October 16, 1964

1964Shawn Little, Canadian lawyer and politician (died 2012)^[†]

Shawn William Little was a political consultant and Ottawa City Councillor in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, for the urban Kitchissippi Ward, consisting of neighbourhoods west of the City Centre. He was born in Ottawa and raised in its Westboro neighbourhood, where he attended Woodroffe Avenue and Broadview Public elementary schools followed by Nepean High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Carleton University, and a diploma in health sciences from Humber College. He wrote articles for the Newswest community paper in its early days. He died in November 2012 while vacationing in Cuba.

1964James Thompson, American-Finnish author (died 2014)^[†]

James Thompson was an American-Finnish crime writer based in Helsinki. He had a master's degree in English philology from The University of Helsinki, where he also studied Finnish, in which he was fluent. He studied six languages. He published four crime novels with the Finnish inspector Kari Vaara as the protagonist.

1964China detonates its first nuclear weapon.^[†]

Project 596 was the first nuclear weapons test conducted by the People's Republic of China, detonated on 16 October 1964, at the Lop Nur test site. It was a uranium-235 implosion fission device made from weapons-grade uranium (U-235) enriched in a gaseous diffusion plant in Lanzhou.

1964Leonid Brezhnev becomes leader of the Soviet Communist Party, while Alexei Kosygin becomes the head of government.^[†]

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982 as well as the fourth chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1960 to 1964 and again from 1977 to 1982. His 18-year term as General Secretary was second only to Joseph Stalin's in duration.