Wednesday, May 11, 1960: Israel abducts Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Eichmann, "the architect of the Holocaust," is captured by Israeli agents in Argentina, where he had been living since 1950. He was smuggled out of the country on May 21, and his capture was announced to the Israeli people on May 23. (His trial would begin in April 1961.) During World War II, Eichmann helped oversee the Nazi campaign to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe.

* More about Eichmann: @ and @

* More about the capture: @

* CIA files on Eichmann: @

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Tuesday, May 10, 1960: Around the world, underwater

The USS Triton, a new nuclear-powered submarine, completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the Earth. She had put to sea on February 15. The sub followed the 1519-1522 route of Portugese explorer Ferdinand Magellan.

* More about the Triton: @

* Website of former crew member: @

* Map of route: @

* Newsreel: @

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Tuesday, May 10, 1960: Kennedy wins West Virginia

Sen. John F. Kennedy (236,510 votes, 60.8%) defeats Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (152,187, 39.2%) in West Virginia's Democratic presidential primary, putting to rest the notion that a Roman Catholic candidate was unelectable in Protestant strongholds of the United States. It is the latest in a series of primary victories for Kennedy over Humphrey, who gives up his candidacy. Reports of vote-buying were (and are) widespread. Kennedy himself would frequently tell variations of this joke on the campaign trail: "I have just received the following wire from my generous daddy -- 'Dear Jack: Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.' " (Kennedy actually told the anecdote as far back as March 1958, in a speech to The Gridiron Club in Washington, D.C. The JFK Library has a transcript of that speech: @.)

* "Winning West Virginia" (from JFK Library): @

* Entries from The West Virginia Encyclopedia: @ and @
* "How the 1960 West Virginia Election Made History" (Washington Post, 2010): @

* "1960: LBJ Vs. JFK Vs. Nixon" (See Chapter Ten, "Committing a sin against God" (David Pietrusza, 2008): @

* "The Making of the President 1960" (See Chapter Four, "The Art of the Primary: Wisconsin and West Virginia" (Theodore H. White, 1961): @

* West Virginia Archives & History website: @ 

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Monday, May 9, 1960: The Pill

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would approve as safe for birth control an oral contraceptive for women. (Formal approval would follow on June 23.) Made by G.D. Searle & Co., the drug -- marketed as Enovid -- was a synthetic combination of hormones that suppresses the release of eggs from a woman's ovaries.

* Short summary: @

* Birth control timeline: @

* Time magazine coverage from 2010: @

* Photo gallery from Life magazine: @

* 1957 interview with birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger: @

* "The Case for Birth Control," 1924 article by Sanger: @

* How the Pill changed the way the FDA operates: @

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Saturday, May 7, 1960: U-2 incident: The evidence

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, left, announces to the Supreme Soviet and the world that downed U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers is, in fact, alive, and says his country has Powers and the wreckage of his spy plane to prove it. "Comrades, I must tell you a secret," Khrushchev said. "When I was making my report, I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and in good health and that we have got part of the plane. We did so deliberately, because had we told everything at once, the Americans would have invented another version." The U.S. then admits the spy mission, while at the same time trying to shield President Eisenhower's involvement: "... Insofar as the authorities in Washington are concerned there was no authorization for any such flight as described by Mr. Khrushchev. Nevertheless it appears that in endeavoring to obtain information now concealed behind the Iron Curtain a flight over Soviet territory was probably undertaken by an unarmed civilian U-2 plane."

* State Department statement, May 7: @

* "Operation Overflight" (Gary Francis Powers memoir): @

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Friday, May 6, 1960: Bob Newhart

The comedy record "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" is released. Newhart's deadpan humor, halting delivery and mock telephone coversations are a hit; the record would become the best-selling album in America and would win Album of the Year at the next year's Grammys. (Newhart would be named Best New Artist.) In 2006 the album was added to the National Recording Registry, a select list of "sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

* Listen to "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue": @
* Appreciation of album: @

* Segment from NPR: @

* National Recording Registry: @

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Thursday, May 5, 1960: U-2 incident: Accusal and denial

In a speech to the Supreme Soviet, Nikita Khrushchev announces that a U.S. spyplane had been shot down on May 1. Khrushchev makes no mention of the pilot's fate; the U.S. assumes he was killed. In response, the U.S. issues a longer version of its initial cover story. Also, a U-2 plane is repainted with NASA markings and displayed the next day.

