100 Fun Facts About 1964

Which band made its first live US television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964?

The Beatles drew an estimated 73 million viewers; Sullivan is said to have booked them after seeing crowds of fans greet their return to Heathrow from Sweden.

Whom did Cassius Clay beat in Miami Beach on February 25, 1964, to become heavyweight champion?

Sonny Liston, the heavy favourite, stayed on his stool when the bell rang for the seventh round, complaining of an injured shoulder.

Which US state was struck on Good Friday 1964 by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America?

Alaska took the magnitude 9.2 shock, and the tsunamis it set off killed people as far away as the coast of California.

Which Austrian city hosted the 1964 Winter Olympics?

Innsbruck was so short of snow that the Austrian army hauled in thousands of cubic metres of it and packed it onto the ski courses.

Which city hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the first Games held in Asia?

Tokyo had its cauldron lit by Yoshinori Sakai, born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb fell, a choice meant to show the country's recovery from the war.

Which US law did President Lyndon Johnson sign on July 2, 1964?

The Civil Rights Act got through only after the Senate voted to cut off a filibuster, something it had never managed before on a civil rights bill.

The US Surgeon General's landmark report of January 11, 1964, warned Americans about the health dangers of what?

Smoking was the target, and Luther Terry chose a Saturday to release the report so it would fill the Sunday papers but spare the stock market.

What did the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the US Constitution outlaw in 1964?

Poll taxes were banned only in federal elections; it took a Supreme Court ruling two years later to end them in state and local votes.

For which film did Sidney Poitier become the first African-American to win Best Actor in 1964?

Lilies of the Field stood alone for 38 years: no other Black actor won Best Actor until Denzel Washington in 2002, the night Poitier collected an honorary Oscar.

The British gang jailed for a combined 307 years in April 1964 had stolen £2.6 million from what?

A mail train from Glasgow to London was the target; Ronnie Biggs, one of the men jailed, climbed out of prison the next year and stayed on the run until 2001.

Jerrie Mock became the first woman to fly solo where in April 1964?

Around the world in 29 days: Mock flew a single-engine Cessna and finished ahead of a rival, Joan Merriam Smith, who had set off two days before her.

To which prison was Nelson Mandela sent after being sentenced to life in June 1964?

Robben Island took all but one of the eight men jailed for life: Denis Goldberg, the only white man convicted, was held apart in Pretoria.

Which British television channel began broadcasting on April 20, 1964?

BBC Two's opening night was blacked out by a power cut across west London, so its first scheduled programme was the children's show Play School the next morning.

Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged on April 26, 1964, to form which country?

Tanzania takes its name from both partners, and the union came only months after a revolution on Zanzibar had overthrown the island's sultan.

Which programming language ran its first program at 4:00 a.m. on May 1, 1964?

BASIC was written at Dartmouth by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz so that students outside the sciences could use a computer.

A disallowed equaliser for Peru against Argentina set off one of football's deadliest disasters in which city in May 1964?

Lima's National Stadium had its exits shut, so when police fired tear gas into the stands the fleeing crowd was crushed in the stairwells; the official toll was 328.

Which car made its first appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 20, 1964?

The Ford GT40 was Henry Ford II's answer after Enzo Ferrari backed out of selling him his company; none finished in 1964, but the car won Le Mans in 1966.

Which country beat the Soviet Union 2-1 to win the 1964 European Nations' Cup?

Spain won the final in Madrid four years after pulling out of the first tournament rather than travel to Moscow to play the same opponents.

Which African country, known under British rule as Nyasaland, became independent on July 6, 1964?

Malawi began under prime minister Hastings Banda, who turned it into a one-party republic two years later and was made president for life in 1971.

What did the Ranger 7 probe send back on July 31, 1964?

The first close-up photos of the Moon arrived in the final minutes before Ranger 7 crashed into it as planned, ending a long run of failed American lunar probes.

Which US destroyer was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964?

USS Maddox and a second destroyer reported another attack two nights later that probably never happened, yet within days Congress handed Johnson broad war powers in Vietnam.

What took place in Liverpool and Manchester on August 13, 1964, for the last time in the United Kingdom?

