February 9, 1961: Kennedy Calls for School Integration, Supports NATO, Awaits Data on 'Missile Gap' and Confers on Laos; Brit Wants Red China in UN

"President Kennedy said today that both the Constitution and public opinion demanded the admission of children to public schools 'regardless of their race,'" the New York Times reports on this day in 1961.

"President Kennedy pledged the United States today to unstinting and expanding support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization," the New York Times reports.

"The Administration has come to no conclusion on the 'missile gap,' President Kennedy said today," the New York Times reports.

"Britain's Foreign Secretary declared today that the facts of international life required Communist China's entry into the United Nations," the Times reports.

"Possible steps to meet the crisis in Laos were studied today at a two-hour conference of President Kennedy and his top advisers," the Times reports.

February 8, 1961: White House Backs Missile Gap, Soviet Spy in London, $1 Minimum Wage May Get Boost

"The White House branded as inaccurate today reports that the Kennedy Administration had tentatively concluded that there was no 'missile gap' favoring the Soviet Union," the New York Times reports on this day in 1961.

"Britain's Attorney General charged today that the Soviet spy system had sent secrets of anti-submarine devices from a bungalow in a suburb of London to Moscow," the New York Times reports.

"President Kennedy called on Congress today for prompt action to increase the national minimum wage from $1 to $1.25 an hour and to extend the protection to 4,300,000 workers," the Times reports.

February 7, 1961: No Missile Gap, US To Help Latin American Nations, Safe Cigarettes Proposed

"Studies made by the Kennedy Administration since Inauguration Day show tentatively that no 'missile gap' exists in favor of the Soviet Union," the New York Times reports on this day in 1961.

"The conclusion appeared to back the views of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who told Congress last month that the missile gap 'shows every sign' of being a fiction."

"Secretary of State Dean Rusk said today that the United States was ready to cooperate with other American states in ending tyranny in the hemisphere, whether that tyranny is of the Left or Right," the Times reports.

"A new theory on how cigarette smoking may be associated with lung cancer has been proposed by a General Electric Research Laboratory physicist. According to an article in the Jan. 21 issue of Nature, a British scientific journal, the glowing tip of a cigarette generates a cloud of electrically charged particles. The particles, when inhaled, may be the materials that change normal tissues to cancerous tissues. If this is true, it was suggested by Dr. Kenneth H. Kingdon, the author, the effect could be 'completely suppressed' by smoking cigarettes that were enclosed in a metallic screen," the New York Times reports.

February 6, 1961: Rioting in Angola, Cuba Controls Water for US Base, No 'Super-Cabinet' for White House

"Rioting broke out today in Luanda, capital of Angola, and four persons were killed and seven wounded, the Portuguese press agency Lusitania reported," the New York Times reports on this day in 1961.

"The Cuban Government seized yesterday the aqueduct that supplies water to the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay. So far the water supply is said to be normal," the Times reports.

"The President needs more help formulating security policy, a Senate sub-ccommittee said today. But he will not get it by creating 'super-Cabinet' positions in the White House, the Senators said," the Times reports.