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A wave of hijackings of U.S. airline flights to Cuba began as Miami electrician Antuilio Ortiz, who had purchased a ticket listing himself on the manifest as "Cofresi Elpirata" (after the 19th century Caribbean pirate Roberto Cofresí), entered the cockpit of National Airlines Flight 337 shortly after it took off from Marathon, Florida to Key West, then forced the pilot to fly to Havana. Cuba's leader Fidel Castro allowed the plane, its crew, and all but one of its passengers to return to the U.S. the next day. Ortiz stayed behind and would live comfortably in Cuba for two years before becoming homesick for the U.S. After being incarcerated several times in Cuban prisons, Ortiz would finally be allowed to leave in 1975, and would spend four years in an American prison for the 1961 crime. In the next 12 years after Ortiz hijacked the flight, there would be 185 successful skyjackings until massive security measures were enacted by the U.S. at the end of 1972; only two of 42 attempts were successful for the rest of the 1970s.
Betting shops became legal in the United Kingdom, permitting UK residents to place bets, through a bookie, on horse races without going to the track.
Anticipating expansion of human spaceflight programs, Space Task Group (STG) proposed a crewed spacecraft development center. The nucleus for a center existed in STG, which was handling the Mercury program, and noted that a larger program would require more staff and facilities, stricter management controls.
In Iran, a teachers' strike began as more than 50,000 educators walked off the job and began protesting working conditions and wages. Believing that the strike had been instigated by the American CIA, Iran's monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi attempted to have the unrest suppressed by the Iranian Army, but would be forced to meet the teachers' demands three days later after learning that the military would not authorize troops to fire on demonstrators. Pahlavi then fired his prime minister, Jafar Sharif-Emami, and replaced him with Ali Amini.
The training vessel Albatross was hit by a white squall about 125 miles (201 km) west of the Dry Tortugas. The schooner sank almost instantly, taking with it six people - Alice Sheldon, ship's cook George Ptacnik, and students Chris Coristine, John Goodlett, Rick Marsellus, and Robin Wetherill. Thirteen other people on the student ship survived. The tragedy would later form the basis for the 1996 film White Squall.
Light from a supernova within the galaxy NGC 4564, located 57.2 megalight-years from Earth, more than 57,200,000 after a star within that system had exploded.
Former British diplomat George Blake was sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for spying, one year for the life of each of the 42 British agents who died after Blake had betrayed them. Blake had been the UK's vice-consul in South Korea before being captured during the Korean War and spending three years in an internment camp, and was later caught passing secrets of the British Navy to the Soviet Union. He escaped London's Wormwood Scrubs Prison on October 22, 1965, and eventually settled in Moscow.
The U.S. federal minimum wage was raised to $1.25 per hour by a 230–196 vote in the House of Representatives. Earlier, the U.S. Senate had approved the measure, advocated by President Kennedy, by a 64–28 vote.
Commander Malcolm Ross and Lieutenant Commander Victor A. Prather set a new record for the highest balloon flight while testing full pressure flight suits. The two U.S. Navy officers ascended to 113,740 feet (34.67 km) over the Gulf of Mexico before landing successfully. Commander Ross was safely transported to USS Antietam (CVS-36) by helicopter. Lieutenant Commander Prather subsequently slipped from the sling and drowned after his suit flooded.
At 9:34 a.m., Alan Shepard became the first American in space as Mercury 3 lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Shepard's spacecraft Freedom 7, first of the Mercury program, reached an altitude of 115 miles (185 km) without achieving orbit, and was recovered 19 minutes later by the aircraft carrierUSS Lake Champlain (CV-39). The mission featured the first manual piloting of the spacecraft and also the landing with pilot still within it.
A NASA working group led by Bernard Maggin delivered its proposals for an integrated research, development, and applied orbital operations program, at a cost of one billion dollars, to guide the program through 1970. The group identified three categories of orbital operations: inspection, ferry, and orbital launch. Maggin argued that future U.S. space programs would require capability for such orbital operations and recommended an integrated program, coordinated with the U.S. Department of Defense, but independent of other space programs and with a separate project office.
Tottenham Hotspur F.C. defeated Leicester City 2–0 in the 1961 FA Cup Final before a crowd of 100,000 at Wembley, becoming the first team in the 20th century to win the English league and cup double. Aston Villa had won the double back in 1897.
China's Prime Minister Zhou Enlai called for the elimination of the government's "collective dining hall" program, telephoning Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, who had instituted the reform during the "Great Leap Forward" campaign of 1958. Premier Zhou made the call after touring rural villages in Handan County of Hebei Province, and seeing proof of malnutrition and famine. Beginning in June, people would be allowed to produce their own food rather than having all resources limited to the village "mess halls".
The Soviet Union restored capital punishment for embezzlement of public property. Legal execution had been abolished for all purposes on May 26, 1947, but was gradually introduced for various crimes starting in 1950. Females were exempt from the death penalty under any circumstances, as were men who had reached the age of 60 by the time of their sentencing.
May 8, 1961: Shepard receives NASA Distinguished Service Medal
At the Savoy Hilton Hotel in New York City, the name of New York's new expansion team in the National League was made official. Joan Payson, the majority owner of the team, christened it as the New York Mets "by breaking a champagne bottle with a baseball bat." The name, short for Metropolitans, was chosen by the public, although Mrs. Payson's personal preference was the "Meadowlarks", and out of 9,613 suggestions, 644 names were selected and then reduced to ten, the other nine choices being Avengers, Bees, Burros, Continentals, Jets, NYBs, Rebels, Skyliners and Skyscrapers.
Martin Company personnel briefed NASA Associate Director Robert C. Seamans, Jr. on using the Titan II missile system as a rocket to be launched for a crewed lunar landing. Although skeptical, Seamans arranged for a more formal presentation to Abe Silverstein, NASA Director, Office of Space Flight Programs, who was sufficiently impressed by the briefing to ask Director Robert R. Gilruth and Space Task Group to study possible Titan II uses, including the use of a Titan II to launch a scaled-up Mercury spacecraft.
The comic strip Apartment 3-G, about three career women sharing an apartment in Manhattan, made its first appearance.
Describing American television as "a vast wasteland", Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow addressed the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington, and implied that the FCC might not renew licenses of those entities that failed to upgrade their product. "I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland," said Minow. "You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials -- many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it."
The second launch of the sounding rocket RM-89 Blue Scout I took place at Cape Canaveral, but the 72-foot (22 m) tall missile wobbled and veered off course. Ground control destroyed the errant vehicle.
U.S. President John F. Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 52, authorizing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to begin a program of covert actions in South Vietnam to prepare the way for an eventual landing of American troops in the southeast Asian nation.
The popular Belgian comic book Bobo, created by Paul Deliège and Maurice Rosy and about the regular attempts by a convicted thief to escape from jail, debuted as a feature in the magazine Le Journal de Spirou.
Mercury spacecraft 8A was delivered to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury 4 (MA-4) uncrewed space mission.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev "quite unexpectedly" accepted a suggestion from U.S. President John F. Kennedy that the two leaders meet at a conference in Vienna to discuss the future of Berlin. Kennedy and Khrushchev would shake hands in Austria on June 3.
A brush fire in Hollywood, California, destroyed 24 houses, including the home of author Aldous Huxley, who lost almost all of his unpublished manuscripts and works in progress.
Died:Tony Bettenhausen, 44, American racecar driver and USAC driving champion for 1958, was killed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway while testing the car to be driven by his friend Paul Russo in advance of the 1961 Indianapolis 500. "Failure of a 10-cent bolt led to the death of the full time farmer and part time race driver," a UPI report would note the next day. As Bettenhausen entered a turn, the bolt fell off the car's front rod support and "permitted the front axle to twist, thereby misaligning the front wheels", according to the U.S. Auto Club's report. The vehicle veered into the outside retaining wall at 145 miles per hour (233 km/h), "climbed over it, upside down, and tore through an 8 foot high wire fence", bursting into flames on impact.
Gordon Reid founded the Giant Tiger chain of Canadian discount stores, with the opening of the first store at 98 George Street in Ottawa; fifty years later, there would be more than 250 stores across seven Canadian provinces.
NASA submitted its legislative program for the 87th Congress (S. 1857 and H.R. 7115), asking for authority to lease property, authority to acquire patent releases, replacement of semiannual reports to Congress with an annual one, and authority to indemnify contractors against unusually hazardous risks.
A Freedom Riders bus was fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama and the civil rights protesters were beaten by an angry mob. Sixteen members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had divided their group at Atlanta, with nine riding on a Greyhound bus and seven others on a Trailways bus. Six miles beyond Anniston, a tire on the Greyhound bus was flattened. Unbeknownst to either the riders or the mob, Alabama special agent Eli M. Cowling had boarded that bus in Atlanta, and prevented the crowd from exacting further violence on the Riders, but the bus itself was burned by the firebomb. The Trailways bus riders arrived in Birmingham, where two of them were beaten up at the station.
