60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
8/12/64 – James Bond author Ian Fleming dies of a heart attack
Also on 8/12, Charlie Wilson, four months into his 30-year sentence for his role in The Great Train Robbery of 1963, escaped from Britain's Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, apparently with the aid of three accomplices. It is believed that Wilson was aided by three men who used a rope ladder to scale a 20-foot high prison wall, tying up a guard, somehow obtaining a key to his cell, and helping him get out. Wilson would be recaptured in Canada in 1968 and serve 10 years of his sentence. After he was released from prison in 1978, he would move to Spain where he would be murdered in his home in 1990.
Also on 8/12, The "Big Three" American automakers
(General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) announced that they would voluntarily
introduce vehicle emissions control devices in time for the 1966 model year.
This move came less than two months after California’s Motor Vehicle Pollution
Control Board forced the issue by licensing devices by four independent vendors
for catalytic converters.