Judicial hangings ended with Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans, executed in two different prisons for the same murder; Parliament suspended the death penalty for murder the next year.

Which nation did the IOC bar from the 1964 Summer Olympics for refusing to renounce racial discrimination in sport?

South Africa would not condemn apartheid in sport, and it did not return to the Olympics until Barcelona in 1992, once the apartheid laws had been repealed.

Which Disney film premiered in Los Angeles on August 27, 1964, and went on to win five Oscars?

Mary Poppins never went near London: the whole film was shot on soundstages at the Disney studio in Burbank, California, in front of painted backdrops.

Which British newspaper replaced the Daily Herald in September 1964?

The Sun began as a broadsheet promising a radical, independent line; it turned tabloid only after Rupert Murdoch bought it five years later.

Which body submitted its report on the Kennedy assassination on September 24, 1964?

The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone; fifteen years later a House committee decided there had probably been a conspiracy.

What did Japan inaugurate on October 1, 1964, as a world first?

A high-speed rail system, the Shinkansen 'bullet train', ran at up to 210 km/h, and the World Bank lent $80 million to help build it.

Which Soviet spacecraft carried the first multi-person crew, three cosmonauts, into orbit in October 1964?

Voskhod 1 was a one-man Vostok capsule refitted for three, so tight that the cosmonauts had to fly without spacesuits.

Who in 1964 became, at 35, the youngest person yet to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Martin Luther King Jr. kept none of the prize money, about $54,000, sharing it out among the groups in the movement he led.

Which Soviet leader was deposed on October 14-15, 1964?

Nikita Khrushchev officially retired for 'advanced age' and ill health; in truth his colleagues had voted him out, and he lived on as a pensioner at his dacha.

Who became British prime minister after Labour's narrow election win on October 15, 1964?

Harold Wilson scraped in with a majority of just four seats, so he called another election 17 months later and won a majority of nearly 100.

Which country exploded its first atomic bomb on October 16, 1964?

China code-named the test 596, for June 1959, the month it resolved to build the bomb alone after the Soviet Union withdrew its help.

From which New York institution was the Star of India sapphire stolen on October 29, 1964?

The American Museum of Natural History was burgled through a window by a trio that included Jack 'Murph the Surf' Murphy; the sapphire turned up in a Miami bus-station locker.

Whom did Lyndon B. Johnson defeat in the November 1964 presidential election?

Barry Goldwater was the unnamed target of Johnson's barely shown 'Daisy' TV ad, in which a girl counting petals is blotted out by a nuclear explosion.

Which New York span, then the world's longest suspension crossing, opened November 21, 1964?

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge honours explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, but its name was misspelled with one 'z' for more than 50 years until New York corrected it in 2018.

Toward which planet did NASA launch Mariner 4 on November 28, 1964?

Mars turned out to be barren and cratered like the Moon in the 21 pictures Mariner 4 sent back, which quashed hopes of finding intelligent life there.

At which university did police arrest about 800 students at a Sproul Hall sit-in in December 1964?

UC Berkeley students in the Free Speech Movement had surrounded a police car holding an arrested activist two months earlier and kept it from moving for more than a day.

Which Lockheed aircraft made its first flight on December 22, 1964?

The SR-71 Blackbird was built after a U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union; at three times the speed of sound it simply outran missiles, and none was ever shot down.

Which revolutionary addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on December 11, 1964?

Che Guevara was speaking when Cuban exiles fired a bazooka at the building; the shell fell short and exploded in the East River.

Who was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused to accept it?

Jean-Paul Sartre turned it down, as he did every official honour, arguing that a writer should not let himself be turned into an institution.

Which instrument did Robert Moog demonstrate as a prototype in October 1964?

The synthesizer came from a man who had built and sold theremins since his teens, and it reached the wider world four years later through the hit album Switched-On Bach.

Which country won its first Eurovision Song Contest in 1964 with a singer aged just sixteen?

Italy's Gigliola Cinquetti sang 'Non ho l'età', meaning 'I'm not old enough', at a contest briefly interrupted by a protester carrying a banner that read 'Boycott Franco and Salazar'.

Which South American country's military seized power on March 31, 1964, and ruled for the next 21 years?

