • On the same day, the People's Republic of China warned that it would "without hesitation... resolutely support the Vietnamese people's just war against U.S. aggressors", though not committing to direct military intervention. American strategy during the war would be set when the Beijing government "informed Washington privately that it would not go beyond material aid provided that the United States did not invade North Vietnam with ground forces", which would be considered a threat to China's frontier. • The funeral for James Chaney, the first for the three victims of the murder in Neshoba County, Mississippi, was held before African-American mourners at the First Union Baptist Church in Meridian, and one of the eulogies was given by a white preacher, Ed King, the chaplain at Tougaloo College. "I come before you to try to say that my brothers have killed my brothers," he told the gathering. "My white brothers have killed my black brothers." Pastor King, a native of Vicksburg, had fought for civil rights since 1960 and had been frequently jailed and beaten for his activities. • Born: Carlo Colombara, Italian operatic bass; in Bologna • Died: • Salima Machamba, 89, former Queen of the island of Mohéli in the Comoro Islands until she was deposed in 1909 • Aleksander Zawadzki, 65, President of Poland since 1952 ==August 8, 1964 (Saturday)==

• The Turkish Air Force began strikes on seven Greek Cypriot towns and villages in Cyprus, as well as other strategic positions on the northwest side of the island republic. The Cyprus government said that 24 Greek Cypriots had been killed, and 200 wounded in the day's attacks. Turkey's government admitted to the strikes, and said that they had happened after efforts to stop Greek Cypriot attacks against the Turkish Cypriot minority had proved to be unsuccessful. Three Turkish Cypriot villages (Ayios Theodhoros, Mansoura and Alvega) were besieged by Greek Cypriots, while the Turks blasted Polis, Xeros, Kokkina, Kato Pyrgos, Ghoudi, Pakhyammos and Pomos. The United Nations Security Council demanded an immediate cease-fire the next day, and attacks halted on August 10. For nearly ten years, there would be no further invasions by either Turkey or Greece, until July 20, 1974, following the overthrow of the Cyprus government by a group favoring union with Greece. Following an invasion by Turkish troops, the island would be divided into Turkish and Greek zones. • A group of 30 U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force jet fighters took to the air to confront a wave of MiG fighters from the People's Republic of China, after radar detected a wave of Chinese jets flying south from China's Hainan Island. The F-102 fighters departed from the USAF base at Da Nang while the F-4 and F-8 jets departed from the aircraft carriers Ticonderoga and Constellation, but the Chinese jets stopped short of penetrating South Vietnamese airspace and flew a "holding pattern" over North Vietnam. • The first protest demonstration against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War came on the first weekend after U.S. air raids, with about 100 protesters marching near New York's Times Square. • A Rolling Stones concert in the Netherlands resort of Scheveningen, near The Hague, ended in a near riot after the Stones had played only four songs. • Born: Jan Josef Liefers, German film and television actor; in Dresden, East Germany • Died: Josie Hannon Fitzgerald, 98, maternal grandmother of the late John F. Kennedy. She was the first, and remains the only, living grandparent of an incumbent President of the United States. Mrs. Fitzgerald had never been told that her grandson had been assassinated and relatives had kept the news from her for fear that the shock would hasten her death. ==August 9, 1964 (Sunday)==

