Year retrospective · 1960s

1966

1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1966th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 966th year of the 2nd millennium, the 66th year of the 20th century, and the 7th year of the 1960s decade.

Recorded events

10

top entries

Notable births

30

Notable deaths

30

Decade

1960s

Timeline

Defining events of 1966

  1. 1966 Rastafari movement: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Jamaica, an event now celebrated as Grounation Day.

    Abrahamic new religious movement originating in 1930s Jamaica

    Rastafari is an Abrahamic religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control of the movement and much diversity exists among practitioners, who are known as Rastafari, Rastafarians, or Rastas.

  2. 1966 American Flyers Airline Flight 280/D crashes on approach to Ardmore Municipal Airport in Ardmore, Oklahoma, killing 83.

    1966 aviation accident

    S. Military Air Command contract from Monterey Regional Airport in California to Columbus Airport in Georgia, via Ardmore Municipal Airport, Oklahoma. On April 22, 1966, while approaching Runway 8 at Ardmore, the aircraft overshot the runway and crashed into a hill, bursting into flames.

  3. 1966 Aeroflot Flight 2723 crashes into the Caspian Sea off the Absheron Peninsula, killing 33 people.

    1966 aviation accident

    Aeroflot Flight 2723 was a Soviet domestic passenger flight from Bina International Airport to Makhachkala Airport. On 23 April 1966 the Ilyushin Il-14 operating the route ditched in the Caspian Sea following unexplained engine problems. None of the 33 on board survived.

  4. 1966 The magnitude 5.1 Tashkent earthquake affects the largest city in Soviet Central Asia with a maximum MSK intensity of VII (Very strong). Tashkent is mostly destroyed and 15–200 are killed.

    Very strong earthquake in Uzbek SSR

    The 1966 Tashkent earthquake occurred on 26 April in the Uzbek SSR. 0 mi). The earthquake caused massive destruction to Tashkent, destroying most of the buildings in the city, killing between 15 and 200 people and leaving between 200,000 and 300,000 homeless.

  5. 1966 A new government is formed in the Republic of the Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye.

    Country in Central Africa

    The Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply Congo, is a country located on the western coast of Central Africa to the west of the Congo River. It is bordered to the west by Gabon, to the northwest by Cameroon, to the northeast by the Central African Republic, to the southeast by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south by the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, and to the southwest by the Atlantic Ocean.

  6. 1966 During the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ personally attempts to lead the capture of the restive city of Đà Nẵng before backing down.

    1966 unrest in South Vietnam

    The Buddhist Uprising of 1966, or more widely known in Vietnam as the Crisis in Central Vietnam, was a period of civil and military unrest in South Vietnam, largely focused in the I Corps area in the north of the country in central Vietnam. The area is a center of Vietnamese Buddhism, and at the time, activist Buddhist monks and civilians were at the forefront of opposition to a series of military juntas that had been ruling the nation, as well as prominently questioning the escalation of the Vietnam War.

  7. 1966 Charles Whitman kills 15 people at the University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
  8. 1966 Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
  9. 1966 The Heron Road Bridge collapses while being built, killing nine workers in the deadliest construction accident in both Ottawa and Ontario.
  10. 1966 Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigations of Americans who have aided the Viet Cong. The committee intends to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 people are arrested.

Arrivals

Born in 1966

Mando 1966– Musical artist
Véronique Gens 1966– French operatic soprano (born 1966)
Paul Reiffel 1966– Australian cricketer and umpire
David Chalmers 1966– Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist
David Filo 1966– American businessman (born 1966)
Mickey Morandini 1966– American baseball player (born 1966)
Jeffrey Dean Morgan 1966– American actor (born 1966) Siobhan Finneran 1966– British actress (born 1966)
Peter McIntyre 1966– Australian cricketer (born 1966)
Yoshihiro Togashi 1966– Japanese manga artist (born 1966)
Veronica Pershina 1966– Russian figure skater (born 1966)
Chris Robinson 1966– American musician (born 1966)

Farewells

Died in 1966

Väinö Tanner Prime minister of Finland from 1926 to 1927
Simon Chikovani Georgian poet
Francis X. Bushman American actor, director, writer (1883–1966)
Karl Ruberl Austrian swimmer
Billy Rose American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist (1899–1966)
Gerard Antoni Ciołek Polish architect and historian (1909–1966)
Camilo Torres Restrepo Colombian Catholic revolutionary (1929–1966)
Grigory Nelyubov Soviet cosmonaut
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar Indian politician and ideologue (1883–1966)
Charles Bassett United States Air Force test pilot and astronaut (1931–1966)
Elliot See American astronaut (1927–1966)
T. M. Sabaratnam Ceylon Tamil lawyer and politician

On the charts

Culture of 1966

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