The following events occurred in June 1966:
June 1, 1966 (Wednesday) The 158th and last original episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show appeared on the CBS television network. The situation comedy, starring Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie, ran for five seasons after its debut on October 3, 1961. During the final season of production, each of the supporting members of the cast featured in at least one show about their character. In the series finale, entitled "The Last Chapter", Van Dyke's Rob Petrie finally completed the project on which he had been working for five years, the writing of a book, and much of it was a "clip show" featuring film clips of prior episodes. In syndication, however, the last episode shown in rotation would be "The Gunslinger", a Wild West dream that was filmed on March 22 and marked the last appearance of the entire cast. With the countdown clock at only one minute, 49 seconds before scheduled liftoff from Cape Kennedy, the Gemini 9 mission was halted for the third time, after an electronic switching circuit failed. The mission was recycled for launch on June 3. One hour and 40 minutes earlier, the "Augmented Target Docketing Adapter" (ATDA), which had replaced the lost Agena target vehicle with which Gemini astronauts Thomas P. Stafford and Gene Cernan were to link up, was successfully launched from complex 14. People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, published the editorial "Sweep Away All Ghosts and Monsters", calling upon the general public to attack any activities that appeared to be "counterrevolutionary" to the doctrines espoused by Party Chairman Mao Zedong. The directive would be followed by a purge of party officials in Beijing, and a call on June 4 for even stronger attacks. Éamon de Valera, the last surviving leader of the 1916 Easter Uprising, was re-elected to a second seven-year term as President of Ireland. The 84-year-old Irish hero, candidate of the Fianna Fáil political party, defeated former Minister for Health Tom O'Higgins of the Fine Gael party in one of the closest elections in the Republic's history. De Valera received 558,538 votes against the 548,240 for Higgins. In a race between three Presidents, Joaquín Balaguer defeated Juan Bosch and Rafael F. Bonnelly to win the election for President of the Dominican Republic. The final tally was Balaguer with 754,409 votes; Bosch with 517,784; and Bonnelly a distant third with 45,073. Died: Peter George, 42, British author of the thriller novel Red Alert, which was later adapted for the film Dr. Strangelove in 1964; of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Cécile Butticaz, 81, who in 1907 became the first female engineer in Europe Papa Jack Laine, 92, American jazz musician
June 2, 1966 (Thursday)
Surveyor 1 landed in the Oceanus Procellarum (the "Sea of Storms"), north of the crater Flamsteed, at 2:17:37 a.m. Florida time, after a 63-hour journey, becoming the first American spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, using retrorockets to slow its descent. Hours later, NASA received the first television transmissions from Surveyor. The photos were expected to be sharper than those transmitted from the first probe to make a soft landing on the Moon, Luna 9, which had arrived four months earlier, on February 3. Over the next 11 days, the probe returned 11,240 photographs of the Moon to Earth before the transmission solar-powered batteries failed on June 13 due to darkness. Born: Candace Gingrich, American LGBT rights activist; in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Catherine King, Australian politician, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government (2022-present), in Melbourne Died: Former Prime Minister Évariste Kimba, 39, and three other former cabinet ministers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Jérôme Anany, Emmanuel Bamba and André Mahamba), were publicly executed by hanging for alleged involvement in a plot to kill Mobutu Sese Seko.ExecutedToday.com. Accessed 5 May 2014
June 3, 1966 (Friday)
After several postponements, Gemini 9A, the seventh crewed and third rendezvous mission of the Gemini program, was launched into orbit at 9:39 a.m. from complex 19 at Cape Kennedy, crewed by command pilot Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford and pilot Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan. After successfully achieving rendezvous during the third revolution, the crew discovered that the augmented target docking adapter (ATDA) shroud had failed to separate, precluding docking.