• The Coptic Christian church, founded in Egypt by Saint Mark during the same century that the Roman Catholic Church was established by Saint Peter, began a mission under Pope Cyril VI to reach the growing number of adherents in North America, with the ordination of Wagdi Elias as the first Coptic Orthodox priest, and began service in Toronto. • Addie Davis became the first female Southern Baptist church member to be ordained as a pastor within the conservative American Christian denomination. Mrs. Davis was ordained in Durham, North Carolina at the Watts Street Baptist Church and would be called by the First Baptist Church in Readsboro, Vermont, serving there for eight years. • The Cuban freighter Maria Teresa was damaged by an explosion while docked at a harbor in Montreal, after arriving in the Canadian city from Cuba. An anti-Castro group, the Cuban Nationalist Association, claimed responsibility for the attack, and said that the bomb had been placed beneath the ship by a frogman working for the C.N.A. • The All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat was established by leaders of multiple Islamic organizations in India, under the leadership of Dr. Syed Mahmud, as a political organization to lobby for the interests of the nation's 50 million Muslims. • Archbishop Makarios III, President of Cyprus, asked Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou for aerial assistance against Turkey. The Greeks responded by sending four planes. • Born: Brett Hull, Canadian-born National Hockey League right wing, 1990–91 MVP; in Belleville, Ontario, as the son of NHL legend Bobby Hull • Died: Fontaine Fox, 80, American comic strip artist known for Toonerville Folks, featuring the "Toonerville Trolley" ==August 10, 1964 (Monday)==

• Associate Justice Hugo L. Black of the United States Supreme Court rejected requests by the Heart of Atlanta Motel and by the Pickrick Restaurant (owned by Lester Maddox in Atlanta) for a temporary stay of enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provisions prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations. Both the motel and the restaurant had urged that they would suffer irreparable injury (in the form of lost revenues) if they had to serve African-American customers while litigation on the constitutionality of the new law was pending before the Supreme Court, which would not begin its new term until October. In a three-page memorandum, Justice Black wrote that a restraint on enforcement would be unjustifiable, but urged his fellow justices to expedite the cases "in the hope that they could be made ready for final argument the first week we meet in October." • In the Soviet Union, the number of years of required secondary education was reduced from three years to two years, effectively returning Soviet students to the ten-year school program that had existed prior to 1958. The decree was issued jointly by the Council of Ministers and by the Communist Party's Central Committee prior to the beginning of the 1964–1965 school year. • Pope Paul VI published his first encyclical, Ecclesiam suam, identifying the Catholic Church with the Body of Christ. Completed on August 6, the papal letter expressed an intent for the church to begin a "dialogue with the other religions of the world", and with anti-religious governments within the Communist nations. • U.S. President Johnson signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which took effect as U.S. Public Law 88–408. • Turkey and Cyprus agreed to the unconditional ceasefire demanded by the United Nations. • Logan Martin Lake, a reservoir on the Coosa River, Alabama, was completed. ==August 11, 1964 (Tuesday)==

• In Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Alice Lenshina surrendered voluntarily to Zambian authorities "in exchange for a guarantee of her personal safety" but without any promises that she would avoid criminal prosecution. Thousands of Lenshina's followers would be imprisoned or killed during the two months that followed, and another 20,000 would flee to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although Lenshina would not be prosecuted, she would remain in detention until her death on December 7, 1978. • One-hundred and six U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force troops were dispatched to the Democratic Republic of Congo to intervene in the Congolese government's fight against the rebels who had taken control of Stanleyville. The group, sent from Fort Bragg, North Carolina included 40 paratroopers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, 56 men from the Air Force maintenance group, and ten Army support personnel, went along with four C-130 transports to be used by the Congo government to airlift its soldiers. • The U.S. Senate approved the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, as amended by the House of Representatives, and sent it to the White House for the approval of President Johnson. At the same time as it was approving domestic aid to fight poverty among Americans, the Senate voted 50–35 to cut foreign aid by $216.7 million. On Saturday, the House of Representatives had voted 226 to 185 to amend the Economic Opportunity bill that had passed the Senate on July 23. • The Beatles' first film, ''A Hard Day's Night'', was released in the United States and Canada by United Artists in 700 movie theaters. ==August 12, 1964 (Wednesday)==

