January
1st	The farthing, which has been in circulation since the 13th century, ceases to be legal tender in the United Kingdom
3rd	President Dwight Eisenhower announces that the United States has severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba
5th	Italian sculptor Alfredo Fioravanti marches into the U.S. Consulate in Rome, and confesses that he was part of the team that forged the Etruscan terracotta warriors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
7th	Following a 4-day conference in Casablanca, 5 African chiefs of state announce plans for a NATO-type African organisation to ensure common defense. The Charter of Casablanca involves the Casablanca Group - Morocco, the United Arab Republic, Ghana, Guinea, and Mali
8th	In France, a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies in Algeria
9th	British authorities announce that they have discovered a large Soviet spy ring in London
17th	President Dwight Eisenhower gives his final State of the Union Address to Congress. In a Farewell Address the same day, he warns of the increasing power of a "military-industrial complex"
17th	Patrice Lumumba is assassinated
20th	John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President of the United States
24th	A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress, with two roughly 2.4 megaton nuclear bombs, crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina
24th	Musician Bob Dylan reportedly makes his way to New York City after bumming a ride in Madison, Wisconsin. Dylan is likely on his way to visit his idol Woody Guthrie. He later finds fame in the Greenwich Village folk music scene
25th	Acting to halt 'leftist excesses,' a junta composed of 2 army officers and 4 civilians takes over El Salvador, ousting another junta that had ruled for 3 months
26th	John F. Kennedy appoints Janet G. Travell to be his physician, the first woman to hold this appointment
30th	President John F. Kennedy delivers his first State of the Union Address
31st	Ham, a 37 pound male chimpanzee, is rocketed into space aboard Mercury-Redstone 2, in a test of the Project Mercury capsule, designed to carry United States astronauts into space

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February
3rd	China buys grain from Canada for $60 million
4th	The Portuguese Colonial War begins in Angola
9th	The Beatles perform for their first time at the Cavern Club
11th	The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem
12th	The Soviet Union launch Venera 1 towards Venus
13th	The Congo government announces that villagers have killed Patrice Lumumba
14th	Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesised in Berkeley, California
15th	A Sabena Boeing 707 crashes near Brussels, Belgium, killing 73, including the entire United States figure skating team and several coaches
25th	The last public tram operates in Sydney, Australia, bringing to an end the Southern Hemisphere's largest tramway network
26th	Hassan II is pronounced King of Morocco

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March
1st	President of the United States John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps
1st	Uganda becomes self-governing by holding its first general elections
3rd	Hassan II is crowned King of Morocco
8th	Max Conrad circumnavigates the earth in 8 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes, setting a new world record
8th	The first U.S. Polaris submarines arrive at Holy Loch
13th	Black and white £5 notes cease to be legal tender in the UK
13th	A dam bursts on the Dnieper River in the USSR, killing 145
13th	USA delegate to the UNSC Adlai Stevenson votes against Portuguese policies in Africa
15th	South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations
15th	The Union of Peoples of Angola, led by Holden Roberto, attacks strategic locations in the north of Angola. These events result in the beginning of the colonial war with Portugal
18th	A ceasefire takes effect in the Algerian War of Independence
18th	Nous les amoureux by Jean-Claude Pascal (music by Jacques Datin, text by Maurice Vidalin) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1961 for Luxembourg

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April
5th	The New Guinea Council of Western Papua is installed
11th	The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem
12th	Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, becomes the first human in space
13th	In Portugal there's a failed coup attempt against Salazar
17th	The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba begins; it fails by April 19
17th	33rd Academy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles, California
18th	Portugal sends to Angola the first military reinforcement
20th	Fidel Castro announces that the Bay of Pigs invasion has been defeated
22nd	Four French generals who oppose de Gaulle's policies in Algeria fail in a coup attempt
23rd	Judy Garland performs in a legendary comeback concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City
24th	Regalskeppet Vasa is removed from the water after being sunk 333 years earlier

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May
3rd	French phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty dies, age 53, of a stroke, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes
4th	13 black and white students with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) leave Washington DC on 2 buses, to test integration laws in bus stations throughout the deep South
5th	Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space aboard Mercury-Redstone 3
6th	Tottenham Hotspur become the first team in the 20th century to win the league and cup double, by winning the FA Cup
8th	Briton George Blake is sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for spying
14th	A Freedom Riders bus is fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama and the civil rights protestors are beaten by an angry mob
15th	Heinrich Matthaei performed the Poly-U-Experiment and was the first human to recognize and understand the genetic code
16th	A military coup in South Korea is successful and Park Chung Hee assumes command of the country
19th	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)
21st	Alabama Governor John Patterson declares martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots break out
24th	Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for "disturbing the peace" after disembarking from their bus
25th	President Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade
28th	Peter Benenson's article "The Forgotten Prisoners" is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding document of the human rights organisation Amnesty International
30th	Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, totalitarian despot of the Dominican Republic since 1930, is killed in an ambush, putting an end to the second longest running dictatorship in Latin American history
31st	In France, rebel generals Maurice Challe and Andre Zelelr are sentenced to 15 years in prison
31st	South Africa officially leaves the Commonwealth of Nations
31st	President John F. Kennedy and Charles De Gaulle meet in Paris

