The following events occurred in December 1957:
December 1, 1957 (Sunday) In Indonesia, Sukarno announced the nationalization of 246 Dutch businesses. Colombia held a referendum on the constitutional reform program of its military junta. This was the first time women in Colombia were allowed to vote, and the reforms included equal rights for men and women. 95.27% of voters approved of the program. Born: Tjahjo Kumolo, Indonesian politician; in Surakarta, Indonesia (d. 2022, multiple organ failure) Deep Roy (born Mohinder Purba), Anglo-Indian actor, stuntman, puppeteer, and comedian; in Nairobi, Kenya Colony Vesta Williams (born Mary Vesta Williams), American singer-songwriter; in Coshocton, Ohio (d. 2011, hypertensive heart disease)
December 2, 1957 (Monday) At 4:30 a.m., the reactor at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, reached criticality for the first time. The plant would become fully operational on December 23. The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 126, concerning the dispute between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir. The first four rounds of the 1958 NFL draft were held in Philadelphia. The Chicago Cardinals selected quarterback King Hill of Rice University with the first overall draft pick. Died: Harrison Ford, 73, American silent film actor, died of injuries from a 1951 pedestrian accident. Leslie Henson, 66, English comedian, producer and director Manfred Sakel, 57, Austrian-American psychiatrist, developer of insulin shock therapy, died of a heart attack.
December 3, 1957 (Tuesday) Seven-year-old Maria Ridulph disappeared from Sycamore, Illinois. Her body would be found near Woodbine, Illinois, on April 26, 1958. Jack McCullough (formerly known as John Tessier) would be convicted of the murder in 2012, but released from prison in 2016 and declared innocent in 2017 after a post-conviction review of evidence. The case remains unsolved. Died: Frank Gannett, 81, American publisher, founder of Gannett, died of complications from a fall. Herbert F. Leary, 72, United States Navy vice admiral
December 4, 1957 (Wednesday) A magnitude 8.1 earthquake in southern Mongolia killed 30 people and destroyed the towns of Dzun Bogd, Bayan-leg and Barum Bogd. The Lewisham rail crash in London, UK, killed 90 people. Speaking before the House of Lords during a debate on the Wolfenden report, Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, expressed support for legislation to decriminalize homosexual relations between consenting adults in the United Kingdom, while also advocating tougher legal measures against the "prostitute's customer". The American Rocket Society's proposal for an Astronautical Research and Development Agency, formally presented to U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on October 14, 1957, was publicly announced.
The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) aired Mars and Beyond, an episode of the Disneyland anthology television series, discussing Wernher von Braun's ideas for a human mission to Mars. Born: Dave Brown, British political cartoonist; in Barnehurst, Kent Eric S. Raymond, American open-source software advocate; in Boston, Massachusetts Lee Smith, American baseball player; in Jamestown, Louisiana Died: Barclay Acheson, 70, chairman of Reader's Digest International Editions, brother of Lila Acheson Wallace, cerebral hemorrhage Huisheng, 19, Chinese princess and Japanese noblewoman, committed joint suicide by firearm with her lover Takemichi Ōkubo. The event became known as the . Sir John Lavarack, 71, Australian World War II general, Governor of Queensland José Alves Correia da Silva, 85, Portuguese Roman Catholic priest, Bishop of Leiria
December 5, 1957 (Thursday) Sally (Thyra) Bowman (43), her daughter Wendy (14), and family friend Thomas Whelan (22) were beaten and shot to death at Sundown Station in South Australia while traveling by car from Alice Springs to Adelaide. 25-year-old Raymond John Bailey would be arrested for the murders in January 1958, convicted, and hanged on 24 June 1958. Investigative journalist Stephen Bishop asked for a posthumous pardon for Bailey in February 2013, but the request was denied. All 326,000 Dutch nationals were expelled from Indonesia. In Bochum, West Germany, a gas explosion in an apartment house killed at least nine people and injured 15. An explosion and fire in Villa Rica, Georgia, killed 12 people and injured 30. An announcement was made that an Advanced Research Projects Agency would be created in the United States Department of Defense to direct its space projects.
William Inge's autobiographical play The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, directed by Elia Kazan, opened at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. Born: Dave Brown, Australian rugby league prop; in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Died: Guido Schmidt, 56, Austrian diplomat and politician, died of grippe. Thomas J. Spellacy, 77, American politician and lawyer, 47th Mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, died of a heart attack.
December 6, 1957 (Friday) The first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite failed, when the IGY Vanguard TV-3 rocket, the first with three live stages, exploded on the launch pad. The Soviet TASS news agency promptly reported the explosion. President Eisenhower requested a full report on the launch failure from the United States Department of Defense. Physicist Joseph Kaplan, chairman of the U.S. National Committee for the International Geophysical Year, cautioned the American public against hysteria over the failure, noting that initial experiments "seldom succeed".
