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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

October 24, 1960: Congolese Army Riot, Communists in Tunis, Kennedy Gains, Fourth Bomb Explodes in NYC, Lodge Speaks on Hungary, Vietnam Fighting

In the Congolese capital of Leopoldville the army rioted as the head of the military regeme Col. Joseph Mobuto left the city. "The United Nations appeared to be maintaining a hands off policy as the soldiers, some of them drunk and apparently bent on revenge, terrorized the population and put the provincial government's civilian police to flight," the New York Times reported today.

In Tunis, the premier of the Algerian Provisional Government, Ferhat Abbas, "spoke repeatedly of 'our Chinese and Soviet Friends'," the New York Times reported, noting it as evidence of "the long step that the Algerian nationalist movement has taken toward the Communist world in the last four months." Meanwhile, in Paris, Algerian nationalists armed with pistols, submachine guns and grenades attacked five police stations, injuring seven policemen, the New York Times reported of the "rebel terrorists."

Sen. John F. Kennedy has made "substantial gains" in all sections of the country since his nomination, setting the stage for a close election, the New York Times reported today.

A bomb exploded on a Staten Island ferryboat, ripping a two-foot hole in the boat but causing no injures, the New York Times reported today. "The crud bomb, siliar to the homemade explosives that have injured thirty-nine persons and terrorized the city on two of the last three Sundays and last Columbus Day, was planted under a seat near a life-preserver locker."

Americans "will never be satisfied until the people of Hungary are allowed the right of self-determination," Republican Vice Presidential candidate Henry Cabot Lodge said on the anniversary of the fourth anniversary of the Hungarian revolution, which the United States failed to support before it was crushed by the Soviet Union, newspapers reported today. Some have criticized Lodge for not supporting a motion to keep the UN Security Council in session during the Hungarian uprising -- against the advice of the British and the French -- after the Soviet delegate denied Soviet troops were moving on Budapest.

"South Vietnamese forces killed ten Communist insurgents and wounded twenty-six others in action in Vinh Binh Province last week, officials reported today. The government losses were not disclosed," UPI reported in todays papers in a dispatch from Saigon.