* NASA press release on missing plane, May 5: @

* State Department press release, May 6: @

* Repainted U-2 plane, photo and description: @ and @

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Tuesday, May 3, 1960: 'The Fantasticks'

The musical opens at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York, the first of what would turn into a record 17,162 performances. Its signature song is "Try to Remember."

* Official website: @

* Synopsis: @

* Assorted facts: @

* Listen to "Try to Remember": @

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Tuesday, May 3, 1960: Anne Frank

The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in the home where the Jewish teenager and her family hid from German occupation forces from July 6, 1942, to August 4, 1944. "The Diary of a Young Girl" was published in 1947.

* Anne Frank House website: @

* Anne Frank Center (New York): @

* Only existing footage of Anne Frank: @

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Sunday, May 1, 1960: U-2 incident

Francis Gary Powers, piloting a U-2 spy plane for the CIA, is shot down over Soviet airspace while taking pictures of missile sites. Powers survives after bailing out and is captured. Tensions quickly escalate between the United States and the Soviet Union as details of the mission come to light.

* More about the U-2 program (from Federation of American Scientists): @

* "The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974" (from www.cia.gov): @

* "May-July 1960: The U-2 Airplane Incident" (from U.S. State Department): @

* "The U-2 Program: A Russian Officer Remembers": @

* Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's son writes about the downing (from American Heritage): @

* Initial cover story devised by U.S., May 2 (from Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum): @

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Sunday, May 1, 1960: Silver Dollar City opens

The 1880s-themed park near Branson, Missouri, was built above Marvel Cave. 125,000 people visited in its first year.

* Official website and history: @ and @

* Timeline from fan website: @

* More about Marvel Cave: @

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Undated: The Corvair

In its April issue, Motor Trend magazine names the new Chevrolet product the Car of the Year, citing its "engineering advancement: its (aluminum) air-cooled engine, transaxle and four-wheel independent suspension." Base price was $2,238. Production of the model began in 1959. Though it had a 10-year run, it did not prove as popular as the Ford Falcon and, later, the Mustang.

* Corvair Society of America: @

* Tribute website: @

* More about the car, including the technical issues written about in 1965's "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader: @

* "The Life and Death of the Chevrolet Corvair": @

* "25 things you didn't know about the Corvair": @

* Watch a long advertisement: @

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Undated: Planning for a space station

The Manned Space Stations Symposium is held in Los Angeles on April 20-22. Several papers are presented concerning the possibilities and challenges of long-term stays in space. The month before, plans for a "Space Vehicle" (drawn up by Douglas Aircraft Co.) had been shown at the annual Ideal Home Exhibition in London.

* Details and drawings of Space Vehicle: @

* More about Ideal Home Exhibition: @ and @

* Video from 1960 Ideal Home Exhibition: @

* Early history of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences: @

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Monday, April 25, 1960: 'Happiness is a Warm Puppy'

"Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz first uses the phrase in a daily comic strip. He would use it as the title of his first book two years later, a series of "Happiness is ..." sayings and drawings.

* Charles M. Schulz Museum website: @

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Sunday, April 24, 1960: Polio vaccine

The first mass distribution in the United States of Dr. Albert Sabin's oral polio vaccine begins, with thousands of schoolchildren in Cincinnati the first recipients. (The year before, millions of children in the Soviet Union had been given the vaccine.) It was often given in the form of a sugar cube laced with the vaccine. Sabin's method of oral immunization came 5 years later after Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, which was administered by inoculation.

* More on Albert Sabin: @

* National Museum of American History site: @

* More on the Salk and Sabin vaccines: @

* Watch "The Polio Crusade" from PBS: @

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