Test pilots Herman Salmon and Roy Edwin Wimmer and flight engineers Louis Holland and William Spreuer made the first flight of the Lockheed L-188 Electra airliner from the Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank, California. A survey showed that 14 boys had been fatally injured while playing high school football in the United States in 1957. Born: Steve Bedrosian, American baseball player; in Methuen, Massachusetts Tom Brinkman, American politician, member of the Ohio House of Representatives; in Cincinnati, Ohio Andrew Cuomo, American politician, 56th Governor of New York; in New York City Died: Claude Barnard, 67, Australian politician and government minister, died of cancer. Robert Esnault-Pelterie, 76, French aircraft designer and pioneer rocket theorist Hugh Mackay, 69, Canadian politician
December 7, 1957 (Saturday) A collision between two cars south of Sebring, Florida, killed four adults and two children and injured three other children. Born: John Lee Ka-chiu, Hong Kong police officer and politician; in British Hong Kong Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, Nigerian career diplomat, President of the United Nations General Assembly (2019); in Zagga, Northern Region, British Nigeria Died: Sir Edmund Wyly Grier DCL, 95, Australian-born Canadian portrait painter William J. P. MacMillan, 76, Canadian politician, 18th Premier of Prince Edward Island
December 8, 1957 (Sunday) The crash of Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 670 in a rainstorm, southwest of Buenos Aires, killed 61 people. At the time, this was the worst aviation accident in the history of Argentina. In Opp, Alabama, five people died in a high speed head-on collision, including four airmen from Eglin Air Force Base. Fire destroyed a cottage west of Park Falls, Wisconsin, killing eight children. Born: Peter Brown, Australian rules footballer Cai Guo-Qiang, Chinese artist; in Quanzhou, Fujian, China Phil Collen, English rock guitarist (Def Leppard); in Hackney Central, London Slick (ring name of Kenneth Wayne Johnson), American professional wrestling manager; in Fort Worth, Texas Died: James A. Gallagher, 88, American banker and businessman, member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania Reginald Sheffield, 56, English actor
December 9, 1957 (Monday) A railway accident in Taiwan caused by children stacking ballast on the rails killed 19 people and injured 116. On the same day, the Codogno rail crash killed 15 people and seriously injured at least 30 in Codogno, Italy, when the Milan–Rome express crashed into a truck at a level crossing.Il Giornale del Mondo, anno, 1957 (nov-dic) ed. Cino del Duca, Historia, mensile illustrato n. 272 ottobre 1980 Born: José Luis Gil, Spanish actor and voice actor; in Zaragoza, Spain Ernesto González, Nicaraguan Olympic lightweight boxer Peter O'Mara, Australian jazz guitarist and composer Donny Osmond, American singer and actor (The Osmonds); in Ogden, Utah"Vital Statistics", Ogden (UT) Standard-Examiner, December 9, 1957, p.15 Ian Richards, English cricketer; in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, England Died: Charles Patteson, 66, English field hockey player, cricketer and clergyman
December 10, 1957 (Tuesday)
Test pilot Guido Carestiato made the first flight of the Aermacchi MB-326 military jet trainer.Flight International, 20 September 1961, p. 492. Canadian diplomat Lester B. Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize for his peacekeeping efforts in the United Nations. The United States Air Force created a Directorate of Astronautics to manage and coordinate astronautical research programs, including work on satellites and antimissile-missile weapons. Brigadier General Homer A. Boushey was named to head the office. James H. Douglas Jr., U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, rescinded the order on December 13, considering the creation of such a group before the activation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency to be premature. Born: Michael Clarke Duncan, American actor; in Chicago, Illinois (d. 2012, complications from heart attack) Paul Hardcastle, English musician; in Kensington, London Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Canadian politician; in Eskimo Point, Northwest Territories (now Arviat, Nunavut) José Mário Vaz, 5th President of Guinea-Bissau; in Calequisse, Portuguese Guinea Died: Dan Bryant (born Leslie Vickery Bryant), 52, New Zealand mountaineer, died in a traffic collision. Gustav Waldemar Elmen, 80, Swedish-born American metallurgist Maurice McLoughlin, 67, American tennis champion Roland Fairbairn McWilliams , 83, Canadian politician, 13th Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba James Stevenson-Hamilton, 90, first warden of South Africa's Kruger National Park Napoleon Zervas, 66, Greek World War II Resistance leader, died of a heart ailment.
December 11, 1957 (Wednesday) East Germany introduced a strict new passport law in an attempt to reduce the number of refugees fleeing to West Germany. The effect was that more East Germans would flee to the West from East Berlin. Although there were severe penalties for East Germans caught trying to escape to West Berlin, there were no physical barriers on the boundary between the two cities, and it was still possible to ride a subway train across the border. By 1961, when one-fifth of the East German population had emigrated to the West, the Communist government would erect the Berlin Wall and fortified boundaries along the rest of the nation's border to make escape almost impossible. I. I. Chundrigar resigned as Prime Minister of Pakistan after losing a vote of confidence. He was replaced on December 16 by Feroz Khan Noon. Ibrahim Ali Didi was forced to resign as Prime Minister of the Maldives by the Sultan Muhammad Fareed Didi. At the time, the Maldive Islands were a British protectorate. Ibrahim Nasir became the new Premier the next day. Died: Blue Peter, 21, British Thoroughbred racehorse, was euthanized after a heart attack. Frederick G. Creed, 86, Canadian inventor Marie Suzette de Marigny Hall Dewey, 70, American Red Cross official, wife of Charles S. Dewey John McDowell, 55, American politician, member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, shot himself to death. Musidora, 68, French actress
December 12, 1957 (Thursday)