1963 - Wikipedia

Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

Years: 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 - 1963 - 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

Events:

January 11 - The Whiskey-a-Go-Go[?] night club in Los Angeles, the first disco in the USA, is opened.
January 14 - George Wallace becomes governor of Alabama.
January 16 - Whiskey-A-Go-Go[?] opens in Los Angeles, California
January 22 - Elysée treaty between France and Germany
February 8 - Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.
February 11 - CIA Domestic Operations Division is created.
March 4 - In Paris six people are sentenced to death for conspiring to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle.
March 21 - Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, closes.
March 27 - In Britain Dr Beeching issues report calling for huge cuts to the UK's rail network See Beeching axe.
April 7 - Yugoslavia is proclaimed to be a Socialist republic[?] and Josip Broz Tito is named President for life.
April 22 - Lester B. Pearson becomes Canada's fourteenth prime minister.
May 15 - Mercury program: NASA launches the last mission of the program, Mercury 9 (on June 12 NASA Administrator James Webb[?] told Congress the program was complete).
May 25 - In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organisation of African Unity is established.
June 16 - Valentina Tereshkova (USSR) becomes the first woman in space.
June 22 - Pope Paul VI is elected by College of Cardinals[?].
August 8 - The Great Train Robbery takes place in Buckinghamshire, England
August 28 - Martin Luther King delivers his "I have a dream" speech on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
September 29 - Opening of second period of Second Vatican Council in Rome.
November 22 - U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated; Lyndon Johnson is sworn into office
December 4 - Closing of second period of Second Vatican Council.

Art, Culture & Fashion

1963 is the year dubbed "Annus Mirabilis" (http://alt.venus.co.uk/weed/writings/poems/plam.htm) by British poet Philip Larkin.

1963 in film
- Tom Jones
- Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds
- Charade starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn
- McLintock! starring John Wayne
1963 in literature
1963 in music
- February 11 - The Beatles tape 10 tracks for their 1st album, including Please, Please Me (released on March 2).
1963 in sports
- January 29 - First inductees into the Football Hall of Fame are announced
1963 in television
- May 15 - First television pictures transmitted from a U.S. manned space capsule ("Faith 7.") Due to the poor picture quality, only NBC carries the transmission, and on tape-delay, not live
- September 2 ? CBS becomes first network to expand its evening network news from 15 to 30 minutes.
- September 9 - NBC expands its evening network news program to 30 minutes
- November 22 - regular television programming is suspended following news of John F. Kennedy's assassination
- November 23 - first episode of Dr Who is broadcast in the UK.
- November 24 - Jack Ruby murders John F. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald live on television.
- The television remote control is authorized by the FCC.

Births:

January 14 - Steven Soderbergh, director
January 23 - Gail O'Grady[?], actress
January 26 - Andrew Ridgeley[?], musician
February 9 - Travis Tritt[?], country music singer
February 11 - Todd Benzinger[?], American baseball player.
February 17 - Michael Jordan, basketball
February 19 - Seal, singer
February 21 - William Baldwin, actor
March 10 - Neneh Cherry[?], musician
March 18 - Vanessa Williams, actress, singer, Miss America
March 27 - Quentin Tarantino, actor, director, writer, producer
March 27 - Xuxa[?], television personality
April 4 - Graham Norton, talk show host[?]
April 26 - Jet Li, martial arts fighter, actor
May 11 - Natasha Richardson[?], actress
May 25 - Mike Myers, actor, comedian
June 25 - George Michael, singer
July 30 - Lisa Kudrow, American actress.
October 10 - Daniel Pearl, journalist (+2002)

Deaths:

Suzanne Duchamp, Dada painter
January 5 - Rogers Hornsby[?], Baseball Hall of Famer
January 29 - Robert Frost, poet
January 30 - Francis Poulenc, composer
February 11 - Sylvia Plath, poet/novelist.
March 4 - William Carlos Williams, writer
March 5 - Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas[?], country music singers
April 6 - Otto Struve[?], astronomer (+ 1897)
June 3 - Pope John XXIII
October 11 - Edith Piaf, French singer
October 11 - Jean Cocteau, writer
November 1 - Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam
November 22 - John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald
November 22 - Aldous Huxley, novelist
November 22 - C.S. Lewis - novelist, Christian apologist, and English professor
November 24 - Lee Harvey Oswald, shot by Jack Ruby
December 28 - Paul Hindemith, German composer
Theodore Roethke - American poet

Technology:

End of the Mercury program of United States manned spaceflight
Frisch[?] and Smith prove radioactive decay of mesons is slowed by their motion. (See Einstein's Special Relativity and General Relativity).
Syncom, the world's first geostationary (synchronous) satellite is orbited by NASA.
Full deployment of SAGE, the semi-automated ground environment.
TAT-3 cable goes into operation.
Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane coins the word "clone".
Arecibo radio telescope officially begins operation.

Nobel Prizes:

Physics - Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J. Hans D. Jensen[?]
Chemistry - Karl Ziegler[?], Giulio Natta[?]
Medicine - Sir John Carew Eccles[?], Alan Lloyd Hodgkin[?], Andrew Fielding Huxley
Literature - Giorgos Seferis
Peace - International Committee of the Red Cross, League of Red Cross Societies

Miscellaneous

Harvey Ball[?] invents the ubiquitous smiley