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The following events occurred in March 1958:

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March 27, 1958: Soviet Communist Party boss Nikita Khrushchev consolidates power, replaces Nikolai Bulganin as head of government

March 1, 1958 (Saturday)

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  • At least 300 people died when the Turkish passenger ship Üsküdar capsized and sank in the Gulf of İzmit. The ship was carrying 370 paid passengers and a crew of 20 when it overturned during a sudden gale. About three-fourths of the passengers were high school and junior college students who went to school in Izmit and who would ride the noon ferry on Saturdays in order to spend the weekend at their family's homes in Gölcük on the other side of the Gulf.[1] The ferry operator disclosed later in the day that in addition to the 370 passengers who had bought tickets, there were between 100 and 150 additional persons who had come aboard using transit passes bought earlier; the capacity of the Üsküdar was limited to 350 people.[2]
  • In Uruguay, the nine-member Consejo Nacional that served as the executive branch for the South American nation, held its annual meeting to select one of its members as the President of Uruguay. Carlos Fischer, the former Minister of Agriculture, was picked to succeed Arturo Lezama and would serve until March 1, 1959.[3]
  • In Japan, All Nippon Airways (ANA) was created by the merger of FarEastern Airways of Japan and Nippon Helicopter Transport.[4]
  • Died: Giacomo Balla, 86, Italian Futurist painter

March 2, 1958 (Sunday)

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The expedition's south to north route over Antarctica

March 3, 1958 (Monday)

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  • Richard A. Mack, one of the five commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission that regulated all broadcasting in the United States, was forced to resign after having been accused of accepting money to award a television station license to a friend in Miami. [8] The charges had come to light in testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Legislative Oversight Committee. Mack was indicted by a federal grand jury, along with bribe payer Thurman A. Whiteside, on September 25. [9] Charges against Mack would eventually be dropped because of his declining health.
  • General Nuri al-Said agreed to return to his previous position as Prime Minister of Iraq after Prime Minister Abdul-Wahab Mirjan was asked by King Faisal II to resign. General Said had resigned in June because of illness.[10] He and the King would both be assassinated in a coup d'etat on July 15.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, that the U.S. Army did not have the authority to give a less than honorable discharge, premised solely on subversive activities that took place before their induction, to a person who had been drafted into the military. [11] The Court also declined to review a decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that had found that Prince Edward County, Virginia had failed to follow the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education and that the county was failing to make a "prompt and reasonable start" to end racial segregation of schools. After the Brown decision, Prince Edward County's supervisors had voted not to operate any public schools and to let education be handled by private schools funded by pledges and tuition. The Attorney General of Virginia had filed a petition for review on behalf of the county.[12]
  • Seven coal miners were killed in the Netherlands at the state-owned Staatsmijn Maurits coal mine near Geleen.
  • Born: Miranda Richardson, English film actress, Golden Globe and BAFTA winner; in Southport, Lancashire
  • Died: Wilhelm Zaisser, 65, former East German official who served as that nation's first director of its secret police agency, the Stasi (Staatssicherheitsdienst or State Security Service). Zaisser also fought in the Spanish Civil War under the nom-de-guerre "General Gomez". He was removed from his position by the ruling Communist party, the SED, in 1953 on charges of failing to use sufficient force to prevent the uprising by East German workers, and later dropped from the party on charges of "forming a faction... with a defeatist line directed against the unity of the Party." [13]

March 4, 1958 (Tuesday)

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  • A ceasefire agreement between the Greek Cypriot paramilitary organization EOKA, and the British government that administered Cyprus at the time, was broken with new attacks by EOKA against colonial buildings.
  • Born: Patricia Heaton, American comedian, TV actress and 3-time Emmy Award winner known as the star of The Middle and supporting actress on Everybody Loves Raymond; in Bay Village, Ohio

March 5, 1958 (Wednesday)

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  • Luhansk, a city in the Ukrainian SSR that had been renamed Voroshilovgrad in 1935 in honor of Defense Minister Kliment Voroshilov, was restored to its original name after a decree by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that cities could not be named after living persons. At the time, Voroshilov was the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the nominal head of state of the U.S.S.R.; upon Voroshilov's death in 1969, the name of Luhansk would be changed again to Voroshilovgrad and then back to Luhansk in 1990.
  • Explorer 2 was launched from Cape Canaveral, at 1:27 p.m. local time (18:27 UTC), with a payload of an 80-inch (2,000 mm) cylinder, similar to that of Explorer 1, launched six weeks earlier. Contact with the Explorer 2 was lost a few minutes after liftoff,[14] and the U.S. Army's team announced the next day that the second Explorer had failed to reach orbit after the final stage of the Jupiter rocket failed to ignite at an altitude of 200 miles (320 km). The satellite burned up on re-entry to the atmosphere over the Caribbean Sea.[15]
  • Born:

March 6, 1958 (Thursday)

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  • North Korea released the 26 passengers and crew who had been on a Korean National Airlines plane hijacked on February 16. On the same day, anti-aircraft artillery from the north side of the Korean Demilitarized Zone shot down a U.S. Air Force F-86 Sabrejet that had strayed into North Korean airspace during a training mission.[16]
  • U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave approval to Operation Argus, a series of low-yield, high-atmosphere nuclear weapons tests and missile tests to test the Christofilos effect, the theory of nuclear physicist Nicholas Christofilos that the explosion of nuclear weapons in the Earth's magnetic field would create large electrical currents that could destroy the electronic systems of enemy missiles. The Argus tests, which would be secretly conducted over the South Atlantic Ocean starting on August 27, 1958, and continuing to September 9, demonstrated that the disruption created by the Christofilos effect could disable the electronics of radar systems and satellites, but was not strong enough to damage missiles.

March 7, 1958 (Friday)

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  • Catholic University of Argentina (Universidad Católica Argentina or UCA) was founded as a private university. Sixty years after its founding, it would have an enrollment of 18,000 students on six campuses.
  • "The Sharpshooter", a pilot for a TV series, was telecast as the week's offering on Zane Grey Theatre on CBS.[17] The telecast, which featured Chuck Connors and Johnny Crawford as a father and son moving to a new town, was popular enough to be picked up in the fall on the ABC network as the series The Rifleman.
  • Born: Rik Mayall, English comedian and TV actor; in Matching Tye, Essex (d. 2014)

March 8, 1958 (Saturday)

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March 9, 1958 (Sunday)

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March 10, 1958 (Monday)

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  • The Sacred Congregation of the Council of the Vatican announced the excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church of three priests in Hungary who had become members of the Communist-dominated Parliament of Hungary, in violations of a decree against participation in politics made the previous July. Richard Horvath, Nicholas Beresztoczy and Janos Mate were barred from administering the sacraments to Catholic worshipers.[22]
  • The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), predecessor to NASA, presented its report on "recoverable crewed satellite" configurations— the launching of an American astronaut into space. One involved a blunt, high-drag, zero-lift vehicle that would depend on a parachute landing for final deceleration. Another was a winged vehicle that would glide to a landing after reentering the atmosphere. The third proposal was a combination of the two.[23]
  • A working conference in support of the Air Force "Man in Space Soonest" (MISS) program began at the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division in Los Angeles. General Bernard Schriever told the crowd that events were moving more quickly than expected, in that the Soviet Union was also making progress on its goal to put the first man into outer space. The U.S. Air Force concept consisted of three stages: a high-drag, no-lift, blunt-shaped spacecraft, with landing to be accomplished by a parachute; a more sophisticated approach by possibly employing a lifting vehicle or one with a modified drag; and a long-range program that might lead to creating a space station or a trip to the Moon.[23]
  • Born:

March 11, 1958 (Tuesday)

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An Mk-6 atomic bomb
  • A U.S. B-47 bomber accidentally dropped an unarmed Mk-6 atomic bomb on a farm at Mars Bluff, South Carolina, five miles (8 km) east of the city of Florence. Although there was no danger of a nuclear explosion, the conventional TNT explosives within the bomb were inadvertently detonated on impact, hurting six people. The United Press news service commented that "It was the first time an atomic bomb was known to have been dropped in the United States outside nuclear testing grounds."[24] The explosion demolished the home of the farm owner, Walter Gregg, and injured him, his wife and three children, and a niece. The blast left a crater 75 feet (23 m) in diameter and 35 feet (11 m) deep in his yard. The Strategic Air Command issued a statement afterward that "Mechanical malfunction of the plane's bomb lock caused the four-jet B-47 to let go of the bomb."[24]
  • Died: Ole Kirk Christiansen, 66, Danish toymaker who founded The Lego Group in 1932 as a maker of wooden toys and later moved to acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastic toys that would become his company's billion-dollar product

March 12, 1958 (Wednesday)