• Charlie Wilson, who was serving a 30-year sentence for his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, escaped from Britain's Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, apparently with the aid of three accomplices. Wilson, who was only four months into his 30-year sentence, was aided by three men believed to have used a rope ladder to scale a high prison wall, tying up a guard, somehow obtaining a key to his cell, and helping him get out. Wilson would be recaptured in Canada in 1968 and would serve 10 years of his sentence. After his release in 1978, he would move to Spain and be murdered in his home in 1990. • The "Big Three" American automakers (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) announced through the Automobile Manufacturers Association that they would introduce vehicle emissions control devices voluntarily in time for the 1966 model year. The move came less than two months after California's Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board had forced the issue by licensing devices by four independent vendors for catalytic converters. • Sinfonia Sacra, Sir Andrzej Panufnik's Third Symphony, was given its world premiere performance by the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra in Monaco, conducted by Louis Frémaux. The symphony "gained immense recognition among audiences and critics" and would be performed in concerts worldwide. • Died: • Ian Fleming, 56, former British intelligence officer and novelist who created the "James Bond" series of spy novels, died of a heart attack • Dmitry Dmitrievich Maksutov, 68, Soviet optical engineer who invented the Maksutov telescope • Ernst Kühnel, 81, German art historian ==August 13, 1964 (Thursday)==

• Restaurateur Lester Maddox shut down the Pickrick restaurant in Atlanta rather than to evade a judicial order requiring him to serve African-American customers. After reopening it as the Lester Maddox Cafeteria to capitalize on his nationwide fame and to evade the judicial order against the Pickrick, Maddox would close his restaurant permanently on February 5, 1965, following a judgment upholding the August order, and threatening him with a retroactive $200 a day fine (for the 180 days of defying the court). He would parlay his popularity into a political career, winning the election for Governor of Georgia in 1966. • The New York Yankees baseball team was purchased by the Columbia Broadcasting System, owner of the CBS television and radio networks. CBS paid $11,200,000 for an 80% interest in the team beginning in November, with an option to buy the other 20% within the next five years; by September, 1966, CBS would be the full owner. After eight seasons of mediocrity during the "CBS years" from 1965 through 1972, the television network would sell the team to George Steinbrenner in 1973. • Murderers Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen became the last people to be executed in the United Kingdom. Evans was hanged at the Strangways prison in Manchester, and Allen went to the gallows at the Walton Gaol in Liverpool. A year later, the UK would abolish the death penalty. Evans and Allen, aged 24 and 21, respectively, had been dairy workers when they stabbed a laundry truck driver, John Allen West, in the heart during a robbery. • The U.S. Senate voted, 62 to 28, to bar all aid to Indonesia. • Born: Jay Buhner, American baseball player; in Louisville, Kentucky • Died: William H. Davis, 84, American lawyer and government administrator who drafted the National Labor Relations Act, then managed the national economy during World War II and the peacetime transition as Chairman of the War Labor Board and then the Director of Economic Stabilization. ==August 14, 1964 (Friday)==

• The United Arab Republic (Egypt) entered the war in Yemen with a massive bombing campaign against the royalists led by the Imam Muhammad al-Badr, who had been overthrown in 1962 when the Yemen Arab Republic had been created by coup leaders. Egyptian planes departed from the El Rahaba Airport at the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in an attack on royalist strongholds to reach the Imam's base at Al-Qarah, and Egyptian troops converged on Al-Qarah by moving north from Sanaa and south from Saada, forcing Imam al-Badr to flee for his life; in September 1964, he and the royalists would receive supplies from Saudi Arabia and would mount a counteroffensive. • The size of the Gemini extravehicular activity (EVA) chest pack was discussed at a meeting between officials of NASA and McDonnell. Attempts to stow the pack on Gemini spacecraft No. 6 showed that it took up room needed for experiments in Gemini missions. NASA requested McDonnell's study of reducing the pack and suggestions for alternative storage. One suggestion was to store some experimental equipment in the capsule's adapter section, but it would mean that a space walk would have to be done before those experiments. • Muhammad Ali married cocktail waitress Sonji Roi, a month after their first meeting. ==August 15, 1964 (Saturday)==