Brazil's generals toppled President João Goulart so quickly that an American naval task force ordered to stand by off the coast was never needed.

Which famous European statue had its head sawn off and stolen in April 1964?

The Little Mermaid never got that head back: a new one was cast and fitted, and the Copenhagen statue has since lost her head a second time and an arm as well.

Which future First Lady was born on January 17, 1964?

Michelle Obama met her future husband at a Chicago law firm in 1989, when he arrived for the summer and she was the lawyer assigned to advise him.

Which future Hollywood star was born in Beirut, Lebanon, on September 2, 1964?

Keanu Reeves grew up in Toronto, where his first passion was ice hockey rather than acting.

Which future US vice president was born on October 20, 1964?

Kamala Harris was born in Oakland in the same year that her mother, who had come from India at 19 to study, finished her doctorate.

Which five-star US general died on April 5, 1964?

Douglas MacArthur told Congress that old soldiers never die eight days after President Truman fired him in a clash over how to fight the Korean War.

Which country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died on May 27, 1964?

India had known no other prime minister in its 17 years of independence; his daughter Indira Gandhi, at his bedside that day, took the same office less than two years later.

Which former US president died on October 20, 1964, aged 90, more than 31 years after leaving the White House?

Herbert Hoover held no government post under Roosevelt, then was brought back by Truman after the war to survey the world's food needs and help reorganise the government.

Which stop-motion Christmas special, narrated by Burl Ives as a snowman, first aired on NBC in December 1964?

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer went on to be telecast every year for more than half a century, the longest unbroken run of any Christmas TV special in the United States.

Which Disney boat ride debuted at a 1964 exposition in New York before moving permanently to Disneyland?

It's a Small World was built for Pepsi as a tribute to UNICEF. Its songwriters wanted to give the song's profits to the charity until Walt Disney talked them out of it.

Which Dallas nightclub owner was sentenced to death in March 1964 for shooting Lee Harvey Oswald?

Jack Ruby was never executed: the conviction was overturned on appeal in 1966, and he fell ill and died in January 1967 before a new trial could start.

Which Kellogg's brand was rushed to market in 1964 after rival Post revealed its own version to the press too early?

Pop-Tarts won the race because Post showed its Country Squares to the press months before they were ready, giving Kellogg's time to develop a version of its own.

Which Hasbro toy soldier, launched in February 1964, led to the coining of the term action figure?

G.I. Joe needed the new label because the marketing wisdom of the day held that boys would not play with dolls, so Hasbro never used the word.

Which British author, a wartime fighter ace, published Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the US in 1964?

Roald Dahl drew on his schooldays, when Cadbury sent boxes of test chocolates to his school and asked the boys for their opinions.

Which Merv Griffin quiz show premiered on NBC in March 1964, an idea his wife Julann had on a flight?

Jeopardy! grew from Julann Griffin's remark that no question-and-answer game had worked since the quiz show scandals, so she fired answers at her husband and he supplied the questions.

Which actor did Elizabeth Taylor marry in a Montreal hotel in March 1964, ten days after her divorce from Eddie Fisher?

Richard Burton had been her co-star in Cleopatra, and after the pair divorced in 1974 they married each other again the following year in Botswana.

Which American car, unveiled at the New York World's Fair in April 1964, sold over 400,000 in its first year?

Mustang sales had been forecast at fewer than 100,000 for the first year, yet the millionth car was sold within two years of the launch.

Which Founding Father's portrait was replaced on the US half dollar by John F. Kennedy's in 1964?

Benjamin Franklin gave way after Congress approved the change just over a month after the assassination, and the first silver coins were hoarded as mementos of the late president.

Which James Bond film, released in 1964, has a villain plotting to set off a dirty bomb inside Fort Knox?

Goldfinger was the first Bond film to win an Academy Award, for its sound effects, and its budget matched those of the first two films combined.

Which actress played Eliza Doolittle in the 1964 film My Fair Lady, with most of her singing dubbed by Marni Nixon?

Audrey Hepburn replaced Julie Andrews, who had played the part on stage but had never been in a film, and the picture won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture.

Which American television actor took his first leading film role in Sergio Leone's 1964 western A Fistful of Dollars?