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  • The Army of Indonesia began a nationwide offensive on the island of Sumatra against the rebel Revolutionary Government (PRRI) rebellion, starting with a defeat of the PRRI in a battle at Pekanbaru to prevent the destruction of the Caltex oil fields and refinery.[25]
  • In Cuba, the regime of President Fulgencio Batista announced the suspension of constitutional rights across the entire nation, with censorship of all media in order "to adopt special measures to maintain public order", according to a statement from Batista's office. He asked Prime Minister Emilio Núñez Portuondo, who had taken office only six days earlier, to resign along with the entire cabinet of members, and replaced him with Gonzalo Güell.[26] The action came one day after constitutional guarantees had been restored in the Oriente Province, where Fidel Castro's guerrilla operation was most active.[27]
  • The 26th of July Movement, Fidel Castro's guerrilla organization, issued the "Manifiesto Del Movimiento 26 De Julio Al Pueblo",[28] its manifesto of a declaration of a "total war on tyranny". Castro called on Cubans to boycott the upcoming November 3 presidential and legislative elections and threatened that people who participated ran the risk of being killed.
  • The NACA staff completed its outline for the "manned satellite program", based on a study of reaching orbit, orbit control, reviewing space limitations, configuration studies, propulsion system research, human factors, structures and materials, satellite instrumentation, range requirements, and noise and vibration during reentry and exit. The program would start with full-scale studies of mockups, simulators, and detail designs, followed by full-scale vertical and orbiting flights involving uncrewed, animal, and crewed flights and recovery, and a goal of increasing the mass of payloads. NACA concluded that the Atlas missile was adequate to reach orbital flights; that retrograde and vernier controllable thrust could be used for orbital control; that heat-sink or lighter material could be used against reentry heating; that guidance should be ground-programmed with provisions for the pilot to make final adjustments; that recovery should be accomplished at sea with parachutes used for letdown; that a global network of radar stations should be established for continuous tracking; and that launches be made from Cape Canaveral in Florida.[23]
  • Maurice Stokes, the 1956 NBA Rookie of the Year and a forward for the Cincinnati Royals (now the Sacramento Kings), suffered a brain injury when he was knocked down during a 96-89 win over the Minneapolis Lakers. After being revived, he returned to play, finishing with 24 points.[29] Three days later, Stokes suffered a seizure after a playoff game and was left permanently paralyzed.

March 13, 1958 (Thursday)

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  • A group of 7,000 members of the police force of Paris began a demonstration in the courtyard of the police headquarters. On encouragement from an extremist member of parliament, Jean-Marie Le Pen, about 2,000 of the police attempted to enter the Palais Bourbon, where the French National Assembly held its sessions.[30] The next day, a new chief of police, Maurice Papon, was named to restore order to replace Prefect Andre Lahillonne.[31]
  • John Aiken of Arlington, Massachusetts, played his first and only National Hockey League game, after being called out of the stands at the Boston Garden where he was a spectator. Under NHL rules at the time, each team had an employee whose job was to tend goal during practices, with the added duty of coming in as an "emergency goalie" during regular games if the goaltender for either team was injured. In the second period, Montreal Canadiens' goaltender Jacques Plante suffered a skull fracture and Aiken was ordered to substitute. Entering when the Boston Bruins were leading 1 to 0, Aiken made 12 saves but six goals got past him and Boston won, 7 to 3.[32]
  • Nathan Leopold, who helped kidnap and murder 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924, walked out of Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois after serving 33½ years of his "life plus 99 years" sentence.[33] Leopold's partner in crime, Richard Loeb, had been killed by a fellow inmate at the state penitentiary in Joliet in 1936.

March 14, 1958 (Friday)

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  • The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) introduced the concept of recognition as a "gold record" for any U.S. music recording that had achieved at least $1,000,000 in retail sales[34] and certified the 45 rpm recording by Perry Como of "Catch a Falling Star" as the first RIAA-measured gold record. While record labels had previously presented gold or silver record awards to their own artists as far back as 1937, the RIAA applied the award to all U.S.-based recording companies.
  • The United States imposed an embargo on sales of weapons to the government of Cuba's dictator Fulgencio Batista, contributing significantly to the deterioration of the Cuban resistance to the rebellion led by Fidel Castro.
  • Former U.S. President Harry S. Truman called a press conference to respond to recent criticism of him by the city council of the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which had been struck by a U.S. atomic bomb on Truman's authorization on August 6, 1945. Truman read aloud a letter he had sent the day before to Hiroshima's mayor, Tsukasa Nitoguri, and said, "Your courteous letter... was greatly appreciated. The feeling of the people of your city is easily understood, and I am not in any way offended by the resolution which their City Council passed. However, it becomes necessary for me to remind the City Council, and perhaps you also, of some historical events." He went on to say, "As the executive who ordered the dropping of the bomb, I think the sacrifice of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was urgent and necessary for the prospective welfare of both Japan and the Allies. The need for such a fateful decision, of course, never would have arisen had we not been shot in the back by Japan at Pearl Harbor in December, 1941."[35]
  • Born:

