January
1st	Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when forces of Fidel Castro advance
3rd	Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state
4th	In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana
7th	The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro
8th	Charles De Gaulle inaugurated as the first president of French Fifth Republic

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February
1st	A referendum in Switzerland turns down female suffrage
3rd	The chartered plane transporting musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper crashes in foggy conditions near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all four occupants on board. The tragedy is later termed "The Day the Music Died" popularised in Don McLean's song "American Pie"
6th	At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished
16th	Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba
18th	Jesús Sosa Blanco, murderer of 108 people, executed in Cuba
19th	The United Kingdom decides to grant Cyprus its independence

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March
8th	Last television appearance of The Marx Brothers, in The Incredible Jewel Robbery
9th	The Barbie doll debuts
11th	Een beetje by Teddy Scholten (music by Dick Schallies, text by Willy van Hemert) wins Eurovision Song Contest 1959 for Netherlands
11th	A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry opens on Broadway in New York
17th	Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet and travels to India
31st	Dalai Lama leaves Tibet

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April
6th	The 31st Academy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles, California
9th	NASA announces its selection of seven military pilots to become the first US astronauts
25th	The St. Lawrence Seaway linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean officially opens to shipping

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May
10th	Nottingham Forest won The FA cup
18th	Launching of the National Liberation Committee of Côte d'Ivoire in Conakry, Guinea
24th	British Empire Day is renamed Commonwealth Day

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June
3rd	Singapore becomes a self governing crown colony of Britain with Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister
5th	A new government of the State of Singapore is sworn in by Sir William Goode. Two former Ministers were re-elected to the Legislative Assembly
9th	The USS George Washington is launched as the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles
18th	The film, "The Nun's Story", based on the best-selling novel, is released. Audrey Hepburn stars as the title character; she will later say that this is her favorite film role. The film is a box-office hit, and is nominated for several Oscars
23rd	Sean Lemass becomes the third Taoiseach of Ireland
23rd	Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in British prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany (where he resumed a scientific career)

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July
1st	The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway by Canada and the United States, officiated by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II
17th	The first skull of Australopithecus is discovered by Louis Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
24th	At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, US Vice President Richard Nixon and USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a "kitchen debate."
25th	SR-N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours on the 50th anniversary of Louis Bleriot's first crossing by heavier-than-air craft

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August
4th	Martial law declared in Laos
7th	The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida
8th	Floods in Taiwan leaves 2,000 dead
14th	Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from space
15th	Cyprus gains independence
21st	Hawaii is admitted as the 50th U.S. state
24th	Cyprus joins United Nations

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September
13th	Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon as the first man-made object on the moon
17th	The first Navy Navigation Satellite System Transit 1A was launched but failed to reach orbit
25th	Ceylon's prime minister SWRD Bandaranaike assassinated
26th	Superpower Typhoon Vera hit central Honshū. Japanese authority estimate killing at least 5,098, injuring another 38,921, 1,533,000 are homeless. Most of victim and damage at Nagoya erea, where occurred with storm surge

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October
2nd	Rod Serling's classic anthology series The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS
7th	Soviet probe Luna 3 sends back first ever photos of the far side of the Moon
13th	USA launches Explorer 7
21st	In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
31st	Riots in the Belgian Congo
31st	Lee Harvey Oswald announces in Moscow that he will never return to the United States

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November
2nd	The first section of the M1 motorway was opened between the present junctions 5 and 18
8th	Leeds City Tramways closes down
18th	MGM's widescreen, multimillion dollar, Technicolor version of Ben-Hur, starring Charlton Heston, is released and becomes the studio's greatest hit up to that time. It is critically acclaimed and eventually wins 11 Academy Awards - a record held until 1998, when 1997's Titanic becomes the first film to equal the record

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December
1st	Antarctic Treaty signed - 12 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign a landmark treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on that continent (this was the first arms control agreement established during the Cold War)
2nd	Malpasset dam in southern France collapses and water flows over the town of Frejus leaving 412 dead
13th	Three years after its first telecast, MGM's The Wizard of Oz is shown on television for only the second time, but it gains an even larger viewing audience than its first television outing, spurring CBS to make it an annual tradition
14th	Makarios III selected first president of Cyprus