Important Historical Events of the year 1961, Year 1961 in History

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List of 1961 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1961

What happened in the year 1961?

Date	Event
January 3, 1961	Cold War: After a series of economic retaliations against one another, the United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba.
January 3, 1961	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.
January 3, 1961	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.
January 3, 1961	Aero Flight 311 crashes into the forest in Kvevlax, Finland, killing 25 people.
January 8, 1961	In France a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies in Algeria.
January 9, 1961	British authorities announce they have uncovered the Soviet Portland Spy Ring in London.
January 11, 1961	Throgs Neck Bridge over the East River, linking New York City's boroughs of The Bronx and Queens, opens to road traffic.
January 17, 1961	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.
January 17, 1961	Former Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba is murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium and the United States.
January 20, 1961	John F. Kennedy is inaugurated the 35th President of the United States of America, becoming the youngest man to be elected into that office, and the first Catholic.
January 23, 1961	The Portuguese luxury cruise ship Santa Maria is hijacked by opponents of the Estado Novo regime with the intention of waging war until dictator António de Oliveira Salazar is overthrown.
January 24, 1961	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.
January 25, 1961	In Washington, D.C., US President John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential television news conference.
January 27, 1961	The Soviet submarine S-80 sinks when its snorkel malfunctions, flooding the boat.
January 31, 1961	Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2: The chimpanzee Ham travels into outer space.
February 3, 1961	The United States Air Forces 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.
February 4, 1961	The Angolan War of Independence and the greater Portuguese Colonial War begin.
February 12, 1961	The Soviet Union launches Venera 1 towards Venus.
February 13, 1961	An allegedly 500,000-year-old rock is discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug.
February 14, 1961	Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California.
February 15, 1961	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.
February 16, 1961	Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched.
February 27, 1961	The first congress of the Spanish Trade Union Organisation is inaugurated.
March 1, 1961	Uganda becomes self-governing and holds its first elections.
March 9, 1961	Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a dog and a human dummy, and demonstrating that the Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.
March 14, 1961	A USAF B-52 bomber crashes near Yuba City, California whilst carrying nuclear weapons.
March 15, 1961	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.
March 24, 1961	The Quebec Board of the French Language is established.
March 29, 1961	The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to vote in presidential elections.
March 30, 1961	The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed in New York City.
April 11, 1961	The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem.
April 12, 1961	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.
April 16, 1961	In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist–Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism.
April 17, 1961	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.
April 20, 1961	Cold War: Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.
April 23, 1961	Algiers putsch by French generals.
April 25, 1961	Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit.
April 30, 1961	K-19, the first Soviet nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear missiles, is commissioned.
May 1, 1961	The Prime Minister of Cuba, Fidel Castro, proclaims Cuba a socialist nation and abolishes elections.
May 4, 1961	American civil rights movement: The "Freedom Riders" begin a bus trip through the South.
May 4, 1961	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).
May 5, 1961	Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, on a sub-orbital flight.
May 10, 1961	Air France Flight 406 is destroyed by a bomb over the Sahara, killing 78.
May 14, 1961	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.
May 16, 1961	Park Chung-hee leads a coup d'état to overthrow the Second Republic of South Korea.
May 19, 1961	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).
May 19, 1961	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.
May 21, 1961	American civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson declares martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots break out.
May 24, 1961	American civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for "disturbing the peace" after disembarking from their bus.
May 25, 1961	Apollo program: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of the U.S. Congress, his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade.
May 28, 1961	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.
May 30, 1961	The long-time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo is assassinated in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
May 30, 1961	Viasa Flight 897 crashes after takeoff from Lisbon Airport, killing 61.
May 31, 1961	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.
May 31, 1961	In Moscow City Court, the Rokotov–Faibishenko show trial begins, despite the Khrushchev Thaw to reverse Stalinist elements in Soviet society.
June 1, 1961	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.
June 4, 1961	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.
June 16, 1961	While on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.
June 19, 1961	Kuwait declares independence from the United Kingdom.