March 15, 1958 (Saturday)

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March 16, 1958 (Sunday)

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  • Elections were held in the South American nation of Colombia for both houses of the Congress, the 148-member Cámara de Representantes and the 80-member Senado, the first free election since 1949 and the first under the National Front agreement of June 24, 1956, which allocated the seats equally among the two legal political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. The multi-candidate primary elections were contested for the available allocated seats, and the outcome of the voting for the Conservatives would affect the choice for the next president, who was to be a Conservative under the 1956 agreement.[41] Right-wing Conservative Party candidates won the majority of the seats allotted to the Party but their leader, former President Laureano Gomez, declined to be selected as president and opposed the moderate Conservative candidate, Guillermo Leon Valencia, who would have been accepted by the Liberals, was not favored by the majority of the Conservative Party.[42] On March 31, Gómez endorsed a Liberal, Alberto Lleras as an acceptable replacement on condition that the 1962 President would be a Conservative.[43]
  • The quadrennial legislative election in the Soviet Union was conducted to vote yes or no on the slate of unopposed candidates that had been pre-approved by the Communist Party for the Supreme Soviet, with 738 for the Soviet of the Union and 640 for the Soviet of Nationalities.[44] Out of almost 134 million votes, about 581,000 or 0.4% were no votes. Citizens could also vote yes by submitting an unmarked ballot.[45]
  • In Italy, the rebuilt Ponte Santa Trinita over the Arno River was rededicated in Florence, almost 14 years after the original 16th century bridge had been destroyed by retreating German troops during World War II. A reporter for The New York Times noted, "Often referred to as the world's most beautiful bridge, it has been reconstructed 'where it was and how it was,'" with the lobbying and fundraising efforts led by U.S. art historian Bernard Berenson.[46]
  • Born:

March 17, 1958 (Monday)

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  • Italy's President Giovanni Gronchi dissolved the Italian Senate and the Chamber of Deputies and scheduled parliamentary elections for May 25 and May 26.[47]
 
The Vanguard 1 satellite being loaded into the nosecone
  • The United States launched the Vanguard 1 satellite into orbit, its second successful orbital launch and the first for the U.S. Navy.[48] The three-stage Saturn rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:15 a.m. local time (1215 UTC) and entered an elliptical orbit ranging between 2,513 miles (4,044 km) and 407 miles (655 km) above the Earth, higher than the two satellites in orbit from the Soviet Union or the U.S. Explorer 1.[49] Vanguard 1 was also the smallest of the first four satellites, measuring 6.4 inches (160 mm) in diameter, comparable to a grapefruit and weighing 3.25 pounds (1.47 kg).[50]
  • The NACA Special Committee on Space Technology presented its reports from committee working groups. From 1952 and 1956, 10% of NACA's research applied to astronautics. In 1957, it was 23% and by 1958, 30% to the aerodynamic effort and 20% to propulsion.[23]
  • The Convention on the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization entered into force, creating the International Maritime Organization (IMCO) as a specialized agency of the United Nations.

March 18, 1958 (Tuesday)

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  • With the Palais Bourbon guarded by troops, France's National Assembly voted for the eleventh time to express confidence in the four-month old government of Prime Minister Felix Gaillard on the issue of constitutional reform. In what was seen as an effort to avoid worsening the ongoing political crisis created by the siege of the parliamentary building five days earlier, Assembly voted 282 to 196 in favor of continuing the Gaillard government.[51]
  • The report "Preliminary Studies of Manned Satellites, Wingless Configuration, Non-Lifting", which would become the basic working paper for the Project Mercury development program, was published by NACA after being written by Maxime A. Faget, Benjamine Garland, and James J. Buglia.[23] The same day, the NACA Conference on High-Speed Aerodynamics began to acquaint the military services and industrial contractors of aerospace projects and results of recent research on spaceflight. The 3-day conference was attended by more than 500 people, featured 46 technical papers presented by NACA personnel, and included specific proposals for human spaceflight vehicle projects.[23]
  • Born: Andriy Valentynov (pen name for Andriy Shmalko), Ukrainian historian, archaeologist and science fiction author; in Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union

