December 1965

Month of 1965

The following events occurred in December 1965:

George E. Mueller, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, and Marshall Space Flight Center MSFC Director Wernher von Braun discussed Marshall's briefing on the S IVB Workshop concept presented at NASA Headquarters the previous day. Mueller asked that MSFC formulate a program development plan and present it at the next meeting of the Manned Space Flight Management Council. Specifically, Mueller demanded that the plan include experiments to be carried aboard the Workshop; funding arrangements; and where development work should be done (in house, or elsewhere). In addition, he asked that MSFC submit two such plans, one for the unpressurized and another for the pressurized version of the Workshop. In effect, Mueller gave Marshall the "green light" to begin the Orbital Workshop program. At von Braun's request, the Workshop received the status of a separate project, with William Ferguson as Project Manager. The village of 't Haantje, Drenthe, in the Netherlands, narrowly escaped a disaster, when a French company drilling for gas began to lose control of the enormous gas pressure, resulting in a huge gas eruption. The ground around the hole caved in, swallowing all of the drilling equipment. The gas eruption would eventually be stopped by a cement injection from a new drilling hole. A small lake surrounded by a forest would become a permanent reminder of the near miss. Billy Jones became the first African American to play in the Atlantic Coast Conference, integrating the exclusively white college basketball circuit in the south Atlantic states in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. Jones played briefly in a game for the University of Maryland against Penn State. The first airlift of Cuban émigrés into the United States began, with 75 Cuban citizens, mostly women and children, taking off from Varadero on a Pan American Airways DC 7, and arriving in Miami one hour later. The United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands was founded by a merger of the Protestant denominations "Presbyterian Church in Jamaica" and "Congregational Union of Jamaica". The Border Security Force was established in India as a special force to guard the country's borders with Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, Nepal, and Bhutan.

Simultaneous announcements were made in Pakistan, India, and the Soviet Union that Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistani President Mohammed Ayub Khan would meet in the Soviet city of Tashkent as guests of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin to reach a peace agreement to end the Indo Pakistani war in the Punjab. The Race Relations Act took effect, becoming the first legislation to address racial discrimination in the United Kingdom. Although the new law did not outlaw discrimination, it did make it possible to bring civil lawsuits to enjoin discrimination in public places on the "grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins". Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith warned that Rhodesia would forcibly resist a trade embargo by neighboring countries, and that foreign workers would be expelled from the country to make room for any local residents who lost their jobs because of the sanctions. Norway and Denmark delimited the boundaries between them on the continental shelf off the coast of their two nations, setting the border based on the median line rather than the Norwegian Trench. Pope Paul VI proclaimed the close of the Second Vatican Council and told the 2,400 bishops "Ite in Pace", Latin for "Go in peace." The Council had first opened on October 11, 1962, under Pope John XXIII. Saudi Arabia and Iran entered into an agreement to establish an "Islamic Pact" of mutual protection of their monarchies against challenges from neighboring republics. The government of the Netherlands announced that Crown Princess Beatrix would marry West German diplomat Claus von Amsberg on March 10, 1966. Cactus Flower, a comedy play by Abe Burrows, opened on Broadway for the first of 1,234 performances at the Royale Theatre. A crowd of 250,000 Russians demonstrated in Moscow to denounce United States involvement in the Vietnam War.

