novelist Boris Pasternak as the winner of the 1958 Prize for Literature. October 26 – A Pan American World Airways Boeing 707 makes its first transatlantic flight. October 28 – Pope John XXIII succeeds Pope Pius XII, as the 261st pope. November November 3 The new UNESCO building, World Heritage Centre, is inaugurated in Paris. Jorge Alessandri is sworn in as President of Chile. November 10 – The bossa nova is born in Rio de Janeiro, with João Gilberto's recording of Chega de Saudade. November 10 – Harry Winston donates the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution. November 18 – En route to Rogers City, Michigan, the Lake freighter breaks up and sinks in a storm on Lake Michigan; 33 of the 35 crewmen on board perish. November 20 – The Jim Henson Company is founded as Muppets, Inc. in the United States. November 22 – 1958 Australian federal election: Robert Menzies' Liberal/Country Coalition Government is re-elected with a slightly increased majority, defeating the Labor Party led by H.V. Evatt. This is the first election where television was used as a medium for communicating with voters. Evatt will eventually resign as Labor leader and will be replaced by his deputy Arthur Calwell. November 25 – French Sudan gains autonomy as a self-governing member of the French colonial empire. November 28 – Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon become autonomous republics within the French colonial empire. November 30 – Gaullists win the French parliamentary election. December December 1 Our Lady of the Angels School fire: 90 students and 3 nuns are killed in a fire in Chicago. Adolfo López Mateos takes office as President of Mexico. December 14 – The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition becomes the first ever to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility. December 15 – Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes of Bell Laboratories publish a paper in Physical Review Letters setting out the principles of the optical laser. December 16 A fire breaks out in the Vida Department Store in Bogotá, Colombia and kills 84 persons. Soviet polar pilot V. M. Perov on Li-2 rescues four Belgian polar explorers, led by Gaston de Gerlache, who have survived a plane crash in Antarctica 250 km from their base five days earlier. December 18 The United States launches SCORE, the world's first communications satellite. The Bell XV-3 Tiltrotor makes the first true mid-air transition from vertical