1961 News Highlights
"military-industrial complex."
January 20, 1961.
January
2 Bobby Fischer, age 17, wins his fourth U.S. chess championship.
3 U.S. breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba.
12 Former Congolese premier Patrice Lumumba is murdered.
17 President Eisenhower's Farewell Address warns of undue power of the "military-industrial complex."
20 John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as 35th President of the United States.
24 Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe divorce.
25 First televised presidential news conference is held.
31 Israeli premier David Ben-Gurion resigns.
February
17-23 Costliest aviation labor strike in history grounds five major airlines.
March
1 President Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps by executive order.
13 Floyd Patterson successfully defends his heavyweight boxing championship for the third time against Ingemar Johannson.
29 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives District of Columbia voters the right to choose electors in presidential elections.
April
12 Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of the USSR becomes the first person to orbit the earth.
17-20 Bay of Pigs: Castro's forces defeat invading CIA-backed Cuban exiles.
May
4 The Freedom Riders challenge racial segregation in interstate transportation by riding buses to several southern cities.
Seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South. They intended to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional.
In the first few days, the riders encountered only minor hostility, but in the second week the riders were severely beaten. Outside Anniston, Alabama, one of their buses was burned.
5 Minimum wage increases from $1 per hour to $1.15 by September.
5 Astronaut Alan Shepard becomes the second person (and first American) in space.
9 Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow, in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, calls television "a vast wasteland."
1 minute 15 second highlight from Minow's speech
Entire 39-minute speech
14 White supremacists in Anniston, Alabama, attack and burn a Freedom Rider bus.
25 President Kennedy asks Congress to set the goal of a manned landing on the moon by the end of the decade.
30 Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, is assassinated.
June
3-4 President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev meet in Vienna.
6 South Korean junta begins a military dictatorship that will last until 1979.
19 U.S. Supreme Court rules in Mapp v. Ohio that evidence seized improperly cannot be used in trials in state courts.
19 Kuwait becomes independent from Britain and is ruled by an emir.
21 Russian ballet star Rudolf Nureyev requests political asylum in France.
25 The president of Iraq announces his country's intent to annex Kuwait.
July
17 John Chancellor replaces original NBC Today Show host Dave Garroway.
21 Astronaut Gus Grissom becomes second American in space; his Mercury capsule sinks in the Pacific after re-entry, and he is barely rescued.
August
1 Six Flags Over Texas park opens in Arlington, Texas.
13-17 East German government closes the border between East and West Berlin; construction of the Berlin Wall begins.
21 Independence leader Jomo Kenyatta released from prison in Kenya, then still a British East African colony.
28 United Nations troops begin military operations in the Congo, trying to unify the country and restrain warring factions.
September
8 U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold dies in plane crash in the Congo.
24 Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color first telecast on NBC.
October
1 Roger Maris hits his 61st home run of the season, breaking Babe Ruth's record.
4-9 New York Yankees win the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, managed by Fred Hutchinson.
19 Last British troops leave Kuwait, as its protection is assumed by the Arab League.
23 USSR detonates 12-megaton nuclear bomb.
27 US and Soviet tanks face off against each other on East-West border in Berlin.
30 USSR detonates 50-megaton nuclear bomb, the largest explosion ever. Nicknamed the Tsar-Bomb.
November
3 U Thant of Burma is elected as Secretary-General of the United Nations.
3 General Maxwell Taylor and National Security Adviser Walt Rostow return from South Vietnam and report that quick military action can lead to victory there.
18 President Kennedy authorizes sending several thousand US military advisers to South Vietnam.
25 USS Enterprise, first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched.
December
3 Fidel Castro announces that he is a Marxist-Leninist and Cuba will follow a socialist path to Communism.
7 US forces airlift United Nations troops into battle in the Congo.
11 Israeli court convicts Adolf Eichmann for his role in WWII slaughter of Jews.
19 India annexes the three Portuguese colonial enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu.
Also in 1961--no specific date found:
IBM Selectric typewriter with metal “golf ball” typeface is introduced. Prior to this, the conventional typewriter's basket of type bars inevitably tended to tangle, slowing a typist's speed. The Selectric was fitted with a golf-ball-shaped typing head that replaced the type bar carriage, reducing the amount of space the typewriter took up on the desktop. The silver-colored typing head also eliminated the jamming issue: With no bars to tangle, typists' speed and productivity soared.