January 6 – A British firm, the Leyland Motor Corp., announces the sale of 450 buses to the Cuban government, challenging the United States blockade of Cuba.[2]
January 9 – Martyrs' Day: Armed clashes between United States troops and Panamanian civilians in the Panama Canal Zone precipitate a major international crisis, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and 4 U.S. soldiers.
January 28 – A U.S. Air Force jet training aircraft that strays into East Germany is shot down by Soviet fighters near Erfurt; all three crewmen are killed.[5][6]
February 5 – India backs out of its promise to hold a plebiscite in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In 1948, India had taken the issue of Kashmir to the United Nations Security Council and offered to hold a plebiscite in the held Kashmir under UN supervision.
Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King Paul.
American boxer Cassius Clay announces the change of his name to Muhammad Ali.[13]
March 18 – 1964 Moscow protest: Approximately 50 Moroccan students break into the embassy of Morocco in the Soviet Union and stage an all-day sit-in protesting against sentencing of eleven people to death for the alleged assassination attempt of King Hassan II of Morocco.
March 20 – The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
April 8 – The U.S. Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft.
April 9 – The United Nations Security Council adopts by a 9–0 vote a resolution deploring a British air attack on a fort in Yemen 12 days earlier, in which 25 persons were reported killed.
April 16 – In the Assize Court at Buckingham, England, sentences totalling 307 years are passed on twelve men who stole £2,600,000 in used bank notes, after holding up the night train from Glasgow to London in August 1963 – a heist that becomes known as the Great Train Robbery.[17][18]
April 19 – In Laos, the coalition government of Prince Souvanna Phouma is deposed by a right-wing military group, led by Brig. Gen. Kouprasith Abhay. Not supported by the United States, the coup is ultimately unsuccessful, and Souvanna Phouma is reinstated, remaining as Prime Minister until 1975.
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in New York, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, simultaneously announce plans to cut back production of materials for making nuclear weapons.
April 25 – Thieves steal the head of the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, Denmark. Although the attack is attributed to Jørgen Nash, the Danish media blame painter Henrik Bruun, who never confesses to the crime.[22]
Some 400–1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, and another 700 in San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. Smaller marches also occur in Boston, Seattle, and Madison, WI.
Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.
At a mail rockets demonstration by Gerhard Zucker on Hasselkopf Mountain near Braunlage (Lower Saxonia, Germany), three people are killed by a rocket explosion.
May 9 – South Korean President Park Chung Hee reshuffles his Cabinet, after a series of student demonstrations against his efforts to restore diplomatic and trade relations with Japan.
May 12 – Twelve young men in New York City publicly burn their draft cards to protest against the Vietnam War, the first such act of war resistance.[26][27]
May 23 – Madeline Dassault, 63, wife of a French plane manufacturer and politician, is kidnapped while leaving her car in front of her Paris home; she is found unharmed the next day in a farmhouse 27 miles (43km) from Paris.[28]
May 27 – The ongoing Colombian conflict starts, with an assault by 1,000 Colombian soldiers, backed by fighter planes and helicopters, against about 50 guerrillas in the community of Marquetalia.[29]
July 27 – Vietnam War: The U.S. sends 5,000 more military advisers to South Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
July 31 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound telescopes).
August 8 – A Rolling Stones gig in Scheveningen gets out of control. Riot police end the gig after about fifteen minutes, upon which spectators start to fight the riot police.[41]
Three thousand student activists at the University of California, Berkeley, surround and block a police car from taking a CORE volunteer arrested for not showing his ID, when he violated a ban on outdoor activist card tables. This protest eventually explodes into the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
The Shinkansenhigh-speed rail system, the world's first such system, is inaugurated in Japan, for the first sector between Tokyo and Osaka.
October 12 – The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits. The flight is cut short and lands again on October 13 after 16 orbits.
Canada: A Federal Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects a design to become the new official Flag of Canada.
A 5.3 kiloton nuclear device is detonated at the Tatum Salt Dome, 21 miles (34km) from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as part of the Vela Uniform program. This test is the Salmon phase of the Atomic Energy Commission's Project Dribble.
October 24 – Northern Rhodesia, a former British protectorate, becomes the independent Republic of Zambia, ending 73 years of British rule.
November 1 – Mortar fire from North Vietnamese forces rains on the Bien Hoa Air Base, killing four U.S. servicemen, wounding 72, and destroying five B-57 jet bombers and other planes.
Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Police arrest about 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover of and massive sit-in at the Sproul Hall administration building. The sit-in most directly protested the U.C. Regents' decision to punish student activists for what many thought had been justified civil disobedience earlier in the conflict.[58]
The Danish football club Brøndby IF is founded as a merger between the two local clubs Brøndbyøster Idrætsforening and Brøndbyvester Idrætsforening. The club wins the national championship Danish Superliga 10 times, and the Danish Cups six times, after joining the Danish top-flight football league in 1981.
December 18 – The Christmas flood of 1964 begins in the United States, affecting the Pacific Northwest and some of Northern California. It will continue until January 7, resulting in 19 deaths, serious damage to buildings, roads and bridges, and the loss of 4,000 head of livestock.[61]
December 24 – The Brinks Hotel in Saigon, Vietnam, is bombed by the Viet Cong, resulting in the deaths of two US soldiers and injuries to a further 60 people, including civilians.[64]
Cheng, Adeline Low Hwee (2001). "The past in the present: Memories of the 1964 'racial riots' in Singapore". Asian Journal of Social Science. 29 (3): 431–455. doi:10.1163/156853101X00181.
"Movie Star Alan Ladd, 50, Found Dead in His Home: Alan Ladd, 50 Movie Actor, Dies in Home Star Won Fame as Film Gunman". Chicago Tribune. January 30, 1964. p.1.
American University (Washington, D.C.). Foreign Areas Studies Division (1964). U.S. Army Area Handbook for Liberia. U.S. Government Printing Office. p.7.
Sander, August (1996). August Sander: "In photography there are no unexplained shadows!": an exhibition organised by the August Sander Archive, Kulturstiftung Stadtsparkasse, Cologne, and shown at the National Portrait Gallery, London. London: National Portrait Gallery. p.255. ISBN9781855142152.
Lane, Grayson Harris (1999). Passantino, Erika D. (ed.). The Eye of Duncan Phillips: a collection in the making. New Haven [u.a.]: Yale University Press. p.441. ISBN0-300-08090-5.
Macintyre, Stuart. "Latham, Sir John Greig (1877–1964)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University – via Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Gordon, Sarah (December 8, 2015) [Originally published July 10, 2002]. "Flannery O'Connor". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Georgia Humanities Council. Archived from the original on March 14, 2016. Retrieved May 13, 2016.