1966 Calendar
What Happened In Year 1966?
- January 1, 1966 – After a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa assumes power as president of the Central African Republic.
- January 21, 1966 – New Year’s Day in Chinese calendar. Start of the year of the Fire Horse in Chinese astrology.
- January 31, 1966 – The Soviet Union launches the unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.
- March 8, 1966 – A bomb planted by young Irish protesters destroys Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin.
- March 12, 1966 – Suharto takes over from Sukarno to become President of Indonesia.
- March 16, 1966 – Launch of Gemini 8, the 12th manned American space flight and first space docking with the Agena Target Vehicle.
- March 31, 1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
- April 21, 1966 – Rastafari movement: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as Grounation Day.
- July 2, 1966 – The French military explodes a nuclear test bomb codenamed Aldébaran in Mururoa, their first nuclear test in the Pacific.
- July 8, 1966 – King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi is deposed by his son Prince Charles Ndizi.
- July 10, 1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois. As many as 60,000 people came to hear Dr. King as well as Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Peter Paul and Mary.
- 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.
- September 9, 1966 – The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
- 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.
- October 1, 1966 – West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with eighteen fatalities and no survivors 5.5 miles south of Wemme, 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 – Near Detroit, Michigan, there is a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor.
- October 22, 1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 12.
- December 1, 1966 – The first Gävle goat, an annual Swedish Yule Goat tradition, is first erected in Gävle.
- December 26, 1966 – The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach.
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