• Aloysius Schwartz, a Roman Catholic priest from the United States, founded the Sisters of Mary of Banneux to provide education to impoverished children in Amnam-dong, a poor section of Pusan in South Korea. Over the 50 years that followed, it would establish programs in the Philippines, Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, and Brazil. • Construction of the Mount Fuji Radar System, Japan's first early-warning weather radar network, was completed. The project had been commissioned after Isewan Typhoon had killed 5,000 people in September 1959. • The first rebellion of the Tuareg minority against the government of Mali was declared suppressed by the Malian Army. A new rebellion would not occur until 1990. • Born: Melinda Gates, American philanthropist, wife of Bill Gates and co-founder of the charitable organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; as Melinda Ann French in Dallas ==August 16, 1964 (Sunday)==

• The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) cut all ties with Michael Goleniewski, a former intelligence officer for Poland's spy agency, the Urząd Ochrony Państwa (UOP). Goleniewski, who had provided Polish and Soviet secrets to the CIA since defecting in 1961, had told The New York Times that he was actually Prince Alexei Romanov, the former heir to the Russian throne. Prince Alexei had been killed along with his father, the former Tsar Nicholas II and the rest of the Romanov family in 1918. Goleniewski, who had been born four years after Alexei's death at the age of 13, claimed also that he was the sole Romanov survivor and heir to the Romanov fortune. • The New York Times published "Visit to the World's Fair of 2014", by American author and scientist Isaac Asimov, his forecast of the world of fifty years in the future. Fifty years later, a writer would note, "Depending on which parts are emphasized, Asimov's predictions range from off-the-wall (underwater cities and solar power plants in space) to eerily prescient (miniaturized computers, self-driving cars and automated kitchen appliances). He estimated the U.S. population at 350 million (it's just under 319 million), and the world population at 6.5 billion (it's 7.2 billion) -- not bad, considering in 1964 they were 192 million and 3.3 billion, respectively." • South Vietnam's Prime Minister, Major General Nguyen Khanh, was named as the nation's new President after a coup d'état, replacing figurehead chief of state Duong Van Minh. Under a new constitution, drafted with the assistance of the U.S. Embassy, a 62-member revolutionary council had the right to veto Khanh's decisions. Khanh would resign after only nine days, and replaced by a three-man military junta. On September 30, Khanh was named prime minister, served only 30 days. • A bus accident killed 14 children and three adults from the Arras region of northern France, when the vehicle plunged into a ravine near Bourg St. Maurice. The dead were part of an excursion of 55 children who were attending a summer camp in the French Alps, and the bus was on a narrow road near the Little St. Bernard mountain pass. An oncoming car forced the bus to the side of the road, which then crumbled under the bus's weight, causing the accident. • Martin-Baltimore received the propellant tanks for Gemini launch vehicle 6 from Martin-Denver, which had begun fabricating them in April 1964. After being inspected, the tanks were placed in storage where they remained until December 18. ==August 17, 1964 (Monday)==

• Construction was completed on the Capital Beltway, a multi-lane interstate highway that surrounds the District of Columbia and passes through Maryland and Virginia as I-495. The first section of the route, originally called the "Washington Circumferential Highway", had been opened in Maryland in 1957 as one of the first projects in the American Interstate Highway System; the project cost an estimated $189,000,000 at the time. • A year and a half after the Konfrontasi between Indonesia and Malaysia began on the island of Borneo, about 100 Indonesian Army troops landed on the Malaysian mainland, launching an amphibious invasion on the peninsula at Pontian. A historian notes that the troops (and a force of paratroopers) "expected to be welcomed by the people" but were immediately turned over to the national government by local militias. • MSC's Spacecraft Integration Branch proposed an Apollo "X" spacecraft to be used in Earth orbit for biomedical and scientific missions of extended duration. Under the plan, the lunar Apollo spacecraft and its systems would be modified minimally with redundancies and spares. The MSC suggested a first-phase mission of the Apollo "X" craft as a two-person Earth-orbiting laboratory for a period of 14 to 45 days, to be boosted into a Earth orbit by a Saturn IB rocket. Various configurations considered were Configuration A (a two-person crew, a 14 to 45 day mission, and no lab module; Configuration B, a three-person, 45-day mission with a single lab module; Configuration C, a three-person 45-day mission with a double lab module; and Configuration D, a three-person, 120-day mission, with an independent systems lab module. ==August 18, 1964 (Tuesday)==

