page_title: July 1959
section_title: July 17, 1959 (Friday)
hierarchical_section_title: July 1959 / July 17, 1959 (Friday)
caption_attribution_description: English: Mary Leakey, British archaeologist and anthropologist
context_page_description: The following events occurred in July 1959:
context_section_description: Anthropologist Mary Leakey unearthed a skull fragment, commonly referred to as Zinjanthropus, that would lead to a rethinking of the origins of human beings. Discovered at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where Louis Leakey had found prehistoric tools 28 years earlier. Zinjanthropus (now Australopithecus boisei) is not considered a direct human ancestor, but another Olduvai discovery from 1960, the mandible with teeth of "OH 5" (Olduvai Hominid 5), the toolmaking Homo habilis, some 1.75 million years old, is believed to be.
  Sixty-eight people, 51 of whom were children under the age of 10, were killed in South Korea when a sudden downpour and rapidly rising waters caused a panic and a stampede at the Busan Municipal Stadium, where an art show was being staged before a crowd of 70,000 people.   The sudden storm came in conjunction with Typhoon Billie, the first typhoon officially monitored by meteorologists at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
  An early experiment in instant replay was done by New York TV station WPIX, after a hit by Jim McAnany of the White Sox ended a no-hitter by the Yankees' Ralph Terry. Since the game was being videotaped, broadcaster Mel Allen asked director Terry Murphy to play a tape of McAnany's hit over the air for a soon-thereafter, replay of the events. 
  Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, with Cary Grant, premiered.
  Died: Singer Billie Holiday died at 3:20 a.m. at New York's Metropolitan Hospital, where she had been admitted on May 31 for heart failure. Thousands of mourners turned out for her wake and her funeral.
caption: Mary Leakey
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