A military coup in South Korea overthrew the government of Prime Minister Chang Myon (John M. Chang) and President Yung Po Sun. At 3:30 in the morning local time, Republic of Korea forces led by Lt. Gen. Chang Do Yung seized control of police barracks and government offices in Seoul and other cities, then announced the takeover at 6:00 a.m. General Park Chung Hee, Deputy Commander of the ROK Second Army, soon took over as the new President. General Carter B. Magruder, Commander of the U.S. 8th Army and highest ranking American officer in Korea, declared American support for the Chang regime, but U.S. forces did not intervene during the tumult.
On the first day of an official visit to Canada, U.S. President John F. Kennedy re-injured his back while participating in a tree planting ceremony at Ottawa. Kennedy, who had nearly died during back surgery in 1954, had been using a shovel to lift dirt, and was on crutches after returning home.
On the day that visiting U.S. President Kennedy was delivering a speech to a joint session of Canada's Parliament, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker found "a crumpled piece of paper in the wastebasket" of the room where the two leaders had met, and found it was a secret memorandum that had been left behind by the President, entitled "What We Want From the Ottawa Trip". According to one biographer of Diefenbaker, the first three points of what the U.S. wanted, on the memo, were "To push the Canadians towards an increased commitment to the Alliance for Progress", "To push them towards a decision to join the OAS" (Organization of American States), and "To push them towards a larger contribution for the India consortium". Another author would say later that Kennedy's handwritten notes in the margins of the memo included the letters "OAS", and that Diefenbaker believed that Kennedy had written "SOB" in reference to the Prime Minister. According to both accounts, Diefenbaker would angrily confront the U.S. Ambassador in May 1962 and threaten to reveal the contents of the discarded secret memo.
The first fatality in the history of Little League Baseball occurred during an evening game in Temple City, California. Nine-year-old Barry Babcock was struck in the chest by a pitched ball, with impact above his heart, and collapsed and died from a cardiac dysrhythmia. One week later, the second fatality in Little League baseball would take place when ten-year-old George McCormick, of Park Ridge, Illinois, was struck in the head by a batted ball during practice.
Space Task Group (STG) issued a Statement of Work for a Design Study of a Manned Spacecraft Paraglide Landing System. Before the end of June, the design study would formally become Phase I of the Paraglider Development Program.
At the Torre Bert listening station, the Judica-Cordiglia brothers supposedly received calls for help from an unidentified and unrecognized Soviet spacecraft.
NASA Space Task Group (STG) Director Robert R. Gilruth announced that the plans for the Apollo program's first mission would have an adapter between the Saturn second stage and the Apollo spacecraft to include an orbiting laboratory. The specifications for the lab were 13 feet (4.0 m) in diameter and 7'10" (2.4 meters) high, for experiments related to human operation of spacecraft. In response, Ames Director Smith J. DeFrance suggested a series of experiments that might be conducted from an Earth-orbiting laboratory, including astronomical observations, monitoring the solar activity; testing a human's ability to work outside the vehicle; zero-g testing; and a micrometeoroid impact study.
The Sound of Music, already in its second year in the U.S. as a production on Broadway, opened its West End production in the UK at the Palace Theatre. Jean Bayless played the role of Maria and Roger Dann portrayed Captain von Trapp. The London show would run for 2,385 performances, closing on January 14, 1967.
The Soviet space probeVenera 1 became the first man-made object to make a "fly-by" of another planet by passing Venus. However, the Soviet launched probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data.
NASA Headquarters and the Space Task Group began a concerted effort to identify technical developments from Project Mercury that were potential inventions, discoveries, improvements, and innovations. This action was in keeping with the policy of providing information on technical advances, within security limits and when appropriate, to other agencies of the government and to American industry.
Bashir Ahmad Sarban, an impoverished, 47-year-old camel driver in Pakistan, became a minor celebrity when then U.S. Vice President Lyndon Johnson visited Karachi and stopped his motorcade to see the camels. Johnson, who shook Bashir's hand and made a routine remark, "Come to Washington and see us sometime," and was surprised the next day when the Pakistani press reported that the camel driver had been invited to travel to the United States. With funding from the United States Information Agency and the People to People International program, the Kennedy Administration would arrange for Bashir Sarban to come to the U.S. later in the year.
