November 1963

The following events occurred in November 1963: November 1, 1963 (Friday) At 1:15 pm in Saigon, three marine battalions of South Vietnam began their seizure of communications throughout the capital city, taking control of the city's radio stations, national and municipal police stations, and the public and Defense Ministry telecommunications centers. The acts were the first in a coup d'état against President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. The planners had set a deadline of 1:15 to either begin the coup or to call it off, and were waiting until visiting U.S. Admiral Harry Felt had departed. Admiral Felt's airplane took off at 1:00 pm. Diem and Nhu quietly escaped Gia Long Palace by 8:00 p.m. and fled to refuge at the Roman Catholic church in the nearby Cholon section of the city. Lennox Madikane, Mxolisi Dam'ane and Felix Jaxa, three African National Congress (ANC) members who had been convicted of violating South Africa's Sabotage Act of 1962 for inciting riots at Paarl the year before, were hanged at Robben Island prison. In the mountains of Puerto Rico, the Arecibo Observatory, along with the world's largest fixed-reflector radar and radio telescope, were officially dedicated. Assistant U.S. Secretary of Defense formally accepted the instrument for use by the DOD's Advanced Research Projects Agency. In the first test of the type of rocket to be used by U.S. astronauts in the Gemini program, Titan II development flight N-25 was launched from the Atlantic Missile Range. The modified Titan II missile carried an oxidizer surge chamber and fuel accumulator kit to reduce the amplitude of longitudinal vibration, a problem in earlier flights, to less than 0.25g, the maximum level tolerable in human spaceflight. The N-25 flight achieved a vibration level of 0.22g, within acceptable limits.