January 1962 - January 26, 1962 (Friday)

January 26, 1962 (Friday)

• The American space probe Ranger 3 was launched to from Cape Canaveral at 3:30 pm local time with the objective of duplicating the Soviet feat of landing a satellite on the Moon. Hours later, NASA announced that the Atlas rocket had hurled Ranger 3 into its trajectory too quickly, and that the probe would miss its target by 22,000 miles. Intersecting the Moon's orbit after 50 hours instead of the planned 66 hours, the spacecraft arrived too soon, got no closer than 22,862 miles from the Moon and went into orbit around the sun.
• Seventeen employees at the National Steel Company in Volta Redonda, Brazil, were killed when a ladle of molten steel poured down upon them during the morning shift.
• Died: Lucky Luciano, 64, Sicilian-born American mafioso who had been deported from the U.S. months earlier. Exiled in Italy, Luciano had just greeted film producer Martin Gosch, who had arrived at the Capodichino Airport in Naples to discuss plans for a film about Luciano's life. As the two men walked out of the terminal with policeman Marcelo Resta, Luciano, who had ordered the murder of more than 40 rival gangsters during his career, collapsed from a fatal heart attack at 5:25 pm. A deputy commissioner of the U.S. Narcotics Bureau told reporters later that day that Luciano had been facing re-arrest for his role in a major drug ring. The film, Lucky Luciano, was made eleven years later and released in 1974, with Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté portraying Luciano.
• Died: Gerald Rudolff Ford, 71, stepfather of future U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, died of injuries after slipping on an ice sidewalk. In 1917, the elder Ford had married Ford's mother and then changed the name of her 3-year old son, Leslie Lynch King, Jr. to his own, with the exception of spelling the middle name as Rudolph.
• Died: Eunice Gray, 77, in a fire at the Waco Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, which she had operated for 40 years. Theories abound that Gray was the same person as Etta Place, former girlfriend, last seen in 1907, of the Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid.