1963 Year in Review

beginning a series

Sixty years ago there was a coup d’etat with the murder of John F. Kennedy, with the murder of his alleged killer, with the arrest of the killer of his alleged killer, and with the subsequent deaths of many investigators including Dorothy Kilgallen. Today I am following a leading of the Holy Spirit to begin a series of “year in review” essays with the year 1963, which changed a great many things. Let’s get started, shall we?

First Quarter 1963

I have mentioned in these pages and elsewhere that I am a Quaker. We don’t use the pagan words for months and we don’t use the pagan words for days of the week, if we can avoid doing so. We’re the ones who started calling the months by their numbers about 350 years ago (Anno Domini 1650 or so). I think our approach makes a lot more sense than your nonsensical habit of calling the ninth month “September” when “sept” is the Latin word for seven. You have a lot of bad habits and it is a good time to begin reflecting on how you want to do things going forward, since bad habits got you into a lot of trouble. In this series of reviews, I will refer to the “first month” which you name after the Roman demon “Janus” the two-faced evil liar. I will refer to the “first day” which is “Domingo” in Spanish, meaning “God’s day,” and “Sunday” in English because of some sun worshipping silliness. Really, if you don’t want to get out of the mess you’re in, read no further.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~ Robert Frost, 1923

First month

Robert Frost died AD 1963 01 29. The American poet was 88 years old.

The Dow Jones Industrial average stood at 646.79 at the start of the year. The S&P 500 stood at 62.69. NASDAQ had not been established. Gold was $35 per ounce but could not be purchased by Americans without leaving the country. Silver was $1.29 per ounce. In a big city, eggs were 35 cents a dozen. A ten pound bag of potatoes would set you back 35 cents. A loaf of bread was 22 cents. A gallon of gasoline was 30 cents. Murray Rothbard is 37 years old this year and publishes a short book asking the provocative question What Has Government Done to Our Money? available free today from the Mises Institute. Short answer: nothing good, and it would only be more evil from here.

In domestic policy, JFK announced his desire to dramatically lower income tax rates from a max rate of 91% (those crazy Republicans under Eisenhower, huh?) to a max of 65% and from a minimum of 20% down to only 14%. Corporate income tax would be cut from 52% to 47%. In foreign policy he announced, “…we seek not the worldwide victory of one nation or system but a worldwide victory of man. The modern globe is too small, its weapons are too destructive, and its disorders are too contagious to permit any other kind of victory.” He closed his state of the union address noting 175 years of sailing on the winds of change, harking back only to 1788. He also thanked “Almighty God for seeing us through a perilous passage, we ask His help anew in guiding the Good Ship Union.”

Overseas, the China-India war of 1962 was formally ended by the acceptance by India’s parliament of peace terms. Canada’s prime minister gave long rambling speech unclear about North American defence. Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer announced an agreement between France and Germany to meet regularly for discussions to avoid future conflicts since they had three major wars between 1870 and 1945. Indonesia under Sukarno began a violent confrontation with Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah, and Singapore to prevent the establishment of a federation of Malaysia. This war would last several years. The Katanga crisis came to an end of sorts with the order of surrender by Moise Tshombe to UN forces in the Congo.

Sylvanus Olympio was murdered 1963 01 13. He was the president of Togo, a tiny African country which exports cocoa, coffee, and phosphates. His death was followed by ruthless dictatorship until 2005.

British spy Kim Philby wandered off from a meeting in Beirut. Later he would surface in Moscow where he revealed decades of treason as a spy for the Soviet Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD). His leaks sent hundreds of men to their deaths, primarily in Albania. (Alles ist klar herr kommissar.)

Jupiter missiles were quietly removed from Italy this month and a week later rather more boisterously began to be removed from Turkey. The settlement of the Cuban missile crisis became obvious.

A group of Trojans attacked and defeated a group of badgers in a rose bowl. It is unclear why.

NASA made frequent announcements through the first month of 1963 about Mercury Atlas, Gemini, and Apollo project plans. The original 7 Mercury astronauts were each assigned roles in the programme to distribute their knowledge and experience to different functions. The plan for Gordo Cooper’s upcoming flight of 18 orbits was extended to 22.

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It’s worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.

