Important Historical Events of the year 1966, Year 1966 in History

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List of 1966 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1966

What happened in the year 1966?

Date	Event
January 10, 1966	Tashkent Declaration, a peace agreement between India and Pakistan signed that resolved the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
January 12, 1966	Lyndon B. Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.
January 13, 1966	Robert C. Weaver becomes the first African American Cabinet member when he is appointed United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
January 15, 1966	The First Nigerian Republic, led by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa is overthrown in a military coup d'état.
January 17, 1966	Palomares incident: A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, killing seven airmen, and dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.
January 24, 1966	Air India Flight 101 crashes into Mont Blanc.
January 26, 1966	The three Beaumont children disappear from a beach in Glenelg, South Australia, resulting in one of the country's largest-ever police investigations.
January 31, 1966	The Soviet Union launches the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.
February 2, 1966	Pakistan suggests a six-point agenda with Kashmir after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
February 3, 1966	The Soviet Union's Luna 9 becomes the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, and the first spacecraft to take pictures from the surface of the Moon.
February 4, 1966	All Nippon Airways Flight 60 plunges into Tokyo Bay, killing 133.
February 14, 1966	Australian currency is decimalized.
February 23, 1966	In Syria, Ba'ath Party member Salah Jadid leads an intra-party military coup that replaces the previous government of General Amin al-Hafiz, also a Baathist.
February 26, 1966	Apollo program: Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket.
February 28, 1966	A NASA T-38 Talon crashes into the McDonnell Aircraft factory while attempting a poor-visibility landing at Lambert Field, St. Louis, killing astronauts Elliot See and Charles Bassett.
March 1, 1966	Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.
March 1, 1966	The Ba'ath Party takes power in Syria.
March 4, 1966	A Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC-8-43 explodes on landing at Tokyo International Airport, killing 64 people.
March 4, 1966	In an interview in the London Evening Standard, The Beatles' John Lennon declares that the band is "more popular than Jesus now".
March 5, 1966	BOAC Flight 911, a Boeing 707 aircraft, breaks apart in mid-air due to clear-air turbulence and crashes into Mount Fuji, Japan, killing all 124 people on board.
March 8, 1966	Nelson's Pillar in Dublin, Ireland, destroyed by a bomb.
March 10, 1966	Military Prime Minister of South Vietnam Nguyễn Cao Kỳ sacks rival General Nguyễn Chánh Thi, precipitating large-scale civil and military dissension in parts of the nation.
March 16, 1966	Launch of Gemini 8 with astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott. It would perform the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit.
March 17, 1966	Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the DSV Alvin submarine finds a missing American hydrogen bomb.
March 18, 1966	United Arab Airlines Flight 749 crashes on approach to Cairo International Airport in Cairo, Egypt, killing 30 people.
March 31, 1966	The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
April 5, 1966	During the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ personally attempted to lead the capture of the restive city of Đà Nẵng before backing down.
April 21, 1966	Rastafari movement: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as Grounation Day.
April 26, 1966	The magnitude 5.1 Tashkent earthquake affects the largest city in Soviet Central Asia with a maximum MSK intensity of VII (Very strong). Tashkent is mostly destroyed and 15–200 are killed.
April 26, 1966	A new government is formed in the Republic of the Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye.
May 6, 1966	Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are sentenced to life imprisonment for the Moors murders in England.
May 16, 1966	The Chinese Communist Party issues the "May 16 Notice", marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
May 21, 1966	The Ulster Volunteer Force declares war on the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.
May 25, 1966	Explorer program: Explorer 32 launches.
May 26, 1966	British Guiana gains independence, becoming Guyana.
May 30, 1966	Former Congolese Prime Minister, Évariste Kimba, and several other politicians are publicly executed in Kinshasa on the orders of President Joseph Mobutu.
June 2, 1966	Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on another world.
June 8, 1966	An F-104 Starfighter collides with XB-70 Valkyrie prototype no. 2, destroying both aircraft during a photo shoot near Edwards Air Force Base. Joseph A. Walker, a NASA test pilot, and Carl Cross, a United States Air Force test pilot, are both killed.
June 8, 1966	Topeka, Kansas, is devastated by a tornado that registers as an "F5" on the Fujita scale: The first to exceed US$100 million in damages. Sixteen people are killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.
June 8, 1966	The National Football League and American Football League announced a merger effective in 1970.
June 13, 1966	The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their Fifth Amendment rights before questioning them (colloquially known as "Mirandizing").
June 14, 1966	The Vatican announces the abolition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("index of prohibited books"), which was originally instituted in 1557.
June 22, 1966	Vietnamese Buddhist activist leader Thích Trí Quang was arrested as the military junta of Nguyen Cao Ky crushed the Buddhist Uprising.[12]
June 30, 1966	The National Organization for Women, the United States' largest feminist organization, is founded.
July 1, 1966	The first color television transmission in Canada takes place from Toronto.
July 2, 1966	France conducts its first nuclear weapon test in the Pacific, on Moruroa Atoll.
July 4, 1966	U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into United States law. The act went into effect the next year.
July 6, 1966	Malawi becomes a republic, with Hastings Banda as its first President.