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June
1st	Ethiopia experiences her most devastating earthquake of the 20th century, with a magnitude of 6.7. The town of Majete is destroyed, 45% of the houses in Karakore collapsed, 17 kilometers of the main road north of Karakore were damaged by landslides and fissures, and 5,000 inhabitants in the area are left homeless
4th	At the Vienna summit John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev meet for 2 days. They discuss nuclear tests, disarmament and Germany
17th	A Paris-to-Strasbourg train derails near Vitry-le-François; 24 are killed, 109 injured
17th	The New Democratic Party of Canada is founded with the merger of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress
19th	The British protectorate ends in Kuwait and it becomes an emirate
21st	Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev requests asylum in France while in Paris with the Kirov Ballet
22nd	Moise Tshombe is released for lack of evidence of connection to the murder of Patrice Lumumba
25th	U.S. philanthropist George Washington Vanderbilt III is found dead at the base of a San Francisco skyscraper
25th	Iraqi president Abdul Karim Kassem announces he is going to annex Kuwait
27th	Kuwait requests British help; the United Kingdom sends in troops

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July
2nd	Ernest Hemingway commits suicide by gunshot in Ketchum, Idaho
4th	The Soviet submarine K-19 reactor leak occurs in the North Atlantic
5th	The first Israeli rocket, Shavit 2, is launched
8th	A mine explosion in Czechoslovakia leaves 108 dead
21st	Gus Grissom, piloting the Mercury-Redstone 4 capsule Liberty Bell 7, becomes the second American to go into space (sub-orbital). Upon splashdown, the hatch prematurely opens, and the capsule sinks (it will be recovered in 1999)
31st	Ireland submits the first ever application to join the then European Economic Community

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August
5th	The Six Flags over Texas theme park officially opens to the public
10th	Britain applies for membership in the European Economic Community
13th	Construction of the Berlin Wall begins, restricting movement between East Berlin and West Berlin and forming a clear boundary between West Germany and East Germany, Western Europe and Eastern Europe
21st	Jomo Kenyatta is released from prison in Kenya

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September
10th	During the F1 Italian Grand Prix on the circuit of Monza, the German driver Wolfgang Von Trips in a Ferrari crashes into a stand killing 14 spectators and himself
14th	The new military government of Turkey sentences 15 members of the previous government to death
17th	Military rulers in Turkey hang former president Adnan Menderes
17th	UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in an air crash en route to Katanga, Congo
24th	The old Deutsche Opernhaus in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg is returned to its newly rebuilt house as the Deutsche Oper Berlin
28th	A military coup in Damascus, Syria effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria

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October
9th	Digital photography invented by Eugene F. Lally presented in a technical paper at the American Rocket Society's Space Flight Report to the Nation in New York
10th	A volcanic eruption on Tristan da Cunha causes the whole population to be evacuated
12th	The death penalty is abolished in New Zealand
17th	French police attack in Paris about 30,000 protesting a curfew applied solely to Algerians. The official death toll is 3, but human rights groups claim 240 dead
19th	The Arab League takes over protecting Kuwait; the last British troops leave
25th	The first edition of Private Eye, the British satirical magazine, is published
27th	An armistice begins in Katanga, Congo
27th	Mongolia and Mauritania join the United Nations
27th	A standoff between Soviet and American tanks in Berlin, Germany heightens Cold War tensions
30th	Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates a 58 megaton yield hydrogen bomb known as Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya. It remains the largest ever (man-made) explosion
31st	Hurricane Hattie devastates Belize City, Belize killing over 270. After the hurricane, the capital moves to the inland city of Belmopan
31st	Joseph Stalin's body is removed from the Lenin Mausoleum

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November
1st	The Hungry generation Movement launched in Calcutta, India
1st	The Interstate Commerce Commission's federal order banning segregation at all interstate public facilities officially comes into effect in America
3rd	The UN General Assembly unanimously elects U Thant acting Secretary General
9th	Neil Armstrong records a world record speed in a rocket plane of 6,587km/h flying a X-15
10th	Catch-22 is first published by Joseph Heller
11th	Congolese soldiers murder 13 Italian United Nations pilots
11th	Stalingrad is renamed Volgograd
17th	Michael Rockefeller, son of New York Governor, and later Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, disappears in the jungles of New Guinea
18th	U.S. President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam
20th	The funeral of longtime House Speaker Sam Rayburn is held in Washington, DC. Two former Presidents (Truman, Eisenhower) and one future one (Lyndon B. Johnson) join President Kennedy in paying their respects
30th	The Soviet Union vetoes Kuwait's application for United Nations membership

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December
1st	Netherlands New Guinea raises the new Morning Star flag and changes its name to West Papua
2nd	In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares he is a Marxist-Leninist, and that Cuba will adopt Communism
5th	U.S. President John F. Kennedy gives support to the Volta Dam project in Ghana
9th	The Australian government of Robert Menzies is re-elected for a sixth term
10th	The Soviet Union severs diplomatic relations with Albania
10th	Melvin Calvin is awarded the Nobel Prize for the process of photosynthesis
11th	The Vietnam War officially begins, as the first American helicopters arrive in Saigon along with 400 U.S. personnel
11th	Adolf Eichmann is found guilty of crimes against humanity by a panel of 3 Israeli judges
15th	An Israeli war crimes tribunal sentences Adolf Eichmann to die for his part in the Jewish Holocaust
17th	India occupies Goa
17th	A Circus tent fire in Niteroi, Brazil kills 323
18th	India occupies Portuguese colonies of Goa, Damao and Diu
19th	Goa is officially ceded to India after 400 years of Portuguese rule
21st	In Congo, Katangan prime minister Moise Tshombe recognizes the Congolese constitution
23rd	Luxembourg's national holiday, the Grand Duke's Official Birthday, is set on June 23 by Grand Ducal decree
31st	Ireland's first national television station, Telefís Éireann (later RTÉ), begins broadcasting