~ Sylvia Plath, The Colossus, 1957

Second month

The second month of 1963 began with a midair collision at Ankara, killing 17 passengers and crew of two aircraft (a Middle East airlines passenger plane and a Turkish air force C47) and also killing 70 people on the ground in the city, injuring 200 more. The collapse of a school chapel roof during heavy rains in Ecuador killed 104 people, mostly schoolgirls, while about 450 were attending worship services inside. The government of Canada dissolved, possibly due to brain fog induced by espionage operatives to disorient prime minister Diefenbaker and bring in a more militaristic government. JFK announced the end of travel to Cuba except for the American military base at Guantánamo bay enhancing profit to cigar smugglers. Iraq’s prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim was overthrown and murdered in the Ramadan coup by the Ba’ath party which would retain power until being officially banned after the 2003 invasion. The cia created its evil and perfidious domestic operations division, given authority to carry out operations in the United States against anyone the cia hated, including the Kennedys. The Toro Kingdom declared its independence from Uganda. An earthquake in Libya killed 300 and left 12,000 homeless. Burma sent its army to nationalise the banks at gunpoint. Monaco and Iran legalised women voting.

In the second month of the year, the Beatles went on tour at the bottom of a list of acts headed by 16-year-old singing sensation Helen Shapiro. Hits like Please Please Me and Love Me Do were in their repertoire for the tour. British spy Julia Child premiered her cooking show, the French chef, on television. In other cooking with gas news, poetess Sylvia Plath committed suicide. She was 30. Construction began on the St. Louis Gateway Arch. The soft drink Tab was introduced by Coca-cola creating confusion in a summer blockbuster film in 1985. (Apparently Spielberg didn’t know that RC Cola had released Diet-rite in 1955.) JFK created the Medal of Freedom by executive order, making it available to civilian American spies, culture creators, and peaceniks.

Boeing made the first flight of its 727 jet liner. Telstar became the first satellite to be destroyed by radiation from a high altitude atomic weapon test. A Titan II rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral testing systems for upcoming manned flights of the Gemini capsule.

Third month

Pan Am airlines succumbed to edifice complex, opening its new skyscraper in New York city. Doctors in a Denver hospital killed a three year old child attempting a liver transplant. Printers in New York city settled their strike with the New York Post while the other dailies fussed. The last viewing in America of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting closed this month in New York. The Confederate Air Force held its first air show of reconditioned WW2 fighter and bomber aircraft. Phoenix Arizona police arrested Ernesto Miranda and didn’t bother to tell him of his constitutional rights. The Glen Canyon dam became high enough to begin filling the reservoir known as Lake Powell. Merck and the FDA began to cooperate/collude on approval for a measles vaccine. The Beatles released their first album, Please Please Me. Four women in Illinois were reportedly dealt four perfect bridge hands in one game, which should not recur in 62 trillion years, but did in the tenth month of 1963 and again in the first month of 1964 in each of two cities in Florida.

Pakistan and China signed a treaty settling their border disputes. A Quebecois independence group fire bombed a wooden building in Montreal. Syria’s president was thrown out of office by a Salah al-Din who co-founded the Arab Ba’ath party. The prime minister of Afghanistan resigned and his cousin became king. A volcano on Bali erupted killing 1,150 people. The Shah of Iran began a violent crackdown on the students of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, killing two. The government of Guatemala was overthrown by its military.

The concept of an orbiting space station using Apollo hardware was first proposed. It was conceived to have a crew of 18 and be served by modified Apollo command modules seating six. Plans for the rendezvous of a Gemini spacecraft with an Agena target vehicle were improved. The longest coldest winter of 20th Century Britain came to an end, but it’s probably nothing to ponder. The Unisphere globe for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York city began construction to be featured later in a 1997 film about men in black. The first paper of the discovery of a quasar was published. Contact with the Soviet Mars 1 spacecraft was permanently lost due to an antenna malfunction. It would become the first craft to approach Mars later this same year.

Second Quarter

"So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?"
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Fourth month

The month began with the longest running “April Fools” gag ever, the television show “General Hospital” was first aired and has not ceased production yet. Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested in Birmingham for parading without a permit and released his letter from Birmingham jail. Sit-ins which had desegregated lunch counters in St. Louis in 1949 were held in Birmingham, leading to arrests. King in his letter called for civil disobedience against unjust laws, echoing the sentiments of Henry David Thoreau’s 1848 speech on civil disobedience. New Hampshire imposed a reverse intelligence tax in the form of a law authorising the first state lottery of the 20th Century.

The Soviet government agreed to establish a direct communication line or “hot line,” between its head of state and the president of the United States. Yugoslavia named Tito president for life. He lived until 1980. The caves at Lascaux were closed to the public for the first time in 17,000 years due to poor ventilation and shoddy management. Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador agreed not to allow nuclear weapons to be based in their countries.

