The following events occurred in July 1967:
July 1, 1967 (Saturday) The first colour television broadcasts in the United Kingdom began at 2:00 in the afternoon as BBC Two telecast a match from Centre Court of WimbledonAsa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Competition (Oxford University Press, 1995) p857 between Cliff Drysdale and Roger Taylor. "It was a Wimbledon no one has ever seen on television before", a reporter noted the next day. "The clothes of the players were whiter than white, the Centre Court an inimitable green.""Wimbledon colour TV whiter than white", by Roger Eglin, The Observer (London), July 2, 1967, p1 Regular colour programming, a full colour service would begin on BBC2 on December 2. Canada celebrated its first one hundred years of Confederation. In honor of the centennial, Queen Elizabeth II visited from London and addressed 25,000 of her Canadian subjects in front of the Parliament Building in Ottawa and expressed her hope that Canada's next 100 years would "bring peace and prosperity, happiness and harmony, and a just reward for the work and endeavor of each one of you.""25,000 Hear Queen at Canadian Fete", Chicago Tribune, July 2, 1967, p3 The Seaboard Air Line Railroad merged with Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (SCL), nine years after the two lines had applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission for permission to join as one company."Seaboard, A.C.L. Finally Merge", Baltimore Sun, July 1, 1967, pB-9 In 1980, the SCL would merge with the Chessie System railroad conglomerate to create today's CSX Transportation. American Samoa's first constitution became effective, with the U.S. territory having limited legislative power to make laws through a 20-member House of Representatives (elected by popular vote), and an 18-member Senate (selected by a meeting of Samoan tribal chiefs).The Statesman's Year-Book 1971–72: The Businessman's Encyclopaedia of all nations, John Paxton, ed. (Springer, 1971) p717 The People's Republic of China announced the ouster of President Liu Shaoqi, in an article in the Communist Party journal Red Flag."Liu Ousted as Red China State Head", Chicago Tribune, July 2, 1967, p3 Liu, who had believed at one time to be the eventual successor of Mao Zedong, had not been seen in public since 1966. Fidel Sánchez Hernández began a five-year term as the new President of El Salvador, succeeding Julio Adalberto Rivera."El Salvador, Republic of", in Heads of States and Governments Since 1945, Harris M. Lentz, ed. (Routledge, 1994) p255 Born: Pamela Anderson, Canadian-born American actress; in Ladysmith, British Columbia Died: Gerhard Ritter, 79, German historian
July 2, 1967 (Sunday)
"Operation Buffalo" began with the worst single-day loss suffered by the United States Marines during the Vietnam War. While patrolling the area around Con Thien in the Quảng Trị Province, near South Vietnam's border with North Vietnam, the 400 members of Alpha Company and Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines were ambushed by the North Vietnamese Army; 84 were killed, nine were missing and 190 were wounded for a total of 283 casualties. The total number of deaths in the operation would be 159 Americans and 1,290 of the North Vietnamese during the seven days between July 2 and July 8. The newly activated Vela 3 and Vela 4 satellites, activated in May to monitor Soviet nuclear testing by detecting gamma rays, recorded the first of many gamma-ray bursts of unknown origin, starting at 14:19 UTC. When the Vela satellites began picking up similar bursts every two weeks, "U.S. authorities were worried, but they soon realised that neither China nor the Soviet Union could test nuclear weapons every other week"; nearly 30 years later, on February 28, 1997, improved satellite technology would confirm that the gamma-ray bursts came from other galaxies, producing "the most violent explosions known to mankind" that "emit more energy in a few seconds than our Sun will generate in its entire lifetime." Parliamentary elections were held in East Germany for the 434 seats in the unicameral Volkskammer from a list of candidates drawn up by the National Front. "Some 583 candidates contested the 434 seats to be filled, which thus gave voters the possibility of striking out certain names on polling day if they wished to do so", but since only 8,005 of the 11,205,270 votes were against the Front's list "under the terms of the electoral law, only those whose names appeared at the top of the list were elected".pp1-3 "Inter-Parliamentary Union: HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION RESULTS – Germany The government of Israel announced that Palestinian Arab refugees, who had fled their homes in the West Bank after its invasion in June, would be allowed to return to their homes, but that they would only have until August 10 to do so. Between 80,000 and 150,000 residents had fled across the Jordan River during and after the Six-Day War, and were in camps in Jordan. The government announced, however, that anyone who crossed into Jordan after July 4 would not be allowed to return at all. In London, diplomat Yaakov Herzog of Israel conducted the first of his secret peace negotiation discussions with King Hussein of Jordan since the end of the Six-Day War.
