February 1958 was the second month of that common year. It began on a Saturday and ended after 28 days on a Friday
The following events occurred in February 1958:
February 1, 1958 (Saturday) King Mahendra of Nepal announced plans for free elections to take place in 1959 and the establishment of a democratic constitution.
Egypt and Syria announced the formation of the United Arab Republic, as President Quwatli of Syria signed a pact with Egypt's President Nasser at the Koubba Palace in Cairo. Domenico Modugno, paired with Johnny Dorelli, won the 8. Sanremo Festival with Volare, composed by Modugno; Nilla Pizzi was runner-up with L’edera. Modugno's resounding and unexpected success marked a turning point for the Italian song, until then bound to the traditional melodic formulas. Canada's Governor General, Viscount Massey, dissolved parliament at the request of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, and scheduled elections for the Canadian House of Commons for March 31. Forty-seven people were killed in the collision of a U.S. Air Force C-118A transport plane with 41 people on board, and a U.S. Navy P2V Neptune patrol plane with a crew of seven. The planes collided over the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk, California. The C-118 plane crashed into the parking lot of the Norwalk Sheriff's Department at the intersection of Firestone Boulevard and Pioneer Boulevard, and there were no survivors. Two men survived the crash of the P2V, which came down in a vacant area at the Santa Fe Springs Fire Station. A woman in Norwalk was killed from the C-118 crash site as she stepped outside of her home to see what had happened, and "was cut in half by a flying fragment". Died: Clinton Davisson, 76, American physicist and 1937 Nobel Prize laureate known for his discovery of electron diffraction in the Davisson–Germer experiment
February 2, 1958 (Sunday) Mario Echandi Jiménez was elected as President of Costa Rica, defeating Francisco Orlich Bolmarcich in a close race. The word "aerospace", originally spelled "aero-space", was coined by the staff of the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, as part of an "interim glossary" that was to be used for jargon in the U.S. Air Force. The term, referring to the atmosphere and outer space as one unit, was derived from "aero-", a Greek suffix for air, and "space", from Latin "spatium", an extension into the beyond. Born: Paolo De Castro, Italian professor and politician, in San Pietro in Vernotico Died: Bertrand Snell, 87, U.S. Congressman for New York and House Minority Leader from 1931 to 1938
February 3, 1958 (Monday) Nikolai Bulganin's letter to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the third in eight weeks and containing a nine-point agenda for a summit, was made public. Died: Wilfred Fienburgh, 38, English TV and print journalist, and member of the British House of Commons, died from injuries sustained two days earlier when he lost control of his car and crashed into a lamppost in London. In December, he had written to a newspaper, in his lifetime he had "been run over by a taxi and knocked down by a pram," and that "In cars and jeeps I have hit a tree, a railway bridge, my own garden fence, three other cars, a four-ton RAF lorry, a policeman and the side of a battle cruiser. I must be, I think, accident prone."
February 4, 1958 (Tuesday) The Marie Byrd Land Traverse Party discovered Mount Moore in Antarctica. An antitrust lawsuit against United Fruit Company by the U.S. Department of Justice ended after four years, as the company, which controlled the majority of "the world's marketable supply of bananas", agreed that it would create a competing company. Born: Tomasz Pacynski, Polish fantasy and science fiction author; in Warsaw (d. 2005) Died: Filippo Andrea VI Doria Pamphili, 71, former Mayor of Rome