NASA agreed to buy 13 flight-rated Gemini capsules from McDonnell Aircraft company (McDAC) as well as 8 test capsules. The Soviet Luna 4 spacecraft missed the Moon and entered a barycentric Earth orbit. Italy started its space research organisation.

Fifth month

Protests of segregation in the city of Birmingham led to the arrest of 959 people on the first day, including many children. Dogs and firehoses were turned on a thousand peaceful protesters by Bull Connor, commissioner of “public safety” because safety. The USA supreme court decided in Brady v. Maryland that the prosecution had to disclose exculpatory evidence before trial. Civil rights activist Medgar Evers made an unprecedented broadcast in Jackson Mississippi in favour of civil rights and integration.

The Netherlands got out of the business of owning parts of Indonesia with the transfer of “West New Guinea” to the government of Indonesia. The territory was promptly renamed West Irian and its capital, Hollandia, was renamed Kotabaru. Sukarno was named president for life of Indonesia, which didn’t work after a few years of cia effort. Canada’s exciting new puppet prime minister agreed to allow the USA military to place nuclear weapons in Canada. Fascist thugs operated by the cia murdered Grigoris Lambrakis, a Greek politician who didn’t like war. Five hundred thousand people attended his funeral and marched in protest.

The first James Bond film, Dr. No, reached the United States this month. The Rite of Spring symphony was performed at its 50th anniversary at Royal Albert Hall. Composor Igor Stravinsky attended.

Germany’s Seliger Forschungs-und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH developed and tested a three-stage sounding rocket of which only grainy newspaper photos are available at present. This Seliger rocket reached an apogee of 100 kilometers, roughly the lower reaches of “space.” Gordo Cooper was launched into space for 22 orbits aboard the last Mercury space capsule, named Faith 7. He deployed a secondary spacecraft, a beacon that he was able to see during the night traverse of his 4th orbit. He returned to Earth after 34 hours in orbit. A second group of astronauts were taken on twenty parabolic flights to provide up to 30 seconds of microgravity aboard a KC-135 which was promptly dubbed “the vomit comet.” Project MUDFLAP intercepted an orbiting Agena satellite with a Nike-Zeus missile. The New York Journal American published leaked testimony to congress that five Soviet cosmonauts had died in spaceflights from 1959 to 1961, including Serenty Shiborin who had been launched in 1959 and not heard from again after 28 minutes when communications were lost. Izvestia denied four of the deaths but not Shiborin’s.

Sixth month

Pope John XXIII, previously the patriarch of Venice, the “Pope of 1960” who was not obedient to the Fatima messages of Mother Mary died age 81 from stomach cancer and peritonitis. South Vietnam soldiers poured caustic chemicals on the heads of 67 Buddhist monks at Hue protesting unjust treatment. The USA threatened to halt aid and the cia continued planning to overthrow president Diem. At least 380 people were murdered by the Shah’s government of Iran after protests erupted after the Shah had Ayatollah Khomeini arrested. Hundreds more were tortured in jail. The senior executives at the cia celebrated these events in Iran. The military of Egypt involved itself in the civil war in Yemen, dropping phosgene chemical weapons on a village; cia management cheered on learning this news. A Buddhist monk set himself on fire in Saigon. He died. The cia move against Diem was put into higher gear. The mafia of Palermo, Sicily, always great friends to the cia, started a war with the Italian police by detonating a hidden car bomb after police were attracted by an obvious bomb on the back seat. Ten thousand police from mainland Italy would come to Sicily to overwhelm the mafia in ensuing weeks.

The 101 passengers and crew of Northwest Airlines 293, mostly airmen from McChord air base in Alaska, were killed when their DC7 airplane crashed into the waters of the Gulf of Alaska. The plane and their remains are believed to be at a depth of 8,000 feet and the exact cause of the accident has not yet been established. Some wreckage but no bodies were recovered. JFK signed executive order 11110 authorising silver certificates to be issued by the US treasury department. He suspended nuclear weapons testing and invited the Soviets to discuss a test ban treaty. Later in the month, JFK was in Berlin giving a speech telling the assembled audience that he is a jelly doughnut “ein berliner.” jk George Wallace tried to blockade the doorway of a university admissions building to protest integrated admissions, but backed down because he wouldn’t go to jail for his opinions. Doctors in Mississippi murdered a man who had been in prison for life by transplanting a lung from a recently deceased person into him. The victim of the experimental surgery lived 18 days. Medgar Evers was shot and killed while standing in his driveway. His murderer would be convicted in 1994.

