January 1959 - January 25, 1959 (Sunday)

January 25, 1959 (Sunday)

• Pope John XXIII announced his plans to convene Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), in Rome. The call for a worldwide gathering of up to 2,500 Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops followed a Sunday mass in honor of St. Paul.

• The first American passenger jet service began as an American Airlines Boeing 707 flew from Los Angeles to New York. Among the 112 passengers was poet Carl Sandburg who said,"We salute the intelligence and the daring of man that has wrought this strange and blessed device, now so familiarly known as the passenger jet plane." After California's First Lady, Bernice Brown, pushed the button to start the engines, Captain C.A. McAtee took off at 9:01 a.m. and arrived in New York 4 hours, 3 minutes later. Captain Hamilton Smith then flew the jet and its 112 passengers back to Los Angeles.