May 1965

Month of 1965

The following events occurred in May 1965:

U. S. President Lyndon Johnson made a nationally televised speech to explain the invasion of the Dominican Republic by American troops, and said that "There are time in the affairs of nations when great principles are tested in an ordeal of conflict and danger. This is such a time for the American nations. At stake are the lives of thousands, the liberty of a nation, and the principles and the values of all the American Republics." He added that the Dominican revolution had "taken a tragic turn" and that "what began as a popular democratic revolution" was "seized and placed into the hands of a band of Communist conspirators." Johnson announced that he had ordered "2,000 extra men" to the Dominican Republic and for an additional 4,500 men to be deployed "at the earliest possible moment." "The American nations cannot, must not, and will not permit the establishment of another Communist government in the Western Hemisphere This is what our beloved President John F. Kennedy meant when, less than a week before his death, he told us: 'We in this hemisphere must also use every resource at our command to prevent the establishment of another Cuba in this hemisphere.'" South Korea President Park Chung Hee gave a speech chastising student protesters. "Dear students!" he said, "Whenever the politicians wrangle over a big issue in the National Assembly, you, without knowing the real point of the issue, take to the streets or hold discussion meetings on the campus with placards saying 'Down with the Government' But I say this to you frankly, that you are the future masters of the nation, but you must train yourself for the job 10 or 20 more years. Then comes the time for your generation, not now "
Wagon Train, the popular television Western drama ended after eight seasons with the broadcast of its 272nd and final original episode. The series closer was also a television pilot with Frank McGrath's character (Charlie Wooster) telling Terry Wilson's Bill Hawks about Charlie's days working at a trading post. The pilot, Bend of the River, would not be picked up by any of the networks. The Intelsat I communications satellite (nicknamed "Early Bird"), launched on April 6, was moved to a stationary geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles above the Atlantic Ocean and began regular operations. The Soviet Union lost all contact with Zond 2, the interplanetary probe that it had launched toward Mars on November 30, 1964.

Pope Paul VI literally gave his blessing to the Italian space program, granting an audience to Luigi Broglio and a group of technicians and managers at the Vatican to discuss Broglio's successful effort in making Italy the third nation (in 1964, after the Soviet Union and the United States) to place an artificial satellite into orbit. The Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church praised the San Marco project, saying, "You do have this deep faith; your presence here, with the humble Vicar of Jesus Christ, tells us that. The name San Marco tells us that, the name you gave your project as well as both satellites you produced, destined to carry into sidereal spaces, together with the presence of Italy, a sincere expression of complete and joyous confidence in heavenly protection too." Colonel Francisco Caamaño was sworn in as President of the Dominican Republic at the presidential palace in Santo Domingo, after rebel forces convened a constitutional congress and voted to have him govern until the return of exiled ex President Juan Bosch. Addressing a crowd of 2,500 supporters in Independence Plaza, Caamaño called for the immediate withdrawal of the 14,000 American troops that had arrived in the Caribbean nation during the past week. The split capital investment trust, a form of investment that allows investors to choose between two or more classes of shares of stock, was introduced. The New York City offices of the British firm Samuel Montagu & Co. launched the program as the Dualvest Limited Fund. The American version of That Was the Week That Was, hosted by David Frost on the NBC television network, was shown for the last time.

Forty male students at the University of California in Berkeley stood in front of the city's draft board office and burned their draft cards, introducing what would become a common form of antiwar protest and a refusal to join the war effort. The 40 UC students were among hundreds who marched to the draft board after a noon rally on the Berkeley campus. "While Berkeley police photographers snapped their photos," an Associated Press report noted, "the students squatted in a huddle like a football team and placed their burning cards in a small pile." Although future draft card burnings would be made in opposition to the Vietnam War, the initial protest was against the U. S. invasion of the Dominican Republic. A spokesman for the Selective Service System noted that U. S. law required "that a registrant must have his draft card with him at all times" and that the general practice when a registrant was unable to produce his draft card was to have him "reported to his local draft board, which sometimes treats me as a delinquent and speeds up his induction." "Boss Radio", a music programming format that relied on less talking by the disc jockeys, shorter commercials, and more frequent play of the most popular songs of the week, was introduced by a Los Angeles radio station, KHJ AM. The concept, developed by Bill Drake and Gene Chenault, along with Gary Mack and Les Turpin, relied on playing of the same 33 songs throughout the day, punctuated occasionally by older records. The planned debut had actually been for May 19, but a disgruntled news announcer at KHJ revealed the plan to rival radio station KFWB, so KHJ disc jockey Don Steele rushed the Boss Radio format on the air the same afternoon; KFWB retreated from stealing the KHJ idea. The "more music, less talk" format would quickly be adopted by other radio stations in the United States. Iberia Airlines Flight 401 from Madrid crashed while attempting to land at the airport at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 30 of the 49 people on board. The Super Constellation plane had aborted one landing attempt in heavy fog, and on the second approach, it struck farm equipment located about 150 feet (46 m) from the edge of the runway. The Organization of American States (OAS) voted 14 to 5 to create an "Inter American Peace Force" to occupy the Dominican Republic until order could be restored. Opposing the measure were Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.

