page_title: December 1965
section_title: December 9, 1965 (Thursday)
hierarchical_section_title: December 1965 / December 9, 1965 (Thursday)
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Anastas Mikoyan
context_page_description: The following events occurred in December 1965:
context_section_description: Anastas Mikoyan resigned from the largely ceremonial job as the Soviet Union's head of state, the President of the Presidium, which he had held since July 15, 1964.  Mikoyan had been one of the original Soviet Communist Party members at the time of the October Revolution in 1917. The 1,500 delegates to the Supreme Soviet gave Mikoyan a standing ovation when he asked to be relieved for health reasons, then voted immediately to elevate Ukrainian official and CPSU Central Committee Secretary Nikolai V. Podgorny to the job.  Podgorny would be the head of the Soviet government until being removed in 1977.
  The "Internationalists in Ireland", forerunner of the Communist Party of Ireland, was founded by Hardial Bains, who was working as a microbiologist at Trinity College, Dublin.
  A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first Peanuts television special, debuted on CBS, and would become an annual tradition. It drew mixed reviews from critics on its first showing.
  A fireball streaked across the sky over Ontario, Michigan, and Ohio and was witnessed by hundreds of people before crashing outside Kecksburg, Pennsylvania at 5:15 in the afternoon. A volunteer firefighter claimed that he saw "an acorn-shaped object 9 to 12 feet in diameter with a golden band around the bottom" and that "symbols resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics were etched on the band"  and other witnesses said that U.S. Army investigators "hauled away a huge object hidden under a tarp on a flatbed truck".  On the other hand, all of the astronomers who were interviewed concluded that the object was a large meteor that was part of the Geminids.  No meteor was found, however.
  Thunderball, the fourth of the James Bond film series of films with Sean Connery, had its world premiere at the Hibiya Cinema in Tokyo.  It would debut at the Paramount Theatre in New York on December 21 and in the Rialto and Pavilion theatres in London on December 29.
  The Romanian Railways opened its first electrified rail line in the country after 2 years of test trials.
  Died: Branch Rickey, 83, American baseball manager who integrated Major League Baseball as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, with the signing the first African-American MLB player of the modern era, Jackie Robinson.
caption: Mikoyan
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