After having won the Kentucky Derby two weeks earlier, Carry Back won the Preakness Stakes, the second race of the U.S. Triple Crown of thoroughbred horse racing. Carry Back, however, would sustain an ankle injury prior to running in the Belmont Stakes on June 3, and would finish in seventh place.
George Davies of the U.S. became the first person to break the world record for the pole vault by using a fiberglass pole, rather than steel or bamboo. Davies cleared 4.83 m (15 ft 10.2 in), breaking the record of 4.80 m (15 ft 9.0 in) set by Don Bragg ten months earlier.
The west African nation of Mauritania ratified its first constitution, after having declared its independence on November 28, 1960.
Died:Nannie Helen Burroughs, 82, African-American educator, religious leader and civil rights activist
The next phase of the Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment began at 3:30 p.m. as Heinrich Matthaei began the process of adding a synthesized RNA molecule sample, "consisting of the simple repetition of one type of nucleotide", to a centrifuged sample of 20 amino acid proteins. The results were realized less than five days later on Saturday, May 27. At 6:00 in the morning, with the isolation of the amino acid of phenylalanine. "In less than a week," it would later be observed, "Matthaei had identified the first 'word' of the genetic code".
The patent for the modern dropped ceiling, now universal in room construction, was issued to Donald A. Brown, who had applied for it on September 8, 1958. U.S. Patent No. 2,984,946 for "Accessible suspended ceiling construction" was granted to Brown who improved on the 1919 patent of Eric E. Hall's interlocking dropped ceiling tiles, with Donn Products' system of "slabs, panels, sheets or the like positioned on the upperside of, or held against the underside of the horizontal flanges of the supporting construction."
A four-year scientific investigation by the U.S. Navy's Arctic Research Laboratory Ice Station of Fletcher's Ice Island, a massive (21-square-mile (54 km)) floating iceberg, began.
A group of Freedom Riders was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for "disturbing the peace" after disembarking from their bus to try to use the white-only facilities at the Tri-State Trailways depot.
May 25, 1961: President Kennedy addresses Congress on "Urgent National Needs"
Addressing a joint session of the United States Congress, U.S. President John F. Kennedy called for a vastly accelerated space program, declaring, "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." For this and associated projects in space technology, the President requested additional appropriations totaling $611 million for NASA and the Department of Defense. Congress would respond with increased funding for the Apollo program. Apollo 11 would land on the Moon, with 164 days left in the 1960s, on July 20, 1969.
King Hussein of Jordan, 25, married an English commoner, 20-year-old Toni Gardiner (later renamed Princess Muna al-Hussein), making her his second wife. Gardiner was not present at the "all male" Muslim ceremony, which took place at the Zahran Palace near Amman and saw the king sign a wedding pledge. Initially, she was "neither a queen nor a princess" but took on the title and name "Sahibat al Sown Wa al Isma Muna al-Hussein".
The first conference on the "Peaceful Uses of Space" was held at Tulsa, Oklahoma and lasted for two days. A second, three-day conference on this subject would begin in Seattle, on May 8, 1962. In both instances, Robert R. Gilruth reported on the human spaceflight aspect.
The Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 went on display at the Paris International Air Show. Some 650,000 visitors received details on the spacecraft and on Alan Shepard's suborbital flight before the display closed on June 4.
Born:Tarsem Singh, Indian film director who has worked on films, music videos and commercials; in Jalandhar, Punjab, India
Born:Northern Dancer, Canadian thoroughbred racehorse and winner of the 1964 Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes; in Oshawa, Ontario (d. 1990)
Died: Maria Fris, 29, Prima ballerina of the Hamburg State Opera, jumped to her death from a catwalk at the opera house between rehearsals for a production of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet of Romeo and Juliet. Fris had been despondent from a chronic tendon inflammation that had ruined her career.
A West Virginia couple, Mr. and Mrs. Alderson Muncy of Paynesville, West Virginia, became the first American food stamp recipients under a pilot program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, being tested in eight communities. For the month of June, the Muncys received $95 worth of food coupons for their household of fifteen people, and made the first purchase at Henderson's Supermarket.
U.S. President John F. Kennedy formally petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to adopt "stringent regulations" prohibiting segregation in interstate bus travel. The proposed order, issued on September 22 and effective on November 1, removed Jim Crow signs in stations and ended segregation of waiting rooms, water fountains, and restrooms in interstate bus terminals later that same year, giving the Freedom Riders an unequivocal victory in their campaign.