The Rolling Stones released their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s song Come On. The film Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton was released; it ran 4 hours and 8 minutes. Audiences had longer attention spans. The French company Carrefour opened the first “big box” grocery and department store in a huge space with petrol pumps in the parking area. Sam and Bud Walton had one small store in Rogers, Arkansas at this time. The America Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was approved as a standard this month. Phil Graham, publisher of the Washington Post was put in a psych hospital to be conditioned to commit suicide. The college of cardinals chose cardinal Montini, Archbishop of Milan, to become pope. He took the name Pope Paul VI.

Two contracts to evaluate the potential for a 24-man orbiting space laboratory were provided by NASA to military industrial contractor companies. The military industrial contractor General Dynamics sent a spokesmodel to Denver to tell scientists that a manned mission to Mars by 1975 was possible.

Meanwhile the Soviets launched two separate Vostok spacecraft this month, one carrying Valery Bykovsky and the other Valentina Tereshkova this month. Bykovsky would be in space nearly 5 days and land about the same time as Tereshkova. Tereshkova would be the first woman to successfully return from orbit.

Third Quarter

Seventh month

The post awful introduced the zip code. A federal court used the 14th amendment to excuse federal meddling in the size of Oklahoma’s state legislature, reducing it from 120 members to 100 in the continuing end of federalism. Doctors in Houston murdered a heart patient with an experimental artificial heart pump. Donald Knuth began analysis of algorithms in computer science, identifying memory and processing requirements for a given complexity of problem.

The country of Malaysia became official as a result of an agreement among member states. The president of Ecuador got drunk, made “disparaging remarks” about the United States, and was promptly overthrown by the cia. Negotiations on the nuclear test ban treaty began with the arrival of Averill Harriman in Moscow. A partial test ban treaty was negotiated that angered the Ventian “nobility” who run the cia and who were running the Soviet military at the time. Even the People’s Republic of China would be upset by this cooperation. Egyptian president Nasser lured Syrian president Atassi to Cairo, signalling the beginning of a coup attempt which killed hundreds and led to the execution of the coup leaders. Fernando Belaúnde became president of Peru after being elected. The traitor Philby surfaced in Moscow and was reported happy there in his communist surroundings. Argentina elected Arturo Illia its new president.

Joe Walker flew the X15 rocket plane above 65 miles altitude for the first time this month. Syncom 2 became the first geosynchronous orbiting communications satellite. A “Gambit” or Keyhole 7 spy satellite was launched from Vandenberg air force base, providing high quality film that was recovered by dropping a capsule and snagging its parachute system with an aircraft. Max Faget at NASA began contemplating the need for an Apollo command/service module that would have a 100 day longevity in orbit in order to support a space laboratory of the sort that Skylab became.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
~ excerpted from “I have a dream,” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963 08 28

Eighth month

At the end of this month, Martin Luther King, Jr. joined 250,000 (or more) Americans in Washington DC and spoke to them about a dream he had. The fbi and cia hated this speech and the presence of African Americans at their temple to their demons, and arranged for MLK to be murdered a few years later, along with his friend RFK. Lee Harvey Oswald was in New Orleans this month distributing leaflets posing as a disaffected marine in order to establish him as the patsy for the cia murder of JFK. Estes Kefauver, the author of the legislation giving enormous power to the food and drug administration to collude with the military industrial financial pharmaceutical complex, died this month. James Meredith became the first African American to graduate from University of Mississippi at a cost of $5 million in federal marshall protective duty after court rulings and a very large scale riot that took place when he was admitted. Meredith would go on to earn a law degree at Columbia, enter politics as a Republican in New York and Mississippi, and served on the staff of senator Jesse Helms.

The global banking cartel established a central bank in Lebanon. The despicable GCHQ fingered Stephen Ward for their Profumo scandal and he killed himself with an overdose of barbituates. His suicide note said, “It’s a wish to not let them get me. I’d rather get myself.” On the same day the cia arranged the suicide of Philip Graham. The nuclear test ban treaty was signed by the USA, UK, and USSR this month and sent to be ratified.

