January 11, 1962 (Thursday)
- Soviet submarine B-37, nine days away from being dispatched to Cuba, was moored at Polyarny, conducting maintenance and pressurizing of outdated gas-steam torpedoes. At 8:20 am, a fire in the torpedo compartment detonated all twelve torpedoes and instantly destroying the submarine. Captain Anatoly Begeba, who had been outside, inspecting the top of the sub, survived. The 78 men inside the sub drowned as it sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea.
- Nelson Mandela secretly left South Africa for the first time, as he was driven across the border to Botswana. From there, he went to Ethiopia to speak at a conference in Addis Ababa. He would tour the continent for the next six months. Upon his return to South Africa on August 5, he would be arrested.
- Born: Kim Coles, American actress, in Brooklyn, New York
Read more about this topic: January 1962
Famous quotes containing the word january:
“and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
The New England postcards,
the January ten o’clock night,
and we rose up like wheat....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)