page_title: January 1966
section_title: January 24, 1966 (Monday)
hierarchical_section_title: January 1966 / January 24, 1966 (Monday)
caption_attribution_description: Indira Gandhi
context_page_description: The following events occurred in January 1966:
context_section_description: Air India Flight 101, a Boeing 707-437 named for the Himalayan mountain Kanchenjunga, crashed into a ridge of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the French Alps, at 8:25 a.m. local time.  All 106 passengers and 11 crew on board were killed.  On November 3, 1950, Air India Flight 245 had crashed in almost exactly the same spot.  The jet, en route from Mumbai to New York City, had been at an altitude of 15,000 feet as it approached for a landing at Geneva, when a violent snow storm on the 15,771 foot high Mont Blanc pulled the plane into the mountainside.  Mountain climbers would find remains of the airplane as late as 2012, when a bag of diplomatic mail from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs was found by a rescue worker.
  Indira Gandhi was sworn into office as Prime Minister of India. President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan administered the oath at the Ashoka Room of the presidential palace.
  Thirteen men were rescued from the disabled British tanker Chelwood Beacon about 15 miles south of Manhattan, 1 1/2 miles east of Sandy Hook, NJ, where the 665-foot tanker had run aground during a snowstorm.
  Died: Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, 56, Indian nuclear physicist and chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, in the crash of Air India Flight 101.
caption: Prime Minister Gandhi
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