What Happened in 1961 — Events, Births & Deaths

Cold War: After a series of economic retaliations against one another, the United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba.

The SL-1 nuclear reactor, near Idaho Falls, Idaho, is destroyed by a steam explosion in the only reactor incident in the United States to cause immediate fatalities.

A protest by agricultural workers in Baixa de Cassanje, Portuguese Angola, turns into a revolt, opening the Angolan War of Independence, the first of the Portuguese Colonial Wars.

Aero Flight 311 crashes into the forest in Kvevlax, Finland, killing 25 people.

In France a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies in Algeria.

British authorities announce they have uncovered the Soviet Portland spy ring in London.

Throgs Neck Bridge over the East River, linking New York City's boroughs of The Bronx and Queens, opens to road traffic.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military–industrial complex" as well as the dangers of massive spending, especially deficit spending.

Former Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba is murdered together with former Minister of Youth and Sports of the Republic of the Congo Maurice Mpolo and former Senator from Kasai Province Joseph Okito in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium and the United States.

Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains lost.

In Washington, D.C., US President John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential television news conference.

Walt Disney Productions released the animated feature One Hundred and One Dalmatians, based on Dodie Smith's 1956 children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

The Soviet submarine S-80 sinks when its snorkel malfunctions, flooding the boat.

Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2: The chimpanzee Ham travels into outer space.

The United States Air Force begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a "Doomsday Plane" is 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.

The Angolan War of Independence and the greater Portuguese Colonial War begin.

The Beatles at the Cavern Club: Lunchtime – The Beatles perform under this name at The Cavern Club for the first time following their return to Liverpool from Hamburg.

The Soviet Union launches Venera 1 towards Venus.

An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug.

Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California.

Sabena Flight 548 crashes in Belgium, killing 73, including the entire United States figure skating team along with several of their coaches and family members.

Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched.

The first congress of the Spanish Trade Union Organisation is inaugurated.

Uganda becomes self-governing and holds its first elections.

Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a dog and a human dummy, and demonstrating that the Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.

A USAF B-52 bomber carrying nuclear weapons crashes near Yuba City, California.

At the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, South Africa announces that it will withdraw from the Commonwealth when the South African Constitution of 1961 comes into effect.

ČSA Flight 511 crashes in Igensdorf, Germany, killing 52.

The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to vote in presidential elections.

The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed in New York City.

LAN-Chile Flight 621 crashes in the Andes mountains, killing 21 people, including Argentinian football player Eliseo Mouriño.

The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem.

Space Race: The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first crewed orbital flight, Vostok 1.

In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist–Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism.

Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.

Cold War: Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.

During the Algiers putsch by French generals, President Charles de Gaulle announces he has assumed emergency powers, and calls on troops and civilians to support him.

Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit.

K-19, the first Soviet nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear missiles, is commissioned.

American civil rights movement: The "Freedom Riders" begin a bus trip through the South.

Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather attain a new altitude record for manned balloon flight ascending in the Strato-Lab V open gondola to 113,740 feet (34.67 km).

Project Mercury: Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight.

Air France Flight 406 is destroyed by a bomb over the Sahara, killing 78.

Civil rights movement: A white mob twice attacks a Freedom Riders bus near Anniston, Alabama, before fire-bombing the bus and attacking the civil rights protesters who flee the burning vehicle.

Park Chung Hee leads a coup d'état to overthrow the Second Republic of South Korea.

Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).

At Silchar Railway Station, Assam, 11 Bengalis die when police open fire on protesters demanding state recognition of Bengali language in the Bengali Language Movement.

American civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson declares martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots break out.

American civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for "disturbing the peace" after disembarking from their bus.

Apollo program: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of the U.S. Congress, that the United States "should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Peter Benenson's article The Forgotten Prisoners is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding of the human rights organization Amnesty International.

The long-time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo is assassinated in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Viasa Flight 897 crashes after takeoff from Lisbon Airport, killing 61.

The South African Constitution of 1961 becomes effective, thus creating the Republic of South Africa, which remains outside the Commonwealth of Nations until 1 June 1994, when South Africa is returned to Commonwealth membership.

In Moscow City Court, the Rokotov–Faibishenko show trial begins, despite the Khrushchev Thaw to reverse Stalinist elements in Soviet society.

The Canadian Bank of Commerce and Imperial Bank of Canada merge to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the largest bank merger in Canadian history.

Cold War: In the Vienna summit, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.

Marriage of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent to Katharine Worsley at York Minster.

While on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.

Kuwait declares independence from the United Kingdom.

