Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events of 1963

January

• January - Britain's "Big Freeze" begins, lasting into April.
• January 1 - Bogle-Chandler case: CSIRO scientist Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs. Margaret Chandler are found dead (presumed poisoned), in bushland near the Lane Cove River, Sydney.
• January 14 - George C. Wallace becomes governor of Alabama. In his inaugural speech, he defiantly proclaims "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!"^[1][2]
• January 14 - The locomotive Flying Scotsman (British Railways No. 60103) makes its last scheduled run, before going into the hands of Sir Alan Pegler for preservation.
• January 22 - France and Germany sign the Elysée Treaty.
• January 26 - The Australia Day shootings rock Perth, Western Australia; 2 people are shot dead and 3 others injured by Eric Edgar Cooke.
• January 28 - Black student Harvey Gantt enters Clemson University in South Carolina, the last U.S. state to hold out against racial integration.
• January 29 - French President Charles de Gaulle vetoes the United Kingdom's entry into the EEC.

February

• February 8 - Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy Administration.
• February 10 - Five Japanese cities located on the northernmost part of Ky-sh“ are merged and become the city of Kitaky-sh“, with a population of more than 1 million.
• February 12 - Northwest Airlines flight 705 crashes in the Florida Everglades killing everyone aboard.
• February 11 - The CIA's Domestic Operations Division is created.
• February 21 - An earthquake destroys the village of Barce, Libya, killing 500.
• February 27 - Juan Bosch takes office as the 41st president of the Dominican Republic.
• February 27 - Female suffrage is enacted in Iran.

March 21: Alcatraz closes

March

• March - The divorce case of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll causes scandal in the United Kingdom.
• March 4 - In Paris, 6 people are sentenced to death for conspiring to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle pardons 5 of them but the other conspirator is executed by firing squad a few days later.
• March 5 - In Camden, Tennessee, country music superstar Patsy Cline (Virginia Patterson Hensley) is killed in a plane crash along with fellow performers Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and Cline's manager and pilot Randy Hughes, while returning from a benefit performance in Kansas City, Kansas for country radio disc jockey "Cactus" Jack Call.
• March 16 - Mount Agung erupts on Bali, killing 11,000.
• March 18 - Gideon v. Wainwright: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the poor must have lawyers.
• March 21 - The Alcatraz Island federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay closes; the last 27 prisoners are transferred elsewhere at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

March 27: British Rail network, as it would have become, if "Beeching axe" plans had been fully implemented (only bolded rail lines would have remained).

• March 22 - The Beatles release their first album Please Please Me.
• March 23 - Dansevise by Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann (music by Otto Francker, text by Sejr Volmer-Sørensen) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1963 for Denmark.
• March 27 - In Britain, Dr. Beeching issues a report calling for huge cuts to the UK's rail network.

April

• April 3 - SCLC volunteers kick off the Birmingham campaign against segregation with a sit-in.
• April 7 - Yugoslavia is proclaimed to be a socialist republic, and Josip Broz Tito is named President for Life.
• April 8 - The 35th Academy Awards ceremony is held.
• April 10 - The U.S. nuclear submarine Thresher sinks 220 miles east of Cape Cod; all 129 crewmen die.
• April 12 - Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth and others are arrested in a Birmingham protest for "parading without a permit".
• April 12 - The Soviet nuclear powered submarine K-33 collides with the Finnish merchant vessel M/S Finnclipper in the Danish Straits. Although severely damaged, both vessels make it to port.
• April 15 - 70,000 marchers arrive in London from Aldermaston, to demonstrate against nuclear weapons.
• April 16 - Martin Luther King, Jr. issues his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
• April 20 - In Quebec, Canada, members of the terrorist group Front de libération du Québec, bomb a Canadian Army recruitment center, killing night watchman Wilfred V. O'Neill.
• April 21-23 - The first election of the Supreme Institution of the Bahá'í Faith (known as the Universal House of Justice, whose seat is at the Bahá'í World Centre on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel) is held.
• April 22 - Lester Bowles Pearson becomes the 14th Prime Minister of Canada.
• April 28 - A general election is held in Italy.
• April 29- Buddy Rogers becomes the first WWWF Champion.

May

• May 1 - The Coca-Cola Company debuts its first diet drink, TaB cola.
• May 2 - Thousands of African Americans, many of them children, are arrested while protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Sheriff Eugene "Bull" Connor later unleashes fire hoses and police dogs on the demonstrators.
• May 2 - Berthold Seliger launches near Cuxhaven a 3 stage rocket with a maximum flight altitude of more than 62 miles (the only sounding rocket developed in Germany).
• May 4 - The Le Monde Theater fire in Dioirbel, Senegal kills 64.
• May 8 - Dr. No, the first James Bond film, is shown in U.S. theaters.
• May 13 - A smallpox outbreak hits Stockholm, Sweden, lasting until July.
• May 15 - Mercury program: NASA launches Gordon Cooper on Mercury 9, the last mission (on June 12 NASA Administrator James E. Webb tells Congress the program is complete).
• May 23 - Fidel Castro visits the Soviet Union.
• May 25 - The Organisation of African Unity is established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
• May 27 - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's second studio album, and most influential, released by Columbia Records.