Clint Eastwood's breakthrough was an unofficial remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and the lawsuit that followed earned Kurosawa more money than his own film had.

Which CBS sitcom premiered in September 1964 with the crew and passengers of the charter boat SS Minnow shipwrecked?

Gilligan's Island named its doomed boat after Newton Minow, the FCC chairman who in a 1961 speech had called American television a vast wasteland.

Which 1964 CBS sitcom, set at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, borrowed the look of Universal's classic movie monsters?

The Munsters could copy the famous Frankenstein make-up because Universal co-produced the show, and it drew higher ratings than The Addams Family, its rival on ABC.

Which British actor played three different characters in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 nuclear satire Dr. Strangelove?

Peter Sellers was meant to take on even more: Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film only if he played at least four major roles.

Which singer starred opposite Ann-Margret as a race-car driver in the 1964 musical film Viva Las Vegas?

Elvis Presley shot the film in the summer of 1963, but it reached cinemas after Kissin' Cousins, a picture he had made later.

Which Motown trio scored the first of five straight US number ones in August 1964 with Where Did Our Love Go?

The Supremes held the top spot for two weeks with a song written and produced by Motown's Holland–Dozier–Holland team, then followed it with Baby Love.

Which California band scored its first US number-one single on July 4, 1964, with I Get Around?

The Beach Boys backed it with Don't Worry Baby, and the single became one of America's biggest home-grown hits since the British Invasion began.

Which jazz trumpeter became the oldest artist yet to top the Billboard Hot 100 with Hello, Dolly! in May 1964?

Louis Armstrong had cut the song as a publisher's demo to promote the Broadway show. Released as a single, it made him a chart-topper at the age of 62.

Which singer starred as Fanny Brice when the musical Funny Girl opened on Broadway in March 1964?

Barbra Streisand was hired after Carol Burnett turned the part down, telling the producers that what the show needed was a Jewish girl.

Which Broadway musical opened in September 1964 with Zero Mostel starring as the milkman Tevye?

Fiddler on the Roof became the first musical in history to pass 3,000 performances, and held Broadway's long-run record for almost ten years until Grease overtook it.

Which spy novelist wrote the children's book Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, published in 1964 two months after his death?

Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, invented the flying-car tale as a bedtime story for his son Caspar and wrote it down while recovering from a heart attack.

Which American magazine published its first swimsuit issue in 1964 to fill a slow spell in the winter calendar?

Sports Illustrated editor Andre Laguerre had few winter fixtures to cover, so he ran a five-page beachwear layout with model Babette March on the cover.

Which golfer won the 1964 Masters by six strokes to become the first four-time champion at Augusta?

Arnold Palmer led by five strokes after three rounds, and it was another eight years before Jack Nicklaus matched his four green jackets.

Which team beat the New York Yankees in seven games to win baseball's 1964 World Series?

St. Louis Cardinals manager Johnny Keane resigned straight after the victory and took over the beaten Yankees, who had just fired Yogi Berra.

Which future world heavyweight champion won Olympic boxing gold in 1964 after replacing the injured Buster Mathis?

Joe Frazier went only as an alternate, having lost to Mathis in the trials, and he reached the final with a broken left thumb that he mentioned to no one.

Which martial art made its Olympic debut at the 1964 Summer Games, where Dutchman Anton Geesink won the open class?

Judo arrived at the Games in its home country, where the hosts won three of the four divisions but saw Geesink beat Akio Kaminaga in front of his own crowd.

Which Ethiopian runner became the first athlete to retain the Olympic marathon title at the 1964 Summer Games?

Abebe Bikila won about five weeks after having his appendix removed, and this time he wore shoes, having taken his first gold in Rome while running barefoot.

Which ballpark opened in Queens in April 1964 as the new home of baseball's New York Mets?

Shea Stadium was named for William Shea, the man most responsible for bringing National League baseball back to the city after the Dodgers and Giants left for California.

Which activist announced his break with the Nation of Islam in March 1964 and made the pilgrimage to Mecca weeks later?

Malcolm X embraced Sunni Islam, and said that seeing Muslims of every race mixing as equals on the Hajj showed him a way to overcome racial problems.

Which name did Lyndon Johnson give his domestic agenda in a May 1964 speech at the University of Michigan?