March 19, 1958 (Wednesday)

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March 20, 1958 (Thursday)

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March 21, 1958 (Friday)

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  • The existence of a new strain of the bacterium staphylococcus aureus, which was resistant to penicillin and other known antibiotics, was announced by the U.S. Public Health Service.[59] A new antibiotic, methicillin, would be discovered in 1960 as effective against the new strain, but would later be matched by another strain, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA.
  • A fire in the Egyptian town of Damat Kutur killed at least 16 people and seriously injured another 11 after starting in a small hut with a straw roof and then being spread by pigeons who had been on the hut's roof. "Flying in agony," a United Press report noted, "the birds acted as flying torches, setting fire to the straw roofs of hundreds of other huts."[60]
  • Bulldozers and helicopters were able to end a 36-hour crisis at a small restaurant on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where more than 800 travelers trapped by a blizzard were crowded in a restaurant that had a capacity for only 100. A traffic jam of over 1,000 cars, buses and trucks, caused by a 42-inch (1,100 mm) snowfall on Wednesday night, had stalled on a 14-mile (23 km) stretch of the highway and had made their way to the only shelter available, a Howard Johnson's restaurant.[61]
  • Born:
  • Died: Cyril M. Kornbluth, 34, American science fiction author, died of a heart attack while in the New York City subway.[62]

March 22, 1958 (Saturday)

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  • An attempt by the French National Assembly to make reforms, to replace the French Fourth Republic with a system with a stronger executive branch, failed by one vote to get the three-fifths majority required for immediate amending the national constitution. Needing 309 of the 514 votes in the Assembly, the measure had a 308 to 206 result, and would require submission to a referendum if approved by the Council of the Republic.[63]
 
Todd & Taylor five months earlier
  • Mike Todd, a successful film and theatrical producer, was killed in the crash of his Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar twin-engine airplane, along with his biographer and screenwriter Art Cohn, 48, pilot Bill Verner and co-pilot Tom Barclay.[64] The overloaded plane was flying Todd back home to Hollywood after his promotional visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico when it suffered an engine failure in icing conditions and crashed in the Zuni Mountains near Grants, New Mexico. Todd had been since 1957 the third husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor (who was not aboard because she had stayed home with a bout of bronchitis)[65] and was an ex-husband of Joan Blondell.
  • Former U.S. President Harry S. Truman served briefly as conductor for the Kansas City Philharmonic orchestra as part of a benefit concert for the organization, guiding the musicians in their performance of John Philip Sousa's famous march, The Stars and Stripes Forever.[66]
  • Police in the French village of Mont-d'Origny arrested U.S. Army Private Wayne Powers, a 37-year-old native of Chillicothe, Missouri, who had deserted his unit in Verdun in November, 1944. For more than 13 years, Powers lived with Yvette Beleuse, and the two had five children. The police turned Powers over to U.S. military authorities at Verdun, where he was court-martialed and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Tens of thousands of French citizens wrote to the U.S. Army and the U.S. Embassy in Paris and asked for clemency, and his sentence was later commuted to six months at hard labor. He would be released on October 9, 1958, after serving his sentence. [67]
 
McCardell
  • Died: Claire McCardell, 52, American fashion designer known for her practical, comfortable designs [68]

March 23, 1958 (Sunday)

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March 24, 1958 (Monday)

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  • Saudi Arabia's King Saud, who had reigned over the Middle Eastern nation since 1953, transferred most of his absolute power to his younger brother, Crown Prince Faisal.[72]
  • In the U.S., nine of the 24 people on Braniff Airways Flight 971 were killed when it crashed shortly after taking off from Miami on a flight to Panama.[73] The four-engine Douglas DC-7C propeller-driven airplane experienced an engine fire and returned to the Miami Airport for an emergency landing, but the burning wing ripped loose and the plane crashed into the Everglades and burned in a marsh more than 4 miles (6.4 km) from the runway. An investigation later blamed the crash on "The failure of the captain to maintain altitude during an emergency return to the airport due to his undue preoccupation with an engine fire following takeoff."[74] The loss of the airplane's wing (which fell 50 yards (46 m) from the cabin) proved to be fortunate. Survivors told investigators that "all aboard might have been killed had not a flaming wing section ripped loose from the plane and had not Everglades marshes helped absorb the shock of impact."[75]
 
