An attempted coup took place in South Vietnam before dawn on September 13, 1964. Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức sent dissident units into the capital Saigon to overthrow the ruling military junta led by General Nguyễn Khánh. They captured key points and announced the overthrow of the regime on national radio. In the previous month, Khánh's leadership had became increasingly troubled. He had tried to augment his powers by declaring a state of emergency; this provoked large-scale protests calling for an end to military rule. Fearful of losing power, Khánh began making concessions and promised democracy in the near future. He also removed military officials linked to the discriminatory Catholic rule of the former President Ngô Đình Diệm, including Phát (Interior Minister) and Đức (IV Corps commander), who responded with a coup. With American help, Khánh rallied support and the coup collapsed the next morning without casualties. Despite Khánh's survival, the historian George McTurnan Kahin has described the coup as the start of Khánh's ultimate political decline. His relations with America became increasingly strained and he was deposed in February 1965 with US connivance.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_1964_South_Vietnamese_coup_attempt

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

509 BC:

The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Capitoline Hill, the most important temple in Ancient Rome, was dedicated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Jupiter_Optimus_Maximus

1541:

After three years of exile, John Calvin returned to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine that came to be known as Calvinism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism

1848:

An explosion drove an iron rod through the head of railroad foreman Phineas Gage (pictured), making him an important early case of personality change after brain injury. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

1971:

Following a failed coup attempt, Mao Zedong's second-in-command Lin Biao died in a plane crash while attempting to flee the People's Republic of China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Biao

2006:

Kimveer Gill shot 19 people for unknown reasons, killing one, at Dawson College in Montreal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_College_shooting

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

gooseberry: 1. A fruit closely related to the currant. 2. Any of several other unrelated fruits, such as the Chinese gooseberry (kiwifruit) or the Indian gooseberry (amla). 3. (British, informal) An unwanted additional person: Robert and Susan were so in love that nobody could go near them without feeling like a gooseberry. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gooseberry

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?   --Richard Feynman https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman