The following events occurred in February 1961: February 1, 1961 (Wednesday) The push-button telephone was put into public service for the first time, as Bell Telephone test marketed its "Touch-Tone" service for its customers in the cities of Carnegie, Pennsylvania and Findlay, Ohio. The United States launched its first test of the Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:00 am and traveled in less than 15 minutes to a target in the Atlantic Ocean. Moore Air Base became inactive, along with the 78th Fighter Group of the US Air Force. The Misfits, directed by John Huston, was released to theaters in the U.S. The film would end up being the last for its two leading stars, Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. February 2, 1961 (Thursday) At Wailuku, Hawaii, Stanley Ann Dunham, an 18-year-old student at the University of Hawaii, married Barack Obama, Sr., a 25-year-old graduate student from Kenya. Six months later, their son, Barack Obama, who would become the 44th President of the United States, was born in Honolulu. Santa Maria hijacking: After ten days of being held captive on an ocean liner, nearly 600 passengers from the cruise ship Santa Maria were freed, and were taken ashore by various boats to the Brazilian port of Recife. Betty Curtis won the Sanremo Music Festival with the song "Al di là" Born: Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of Norway 2013 - 2021, in Bergen Died: Victor Danielsen, 66, Faroese translator and missionary February 3, 1961 (Friday) Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 542 and its 26 occupants disappeared while flying from Surabaya on the island of Java, to Balikpapan on the island of Borneo. The Douglas DC-3 plane plunged into the Java Sea after having last been seen over Madura Island. Operation Looking Glass began, as the first of a series of Boeing EC-135 jets went into the air on orders of the Strategic Air Command. For more than 30 years, an EC-135 was always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States' bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC's command post near Omaha. As one jet "Doomsday Plane" was preparing to land, another was already aloft. The program continued, with E4A jets later replacing the EC-135s, until the fall of the Soviet Union. French interior designer Stéphane Boudin made his first visit to the