Presley and others being sworn in at Fort Chaffee

March 25, 1958 (Tuesday)

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  • The largest non-nuclear explosion in the Soviet Union, an underground blast, was so powerful that U.S. Senate Disarmament Subcommittee Chairman Hubert H. Humphrey said later that it had been detected more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) away and that "if caused by chemicals, would probably have required 100 freight carloads of explosives."[78] Senator Humphrey would reveal the news shortly after Moscow Radio predicted on April 6 that the Soviet Union would use small atomic weapons to build immense tunnels "in the near future".[79]
  • The West Indies Federation, the 10-member union of islands in the Caribbean Sea, held its first and only parliamentary elections. Of the 45 seats of the Federation's House of Representatives, the West Indies Federal Labour Party, led by Grantley Adams of Barbados and Norman Manley of Jamaica, won a majority with 25 seats.[80]
  • Cuba's Congress voted to approve the declaration by President Batista of "a state of national emergency" and granted him full power to respond to the insurgency by 26th of July Movement leader Fidel Castro.
  • Canada's supersonic Avro Arrow jet interceptor made its maiden flight. The aircraft was never put into production and the project would be cancelled 11 months later on February 20, 1959.
  • In a split decision, Sugar Ray Robinson won the world middleweight boxing championship for the fifth time in his career, defeating title holder Carmen Basilio, who had beaten Robinson in September.[81][82]
  • Died: Tom Brown (trombonist), 69, American Dixieland bandleader and trombonist

March 26, 1958 (Wednesday)

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March 27, 1958 (Thursday)

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  • Nikolai Bulganin was removed from his position as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, without explanation, and replaced as the head of the Soviet government by the Soviet Communist Party's First Secretary (and de facto leader of the U.S.S.R.), Nikita Khrushchev.[87] The first clue of Premier Bulganin's fall from grace came two days earlier, when he was not included in the group of Soviet officials who hosted United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and not mentioned at all in a Radio Moscow report of six persons present at the Kremlin dinner.[88] On June 19, 1957, the "Anti-Party Group" within the Communist Party Politburo had attempted to remove Khrushchev as the First Secretary and had secured a 7 to 4 vote in favor of placing Premier Bulganin in the position.[89] Khrushchev had taken the matter to the full Central Committee, which reversed the Politburo decision, and the three members of the Anti-Party effort (Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich) were quickly removed. "Since it would have been awkward to dismiss Khrushchev's own prime minister" in 1957, an author would later note, "Bulganin temporarily remained at his post as window dressing," [89] until the next meeting of the Supreme Soviet could vote to accept Bulganin's resignation. Bulganin was given a position as chairman of Gosbank, the government's central bank.[90]
  • The government of France issued an order banning the controversial book La Question, a book by Henri Alleg that revealed torture techniques used by the French Army during the ongoing Algerian War.[91][92] Released on February 18 by Éditions de Minuit, La Question had sold 60,000 copies before the government seized the remaining 7,000 and banned its sale on national security grounds. The basis for invoking the censorship law was "attempted demoralization of the Army with intent to harm the defense of the nation". Within two weeks, a publishing house in Switzerland, Éditions de la Cité, would print another run of copies.

March 28, 1958 (Friday)

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  • Jeremiah Reeves, an African-American man who was sentenced to death after being convicted for a rape of a white woman, committed when he was 17 years old, was executed in the electric chair at Kilby Prison in Montgomery, Alabama, less than five hours after Alabama Governor Jim Folsom announced that a plea for clemency would not be granted.[93] For more than five years, beginning after Reeves's arrest in 1952, the NAACP had hired attorneys to defend Reeves and had taken his case up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although put on trial for one rape after his arrest on November 10, 1952,[94] Reeves had been initially indicted for crimes against six women in Montgomery, one for robbery, three for assault with intent to rape and two for rape.[95] On December 6, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court set aside his conviction and remanded the matter for another trial.[96] Reeves was convicted again on June 2, 1955 [97] and sentenced to death a second time.[98] On January 13, 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court voted, 8 to 1, to deny a second appeal.[99] Dr. Martin Luther King would write later in his memoir that the Reeves case illustrated the unequal treatment of black and white men in the meting out of sentences: "It was the severity of Jeremiah Reeves's penalty that aroused the Negro community, not the question of his guilt or innocence. But not only are we here to repent for the sin committed against Jeremiah Reeves, but we are also here to repent for the constant miscarriage of justice that we confront every day in our courts. The death of Jeremiah Reeves is only the precipitating factor for our protest, not the causal factor. The causal factor lies deep down in the dark and dreary past of our oppression. The death of Jeremiah Reeves is but one incident, yes a tragic incident, in the long and desolate night of our court injustice."
  • Born:
  • Died:
    • W. C. Handy, 84, American blues music composer and musician known as "the Father of the Blues" for making the genre popular.[100]
    • Chuck Klein, 53, American baseball outfielder, 1932 National League MVP and batting champion and Baseball Hall of Fame enshrinee, died of a cerebral hemorrhage.[101]
    • Charles H. Strub, 73, American dentist, entrepreneur and sportsman who successfully lobbied California to bring horse racing and parimutuel betting to California and opened the Santa Anita Park.

