January 1962 - January 8, 1962 (Monday)

January 8, 1962 (Monday)

• Harmelen train disaster: The collision of two trains killed 91 people in the worst rail crash in Netherlands history. An express train running from Leeuwarden to Amsterdam and a slower moving commuter train from Rotterdam collided at the same switching point after 9:18 am in a heavy fog.

• The first two teams of the United States Navy SEALs, were commissioned as the United States Navy's Sea, Air and Land teams, with an order backdated to January 1, in order to carry out President Kennedy's recommendation for the development of "unconventional warfare capability". SEAL Team One, based in Coronado, California served the Pacific Fleet and SEAL Team Two served the Atlantic Fleet out of Little Creek, Virginia. Each team consisted of 50 men and ten officers.
• In a closed session at the Presidium, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered what was later referred to as the "meniscus speech", using the analogy of a wineglass filled to the point that it could overflow at anytime. In the speech, which was not revealed until 40 years later, Khrushchev told the ministers that the U.S.S.R. was weaker militarily than the United States, and that the only way to compete against American superiority was to maintain the threat that world tensions could spill over. "Because if we don't have a meniscus," Khrushchev said, "we let the enemy live peacefully."
• The Yugoslavian freighter Sabac was cut in two by the British steamer Dorington Court in a collision in the English Channel. Only eight of the 33 men on the Sabac survived.
• Born: Anatoliy Serdyukov, Russian Minister of Defense since 2007; in Krasnodar Krai
• Died: Maximilian, Duke of Hohenberg, 59, eldest son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Countess Sophie