The following events occurred in May 1962:
May 1, 1962 (Tuesday) The Dayton Hudson Corporation opened the first of its Target discount stores. The store (now a "SuperTarget") is located at 1515 West County Road B, in the St. Paul suburb of Roseville, Minnesota. Norwich City F.C. won the English Football League Cup, beating Rochdale F.C. 1 to 0 in the second leg of the two-game final after having defeated them 3 to 0 at Rochdale on April 26, for an aggregate score of 4 to 0. A gas analysis laboratory was installed in Hanger S at Cape Canaveral to analyze gases used in the Mercury spacecraft. The Air Force Space Systems Division (SSD) awarded a contract to Lockheed for eight Gemini Agena target vehicles (GATV). Mission requirements were to (1) establish a specified circular orbit; (2) provide a stable target and dock for rendezvous; (3) respond to commands from ground stations or spacecraft; (4) perform complex series of orbital maneuvers; and (5) provide an active orbit life of at least five days. NASA and Lockheed agreed on a full pulse-code-modulation (PCM) for the Gemini program. Ten sites were selected for the installation of PCM equipment. Died: Sir Sydney Cockerell, 94, English curator and art collector
May 2, 1962 (Wednesday) An OAS car bomb killed 96 people when it exploded at the docks of Algiers. The deaths of 14 other people and the injury of 147 overall made the occasion "the bloodiest single day in the modern history of Algeria's capital". The value of the Canadian dollar was put at a fixed exchange rate at 92.5 United States cents (USD 0.925) after having had a fluctuating value since September 30, 1950. The Canadian Exchange Fund would purchase U.S. dollars in order to keep the Canadian dollar from going more than one percent above ¢ American, until May 30, 1970. Benfica (of Lisbon), champion of Portugal's Primeira Divisão league, won the European Cup for the second time in a row, beating Real Madrid (champions of Spain's La Liga, 5 to 3, before a crowd of 61,257 at Amsterdam's Olympisch Stadion. Born: Elizabeth Berridge, American actress; in New Rochelle, New York Jimmy "Whirlwind" White, English snooker player; in Tooting, London Ty Herndon, American country music singer; in Meridian, Mississippi Died: Clairvius Narcisse, 40, Haitian peasant who would attain media attention from 1980 onward as being the identity of a zombie after her death.
May 3, 1962 (Thursday) A railway crash involving three separate trains killed 160 people in Japan near the Mikawashima Station at Arkawawa, a ward of Tokyo. Engineer Norifumi Minakami drove a freight train through a red signal and sideswiped a commuter train. As surviving passengers climbed out of that train, a third train ran through them, then plunged over an embankment. British supermarket executive Alan Sainsbury, CEO of the Sainsbury's Supermarkets chain of grocery stores, was created a life peer in the House of Lords, with the title Baron Sainsbury.
May 4, 1962 (Friday) Dr. Masaki Watanabe of Japan performed the very first arthroscopic surgery to repair a meniscus tear, a common injury for athletes. The first patient to receive the procedure was a 17-year-old basketball player, who was returned to playing six weeks after the meniscectomy and resection of his right knee by Dr. Watanabe. Scott Carpenter, designated as the primary pilot for the Mercury-Atlas 7 (MA-7) crewed orbital flight, completed a simulated MA-7 mission exercise. U.S. Ambassador to Canada Livingston Merchant, in his final month as envoy, made a final visit to Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in Ottawa. At the meeting Diefenbaker angrily brought out an American memorandum that had been left behind during President Kennedy's visit in May 1961. The President's handwritten notes in the margin included the letters "OAS" (the Organization of American States), "but Diefenbaker read Kennedy's handwriting as 'SOB'," and threatened to use the memo (and the suggestion that Kennedy thought that Diefenbaker was a "son of a bitch") in the upcoming June 18 elections. After conferring with his superiors, the ambassador later told Diefenbaker that he was personally reluctant to report "anything which could be construed as a threat" and that publication of the memo would "make difficult future relations". The memo was never used, but Kennedy and Diefenbaker never trusted each other again. During the El Carupanazo revolt against Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt, Venezuelan Air Force aircraft began a two-day attack on rebel positions at Carúpano.