March 29, 1958 (Saturday)

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  • Representatives of Brazil and Bolivia signed the Roboré Agreement in an attempt to resolve their boundary dispute over islands in the Amazon River between the two, including the Isla Suárez, an island claimed by both sides and located in a tributary of the Amazon, the Mamoré River.
  • The Soviet Union's Ministry of Education created a university in Khabarovsk in the Russian SFSR, initially called the Khabarovsk Automobile Highway Institute for engineering.[102] The institution would become the Khabarovsk Polytechnical Institute in 1962 and, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Khabarovsk State University of Technology (in 1992) and, as of 2005, the Pacific National University with 21,000 students.
  • England's Grand National steeplechase race was held at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool and won by Irish thoroughbred Mr. What, ridden by Arthur Freeman.

March 30, 1958 (Sunday)

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  • Ukrainian-born French ballet master Serge Lifar fought a duel with swords against Chilean-born French ballet producer George de Cuevas over changes made by Cuevas to Lifar's ballet, Suite en blanc. Only 50 members of the press were told of the time and place for the duel, which ended with Lifar receiving a cut to his forearm in what W. Granger Blair of The New York Times described as "what may well have been the most delicate encounter in the history of French dueling."[103]
  • The pilot of National Airlines Flight 508 narrowly averted a head-on collision with a two-engine plane at 8,000 feet (2,400 m) during his approach to New York at the end of a flight from Palm Beach, Florida. With 58 people on board, the pilot of the Douglas DC-6, Jack A. Guthrie, was over New Jersey and still 70 miles (110 km) from New York when he saw the smaller plane flying directly toward him. Guthrie made a steep dive, causing 11 persons to require medical treatment, but was able to land safely at New York International Airport at "Idlewild", later renamed for the late President John F. Kennedy and referred to now as "JFK Airport".[104]
  • Born:
  • Died: Javier Pereira, Colombian citizen who claimed that he was 168 years old[105]

March 31, 1958 (Monday)

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Canada's Prime Minister Diefenbaker
  • Nationwide voting for the House of Commons of Canada took place less than eight months after the previous vote that had given the Progressive Conservative Party (PC) a plurality in the 265-member body. The PC, led by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker went from a 112 to 105 lead over Lester B. Pearson's Liberal Party to a 208 to 48 lead, an increase of more than 85%.[106]
  • The Supreme Soviet, legislature of the Soviet Union, approved a decision to halt nuclear testing, conditional on other nuclear powers doing the same.[107] A worldwide moratorium by the three nuclear powers (the U.S., the USSR and the UK) would begin in November and last for three years.[108]
  • The ocean liner MS Skaubryn caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean while 300 miles (480 km) off of the cost of Africa. All but one of the more than 1,300 passengers and crew on the I. M. Skaugen Line ship were rescued after evacuating to lifeboats. They were reached first by a Polish Ocean Lines cargo ship, MS Małgorzata Fornalska which then was able to transfer the persons on board to SS City of Sydney, a larger freighter of the British Ellerman Line.[109] MS Skaubryn was less than halfway through its West Germany to Australia voyage from Bremerhaven to Sydney.
  • Austrian Airlines, a subsidiary of Lufthansa and the national airline of Austria, began operations with a flight from Vienna to the Swiss city of Zürich, in a leased Vickers Viscount airplane.
  • Ian Fleming's Dr. No, the sixth in his James Bond series, was first published.[110] On October 5, 1962, the book would be the first Bond novel to be adapted to film, starring Sean Connery as Bond.