July 8, 1966	King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi is deposed by his son Prince Charles Ndizi.
July 10, 1966	The Chicago Freedom Movement, co-founded by Martin Luther King Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago. As many as 60,000 people attend.
July 15, 1966	Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnam begin Operation Hastings to push the North Vietnamese out of the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone.
July 18, 1966	Human spaceflight: Gemini 10 is launched from Cape Kennedy on a 70-hour mission that includes docking with an orbiting Agena target vehicle.
July 18, 1966	A racially charged incident in a bar sparks the six-day Hough riots in Cleveland, Ohio; 1,700 Ohio National Guard troops intervene to restore order.
July 24, 1966	Michael Pelkey makes the first BASE jump from El Capitan along with Brian Schubert. Both came out with broken bones. BASE jumping has now been banned from El Cap.
July 30, 1966	England defeats West Germany to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup at Wembley Stadium after extra time.
July 31, 1966	The pleasure cruiser MV Darlwyne disappeared off the Cornwall coast with the loss of all 31 aboard.
August 1, 1966	Charles Whitman kills 16 people at the University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
August 1, 1966	Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
August 5, 1966	A group of red guards at Experimental High in Beijing, including Deng Rong and Liu Pingping, daughters of Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi respectively, beat the deputy vice principal, Bian Zhongyun, to death with sticks after accusing her of counter-revolutionary revisionism, producing one of the first fatalities of the Cultural Revolution.
August 10, 1966	The Heron Road Bridge collapses while being built, killing nine workers in the deadliest construction accident in both Ottawa and Ontario.
August 16, 1966	Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigations of Americans who have aided the Viet Cong. The committee intends to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 people are arrested.
August 18, 1966	Vietnam War: The Battle of Long Tan ensues after a patrol from the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment clashes with a Viet Cong force in Phước Tuy Province.
August 22, 1966	Labor movements NFWA and AWOC merge to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), the predecessor of the United Farm Workers.
August 23, 1966	Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
August 26, 1966	The South African Border War starts with the battle at Omugulugwombashe.
August 29, 1966	The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
August 29, 1966	Leading Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb is executed for plotting the assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
September 6, 1966	Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, is stabbed to death in Cape Town, South Africa during a parliamentary meeting.
September 8, 1966	The landmark American science fiction television series Star Trek premieres with its first-aired episode, "The Man Trap".
September 9, 1966	The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
September 12, 1966	Gemini 11, the penultimate mission of NASA's Gemini program, and the current human altitude record holder (except for the Apollo lunar missions).
September 16, 1966	The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra.
September 22, 1966	Twenty-four people are killed when Ansett-ANA Flight 149 crashes in Winton, Queensland, Australia.
September 30, 1966	Bechuanaland declares its independence, and becomes the Republic of Botswana.
October 1, 1966	West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with no survivors in Oregon. This accident marks the first loss of a DC-9.
October 4, 1966	Basutoland becomes independent from the United Kingdom and is renamed Lesotho.
October 5, 1966	A reactor at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station near Detroit suffers a partial meltdown.
October 9, 1966	Vietnam War: the Republic of Korea Army commits the Binh Tai Massacre.
October 14, 1966	The city of Montreal begins the operation of its underground Montreal Metro rapid transit system.
October 15, 1966	The Black Panther Party is created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.
October 17, 1966	The 23rd Street Fire in New York City kills 12 firefighters.
October 21, 1966	A colliery spoil tip slips onto houses and a school in the village of Aberfan in Wales, killing 144 people, 116 of whom were schoolchildren.
November 2, 1966	The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
November 4, 1966	The Arno River floods Florence, Italy, to a maximum depth of 6.7 m (22 ft), leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. Venice is also submerged on the same day at its record all-time acqua alta of 194 cm (76 in).
November 8, 1966	Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
November 8, 1966	U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.
November 11, 1966	NASA launches Gemini 12.
November 13, 1966	In response to Fatah raids against Israelis near the West Bank border, Israel launches an attack on the village of As-Samu.
November 13, 1966	All Nippon Airways Flight 533 crashes into the Seto Inland Sea near Matsuyama Airport in Japan, killing 50 people.
November 15, 1966	Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program's final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
November 15, 1966	Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Dallgow-Döberitz, East Germany, killing all three people on board.
November 24, 1966	Bulgarian TABSO Flight 101 crashes near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, killing all 82 people on board.
November 28, 1966	Michel Micombero overthrows the monarchy of Burundi and makes himself the first president.
November 30, 1966	Decolonization: Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
December 8, 1966	The Greek ship SS Heraklion sinks in a storm in the Aegean Sea, killing over 200.
December 18, 1966	Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by astronomer Richard Walker.
December 24, 1966	A Canadair CL-44 chartered by the United States military crashes into a small village in South Vietnam, killing 111.
December 26, 1966	The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach.
December 27, 1966	The Cave of Swallows, the largest known cave shaft in the world, is discovered in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.