On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
Portrait 1080 × 1920 PNG · created on your device
Parliament to be dissolved Mar 10, new Commons sworn Apr 16 as Wilson calls gen election for Mar 31
Gen Walt repts he requested more troops to secure pacified areas in N, news conf, Washington; links part of failure of recent Quangngai Prov drive to inability to leave behind troops to protect area; stresses gains from pacification. Danang area
Meets
Makes solo flight to UAR on self-apptd peace mission he pledged to make during unsuccessful bid for Israeli Parliament seat; jailed; UAR to expel him; illus
Labor Dept repts seasonal decline in avg hrs worked and Soc Security tax rise cut take-home pay of factory workers by $2.25, Jan
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of February 23, 1966, covering March 1, 1966.
Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass
The Beatles
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
Soundtrack
Frank Sinatra
1966Don Lemon, American journalist[†]
Don Lemon is an American television journalist best known for being a host on CNN from 2014 until 2023. He anchored weekend news programs on local television stations in Alabama and Pennsylvania during his early days as a journalist. Lemon worked as a news correspondent for NBC on its programming, such as Today and NBC Nightly News. Lemon is also a recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2002 for his coverage of the capture of the Washington, D.C. snipers. He also received three regional Emmy Awards for his special report on real estate in Chicago and a business feature on Craigslist.
1966Zack Snyder, American director, producer, and screenwriter[†]
Zachary Edward Snyder is an American filmmaker. He made his feature film debut in 2004 with Dawn of the Dead, a remake of the 1978 horror film of the same name. Since then, he has directed or produced a number of comic book and superhero films, including 300 (2006) and Watchmen (2009), as well as the Superman film that started the DC Extended Universe, Man of Steel (2013), and its follow-ups, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017), the latter of which had a director's cut released in 2021.
1966Fritz Houtermans, Polish-German physicist and academic (born 1903)[†]
Friedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans was a Dutch-Austrian-German atomic and nuclear physicist and Communist born in Zoppot near Danzig, West Prussia to a Dutch father, who was a wealthy banker. He was brought up in Vienna, where he was educated, and moved to Göttingen when he was 18 to study. It was in Göttingen where he obtained his Ph.D. under James Franck.
1966Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.[†]
Venera 3 was a Venera program space probe that was built and launched by the Soviet Union to explore the surface of Venus. It was launched on 16 November 1965 at 04:19 UTC from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, USSR. The probe comprised an entry probe, designed to enter the Venus atmosphere and parachute to the surface, and a carrier/flyby spacecraft, which carried the entry probe to Venus and also served as a communications relay for the entry probe.
1966The Ba'ath Party takes power in Syria.[†]
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, also known simply as Baʽth Party, was a political party founded in Syria by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, and associates of Zaki al-Arsuzi. The party espoused Ba'athism, which is an ideology mixing Arab nationalist, pan-Arab, Arab socialist, and anti-imperialist interests. Ba'athism calls for the unification of the Arab world into a single state. Its motto, "Unity, Freedom, Socialism", refers to Arab unity and freedom from non-Arab control and interference.
In 1966, the world population was approximately 3,404,041,125 people[†]