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, who had ruled the Dominican Republic since 1930, was assassinated in an ambush, putting an end to the second longest-running dictatorship in Latin American history. Trujillo was being driven in his car from his residence in San Cristobal to Ciudad Trujillo. Shortly after 10:00 p.m. local time, a sedan pulled into the path of his car, and assassins with machine guns killed both Trujillo and the chauffeur. The news was not announced to the nation's people until 5:00 p.m. the next day.
All 61 people on KLM Flight 897 were killed when the DC-8 crashed at 1:19 in the morning, shortly after taking off from Lisbon in Portugal for a scheduled destination of Caracas in Venezuela. High winds and driving rains brought the DC-8 jet down into the ocean off of the coast of Portugal, and wreckage and bodies washed onto the beach.
Trial opened in the Rokotov-Faibishenko case in Moscow City Court for foreign currency smugglers I. T. Rokotov, Vladislav Faibishenko, and seven other people. Rokotov and Faibishenko, originally sentenced to 15 years in prison, would be retried after a new law went into effect on July 1, providing for the death penalty. Both 22, they would be executed after their conviction on July 21.
Presidents John F. Kennedy of the United States and Charles De Gaulle of France met in Paris. Making her first trip to Europe as First Lady, Jackie Kennedy charmed the crowds as she arrived for dinner at the Elysee Palace. Her new hairstyle, created by the Paris coiffeur Alexandre, made fashion news worldwide.
Died:Roger Gavoury, 50, French National Police Commissioner of Algiers, was assassinated by the OAS, which was seeking to preserve French Algeria as a part of Metropolitan France. The killer invaded his apartment, then stabbed and beat Gavoury.
References
"Airliner Pirate Hints He's Solid With Fidel". Miami News. May 2, 1961. p. 1.
"Passenger Forces Airliner in Florida To Detour to Cuba". The New York Times. May 2, 1961. p. 1.
"Hijacked U.S. Plane Returns From Cuba". Milwaukee Sentinel. May 2, 1961. p. 1.
McCann, Joseph T. (2006). Terrorism on American Soil: A Concise History of Plots and Perpetrators from the Famous to the Forgotten. Sentient Publications. p. 99.
"187 U.S. Craft Hijacked Since '61". The New York Times. June 12, 1979. p. A13.
Vamplew, Wray; Kay, Joyce (2005). Encyclopedia of British Horseracing. Routledge. p. 360.
^ This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Grimwood, James M.; Hacker, Barton C.; Vorzimmer, Peter J. "PART I (A) Concept and Design April 1959 through December 1961". Project Gemini Technology and Operations - A Chronology. NASA Special Publication-4002. NASA. Retrieved 18 February 2023.
Abbas Milani, A Look at the Shah (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
"SEA SURVIVORS TELL OF STORM HORROR". Miami News. May 4, 1961. p. 1.
Peter Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (The New Press, 1998)
Transcript of "Nomination : hearing of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, second session, on Gilbert F. Casellas, of Pennsylvania; Paul M. Igasaki, of California; and Paul Steven Miller, of California, to be members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, July 21, 1994" (retrieved May 29, 2009).
Burgess, Colin (2014). Freedom 7: The Historic Flight of Alan B. Shepard Jr. Springer-Praxis books in space exploration. New York; London: Springer. p. 147. ISBN978-3-319-01155-4. OCLC902685533.
Burridge, John T. (2011). Kennedy and Khrushchev: The New Frontier in Berlin. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 47–48.
Nugel, Bernfried (2006). "A Preliminary Catalogue of Aldous Huxley's Manuscripts, Typescripts and Proofs at Laura Huxley's Residence". Aldous Huxley Annual: A Journal of Twentieth-Century Thought and Beyond. 6. LIT Verlag Münster: 177.
"SOUTH KOREA UNDER MARTIAL LAW AFTER ARMY COUP", Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 1961, p1; "COUP OUSTS S. KOREAN REGIME", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 16, 1961, p1; List of Prime Ministers, with photos
"Kennedy Hurt Planting Tree", Calgary Herald, June 9, 1961, p7
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Lt. Commander Prather and Commander Ross
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This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Grimwood, James M.; Hacker, Barton C.; Vorzimmer, Peter J. "PART I (A) Concept and Design April 1959 through December 1961". Project Gemini Technology and Operations - A Chronology. NASA Special Publication-4002. NASA. Retrieved 18 February 2023.