Tigran Petrosian retained his title in the World Chess Championship, defeating Boris Spassky in the 22nd game of the 24-game series in Moscow that had started on April 11. Under the rules, a draw game counted as one-half of a point for each player, and the first to reach 12 points would win the match. Going into the game, Petrosian had an 11 to 10 lead based on three wins and 16 draws. Born: Wasim Akram, Pakistani cricketer named as the Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World in 1992 for his bowler abilities; in Lahore Died: Alice Calhoun, 65, American silent film actress
June 4, 1966 (Saturday) People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, published a warning to all of China's citizens, declaring that "Anyone who opposes Chairman Mao Tze-tung, opposes Mao Tze-tung's thoughts, opposes the party central leadership, opposes the proletariat's dictatorship, opposes the correct way of socialism, whoever that may be, however high may the position be, and however old his standing, will be struck down by the entire Party and the entire people." The editorial, carrying the title "A Big Revolution to Touch People to Their Innermost Being", encouraged people for the first time to physically attack political deviants, and came one day after most of the party leaders in the city of Beijing were dismissed for being "an anti-Party, anti-socialist, counterrevolutionary group which had been exposed during the socialist cultural revolution", including Mayor Peng Chen, considered at one time to be one of the most powerful men in China. Peng, who had been out of public view since April, was replaced by Li Hsueh-feng. The United Kingdom dropped its space program because of increasing costs, withdrawing from the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO), a coalition of seven nations whose goal was to place a communications satellite into orbit by 1970. The UK had been paying almost 40 percent of the costs, which had increased from $190,000,000 to $442,000,000. The Senate of the Philippines voted, 15–8, to authorize President Ferdinand Marcos to send 2,000 soldiers to South Vietnam. With that action, they became the fourth nation to join the United States in entering the Vietnam War, along with South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The crew of Gemini 9A achieved a rendezvous from above with the ADTA, simulating the rendezvous of an Apollo command module with an Apollo Lunar Module in a lower orbit. EVA was postponed because of crew fatigue, and the second day was given over to experiments. Born: Cecilia Bartoli, Italian mezzo-soprano; in Rome Died: Chang Myon, 62, Prime Minister of South Korea during the Korean War Arthur C. Cope, 58, American organic chemist
June 5, 1966 (Sunday)
Gene Cernan made the second American spacewalk (and only the third ever), spending a record two hours and seven minutes outside of the Gemini 9A capsule as it orbited the Earth. During the time between Cernan's departure from the capsule at 10:59 a.m. Florida time, and his return at 1:06 p.m., the spacecraft made one complete orbit, which some likened to Cernan making a walk around the world. EVA was successful, but one secondary objective - evaluation of the astronaut maneuvering unit (AMU) - was not achieved because Cernan's visor began fogging. The extravehicular life support system apparently became overloaded with moisture when Cernan had to work harder than anticipated to prepare the AMU for donning. The rest of the third day was spent on experiments. India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced a devaluation of 36.5% of the national currency, the rupee, as a measure of fighting inflation and promoting exports, but without consultation with other leaders of her political party, and, as one observer would note, "despite her complete lack of knowledge on matters relating to money and economics". Rupees that had previously been worth $0.21 American were now worth 13 cents; and an American dollar that previously exchanged for 4.75 rupees was now buying 7.5 rupees. Rather than increasing exports and their value, the devaluation would have the opposite effect. Voting took place to fill 52 vacancies in the 150-seat Senate of Turkey. The Justice Party, led by Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel, won 35 of the vacancies to increase its control over both houses of parliament. Died: Edward Arthur Carr, 63, British colonial administrator who governed Nigeria from 1947 to 1954
June 6, 1966 (Monday)
The day after African-American activist James Meredith began his "March Against Fear", walking the from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to "tear down the fear that grips Negroes in Mississippi", he was shot from ambush. Near the town of Hernando, Mississippi, Aubrey James Norvell came out from underneath a culvert on U.S. Highway 51, aimed his 16-gauge shotgun, and fired three blasts at Meredith, striking him in the head, right shoulder and leg. Because Norvell had loaded his gun with birdshot shells, Meredith's wounds were not life-threatening. DeSoto County and several other deputies arrested Norvell, although a witness said that the police had done nothing to stop the sniper when he had first appeared. Meredith was not alone in his march. He was accompanied by five friends as well as newsmen and police. One of the newsmen, Jack R. Thornell, took a photograph of Meredith, lying on the ground in pain, which also appears to show Aubrey James Norvell standing in a wooded area in the background. The photo would later win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography."James Meredith", Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, 1966-1968, photos, Seattle Times, 2008 Meredith would recover from his wound and rejoin the march before it reached Jackson. During his march, 4,000 African-Americans in Mississippi would register to vote. Norvell would be released from the Mississippi State Penitentiary after two years incarceration. The United States Supreme Court reversed the murder conviction of Dr. Sam Sheppard, almost twelve years after his wife had been found beaten to death in their home in Bay Village, Ohio. In an 8–1 decision, the Court ruled that Sheppard had been denied due process during the highly publicized proceedings, and ordered the state of Ohio to promptly retry the case, or to dismiss the charges. Justice Tom C. Clark wrote, "The fact is that bedlam reigned at the courthouse... The carnival atmosphere at trial could easily have been avoided since the courtroom and courthouse premises are subject to the control of the court." Four days later, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, prosecutor John T. Corrigan announced that his office would try Sheppard again in September. In his second jury trial, however, Sheppard would be found not guilty and would be released after 12 years in prison, on November 16; he would die less than four years later, on April 6, 1970. The groundbreaking British TV situation comedy Till Death Us Do Part, created by Johnny Speight, premiered on BBC1."Till Death Us Do Part" Starring Warren Mitchell as "Alf Garnett", a right-wing, racist blue-collar laborer in London's East End, and featuring Alf's wife Else Garnett, daughter Rita Rawlins and left-wing son-in-law Mike Rawlins living in the Garnett home. U.S. producer Norman Lear would purchase the rights to adapt the British programme as the successful American sitcom All in the Family.