Anastas Mikoyan resigned from the largely ceremonial job as the Soviet Union's head of state, the President of the Presidium, which he had held since July 15, 1964. Mikoyan had been one of the original Soviet Communist Party members at the time of the October Revolution in 1917. The 1,500 delegates to the Supreme Soviet gave Mikoyan a standing ovation when he asked to be relieved for health reasons, then voted immediately to elevate Ukrainian official and CPSU Central Committee Secretary Nikolai V. Podgorny to the job. Podgorny would be the head of the Soviet government until being removed in 1977. A fireball streaked across the sky over Ontario, Michigan, and Ohio and was witnessed by hundreds of people before crashing outside Kecksburg, Pennsylvania at 5:15 in the afternoon. A volunteer firefighter claimed that he saw "an acorn shaped object 9 to 12 feet in diameter with a golden band around the bottom" and that "symbols resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics were etched on the band". Other witnesses said that U. S. Army investigators "hauled away a huge object hidden under a tarp on a flatbed truck". On the other hand, all of the astronomers who were interviewed concluded that the object was a large meteor that was part of the Geminids. No meteor was found, however. The fourth James Bond film, Thunderball, held its world premiere at the Hibiya Cinema in Tokyo. It would debut at the Paramount Theatre in New York on December 22 and in the Rialto and Pavilion theatres in London on December 29. A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first Peanuts television special, debuted on CBS, and would become an Christmas annual tradition. It drew mixed reviews from critics on its first showing. Hardial Bains, who was working as a microbiologist at Trinity College, Dublin, founded the "Internationalists in Ireland", forerunner of the Communist Party of Ireland. The Romanian Railways opened its first electrified rail line in the country after two years of test trials. Died: Branch Rickey, 83, American baseball manager who integrated Major League Baseball as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, with the signing of the first African American MLB player of the modern era, Jackie Robinson.

Hugh Addonizio, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, foiled a gang of bank robbers after finding himself near the crime scene while being driven to a tree planting ceremony. The Mayor happened to be around the corner from the bank when he heard the bulletin on the police radio in his car, and spotted four men scrambling out of the Robert Treat Savings and Loan and into the getaway car. Addonizio then used his limousine telephone to call the police, and ordered his chauffeur, Frank Dangerio, to give chase. After their car lost control and crashed into a lightpole, the robbers fired shots at the Mayor's car, narrowly missing Dangerio and the Mayor, and police nabbed two of the suspects. The British government began an oil embargo against Rhodesia, which would be followed by a ban on all exports (except for humanitarian aid, books and films) on January 30, 1966. The United States would join the oil embargo 11 days later, on December 28.

France's President Charles de Gaulle was re elected in the runoff vote against Socialist Party rival François Mitterrand, who had finished in second place in the December 5 vote. On the second round, de Gaulle got 13,083,699 votes to Mitterrand's 10,619,735. Nat Worthington became the first African American to receive an athletic scholarship from a college in the Southeastern Conference, after signing an agreement to play for the University of Kentucky football team. Accompanying Worthington to the signing ceremony were Kentucky Governor Edward T. Breathitt, university president John W. Oswald, and UK football coach Charlie Bradshaw. Convicted criminal Ronald Ryan shot and killed prison officer George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison, Victoria, Australia. Ryan would be hanged for the murder on February 3, 1967, becoming the last person to be legally executed in Australia. The Syria Regional Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party was dissolved, but would return to existence after the February 23 coup.

The Dating Game, an American TV game show, made its debut, on the ABC network's daytime schedule at 11:30 a. m. Created by Chuck Barris and hosted by Jim Lange, the show's format presented "two girls with a choice of 'mystery' bachelors from whom to pick a date for a night on the town. Although introduced to the home audience, the three 'possibilities' are unseen by the lass in question, and are chosen – or eliminated – by a series of questions." Along with the other new show that debuted that morning, Supermarket Sweep, were described the next day by UPI critic Rick Du Brow as "two new half hour horrors which have such a greasy tone that one feels uncomfortably slippery merely by watching them", and AP critic Cynthia Lowry called them a Christmas gift "about as welcome as a box of hand painted souvenir neckties." U. S. Narcotics Bureau agents made the "largest single seizure of heroin ever made in the United States" when they raided the Columbus, Georgia, home of a U. S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Herman Conder, who was found to have of heroin that he had smuggled from France after being transferred to Fort Benning from a base in Orléans. Nine children and three adults at an after school music class were killed in a fire in Yonkers, New York. The victims were on the fourth floor of the Jewish Community Center when the blaze broke out in the center's auditorium during the third night of the Hanukkah religious festival and died of smoke inhalation. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) presented its first grant to endow an American artistic institution, as U. S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey handed a check for $100,000 to the American Ballet Theatre. The World Food Programme, originally established on December 19, 1961, was made a permanent agency of the United Nations.