July 3, 1967 (Monday) Twenty-three of 42 entombed miners in the Philippines were rescued alive, five days after a cave-in had sealed them 4,300 feet underground. The men, employed by the Philex Mining Corporation to extract gold and copper from the deep mine near Baguio, were sealed in when heavy rains from a typhoon buried the mine entrances in a landslide."23 Philippine Miners Freed After 5 Days", Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1967, p7 One of the men would die soon after being brought out, and the bodies of the remaining 19 would be brought out later. Norwell Gumbs began duty with the Metropolitan Police Service as the first non-white policeman in London."News Briefs", Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1967, p3 Gumbs, a 21-year old British citizen originally from the West Indies, had started training on March 29, and was assigned to the West End Central Police Station. He would later change his surname to Roberts because of the frequent misspelling of the surname "Gumbs". Born: Brian Cashman, American baseball executive; in Rockville Centre, New York
July 4, 1967 (Tuesday) After a bitter all-night debate, the British House of Commons voted 99 to 14 to approve the Sexual Offences Act 1967, decriminalizing homosexuality in England and Wales. The law, which would receive royal assent on July 27, removed penalties only for relations between gay men over the age of 21. Sexual relations between lesbians were still prohibited, and the law did not apply to Scotland or to Northern Ireland. Moreover, the change in the law did not apply to the armed forces or to the merchant marines, and while the age of consent for heterosexual relations was 16 years old, the law still penalized homosexual acts involving anyone 20 years old or younger. The formal coronation ceremony for King Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV of Tonga took place at a chapel in Nukuʻalofa, on the monarch's 49th birthday. Tonga's royal chaplain, Reverend George Harris of Australia, placed the crown upon the king's head. Tupou had been Prime Minister of Tonga since 1946 and had been head of state of the British protectorate since the death of his mother, Queen Salote, on December 16, 1965. For the first time in major league baseball history, two brothers faced each other as starting pitchers. Phil Niekro, 28, pitched for the Atlanta Braves, who were hosting the Chicago Cubs, who started with Joe Niekro, 22, in the first game of a doubleheader. Joe pitched three innings, while Phil pitched the entire game in an 8–3 win that ended the Cubs' seven-game winning streak. In 1924, Jesse Barnes had come in as a relief pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in a 7–6 win over a New York Yankees team whose pitcher was his brother Virgil Barnes. Hundreds of Muslim and Christian citizens of Bethlehem, known for being the birthplace of Jesus Christ and captured from Jordan during the Six-Day War, petitioned the Israeli government to ask that their city be formally annexed into Israel. While Israel had annexed a large part of the territory west of the Jordan River, Bethlehem had been excluded.
July 5, 1967 (Wednesday) A group of 1,500 soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, led by 11 white soldiers of fortune under the command of mercenary Jean Schramme of Belgium, mutinied and attacked Camp Ntele, a military base outside of Stanleyville, and massacred 400 people (including families of the soldiers killed). The uprising against President Joseph Mobutu would kill at least 2,000 people before being suppressed on November 5."Civil Wars", in Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by Emizet Francois Kisangani (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) p131 Other troops from Schramme's group came across the border from neighboring Rwanda and took control of the border city of Bukavu.Belachew Gebrewold, Anatomy of Violence: Understanding the Systems of Conflict and Violence in Africa (Routledge, 2016) p96Frank R. Villafana, Cold War in the Congo: The Confrontation of Cuban Military Forces, 1960-1967 (Transaction Publishers, 2011) p182 A group of three university presidents, three university vice-presidents, and four university library directors met on the campus of Ohio State University to hear the proposal of Frederick G. Kilgour to implement the first plan for an online computer network of library holdings, the Ohio College Library Center, OCLC.Marilyn Gell Mason, Strategic Management for Today's Libraries (American Library Association, 1999) pp93-94 OCLC would later expand beyond Ohio and change its name, though not its initials, to Online Computer Library Center. With the approval by its people on March 19 for a continued association with France, the colony of French Somaliland renamed itself as an overseas territory, with representation in France's National Assembly and its Senate as the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas. It would become an independent nation on June 27, 1977, as Djibouti."Djibouti", in The Statesman's Year-Book 1993–94, Brian Hunter, ed. (Springer, 1993) p504 Died: Bruce Barton, 80, American advertising executive and co-founder (in 1918) of the Barton, Durstine & Osborn agency that merged with in 1928 with the George Batten agency to create BBDO, the world's largest advertising agency. Besides serving as a Congressman for Tennessee and creating the character of Betty Crocker for General Mills, Barton also wrote the controversial bestseller The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus, in which he described Jesus Christ as "the greatest salesman who ever walked the Earth".
July 6, 1967 (Thursday)
A railway crash killed 94 people, mostly children at a crossing in East Germany at the town of Langenweddingen, seven miles southwest of Magdeburg. The double-decker train collided with a gasoline truck that was stopped on the railroad tracks. In Thailand, 43 people were killed and dozens injured in the city of Korat when the driver of the bus they were on pulled into the path of an oncoming express train. Most of the victims were women and children. According to Thai officials, 86 passengers were inside the bus, and 10 were riding on top. Survivors said that when the driver realized that he would be unable to stop, he opened the door and jumped to safety before the bus rolled into the path of the train.