January 22 » Edward VII is proclaimed King after the death of his mother, Queen Victoria.
May 9 » Australia opens its first national parliament in Melbourne.
August 28 » Silliman University is founded in the Philippines. It is the first American private school in the country.
September 2 » Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
October 29 » In Amherst, Massachusetts, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
December 12 » Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio signal (the letter "S" [***] in Morse Code), at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland.
Day of death February 24, 1963
The temperature on February 24, 1963 was between -14.1 °C and 1.1 °C and averaged -6.3 °C. There was 8.3 hours of sunshine (79%). The average windspeed was 2 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the northeast. Source: KNMI
April 16 » Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pens his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting against segregation.
May 30 » A protest against pro-Catholic discrimination during the Buddhist crisis is held outside South Vietnam's National Assembly, the first open demonstration during the eight-year rule of Ngo Dinh Diem.
July 19 » Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 meters (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.
July 26 » Syncom 2, the world's first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.
September 2 » CBS Evening News becomes U.S. network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.
December 26 » The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There" are released in the United States, marking the beginning of Beatlemania on an international level.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Wesley Brown, "The Brown Tree", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/the-brown-tree/P7435.php : accessed January 15, 2026), "William "Billy" Thorne (± 1883-1963)".
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