Randy Matson became the first person to hurl a standard shot put more than 70 feet (21 m). Matson, competing at an athletic meet at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, threw the sphere 70 feet, 7 1/4 inches (21.52 meters). The current record, set in 1990, is 75 feet, 10 inches (23.12 meters). The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) was founded in Chicago.

An avalanche came down from West Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze, onto the Hotel Schneefernerhaus near Garmisch Partenkirchen, burying dozens of skiers and tourists. Until missing persons could be located, officials feared that as many as 90 people had been killed; ultimately, the death toll was ten. The resort was in its final week of the 1964–1965 season and temperatures were above 60 degrees when melting snow loosened and triggered the disaster. President Johnson ordered the United States Mint to resume production of silver dollars for the first time since 1935, with directions that 45 million new coins would be minted and that "they will be distributed in the areas of the country where the silver dollar has traditionally been used as a medium of exchange". However, because of a shortage of silver and uncertainty about the metal composition, dollar coins would not be reintroduced until 1971. Qualification of the G4C extravehicular suit was completed. This suit was basically the same as the G3C suit except for modifications which included a redundant zipper closure, two over visors for visual and physical protection, automatic locking ventilation settings, and a heavier cover layer incorporating thermal and micrometeoroid protection. Six G4C suits would be at the launch site for the Gemini 4 flight crews by the end of May.

President Johnson formally launched Project Head Start, a $112,000,000 program to give summertime education to more than half a million American preschool age children from underprivileged families. According to the announcement from the White House, "the first 1,676 projects at 9,508 centers will reach 375,842 boys and girls at a cost of $65,686,741", with the vast majority of the money coming from federal grants. Dolby Laboratories was founded in London by American inventor Ray Dolby, who invented the Dolby noise reduction system and other innovations in audio recording technology. Died: Eli Cohen, 40, Israeli spy, was executed in public in Syria. With the verdict of the court attached to his shirt, Cohen was taken to a gallows at the Garden of Martyrs Square in Damascus and hanged. His body remained on display for six hours before it was taken down.

All extravehicular equipment planned for the Gemini 4 mission, including the ventilation control module, the extravehicular umbilical assembly, and the hand held maneuvering unit, had been qualified. The flight hardware was at the launch site ready for flight at the end of May. Although there is an urban legend that NASA spent millions of dollars to develop an unnecessary replacement to a pencil, Fisher was privately funded and earned his costs back when both the American and Soviet space programs began purchasing pens, which were necessary because of the hazards of broken pencil tips, graphite dust, and flammable wood; the pens themselves were sold for six dollars apiece. U. S. Patent Number 3,285,228 would be granted on November 15, 1966. A single sounding rocket successfully sent aloft a "mother daughter" experiment to transmit radio signals between two instrument packages that parted in flight and climbed separately through the ionosphere. The experiment, employing a technique developed by scientists of Penn State University, was launched at 4:11 p. m. EDT by a four stage Jevelin (ARGO D0 4) from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Wallops Island Station, Wallops Island, Virginia. The roof of the Key Food Supermarket in Brooklyn, New York, collapsed without warning upon the area closest to the checkout lines, injuring 25 employees and shoppers.

Pitcher Ron Herbel of the San Francisco Giants, described by one author as the player who "deserved to be the poster child for the designated hitter rule", got his first hit in a major league baseball game, after going hitless in his first 54 at bats. Herbel, who pitched the Giants to an 8–1 win over the Houston Astros, was playing his first indoor game, at the Astrodome. He would finish his career in 1971 with the lowest batting average (.029) of any career major leaguer, as well as a career ERA of 3.83. The largest ever teach in began at Berkeley, California, attended by 30,000 people who gathered at the University of California campus for "Vietnam Day". "This brilliantly provocative event”, an historian would observe later, "organized by the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), a collection of students and protesters disenchanted with liberal America and frightened by the South East Asian conflict, stunned the University authorities and caused concern in Washington."

The United States Senate passed an amended version of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, by a 77–19 margin. Voting against the bill were 17 Democrats and two Republicans, all from the southern United States. An amendment was added in order to get the bill to pass, avoiding a prohibition of the poll tax; as one author would note later "The compromise amendment stated that Congress was against the use of poll taxes as a condition for voting, but it did not actually ban the use of the taxes." After a week of civil warfare arising from a strike of tin miners, the offices of co presidents of Bolivia were created, with President René Barrientos sharing power equally with General Alfredo Ovando Candía until new civilian presidential elections could be arranged. Barrientos would resign on January 2 to run in the campaign. The new SOLAS Convention (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea), opened for signing in 1960, entered into force worldwide.

The Samotlor oil field, the sixth largest in the world, was discovered in the Soviet Union when drillers struck oil for the first time there. Located in the Tyumen Oblast in Western Siberia in the Russian SFSR, near the border with the Kazakh SSR, the Samotlor field would become the largest in the USSR, and later in Russia. The Captain Cook Bridge across the Georges River in Sydney opened for traffic, with seven spans to make it 1,660 feet (506 m) long. Born: Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov, Tajikistan film director (d. 2015); in Dushanbe, Tadzhik SSR, Soviet Union