The UN security council resolved to embargo arms from its permanent veto members (the five largest arms exporters in the world) to South Africa. The USA and the UK abstained from voting on the resolution. Israel began lying about its participation in the South Africa arms embargo this month. A great train robbery took place in the UK with the theft of about $7.3 million sent by mail which, using the price of gold then and now to convert, would be worth over $400 million today. (Bitcoin solves this.) The Hai river flooded in China killing 5,154 people. South Vietnam president Diem began marauding against Buddhist monks, arresting thousands; torturing, and disappearing many. By the end of the month, the cia and state department had determined to remove Diem with the fatuous expectation that doing so would not cause the USA to become much more deeply involved in Vietnam. (You break it, you bought it.)

The first Gemini spacecraft was completed by McDAC for delivery to NASA. NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Centre ordered 8 Atlas rockets for upcoming Gemini launch missions at an estimated cost of $40 million (about $2.38 billion today).

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
from “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot
published in his collected poems 1963 09 26

Ninth month

Walter Cronkite began broadcasting the CBS evening news early in the month. He would also be active at the Bohemian grove as the voice of the demon. JFK signed an executive order exempting married men from the draft. (Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing…) Mary Kay Ash began her cosmetics company. Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico city seeking visas for entry to Cuba and the Soviet Union in the ongoing set up by the cia of his role in the events two months later.

A time bomb detonated in a church in Birmingham during “Sunday” school murdering 4 African American girls and injuring 22 other students. Three actual white supremacists would be convicted for the murders in 1977, 2001, and 2002.

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones appeared during the same set of acts for the only time ever, at the Albert Hall in London. Dr. Richard Kimble began running as “The Fugitive” on television. Patty Duke became identical cousins.

The military and cia began escalating the war in Vietnam with Operation 34A which included team insertions, naval sabotage, and other deadly operations. Mafia suspect Bernardo Provenzano was indicted for murder but escaped jail and began a 43 year elusion of authorities. (Hide and go seek champion 1963-2006). The Ankara agreement was signed to bring Turkey into the European Economic Community. The Republic of Korea (South Korea or RoK) sent the first of its soldiers to the Vietnam conflict. By the end of the war over 312,000 Korean soldiers would serve there. The US senate ratified the test ban treaty 80 to 19.

At the United Nations 1963 09 20 JFK proposed a joint USA and Soviet moon landing mission.

Fourth Quarter

Tenth month

Morocco invaded Algeria in the Sand war. JFK’s team announced the first thousand American troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam by the end of the year, with the remaining 14,000 being withdrawn by the end of 1965. The cia began to contemplate the end of its opium and heroin supplies. (Just kidding, they had already been planning to murder the president.) The cia arranged the overthrow of the president of Honduras. JFK signed the nuclear test ban treaty. British prime minister McMillan announced he would resign for health reasons and totally not because of the Profumo scandal. (His health was quite sound and the doctor diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer was in error.) Some earl of Home replaced him. The UN General Assembly asked South Africa to release Mandela with no effect. The British declared an Aden emergency because they wanted to keep military bases in Yemen and were not wanted there. Park Chung-hee was elected president of South Korea. Konrad Adenauer resigned as chancellor of Germany to retire, age 87. He was replaced by Ludwig Erhard. Meeting in the Vatican an ecumenical council voted to use local languages in place of Latin in the sacraments, defying over a thousand years of tradition.

Hurricane Flora killed 5,000 in Haiti and left 100,000 homeless. A further thousand were killed in Cuba. The government of Italy and a monopoly electric power company conspired to ignore and concealed warnings of instability of Monte Toc. The initial filling of the Lago de Vajont reservoir behind the 860 foot dam caused a massive landslide which created a megatsunami of 1.8 billion cubic feet of water and mud. The government and the monopolists murdered over 2,000 and possibly as many as 3,700 people in the communities below and above the dam.

Sam Cooke and his wife tried to stay at a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana and were arrested for being black. Marvin Gheesling of the fbi removed Lee Harvey Oswald’s name from an fbi watch list. The fbi began wiretapping MLK to see how they could hurt him. JFK signed the community mental health act beginning the closure of hundreds of vicious torture asylums and the establishment of outpatient clinics.

A series of games named for the world involving no baseball teams from Japan concluded with a bunch of dodgers from Los Angeles beating a group of Yankees from New York. Sandy Koufax pitched. Bond was back from Russia with Love. The Beatles performed She Loves You live on British telly with millions of viewers. Crowds of fans danced in joy, and the Brit press called it Beatlemania. The Olympic committee announced that Mexico would host the 1968 games and a certain number of black panthers smiled. Lamborghini incorporated and unveiled their first car.

