I was in eighth grade for the first half of 1962 and a freshman, but still at Lake Oswego Junior High at the end of it. I had my first girlfriend, Bonnie, who became too much of an obsession in my life for quite a few years. I played a football game in the middle of Typhoon Frieda on October 12.
And music ranged from Nat King Cole to the Beatles.
My back is killing me today, so in lieu of actual writing, I pulled the news from 1962 out of wiki: every fifth story. In some cases, I added some comments.
I found it an interesting study. Maybe you will, too.
January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand. American Samoa belongs to the US to this day.
January 4 – New York City introduces a subway train that operates without a crew on board.
January 10 – An avalanche on Nevado Huascarán in Peru causes 4,000 deaths. In 1970 an earthquake would cause a substantial collapse of the north face of the mountain.
January 19 – A counter-coup occurs in the Dominican Republic; the old government returns except for the new president Rafael Filiberto Bonnelly, who replaced Joaquín Balaguer.
January 27 – The Soviet government changes all place names honoring Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich and Georgi Malenkov, all close associates of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin.
February 5 – French President Charles de Gaulle calls for Algeria to be granted independence. [I found it interesting that choosing every fifth story highlighted Algeria. A different rotation could have done the same for Cuba.]
February 10 – Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers, of U-2 incident fame, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in Berlin.
February 20 – Project Mercury: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes.
March 7 – Ash Wednesday Storm: A snow storm batters the Mid-Atlantic. Forty died and over 1000 were injured in one of the ten worst storms in the United States in the 20th Century. Later in the year, on October 12, Typhoon Frieda would be most powerful extratropical cyclone recorded in the U.S. in the 20th century.
March 19 – An armistice begins in Algeria; however, the OAS (Organisation de l’armée secrète…a right-wing militia, formed in Franco’s Spain in 1961) continues its terrorist attacks against Algerians.
April 3 (my birthday) – Jawaharlal Nehru is elected de facto Prime Minister of India.
April 9 – The 34th Academy Awards ceremony is held, hosted by Bob Hope. Best Picture was West Side Story. Best actor was Maximillian Schell in Judgement at Nuremberg. Best actress was Sophia Loren in Two Women. Best supporting actor/actress were George Chakiris and Rita Moreno from West Side Story. Best Original Screenplay was William Inge’s Splendor in the Grass.
April 20 – OAS leader Raoul Salan is arrested in Algiers.
May 2 – An OAS bomb explodes in Algeria – this and other attacks kill 110 and injure 147.
May 14 – Milovan Djilas, former vice-president of Yugoslavia, is given further sentence for publishing Conversations with Stalin.
Djilas remained a committed socialist but argued that the dictatorship of the New Class inevitably carried within it the seeds of its own destruction.
May 29 – Negotiations between the OAS and the FLA lead to a real armistice in Algeria.
June 11 – President John F. Kennedy gives the commencement address at Yale University.
June 22 – An Air France Boeing 707 jet crashes into terrain during bad weather in Guadeloupe, West Indies, killing all 113 on board. It is the airline’s second fatal accident in just 3 weeks, and the third fatal 707 crash of the year.
June 30 – The last soldiers of the French Foreign Legion leave Algeria.
July 2 – The first Wal-Mart Discount City store opens for business in Rogers, Arkansas.
July 13 – In what the press dubs the “the Night of the Long Knives”, United Kingdom Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dismisses 7 members of his Cabinet. Commented Jeremy Thorpe:
Greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his friends for his life.
July 23 – Telstar relays the first live trans-Atlantic television signal.
August 5 – The South African government arrests Nelson Mandela in Howick, with CIA assistance, and charges him with incitement to rebellion. In October he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Convictions in later trials kept him in prison until February of 1990.
August 17 – East German border guards kill 18-year-old Peter Fechter, as he attempts to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin.
August 27 – NASA launches the Mariner 2 space probe. On December 14, it passed within 22,000 miles of Venus, becoming the first space probe to conduct a successful planetary encounter.
September 8 – Newly independent Algeria, by referendum, adopts a constitution.
September 26 – Civil war erupts in Yemen, resulting in the independence of North Yemen, also known as the Yemen Arab Republic.
September 30 – CBS broadcasts the final episodes of Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, marking the end of the Golden Age of Radio.
October 8 – The German magazine Der Spiegel publishes an article about the Bundeswehr’s poor preparedness; the Spiegel scandal erupts. The magazine was accused of treason. This would cost Franz Josef Strauß his office as Federal Minister of Defense.
October 11 – Second Vatican Council (aka Vatican II): Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years. Two-thousand nine-hundred and eight (2,908) men gathered to decide the fate of humanity the Catholic soul.
October 22 – In a televised address, U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces to the nation the existence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
November 1 – The Soviets begin dismantling their missiles in Cuba.
November 5 – A coal mining disaster in Ny-Ålesund kills 21 people. The Norwegian government is forced to resign in the aftermath of this accident in August, 1963.
November 23 – United Airlines Flight 297 crashes, killing all 17 on board.
November 30 – The United Nations General Assembly elects U Thant of Burma as the new UN Secretary-General.
December 9 – Tanganyika (now Tanzania) becomes a republic within the Commonwealth, with Julius Nyerere as president.
December 22 – “Big Freeze” in Britain: There are no frost-free nights until March 5, 1963.
6 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
The world started to seem to me to be out of control. It would be easy to say that was because I was more aware of it, but that would not be entirely so. We grew up with duck-and cover drills. Sputnik was overhead. The Berlin Wall began being erected in 1961.
Nat King Cole: Ramblin’ Rose
Makes one think of how far we have come, but at the same time, how much has stayed the same.