June 23, 1961	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.
July 4, 1961	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.
July 9, 1961	Greece becomes the first member state to join the European Economic Community by signing the Athens Agreement, which was suspended in 1967 during the Greek junta.
July 12, 1961	Indian city Pune floods due to failure of the Khadakwasla and Panshet dams, killing at least two thousand people.
July 12, 1961	ČSA Flight 511 crashes at Casablanca–Anfa Airport in Morocco, killing 72.
July 19, 1961	Tunisia imposes a blockade on the French naval base at Bizerte; the French would capture the entire town four days later.
July 20, 1961	French military forces break the Tunisian siege of Bizerte.
July 21, 1961	Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 4 Mission: Gus Grissom piloting Liberty Bell 7 becomes the second American to go into space (in a suborbital mission).
July 21, 1961	Alaska Airlines Flight 779 crashes near Shemya Air Force Base in Shemya, Alaska killing six.
July 23, 1961	The Sandinista National Liberation Front is founded in Nicaragua.
July 25, 1961	Cold War: In a speech John F. Kennedy emphasizes that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO.
August 1, 1961	U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara orders the creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the nation's first centralized military espionage organization.
August 10, 1961	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.
August 11, 1961	The former Portuguese territories in India of Dadra and Nagar Haveli are merged to create the Union Territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
August 13, 1961	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.
August 15, 1961	Border guard Conrad Schumann flees from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall.
August 25, 1961	President Jânio Quadros of Brazil resigns after just seven months in power, initiating a political crisis that culminates in a military coup in 1964.
September 1, 1961	TWA Flight 529 crashed 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.
September 10, 1961	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.
September 11, 1961	Hurricane Carla strikes the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, the second strongest storm ever to hit the state.
September 12, 1961	The African and Malagasy Union is founded.
September 12, 1961	Air France Flight 2005 crashes near Rabat–Salé Airport, in Rabat, Morocco, killing 77 people.
September 16, 1961	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.
September 16, 1961	Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.
September 16, 1961	Pakistan establishes its Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission with Abdus Salam as its head.
September 17, 1961	The world's first retractable roof stadium, the Civic Arena, opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
September 17, 1961	Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706 crashes during takeoff from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, killing all 37 people on board.
September 18, 1961	U.N. 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.
September 20, 1961	Greek general Konstantinos Dovas becomes Prime Minister of Greece.
September 28, 1961	A military coup in Damascus effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria.
October 1, 1961	The United States Defense Intelligence Agency is formed, becoming the country's first centralized military intelligence organization.
October 1, 1961	East and West Cameroon merge to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon.
October 1, 1961	The CTV Television Network, Canada's first private television network, is launched.
October 7, 1961	A Douglas Dakota IV operated by Derby Aviation (later renamed to British Midland International) crashes in Canigou, France, killing 34 people.
October 11, 1961	The 1st Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement is held in Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia, resulting in the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement.
October 17, 1961	Directed by their chief Maurice Papon, Paris police massacre scores of Algerian protesters.
October 17, 1961	The first attempt of the apartheid analogy by Ahmad Shukeiri.[7][8][9]
October 20, 1961	The Soviet Navy performs the first armed test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, launching an R-13 from a Golf-class submarine.
October 27, 1961	NASA tests the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1.
October 30, 1961	The Soviet Union detonates the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated.
October 30, 1961	Due to "violations of Vladimir Lenin's precepts", it is decreed that Joseph Stalin's body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin's tomb and buried near the Kremlin Wall with a plain granite marker.
October 31, 1961	In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's body is removed from the Lenin's Mausoleum, also known as the Lenin Tomb.
November 11, 1961	Thirteen Italian Air Force servicemen, deployed to the Congo as a part of the UN peacekeeping force, are massacred by a mob in Kindu.
November 12, 1961	Terry Jo Duperrault is the sole survivor of a series of brutal murders aboard the ketch Bluebelle.
November 18, 1961	United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.[17]
November 21, 1961	The "La Ronde" opens in Honolulu, first revolving restaurant in the United States.
November 29, 1961	Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbits the Earth twice and splashes down off the coast of Puerto Rico.
December 2, 1961	In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist–Leninist and that Cuba will adopt Communism.
December 9, 1961	Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain.
December 15, 1961	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.
December 17, 1961	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.
December 19, 1961	India annexes Daman and Diu, part of Portuguese India.
December 31, 1961	RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first national television service.