The Antarctic Treaty System, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and limits military activity on the continent, its islands and ice shelves, comes into force.

On its maiden voyage, the Soviet nuclear-powered submarine K-19 suffers a complete loss of coolant to its reactor. The crew are able to effect repairs, but 22 of them die of radiation poisoning over the following two years.

Greece becomes the first member state to join the European Economic Community by signing the Athens Agreement, which is later suspended in 1967 during the Greek junta.

Indian city Pune floods due to failure of the Khadakwasla and Panshet dams, killing at least two thousand people.

ČSA Flight 511 crashes at Casablanca–Anfa Airport in Morocco, killing 72.

Tunisia imposes a blockade on the French naval base at Bizerte; the French would capture the entire town four days later.

French military forces break the Tunisian siege of Bizerte.

Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 4 mission: Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).

Alaska Airlines Flight 779 crashes near Shemya Air Force Base in Shemya, Alaska, killing six.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front is founded in Nicaragua.

Cold War: In a speech John F. Kennedy emphasizes that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara orders the creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the nation's first centralized military espionage organization.

Vietnam War: The U.S. Army begins Operation Ranch Hand, spraying an estimated 20 million US gallons (76,000 m3) of defoliants and herbicides over rural areas of South Vietnam in an attempt to deprive the Viet Cong of food and vegetation cover.

The former Portuguese territories in India of Dadra and Nagar Haveli are merged to create the Union Territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Cold War: East Germany closes the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to thwart its inhabitants' attempts to escape to the West, and construction of the Berlin Wall is started. The day is known as Barbed Wire Sunday.

Border guard Conrad Schumann flees from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall.

President Jânio Quadros of Brazil resigns after just seven months in power, initiating a political crisis that culminates in a military coup in 1964.

TWA Flight 529 crashes shortly after takeoff from Midway Airport in Chicago, killing all 78 people on board. At the time, it was the deadliest single plane disaster in U.S. history.

In the Italian Grand Prix, a crash causes the death of German Formula One driver Wolfgang von Trips and 15 spectators who are hit by his Ferrari, the deadliest accident in F1 history.

A President Airlines Douglas DC-6 crashes just after takeoff from Shannon Airport, Ireland. All 83 passengers and crew are killed.

Hurricane Carla strikes the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, the second strongest storm ever to hit the state.

The African and Malagasy Union is founded.

Air France Flight 2005 crashes near Rabat–Salé Airport, in Rabat, Morocco, killing 77 people.

The United States National Hurricane Research Project drops eight cylinders of silver iodide into the eyewall of Hurricane Esther. Wind speed reduces by 10%, giving rise to Project Stormfury.

Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.

Pakistan establishes its Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission with Abdus Salam as its head.

The world's first retractable roof stadium, the Civic Arena, opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706 crashes during takeoff from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, killing all 37 people on board.

United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in an air crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Greek general Konstantinos Dovas becomes Prime Minister of Greece.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy nominates African American civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, although pro-segregation Southern senators manage to delay his confirmation until September 11, 1962.

A military coup in Damascus effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria.

A Douglas Dakota IV operated by Derby Aviation (later renamed to British Midland International) crashes in Canigou, France, killing 34 people.

Directed by their chief Maurice Papon, Paris police massacre scores of Algerian protesters.

The first attempt of the apartheid analogy by Ahmad Shukeiri.

The Soviet Navy performs the first armed test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, launching an R-13 from a Golf-class submarine.

NASA tests the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1.

The Soviet Union detonates the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated.

In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's body is removed from Lenin's Mausoleum, and is buried near the Kremlin Wall under a plain white marker.

U Thant is unanimously appointed as the 3rd Secretary-General of the United Nations, becoming the first non-European individual to occupy the post.

Thirteen Italian Air Force servicemen, deployed to the Congo as a part of the UN peacekeeping force, are massacred by a mob in Kindu.

Terry Jo Duperrault is the sole survivor of a series of brutal murders aboard the ketch Bluebelle.

Vietnam War: United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.

"La Ronde" opens in Honolulu, the first revolving restaurant in the United States.

Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbits the Earth twice and splashes down off the coast of Puerto Rico.

In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist–Leninist and that Cuba will adopt Communism.

Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain.

Eichmann trial: Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty by an Israeli court of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization.

Niterói circus fire: Fire breaks out during a performance by the Gran Circus Norte-Americano in the city of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing more than 500.

India annexes Daman and Diu, part of Portuguese India.

RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first national television service.

Jackie Earle Haley, American actor and director

Howard Lutnick, American businessman, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, secretary of commerce in the Trump administration

Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist (born 1875)