The first Learjet ever took off from Wichita. Later someone would fly a Learjet to Nova Scotia for a total eclipse of the sun, and there would be clouds in someone’s coffee. A B-58 supersonic jet made the Tokyo to London trip in 8.5 hours setting a new record. It had to be refuelled five times on the trip. Two “Vela” satellites were launched to 60,000 miles altitude to monitor Earth for nuclear explosions as a means of enforcing the nuclear test ban treaty. A bunch of new astronauts were added, including Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Gene Cernan, Michael Collins (always a favourite in Ireland), and Rusty Schweickart. France launched a cat into space from Algeria.

Eleventh Month

This month the cia would murder the president of South Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm, as well as the president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The coup in South Vietnam began the month with three marine battalions heading for the palace in Saigon. President Diem and his brother fled to a Catholic church nearby. They were captured the next morning, tortured, and shot dead. The coup leaders established a military dictatorship. Everyone at the cia loved these results.

As reported in the book Coup in Dallas a team of murderers was selected by the cia for a Chicago motorcade planned for the 2nd day of the 11th month but JFK opted to cancel his trip to Chicago in order to confer with his aides about the cia atrocities in Vietnam. On the 22nd, JFK was murdered by teams of assassins placed around his motorcade. The murder was pinned on Lee Harvey Oswald who was subsequently shot while in police custody. A series of further murders would follow as eyewitnesses and investigative reporters were murdered by the ruthless filth of the cia.

On the flight away from the carnage, LBJ, a nasty little garbage man, was sworn in as puppet in chief by a district federal judge who was brought along for the purpose. LBJ and his friends had a great time on the flight back to the District of Corruption. These events pleased everyone at the cia and fbi. Back in the District of Corruption LBJ rescinded JFK’s order to withdraw from Vietnam, knowing that there would be huge profits for his shares in Bell Helicopter and other military contractor companies.

A few days after being murdered, JFK was laid to rest in a state funeral attended by people from all over the world. The treasury department began removing silver certificates from circulation. Karyn Kupcinet was murdered at her home in Hollywood, California. She was strangled to death and her body was left nude. Her murder remains unsolved, but the cia has all the details. A week after the JFK murder LBJ set up the Warren commission to hide the truth.

Argentina’s president cancelled all contracts for oil production with Standard Oil and with a group of British companies. Oops.

Maurice Sendak’s book, Where the Wild Things Are was published. The BBC aired the very first episode of Doctor Who.

The Arecibo telescope was dedicated in Puerto Rico. A Titan II rocket was launched from the Atlantic Missile Range to test the rocket system chosen for the Gemini missions. India completed its first sounding rocket flight test with an experiment reaching 124 miles altitude, beginning its space programme. Explorer 18 was launched to investigate the Moon’s magnetic field.

Twelfth month

There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
~ Harry S. Truman, editorial, Washington Post 1963 12 22

Maurice Baker, 35, a former Dallas policeman, was found shot to death in his apartment. Oddly he had been a neighbour of Oswald and a friend of Ruby. Army captain Michael D. Groves, part of the JFK honour guard, died suddenly while dining with his family, age 27. On the fifth of the month, the fbi closed its cover up of the JFK assasination, concluding that Oswald and Ruby had each acted alone and weren’t carefully chosen patsies of the orchestrators of the murder. The fbi continued its plans to murder MLK. On the 28th, New York mobster Joseph Magliocco died of a heart attack, or maybe poison.

The second Vatican council closed 400 years to the day from the closing of the council of Trent. The council decided that priests celebrating in the new way would turn their backs on God. Instead of leading their parishioners as first among equals and facing the Cross, the priests were now expected to be superior to their congregation in keeping with the move to make the faith follow the pattern of demon worship. Other changes were meant to defy tradition. The traditional Latin mass would continue over the following decades although it would be increasingly attacked by the “modernists.”

LBJ’s puppet masters had the X-20 DynaSoar reusable space plane project cancelled. The TIROS 8 weather satellite was launched. Nuclear weapons were deployed to Canada on the last day of the year.

The last month of the year ended with the Dow Jones Industrial average stood at 766.08. The S&P 500 stood at 74.56. Gold was $35 per ounce but could not be purchased by Americans without leaving the country. Silver was $1.29 per ounce. Other prices were largely unchanged.

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And that, my friends, was the year that was Anno Domini 1963. I hope you enjoyed our trip down memory lane together. That’s all I’ve got for now. Come back again soon when I have something new. Or old.