June

• June 3 - Pope John XXIII dies.
• June 4 - President John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 11110.
• June 5 - The first annual NHL draft is held in Montreal, Quebec.
• June 10 - The University of Central Florida is established by the Florida legislature.
• June 11 - In Saigon, Buddhist monk Thích Qu-ng Ð-c commits self-immolation to protest the oppression of Buddhists by the Ngo Dinh Diem administration.
• June 11 - Alabama Governor George C. Wallace stands in the door of the University of Alabama to protest against integration, before stepping aside and allowing African Americans James Hood and Vivian Malone to enroll.
• June 11 - President John F. Kennedy makes a historic civil rights speech, in which he promises a Civil Rights Bill, and asks for "the kind of equality of treatment that we would want for ourselves."
• June 12 - Medgar Evers is murdered in Jackson, Mississippi (his killer is convicted in 1994).
• June 13 - The cancellation of Mercury 10 effectively ends the Mercury program of United States manned spaceflight.
• June 16 - Vostok 6 carries Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman, into space.
• June 17 - Abington School District v. Schempp: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that state-mandated Bible reading in public schools is unconstitutional.
• June 21 - Pope Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Montini) succeeds Pope John XXIII as the 262nd pope.

July

• July 1 - ZIP Codes are introduced in the U.S.
• July 5 - Diplomatic relations between the Israeli and the Japanese governments are raised to embassy level.
• July 5 - The Roman Catholic Church accepts cremation as a funeral practice.
• July 12 - Pauline Reade, 16, is abducted by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady in Manchester, England.
• July 26 - An earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia leaves 1,800 dead.
• July 26 - NASA launches Syncom, the world's first geostationary (synchronous) satellite.
• July 27 - Indonesian Confrontation: Indonesian president-for-life Sukarno declares that he will crush Malaysia.
• July 30 - The Soviet newspaper Izvestia reports that Kim Philby has been given asylum in Moscow.

August

• August 5 - The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign a nuclear test ban treaty.
• August 8 - The Great Train Robbery of 1963 takes place in Buckinghamshire, England.
• August 18 - American civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
• August 21 - Xa Loi Pagoda raids: The Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, vandalise Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.
• August 28 - Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his I Have A Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of at least 250,000, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

September

• September 5 - British prostitute Christine Keeler is arrested for perjury. On December 6 she is sentenced to 9 months in prison.
• September 6 - The Centre for International Industrial Property Studies (CEIPI) is founded.
• September 7 - The Pro Football Hall of Fame opens in Canton, Ohio with 17 charter members.
• September 10 - Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano is indicted for murder (he is captured 43 years later, on April 11, 2006).
• September 15 - American civil rights movement: The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, in Birmingham, Alabama, kills 4 and injures 22.
• September 16 - Malaysia is formed through the merging of the Federation of Malaya and the British crown colony of Singapore, North Borneo (renamed Sabah) and Sarawak.
• September 16 - In Fort-Lamy, Chad, demonstrations are quelled with 300 dead.
• September 18 - Rioters burn down the British Embassy in Jakarta, to protest the formation of Malaysia.
• September 23 - King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals is established by a Saudi Royal Decree as the College of Petroleum and Minerals.
• September 24 - The U.S. Senate ratifies the nuclear test ban treaty.
• September 25 - The Denning Report on the Profumo affair is published in Great Britain.
• September 29 - The second period of Second Vatican Council in Rome opens.
• September 29 - The University of East Anglia is established in Norwich, England.

October

• October 1 - Nigeria becomes a republic; The 1st Republican Constitution is established
• October 4 - Hurricane Flora, one of the worst Atlantic storms in history, hits Hispaniola and Cuba killing nearly 7,000 people.
• October 8 - Sam Cooke and his band were arrested after trying to register at a "whites only" motel in Louisiana. In the months following, he records A Change Is Gonna Come (song).
• October 9 - In northeast Italy, over 2,000 people are killed when a large landslide behind the Vajont Dam causes a giant wave of water to overtop it.
• October 10 - The nuclear test ban treaty, signed on August 5, takes effect.
• October 14 - A revolution starts in Radfan, South Yemen against British colonial rule.
• October 19 - Alec Douglas-Home succeedes Harold Macmillan as British Prime Minister.
• October 31 - 74 die in a gas explosion at a coliseum in Indianapolis, Indiana.

November