1961

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

align="center" colspan=2 | Years:
1958 1959 1960 - 1961 - 1962 1963 1964

align="center" colspan=2 | Decades:
1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s

align="center" | Centuries:
19th century - 20th century - 21st century

1961 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January

January 1 - The farthing coin, used since the 13th century, ceases to be legal tender in the United Kingdom.
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 ensure common defense. The Charter of Casablanca involved were Morocco, the United Arab Republic, Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.
January 8 - Large spy ring exposed in Britain
January 12 - President Dwight Eisenhower gave his final State of the Union Address to Congress.
January 17 Assassination of Patrice Lumumba
January 20 - John F. Kennedy becomes President of the United States
January 24 - US B-52 bomber with two 24-megaton nuclear bombs crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina
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 plane 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.
Change of US presidency from Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) to John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)

February-March

February 4 - The Portuguese Colonial War begins in Angola.
February 5 - The Sunday Telegraph publishes its first issue.
February 9 - Former prime minister of Kongo Patrice Lumumba is murdered in Elisabethville.
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.
February 26 - Hassan II is pronounced King of Morocco.
March 1 - President of the United States John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
March 1 - First elections held in Uganda and it becomes self-governing.
March 3 - Hassan II is crowned King of Morocco.
March 8 - Max Conrad circumnavigates the earth in eight days, 18 hours and 49 minutes setting a new world record.
March 8 - First US Polaris submarines arrive at Holy Loch.
March 13 - A dam bursts on the Dnieper river in the USSR - 145 dead.
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 22 - Three French generals who oppose De Gaulle's policies in Algeria fail in a coup attempt.
April 23-24 - HMS Wasa raised in the Stockholm harbor.
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 5 - Alan B. Shepard: is first American in space.
May 8 - British George Blake is sentenced to 42 years inprisonment for spying.
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 16 - A military coup in South Korea - Do Young Tsang takes over.
May 19 - Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made 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.

June-September

June 4 - John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev meet during two days in Vienna. They talk about nuclear tests, disarmament and Germany.
June 17 - The New Democratic Party of Canada is founded with the merger of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress.
June 21 - Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev requests asylum in France while in Paris with the Kirov Ballet
June 22 - Moise Tshombe released
June 25 - US philanthropist George Vanderbilt is found dead at the base of a San Francisco skyscraper
June 25 - Iraqi president Abdul Karim Kassem announces he is going to annex Kuwait - Kuwaiti government ask British help in June 27. British army begin to send in troops.
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 10 - Britain applies for membership of the EEC.
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.
August 21 Jomo Kenyatta is fully released in Kenya.
September 17-18 - Dag Hammarskjld dies in an air crash enroute to Katanga, Congo.
September 24 - The old Deutsche Opernhaus in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg returned to its newly rebuilt house as the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
September 28 - A military coup in Damascus, Syria effectivly ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria

October-November

October 10 - Volcanic eruption on Tristan da Cunha - whole population evacuated.
October 12 - The death penalty abolished in New Zealand.
October 17 - "Battle of Paris": French police attack in Paris about 30,000 protesting a curfew applied solely to Algerians. Official death toll is 3, but human rights groups claim 240 dead.
October 19 - Arab League takes over protection of Kuwait - last British troops leave.
October 25 - The first edition of Private Eye, the British satirical magazine.
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). Nikita Kruschev announces that the scientists had planned to make it 100 megatons, but had reduced the yield so as to avoid breaking all the windows in Moscow.
October 31 - In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's body is removed from Lenin's Tomb.
October 31 - Hurricane Hattie hits Belize City. 400 dead, 65.000 made homeless.
November 12 - Stalingrad's name changed to Volgograd.
November 13 - Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny succeeds Aleksandr Nikolayevich Shelepin as head of the KGB.
November 16 - British Conservative government introduces the Commonwealth Immigration Bill, limiting immigration from British Commonwealth countries to Britain.
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

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 5 US president John F. Kennedy gives support to Volta Dam project in Ghana.
December 9 - Tanganyika gains independence and declares itself a republic with Julius Nyerere as its first President.
December 10 - Soviet Union severs diplomatic relations with Albania.
December 11 - Vietnam War officially begins as the first American helicopters arrive in Saigon along with 400 U.S. personnel.
December 15 - An Israeli war crimes tribunal sentences Adolph Eichmann to die for his part in the Jewish holocaust.
December 19 - Goa ceded to India after 400 years of Portuguese rule.
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 television station, Teilifs ireann, (later RT) begins broadcasting.