• At the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach in East Germany, Socialist Unity Party Chairman Walter Ulbricht met with Moritz Mitzenheim, the Evangelical Lutheran Bishop of Thuringia, and the two signed a "document on church-state understanding". Although Bishop Mitzenheim was not authorized to speak on behalf of all of East Germany's Protestant churches, there were concessions made, with the East German evangelical Lutherans associating less with the West German church, and East Germany allowing pacifists an alternative form of military service that did not require them to bear arms. • The U.S. Senate voted, 44 to 41, to table a bill that would have required equal television and radio time to Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater in the presidential campaign if the two candidates did not participate in a debate. All 44 of the votes for postponing consideration of the legislation were from Democratic Party senators; 12 other Democrats joined all 29 Republican senators in opposing the move. • The International Olympic Committee banned South Africa from future participation in the Olympic Games after the nation's white-minority government declined to disassociate itself from its apartheid policy of barring non-whites from its Olympic team. Frank Braun, President of the South African Olympic Committee, had informed the IOC that it did not intend to change its policies. • In The Ashes, the five-match test cricket series between Australia and England, Australia retained its title despite having won only one of the matches, and despite the consensus that the English team was the better of the two. The other four meetings ended in draws, including the final match, which was ruined by the weather, giving Australia the 1–0 victory for the series. • Lebanon's Parliament voted, 99 to 5, to elect Education Minister Charles Helou as the nation's new President. Helou would take office on September 23. • Died: Hildegard Trabant, 37, was shot by East German border guards while attempting to cross into West Berlin. Unlike almost all other deaths at the Berlin Wall, Trabant's killing would go unnoticed in the West until the discovery of the incident 26 years later in East German files in 1990. ==August 19, 1964 (Wednesday)==

• The United States launched the world's first geostationary satellite, sending Syncom 3 into orbit in advance of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, with a dual purpose of televising the games back to the U.S. and to provide "an emergency communication link with hard-to-reach Asian trouble spots". The next day, a ground station in ground control at Salisbury, South Australia sent a command to fire rockets to increase Syncom 3's altitude from to above the equator, where it would match the Earth's rotation. Over a period of two weeks, other ground stations would send commands at precise times to gradually move Syncom 3 to a position "above the intersection of the equator and the International Date Line." • Born: Dermott Brereton, Australian Football League star; in Dublin • Died: Hans Peter Luhn, 68, German computer scientist who invented the Luhn algorithm and the Key Word in Context (KWIC) search system, as well as developing the Selective dissemination of information (SDI) concept. ==August 20, 1964 (Thursday)==

• U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act into law. "Today, for the first time in all the history of the human race," Johnson said in a ceremony at the Rose Garden outside the White House, "a great nation is able to make and is willing to make a commitment to eradicate poverty among its people. To sign the legislation, Johnson "used 72 pens, which he handed out to the notables who were gathered together... a moment of high drama in a period in which a number of new, important, controversial programs were infused into American life", with the War on Poverty being a major part of Johnson's Great Society program. • Intelsat, the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, was established by 11 founding nations. • The U.S. Air Force began the first of 3,435 unmanned drone reconnaissance missions during the Vietnam War, using the Ryan AQM-34 Lightning Bug series. The first of the Lightning Bugs flew a mission in Communist Chinese airspace, while others flew over locations in Southeast Asia. The drones could gather photographic, electronic, and communication intelligence, as well as to serve as decoys or to drop leaflets. • What would later become known as "The Harmonica Incident" took place between New York Yankees' manager Yogi Berra and utility infielder Phil Linz after Linz's playing of a harmonica on the team bus following a four-game sweep by the Chicago White Sox. ==August 21, 1964 (Friday)==