References

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  3. ^ "Uruguay Elects President", The New York Times, March 2, 1958, p. 6
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  6. ^ "Karamanlis Resigns as Premier; Calls for an Election in Greece", The New York Times, March 3, 1958, p. 3
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  8. ^ "Mack Quits F.C.C.; President Calls His Action 'Wise'", by Jay Walz, The New York Times, March 4, 1958, p.1
  9. ^ "Mack Is Indicted With Whiteside in Miami TV Case; Ex-F.C.C. Aide and Lawyer Accused — Harris Defends Lawrence and Smathers Indicted on Conspiracy Charges", The New York Times, September 26, 1958, p. 1
  10. ^ "Nuri As-Said Gets Iraq Premiership", The New York Times, March 4, 1958, p. 3
  11. ^ "High Court Curbs Army Discharges in Security Cases; Bars Pre-Induction Activities as Basis for Less Than Honorable Severance", by Anthony Lewis, The New York Times, March 4, 1958, p.1
  12. ^ "Integration Delay Denied For Virginia's Test County", The New York Times, March 4, 1958, p.1
  13. ^ "Wilhelm Zaisser Is Dead at 65; East German State Security Minister Lost Office After Workers' Riot in 1953", The New York Times, March 7, 1958, p. 23
  14. ^ Finney, John W. (March 6, 1958). "2d U.S. Explorer Fired, Vanishes; Orbiting in Doubt— Early Signals Die— Official Says Evidence Shows Malfunction in the Missile". The New York Times. p. 1.
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  16. ^ "North Koreans Down U. S. Jet; Free 26 From Hijacked Airliner". The New York Times. March 7, 1958. p. 1.
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  60. ^ "Pigeons Spread a Fire In Egypt That Kills 16". The New York Times. March 23, 1958. p. 17.
  61. ^ "800 in Pennsylvania Stranded 36 Hours In a Turnpike Cafe". The New York Times. March 22, 1958. p. 1.
  62. ^ "Cyril M. Kornbluth Dead at 35; Wrote Science Fiction Stories". The New York Times. March 22, 1958. p. 17.
  63. ^ "Charter Reform Gets Paris Vote; Assembly Approves a Bill to Strengthen Executive — Referendum Needed", The New York Times, March 22, 1958, p. 2
  64. ^ "Mike Todd and 3 Aides Die In New Mexico Air Crash; Producer on Way Here to a Dinner— Art Cohn, Writer, Also Killed", The New York Times, March 23, 1958, p. 1
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  67. ^ "U. S. Private, Jailed for 1944 Desertion, Is Freed to Return to His French Family", The New York Times, October 10, 1958, p. 14
  68. ^ "Clarie McCardell, Designer, Is Dead", The New York Times, March 23, 1958, p. 1
  69. ^ "Kentucky, Xavier Triumphs Hailed; N.C.A.A., N.I.T Basketball Champions Reached Peaks After Mediocre Seasons", by Louis Effbat, The New York Times, March 24, 1958, p. 33
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  73. ^ "10 Dead, 14 Injured In Miami Air Crash". The New York Times. March 25, 1958. p. 1.
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  76. ^ "King of Rock 'n' Roll Becomes Pvt. Presley". The New York Times. March 25, 1958. p. 29.
  77. ^ "Herbert Fields, Librettist, Dead— Author of Broadway and Film Hits, Including 'Annie Get Your Gun,' Was 60". The New York Times. March 25, 1958. p. 33.
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  81. ^ "Ray Robinson Wins Title for Fifth Time". The New York Times. March 26, 1958. p. 1.
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  93. ^ "Convicted Rapist Dies In Kilby Electric Chair; Reeves Calm As 5-Year Wait Ends", Montgomery (AL) Advertiser, March 28, 1958, p. 1
  94. ^ "High school boy held as he admits beating Montgomery woman", Birmingham (AL) News, November 11, 1952, p. 4
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  104. ^ "58 in Airliner Safe As It Dives to Avert Mid-Air Collision". The New York Times. March 31, 1958. p. 1.
  105. ^ "Javier Pereira, Colombian Indian, Dies; Believed 168, Called World's Oldest Man". The New York Times. April 1, 1958. p. 31.
  106. ^ "Diefenbaker Easy Winner Over Pearson in Canada", by Raymond Daniell, The New York Times, April 1, 1958, p. 1
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