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:
“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)