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Aug12

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1963!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Aug 12, 2026

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1963!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 63 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Aug. 12, 1963. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Aug. 5, 1961. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are the issues that went on sale between Aug. 9 and Aug. 15.) So, let’s set the scene: The nation was mourning the death of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the three-day-old son of President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Patrick was born five and a half weeks prematurely by emergency Caesarean section Aug. 7, and died Aug. 10, from hyaline membrane disease, later known as infantile respiratory distress syndrome. His death brought the syndrome into the public consciousness and inspired further research. This was not the first time the couple endured such horror. Jacqueline Kennedy had suffered a miscarriage in 1955, followed by a stillborn girl the next year. Two other children survived — Caroline, born in 1957, and John Jr., born in 1960 (though also premature). As this terrible tragedy played out, an anti-American activist was distributing flyers in New Orleans on Aug. 9, supporting Castro’s Cuba. He was arrested after getting into a fight with three Cuban men, who were also detained. Lee Harvey Oswald spent the night in lockup and was released the next day. He was passing out leaflets again a week later. Nobody, except those involved, cared at the time. IN OTHER NEWS — Nothing like a daring, rogueish, large-scale robbery to capture the public’s fancy. The Great Train Robbery of 1963 was pulled off Aug. 8, when a gang of bandits stopped a mail train between Glasgow and London, and made off with sacks containing about £2.6 million ($7.3 million) — worth £70.7 million, or $95.5 million today. By Aug. 14, cops began making arrests and over the next five years nailed almost all 17 full members of the crew. — On Aug. 14, playwright and screenwriter Clifford Odets died of stomach cancer at the age of 57. He’d been hospitalized in July and he received bedside visits from such heavyweights as Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Lee Strasberg, Shirley MacLaine, Danny Kaye, and Jean Renoir, among others. — On Aug. 10,...

Aug05

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1961!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Aug 5, 2026

RETRO HOT PICKS! On Sale This Week — in 1961!

Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 65 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Aug. 5, 1961. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of July 29, 1959. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are the issues that went on sale between Aug. 2 and Aug. 8.) So, let’s set the scene: Tensions over the divided Berlin were reaching a peak, and decisions were being made that would radically alter the geopolitical landscape for decades to come. On August 5, the communist Warsaw Pact nations announced that they’d unanimously agreed to a peace deal with East Germany, with the goal of ousting the American, British and French forces from Berlin. They also desperately wanted to stop the flow of East Germans pouring into the West. (Millions had bolted since the late ’40s.) At the same meeting, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave East German leader Walter Ulbricht his approval for shutting down the border with West Berlin using a barbed-wire fence — the first steps in building the Berlin Wall. The fencing would go up eight days later. The Berlin Crisis of 1961 had begun. As the Soviets tightened their grip, they were also succeeding in the Space Race. On Aug. 6, cosmonaut Gherman Titov was launched into orbit, staying up for more than a day and becoming the first human to sleep in space (and also the first to vomit in space). To this day, Titov, at 25, was the youngest person ever to go into orbit, and the second overall. The U.S. had yet to send someone beyond the Earth’s gravitational pull. On Aug. 7, the day Titov returned to the planet, the U.S. Congress approved almost $1.7 trillion to bolster the nation’s space program. There wasn’t even a roll-call vote! The bill included more than $470 million to fund a crewed mission to the Moon. IN OTHER NEWS — It wouldn’t be revealed for another two years, but on Aug. 7, the horrifying Milgram Experiment began on the campus of Yale University. Inspired by the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, psychologist Stanley Milgram tested just how willing an average person would be to torture others rather than...

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