Category: 1966

3 January
British Rail begins full electric passenger train services over the West Coast Main Line from Euston to Manchester and Liverpool with 100 mph (160 km/h) operation from London to Rugby. Services officially inaugurated 18 April.
Stop-motion children’s television series Camberwick Green first shown on BBC1.
4 January – More than 4,000 people attend a memorial service at Westminster Abbey for the broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, who died last month aged 52.
12 January – Three British MPs visiting Rhodesia (Christopher Rowland, Jeremy Bray and David Ennals) are assaulted by supporters of Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith.
20 January
The Queen commutes the death sentence on a black prisoner in Rhodesia, two months after its abolition in Britain.
Radio Caroline South pirate radio ship MV Mi Amigo runs aground on the beach at Frinton.
21 January – The Smith regime in Rhodesia rejects the Royal Prerogative commuting death sentences on two Africans.
30 January – Action Man toy action figure launched.
31 January – United Kingdom ceases all trade with Rhodesia.
9 February – A prototype Fast Reactor nuclear reactor opens at Dounreay on the north coast of Scotland.
17 February – Britain protests to South Africa over its supplying of petrol to Rhodesia.
19 February – Naval minister Christopher Mayhew resigns.
28 February – Harold Wilson calls a general election for 31 March, in hope of increasing his single-seat majority.
1 March – Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan announces the decision to embrace decimalisation of the pound (which will be effected on 15 February 1971).
4 March
In an interview published in The Evening Standard, John Lennon of The Beatles comments, “We’re more popular than Jesus now”.
Britain recognized the new regime in Ghana.
5 March – BOAC Flight 911 crashes in severe clear-air turbulence over Mount Fuji soon after taking off from Tokyo International Airport in Japan, killing all 124 on board.
9 March – Ronnie, one of the Kray twins, shoots George Cornell (an associate of rivals The Richardson Gang) dead at The Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel, east London, a crime for which he is finally convicted in 1969.
11 March – Chi-Chi, the London Zoo’s giant panda, is flown to Moscow for a union with An-An of the Moscow Zoo.
20 March – Theft of football’s FIFA World Cup Trophy whilst on exhibition in London.
23 March – Pope Paul VI and Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, meet in Rome.
27 March – Pickles, a mongrel dog, finds the FIFA World Cup Trophy wrapped in newspaper in a south London garden.
30 March – Opinion polls show that the Labour government is on course to significantly increase its parliamentary majority in the general election tomorrow.
31 March – The Labour Party under Harold Wilson win the general election with a majority of 96 seats. At the 1964 election they had a majority of five but subsequent by-election defeats had led to that being reduced to just one seat before this election.[7] The Birmingham Edgbaston seat is retained for the Conservatives by Jill Knight in succession to Edith Pitt, the first time two women MPs have followed each other in the same constituency.

April – June

January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko.
January 2 – A strike of public transportation workers in New York City begins (it would end January 13).
January 3 – The first Acid Test is conducted at the Fillmore, San Jose.
January 4
A military coup occurs in Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso).
The prime ministers of India and Pakistan meet in Moscow.
A gas leak fire at the Feyzin oil refinery near Lyon, France, kills 18 and injures 84.
January 10
Pakistani–Indian peace negotiations end successfully in Tashkent. Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri dies the next day.
The French paper L’Express publishes a story by Georges Figon, who took part in the kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka.
Georgia House of Representatives refuses to seat Julian Bond.
Home of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is firebombed. Dahmer’s family escapes but he dies the next day from severe burns. (White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers will be unsuccessfully tried for this murder on four occasions, and then convicted in 1998.)
Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference convenes in Lagos, Nigeria.
January 11
A conference on Rhodesia begins in Lagos, Nigeria.
The first SR-71 Blackbird spy plane goes into service at Beale AFB.
January 12 – United States President Lyndon Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.
January 13 – Robert C. Weaver becomes the first African-American Cabinet member, by being appointed United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
January 15 – A bloody military coup is staged in Nigeria, deposing the civilian government.
January 17
The Nigerian coup is overturned by another faction of the military, leaving a military government in power. This is the beginning of a long period of military rule.
A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares, and one into the sea, in the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash.
Carl Brashear, the first African-American United States Navy diver, is involved in an accident during the recovery of a lost H-bomb which results in the amputation of his leg.
January 18
French police announce that Georges Figon has committed suicide, prior to his arrest for the kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka.
About 8,000 U.S. soldiers land in South Vietnam; U.S. troops now total 190,000.
January 19 – Indira Gandhi is elected Prime Minister of India; she is sworn in January 24.
January 20 – Demonstrations occur against high food prices in Hungary.
January 21 – Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro resigns due to a power struggle in his party.
January 22
The military government of Nigeria announces that ex-prime minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was killed during the coup.
The Chadian Muslim insurgent group FROLINAT is founded in Sudan, starting the Chadian Civil War.
January 24 – Air India Flight 101 crashes into Mont Blanc, killing all 117 persons on board, including Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission.
January 26
Harold Holt becomes Prime Minister of Australia when Robert Menzies retires.
Beaumont children disappearance: Three children disappear on their way to Glenelg, South Australia, never to be seen again.
January 27
The British government promises the U.S. that British troops in Malaysia will stay until more peaceful conditions occur in the region.
Britain’s Labour Party unexpectedly retains the parliamentary seat of Hull North in a by-election, with a swing of 4.5% to their candidate from the opposition Conservatives, and a majority up from 1,181 at the 1964 General Election to 5,351.
January 29 – The first of 608 performances of Sweet Charity opens at the Palace Theatre in New York City.
January 31 – The United Kingdom ceases all trade with Rhodesia.