Eight people at the French resort of Clermont Ferrand were killed, and 20 others injured, when they celebrated the Christmas holiday with an aerial tramway ride to the summit of the Puy de Sancy mountain. Buffeted by high winds, the tramway car with 62 people inside collided with a protruding rock or with a support pylon as it approached the summit. The cabin was split open by the impact, hurtling 28 of the passengers down the side of the mountain, while 34 other people, including the doorman, were able to stay inside. Reportedly, the doorman was able to hold on to a child's ankle with one hand while steadying himself with the other until rescuers arrived. The Soviet Union published a decree in Soviet newspapers, announcing that it would cut the price of passenger automobiles by two thirds for employees of collective farms. The decision applied to trucks, tractors, trailers and agricultural machinery as well. The price of the most common Soviet car, the five passenger Volga sedan, was cut from $6,050 to $2,090 in a move that seemed to be the first step toward making passenger cars more available to everyone. In 1965, 55,000,000 Soviets lived and worked on collective farms. According to snowboarding legend, engineer Sherman Poppen of Muskegon, Michigan, created the predecessor to the snowboard, the "snurfer", in his garage workshop to give as a Christmas present to each of his children. In 1966, Poppen would sell the rights to the snurfer to the Brunswick Corporation, a sporting goods manufacturer that made bowling equipment, with the idea that the wood lamination process used in building the lanes in bowling alleys would make the board move smoothly on snow. The Yemeni Nasserite Unionist People's Organisation was founded in Taiz.

The 900th anniversary of London's Westminster Abbey was celebrated as Queen Elizabeth II brought red roses to the famous London landmark where all British monarchs had been crowned. On December 28, 1065, the site was consecrated by order of Edward the Confessor, King of England, who had invited the chief prelates and nobles of his realm to attend; King Edward himself, however, became seriously ill before the ceremony was to take place, and died eight days after the ceremony. Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Amintore Fanfani resigned from the cabinet of Aldo Moro, after Fanfani's wife had arranged for his friend Giorgio La Pira to be interviewed by the editor of a right wing magazine. At the time of Mrs. Fanfani's decision, the Foreign Minister had been attending a session of the United Nations in New York. To make matters worse, La Pira was quoted in the interview as saying that the Prime Minister was "soft and sad", that U. S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk "knows nothing and understands little", and that Fanfani was the real number one man in Italian politics. Fanfani would be brought back as Foreign Minister two months later. Donald L. Elbert, James M. Faria, and Robert T. Wright filed a patent application for their invention, "ChemGrass", described as a "monofilament ribbon pile product", an improvement on decorative artificial grass like turf that would be "useful both indoors and outdoors for a variety of recreational and sports activities" and that would be the first to "withstand permanent outdoor installation and the abusive wear caused by spiked or cleated shoes". U. S. Patent Number 3,332,828 was assigned to the company Monsanto, which would market the new product under the tradename "AstroTurf". Fuel rationing began in Rhodesia as the British oil embargo took effect. Motorists were restricted to no more than four gallons of motor fuel per week. On the same day, the United States announced that it would place an embargo on oil shipments as well. "Securing U. S. cooperation was an important achievement for Britain", a historian would later note, "as the British and American oil companies supplied over 90 percent of the Rhodesian oil market." The largest number of immigrants from Eastern Europe since World War II arrived in Boston as 548 men, women and children from Poland arrived as passengers on the Polish ocean liner MS Batory. All had been permitted to leave by Poland's Communist government and had been cleared by the U. S. consul in Warsaw and by the U. S. State Department.