1961

Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

Years: 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 - 1961 - 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966

As MAD Magazine pointed out on its first cover for the year, 1961 was the first "upside-down" year - i. e., one that looked the same upside down - since 1881, and the last until 6009.

Events

January

January 3 - President Dwight Eisenhower announced that the United States had severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba.
January 3 - SL-1, an atomic reactor, exploded at National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho, killing 3 military technicians.
January 7 - Following a four-day conference conference in Casablanca, five African chiefs of state announced plans for a NATO-type African organization to insure common defense. The Charter of Casablanca involved were Morocco, the United Arab Republic, Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.
January 12 - President Dwight Eisenhower gave his final State of the Union Address to Congress.
January 20 - John F. Kennedy becomes President of the United States
January 25 - In Washington, DC John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential news conference. In it, he announces that the Soviet Union had freed the two surviving crewmen of a USAF RB-47 reconnaissance plan shot down by Soviet flyers over the Barents Sea July 1, 1960. (see RB-47H shot down)
January 25 - Acting to halt 'leftist excesses,' a junta comprised of two army officers and 4 civilians took over the rule of El Salvador, ousting another junta that had ruled for three months.
January 26 - John F. Kennedy appoints Janet G. Travell to be his physician. This is the first time a woman held this appointment.
January 30 - President John F. Kennedy delivered his first State of the Union Address.
January 31 - Ham, a 37 pound male chimpanzee, was rocketed into space in a test of the Project Mercury capsule designed to carry U.S astronauts into space.

February-March

February 5 - The Sunday Telegraph publishes its first issue.
February 11 - Trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem
February 14 - Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized (Berkeley, California).
February 15 - A Boeing 707 crashes in Belgium killing 73, including the entire United States figure skating team and several coaches.
March 1 - President of the United States John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
March 3 - Hassan II becomes King of Morocco
March 8 - Max Conrad circumnavigates the earth in eight days, 18 hours and 49 minutes setting a new world record.
March 15 - South Africa withdraws from the British Commonwealth
March 29 - The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, DC to vote in presidential elections.

April

April 12 - Yuri Gagarin is the first human in space.
April 17 - Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba begins, ending in failure April 19
April 25 - Robert Noyce is granted the first patent for an integrated circuit.
April 27 - Sierra Leone is granted its independence from the United Kingdom.

May

May 14 - American civil rights movement: A Freedom Riders bus is fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama and the civil rights protestors are beaten by an angry mob.
May 19 - Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first manmade object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (however the probe had lost contact with earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).
May 21 - American civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Patterson declares martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots break out.
May 24 - American 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 initiate a project to put a "man on the moon" before the end of the decade.
May 28 - 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

July-October

July 21 - Mercury program: Gus Grissom piloting the Mercury 4 capsule "Liberty Bell 7" becomes the second American to go into orbit around the Earth.
July 31 - At Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, the first All-Star Game tie in major league baseball history occurs when the game is stopped in the 9th inning due to rain.
August 13 - Construction of the Berlin Wall begins. Movement between East Berlin and West Berlin remains restricted for the next 28 years, until November 9, 1989.
October 17 - "Battle of Paris": French police attack in Paris about 30,000 protesting a curfew applied solely to Algerians, about 200 are killed
October 30 - Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates a 58 megaton yield hydrogen bomb over Novaya Zemlya (this is still the largest nuclear device to ever be detonated).
October 31 - In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's body is removed from Lenin's Tomb.

November-December

November 13 - Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny succeeds Aleksandr Nikolayevich Shelepin as head of the KGB.
November 29 - Mercury program: Mercury-Atlas 5 is launched with Enos the chimp aboard (the spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed-down off the coast of Puerto Rico).
December 2 - Cold War: In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism.
December 15 - An Israeli war crimes tribunal sentences Adolph Eichmann to die for his part in the Jewish holocaust.
December 31 - The Marshall Plan expires after having distributed more than $12 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.
December 31 - Ireland's first national telvision station, TeilifÃÂÃÂs ÃÂÃÂireann, (later RTÃÂÃÂ) begins broadcasting.
Change of US presidency from Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) to John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
John F. Kennedy begins the Apollo program of U.S. manned spaceflight
The first quasar is discovered by Allan Sandage at Mt Palomar, California
South Africa withdraws from the British Commonwealth and declares itself an independent republic on May 31