The 113th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Steve Forrest and Jacqueline Scott star in an episode written by Serling.
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British broadcaster ABC airs the 51st episode of Sydney Newman’s spy series The Avengers, starring Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman.
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The 114th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Howard Morris, Patricia Berry, and Jack Albertson star.
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British broadcaster ABC airs the 52nd episode of Sydney Newman’s spy series The Avengers, starring Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman. This concludes the series’ second season.
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Meetings commence at the BBC to hash out ideas for a new children’s science fiction series to be produced in-house, possibly involving a time machine, an aloof old man, a younger “man of action” character, a female scientist, and a younger woman. As the creative lightning rod of this series development, Sydney Newman begins to weed out ideas he considers unsuitable – such as giving these characters the roles of “science troubleshooters” working for the government – and homes in on the time travel idea, as well as the old man character, who emerges as a man of mystery. These are the first creative meetings from which the BBC’s Doctor Who will emerge.
An unmanned Soviet lunar lander, Luna 4, is launched from the USSR’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. Unlike Luna 2, which intentionally crashed into the moon with no attempt to slow its approach, Luna 4 is the first atempt at a vehicle intended to survive its descent to the lunar surface and make observations from the ground. A failed course correction engine burn leaves the 3,000-pound vehicle in a wide, looping orbit around the Earth, unable to reach the moon at all. The Soviet Union, after several more attempts, will eventually achieve the first unmanned soft landing on the surface of the moon three years later.
The 115th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Martin Balsam stars.
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The 116th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Albert Salmi and John Anderson star.
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The 117th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Pat Hingle and Nan Martin guest star.
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The 118th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. James Whitmore and Tim O’Connor star in an episode written by Serling.
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The 119th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Gladys Cooper and Wilfrid Hyde-White star.
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The final manned Mercury flight, Mercury 9 (nicknamed Faith 7) puts astronaut Gordon Cooper in orbit for over a day. Over the course of 34 hours, Cooper circles Earth 22 times, performing small-scale experiments and photography tasks. With Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton grounded due to health issues, only six of the Mercury seven have flown. Development of a two-seater descendant of the Mercury design (initially called “Big Mercury” but now known as Gemini) is well underway, along with the development of the Apollo spacecraft that will succeed Gemini and take men to the moon. Cooper is the last solo American space pilot until Mike Melvill flies the experimental SpaceShip One into suborbital space in the 21st century.
The 120th episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Jack Weston, John McGiver, and Burt Reynolds star in the fourth season finale, written by Serling.
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The Soviet Union launches the Vostok 5 mission to orbit Earth, carrying cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky aboard. He remains in orbit for over four days, traveling over 2,000,000 miles in Earth orbit. As he flies over the Soviet Union, a second Vostok capsule is launched in the USSR’s first bid to trump the United States by mounting the first manned space rendezvous.
While cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky orbits overhead about Vostok 5, Vostok 6 is launched from the Soviet Union, carrying the first female space traveler, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Spending nearly three days in orbit, Tereshkova’s Vostok capsule serves as a rendezvous target for Vostok 5, though without precision piloting ability, the two vehicles’ closest approach is no closer than within three miles, and neither Vostok is actually equipped for any kind of docking. Tereshkova’s flight is a political point scored for the Soviet Union, but only a brief victory for womankind: it will be two more decades before another woman flies in space. The glass ceiling remains firmly in orbit.
NASA and the United States Weather Bureau launch the seventh experimental TIROS weather satellite, TIROS-7. In addition to observing weather on Earth, TIROS-7 carries instruments to measure electron activity in Earth’s vicinity and to measure the temperature of space. Enhancements designed to extend the satellite’s life prove to be wildly successful: TIROS-7 is the longest-lived of the experimental TIROS series, remaining in service for five years (and, critically, five hurricane seasons).
NASA launches the experimental, Hughes Aircraft-built communications satellite Syncom 2 into a geosynchronous orbit, the first human-made satellite to occupy that orbit. (Syncom 1, launched in February, malfunctioned on its way to that orbit, so technically it could be considered the first, though it didn’t arrive in geosynchronous orbit in a functional state.) Capable of handling either a single two-way telephone call, or up to 16 simultaneous teletype transmissions. Early fax transmission tests were also carried out. Syncom 2 could also transmit low-quality video, but with no audio. Control of Syncom 2 is handed over to the Department of Defense in 1965 once NASA has completed its run of experimental communications tests.
Construction commences on NASA’s massive Vehicle Assembly Building (originally named the Vertical Assembly Building), where the giant Saturn V rockets for Apollo lunar missions will be constructed, tested, and then rolled out to the launch pad atop huge mobile crawlers. Covering eight acres of land on Merritt Island, Florida, the building must withstand Florida’s notorious hurricane seasons (and protect any rockets under construction within) as well as the shockwaves of Saturn V rocket launches taking place only three miles away; special ventilation and humidity control systems have to be built as well, as the interior space is so voluminous that the building has its own internal weather! The VAB will later transition to the assembly of the Space Shuttle launch system elements and the Space Launch System boosters for the 21st century Orion program.
Radio and television stations across the United States begin mandatory participation in the national Emergency Broadcast System, a nationwide civil defense alert network replacing the CONELRAD system of the 1950s. Much like CONELRAD, EBS tests and activations initially require the rapid shutdown and reactivation of transmitters, at least until that practice is abolished in favor of a two-tone warning sound in the 1970s. Though the switch from CONELRAD to EBS is sparked by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the EBS will later become more closely associated with severe weather warnings.
ABC airs the first episode of Leslie Stevens’ anthology series The Outer Limits. Lee Phillps and Jacqueline Scott star in a script written by Stevens.
ABC airs the second episode of Leslie Stevens’ anthology series The Outer Limits. Sidney Blackmer and Phillip Pine star.
The 121st episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone airs on CBS. Jack Klugman, Bobby Diamond, and Bill Mumy star in the fifth season finale, written by Serling. The show resumes its half-hour length for the duration of this season.
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The original pilot episode of Doctor Who – version 1.0 of An Unearthly Child – is filmed at the BBC’s Lime Grove Studios. Though it’s substantially the same script as the televised version – barring a line claiming that the Doctor and Susan are from Earth in the 49th century (!) – problems with the sets and props necessitate a complete reshoot on October 18th.
British broadcaster ABC airs the 53rd episode of the spy-fi series The Avengers, starring Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman. By this episode, which opens the third season, the series has moved firmly into a light-hearted spy-fi vein far removed from its original gritty formulation with two male leads. Where Steed’s sidekicks were on something of a rotation during the second season, Honor Blackman is now the series’ sole female lead.
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ABC airs the third episode of Leslie Stevens’ anthology series The Outer Limits. Robert Culp stars in a script by Meyer Dolinsky.