July 16, 1965

1965Michel Desjoyeaux, French sailor^[†]

Michel Desjoyeaux is a French sailor, known for competing successfully in several long-distance single-handed races. He won the Vendée Globe race in 2000-01 and 2008–09, making him the only person to win that race more than once. In 2014–15, he was watch captain, on leg 1 on Mapfre in the Volvo Ocean Race.

1965Claude Lemieux, Canadian ice hockey player^[†]

Claude Percy Lemieux, is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who played 21 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for six teams between 1983 and 2009. Lemieux won four Stanley Cup championships during his career, two with the New Jersey Devils, with whom he won the Conn Smythe Trophy during the team's victory in the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals. He is one of only 11 players to win a Stanley Cup championship with at least three teams. He is also known as one of the greatest playoff performers, as his 80 career playoff goals are the ninth most in NHL history.

1965Boris Artzybasheff, Ukrainian-American illustrator (born 1899)^[†]

Boris Mikhailovich Artzybasheff was a Russian and American illustrator notable for his strongly worked and often surreal designs.

1965The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opens.^[†]

The Mont Blanc Tunnel is a highway tunnel between France and Italy, under Mont Blanc in the Alps. It links Chamonix, Haute-Savoie, France with Courmayeur, Aosta Valley, Italy, via the French Route Nationale 205 and the Italian Traforo T1, in particular the motorways serving Geneva and Turin. The passageway is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes, particularly for Italy, which relies on this tunnel for transporting as much as one-third of its freight to northern Europe. It reduces the route from France to Turin by 50 kilometres and to Milan by 100 km (60 mi). Northeast of Mont Blanc's summit, the tunnel is about 15 km (10 mi) southwest of the tripoint with Switzerland, near Mont Dolent.

1965South Vietnamese Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo, a formerly undetected communist spy and double agent, is hunted down and killed by unknown individuals after being sentenced to death in absentia for a February 1965 coup attempt against Nguyễn Khánh.^[†]

The Army of the Republic of Vietnam composed the ground forces of the South Vietnamese military from its inception in 1955 to the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. Its predecessor was the ground forces of the Vietnamese National Army, established on 8 December 1950, representing Vietnam to fight in the First Indochina War against the communist Viet Minh rebels. At the ARVN's peak, an estimated 1 in 9 citizens of South Vietnam were enlisted, composed of Regular Forces and the more voluntary Regional Forces and the Popular Force militias. It is estimated to have suffered 1,394,000 casualties during the Vietnam War.