Great Society was a phrase credited to speechwriter Richard Goodwin, and the president had tried it out two weeks earlier in front of students at Ohio University.

Which flower gave its name to the 1964 Johnson campaign ad in which a girl counts petals before a nuclear blast?

Daisy ran as a paid commercial only once, during an NBC Monday night film on September 7, yet it is remembered as a turning point in political advertising.

In which US state were three Freedom Summer volunteers murdered by Ku Klux Klan members in June 1964?

Mississippi was where the three had been registering Black voters, and they were killed after visiting a church that had been burned. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam.

The 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens prompted decades of research into which psychological phenomenon?

Bystander effect studies grew out of a New York Times report that 38 witnesses had done nothing, a picture that later research found to be largely unfounded.

Which African country became independent on the closing day of the 1964 Summer Olympics, changing its name mid-Games?

Zambia had entered the Games as Northern Rhodesia, and it marked the change by carrying a new placard at the closing ceremony, the only team to use one.

Which Commonwealth island nation won independence from Britain in September 1964, a decade before becoming a republic?

Malta kept Elizabeth II as its queen under the 1964 constitution, with a governor-general acting for her, and did not establish its parliamentary republic until 1974.

Which country's parliament ended its long Great Flag Debate in December 1964 by voting to adopt a new national flag?

Canada's MPs voted at 2:15 in the morning after some 250 speeches, and the red maple leaf design was raised for the first time in February 1965.

Which Minnesota senator was Lyndon Johnson's running mate on the winning ticket in the 1964 presidential election?

Hubert Humphrey was kept in suspense at the convention alongside two rivals, one of them fellow Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, before the president announced his choice with fanfare.

Which Soviet politician took over as Communist Party First Secretary in October 1964 and led the country for 18 years?

Leonid Brezhnev at first governed in a troika with Premier Alexei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny, because the party had just barred one man from holding both top posts.

Which British physicist wrote a 1964 paper predicting the mass-giving particle that CERN finally detected in 2012?

Peter Higgs was the sole author of one of three milestone papers on the idea published that year, and he shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics with François Englert.

Which subatomic particles did Murray Gell-Mann propose in 1964, taking their name from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake?

Quarks were proposed independently the same year by George Zweig, and Gell-Mann was undecided on a spelling for his coinage until he found the word in Joyce's novel.

Which theory of the universe's origin was backed in 1964 when Bell Labs astronomers picked up a faint microwave hiss?

Big Bang theory won out over the rival steady state model, though the two astronomers first blamed the noise on pigeons nesting in their antenna and cleaned out the droppings.

Which British chemist won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry after mapping the structures of penicillin and vitamin B12?

Dorothy Hodgkin once taught a student called Margaret Roberts, the future Margaret Thatcher, who as prime minister hung her old tutor's portrait in Downing Street.

Which company announced the System/360 family of compatible mainframe computers on April 7, 1964?

IBM separated the architecture from the hardware that implemented it, which let the company sell a suite of compatible machines at very different prices.

Which computer device did Douglas Engelbart and Bill English first build as a prototype in 1964?

Mouse first appeared in print as the name of a pointing device in a July 1965 report by English, and the bulky original tracked movement with two wheels set at right angles.

Which Ferrari driver won the 1964 Formula One title, making him a world champion on both two wheels and four?

John Surtees won 38 motorcycle Grands Prix, and when he tried cars he finished second in only his second Formula One championship race in 1960.

Which British record-breaker set both the world land and water speed records in 1964, in vehicles named Bluebird?

Donald Campbell did both in Australia, taking the land record at 403 mph on a damp Lake Eyre in July and the water record on the last day of the year.

Which French cyclist won the 1964 Tour de France to become the race's first five-time champion?

Jacques Anquetil won all three time trials that year, which mattered when his rival Raymond Poulidor dropped him on a late climb and cut his lead to just 14 seconds.

Which pirate station, founded by Ronan O'Rahilly, began broadcasting pop music from a ship off England in March 1964?

Radio Caroline grew out of O'Rahilly's failure to get airplay for his artist Georgie Fame on Radio Luxembourg, so he took to international waters instead.