to consider national interest in times of struggle against "a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy", in an address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association. Sierra Leone becomes independent from the United Kingdom. May May 4 – U.S. Freedom Riders begin interstate bus rides, to test the new U.S. Supreme Court integration decision. May 5 – Mercury program: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space, aboard Mercury-Redstone 3. May 6 – Tottenham Hotspur F.C. becomes the first team in the 20th century to win the English league and cup double. , this is the last time Tottenham have won the English League. May 8 – Briton George Blake is sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for spying. May 9 – In a speech on "Television and the Public Interest" to the National Association of Broadcasters, FCC chairman Newton N. Minow describes commercial television programming as a "vast wasteland". May 14 – Civil rights movement: A Freedom Riders bus is fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama, and the civil rights protestors are beaten by an angry mob of Ku Klux Klan members. May 15 – J. Heinrich Matthaei alone performs the Poly-U-Experiment, and is the first person to recognize and understand the genetic code. This is the birthdate of modern genetics. May 16 – Park Chung-hee takes over in a military coup, in South Korea. May 19 – Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (however, the probe loses contact with Earth a month earlier, and does not send back any data). May 21 – Civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Patterson declares martial law in an attempt to restore order, after race riots break out. May 22 – An earthquake rocks New South Wales. May 24 – Civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for "disturbing the peace", after disembarking from their bus. May 25 – Apollo program: President Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of Congress, his goal to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. May 27 – Tunku Abdul Rahman, Prime Minister of Malaya, holds a press conference in Singapore, announcing his idea to form the Federation of Malaysia, comprising Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, Brunei and North Borneo (Sabah). May 28 – Peter Benenson's article "The Forgotten Prisoners" is published in several internationally read newspapers. This is later considered the founding of the human rights organization