January 12, 1962 (Friday)
- Operation Chopper, the first American combat mission in Vietnam, began as the American pilots transported hundreds of South Vietnamese troops to fight against a Viet Cong force near Saigon. Three days later, President Kennedy told reporters at a press conference that American troops were not being used in combat.
- A spokesman for the Army of Indonesia, Colonel Soenarjo, that soldiers had begun landing on West Irian, the semi-independent western side of New Guinea that remained under the administration of the Netherlands.
- Born: Richie Richardson, Antiguan cricketer and one time captain of the West Indies cricket team; in Five Islands Village
Read more about this topic: January 1962
Famous quotes containing the word january:
“Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days—whatever there may be for the dust—the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)