Nigeria during the absence of President Nnamdi Azikiwe, Acting President Nwafor Orizu announced to the nation that "I have tonight been advised by the Council of Ministers that they had come to the unanimous decision voluntarily to hand over the administration of the country to the Armed Forces of the Republic, with immediate effect." In that most of the government ministers had been hiding out of fear of assassination, there were few Council members present, but Orizu passed along the military statement that "All Ministers are assured of their personal safety by the new administration." Orizu finished by announcing that he would surrender the presidency to Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi. The BBC began broadcasting a television adaptation of David Copperfield, which starred Ian McKellen as David and Flora Robson as Betsey Trotwood. The Quindío Department was created as a separate province within the Republic of Colombia. Died: General Courtney Hodges, 79, American military commander who commanded the U.S. First Army during World War II, and the first U.S. soldiers to invade Germany Clarice Mayne, 79, English actress, singer and performer Sadhu T. L. Vaswani, 86, Indian scholar and educator January 17, 1966 (Monday) Three hydrogen bombs were dropped on Spain near the coastal town of Palomares, and a fourth one fell into the deep ocean, after the B-52 bomber carrying them collided with a KC-135 refueling airplane. Fortunately, none of the bombs detonated, though each of the four Mark 28 thermonuclear warheads had a 70-kiloton yield. At 10:22 a.m. local time, the B-52 was flying at 31,000 feet and preparing for a refueling in midair, but accidentally pitched upward and rammed the tanker plane, spilling jet fuel that ignited on both aircraft. One of the H-bombs parachuted to the ground unscathed; two more fell at high speed, and the conventional explosives in their casing scattered radioactive plutonium over 558 acres (almost one square mile) of countryside; but the fourth H-bomb could not be located (a search would eventually discover it at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea in waters 2,250 feet deep). Fortunately, no nuclear explosion was triggered (a 70 kiloton bomb would have collapsed most houses within a one-mile radius) and the missing bomb did not fall under the control of hostile forces. All of the men on board the tanker were killed, and only four of the men on the B-52 were able to parachute to safety. Initial