Year 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

As MAD Magazine pointed out on its cover for the March 1961 issue, this was the first "upside-up" year-i.e., one in which the numerals that form the year look the same as when the numerals are rotated upside down-since 1881, and the last until 6009.

Events of 1961

January

• January 1 - The farthing, used since the 13th century, ceases to be legal tender in the United Kingdom.
• January 3 - President Dwight Eisenhower announces that the United States has severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba.
• January 3 - At the National Reactor Testing Station near Idaho Falls, Idaho, atomic reactor SL-1 explodes, killing 3 military technicians.

• January 5 - 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.
• January 7 - Following a 4-day conference in Casablanca, 5 African chiefs of state announce plans for a NATO-type African organization to ensure common defense. The Charter of Casablanca involves the Casablanca Group: Morocco, the United Arab Republic, Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.
• January 8 - In France, a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies on independence for Algeria.
• January 9 - British authorities announce that they have discovered a large Soviet spy ring in London.
• January 17 - 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".
• January 17 - Patrice Lumumba is assassinated.

Jan. 20: John F. Kennedy inaugurated as President of the U.S.

• January 20 - John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President of the United States.
• January 24 - A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress, with two nuclear bombs, crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina.
• January 24 - 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 protest folk music scene.
• January 25 - In Washington, DC John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential news conference. In it, he announces that the Soviet Union has freed the 2 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 composed of 2 army officers and 4 civilians takes over El Salvador, ousting another junta that had ruled for 3 months.
• January 26 - John F. Kennedy appoints Janet G. Travell to be his physician, the first woman to hold this appointment.
• January 30 - President John F. Kennedy delivers his first State of the Union Address.
• January 31 - Ham the Chimp, a 37 pound male, is rocketed into space aboard Mercury-Redstone 2, in a test of the Project Mercury capsule, designed to carry United States astronauts into space.

February

• February 1 - The United States launches its first test of the Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile.[1]
• February 3 - China buys grain from Canada for $60 million.
• February 4 - The Portuguese Colonial War begins in Angola.
• February 5 - February 9 - In Congo, President Joseph Kasavubu names Joseph Ileo as the new Prime Minister.
• February 9 - The Beatles perform for their first time at the Cavern Club.
• February 12 - The U.S.S.R. launches Venera 1 towards Venus.
• February 13 - The Congo government announces that villagers have killed Patrice Lumumba.
• February 14 - Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized in Berkeley, California.
• February 15 - President Kennedy warns the Soviet Union to avoid interfering with the United Nations pacification of the Congo.[2]
• February 15 - A Sabena Boeing 707 crashes near Brussels, Belgium, killing 73, including the entire United States figure skating team and several coaches.
• February 25 - The last public trams in Sydney, Australia, cease operation, bringing to an end the Southern Hemisphere's largest tramway network.
• February 26 - Hassan II is pronounced King of Morocco.

March

• March 1 - President of the United States John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
• March 1 - Uganda becomes self-governing by holding its first general elections.
• March 3 - Hassan II is crowned King of Morocco.
• March 8 - Max Conrad circumnavigates the earth in 8 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes, setting a new world record.
• March 8 - The first U.S. Polaris submarines arrive at Holy Loch.
• March 13 - Black and white £5 notes cease to be legal tender in the UK.
• March 13 - A dam bursts on the Dnieper River in the USSR, killing 145.
• March 13 - United States delegate to the UNSC Adlai Stevenson votes against Portuguese policies in Africa.
• March 13 - President of the United States John F. Kennedy proposes a long-term "Alliance for Progress" between the United States and Latin America.[[3]]
• March 15 - South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.
• March 15 - 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.
• March 18 - A ceasefire takes effect in the Algerian War of Independence.
• March 18 - Nous les amoureux by Jean-Claude Pascal (music by Jacques Datin, text by Maurice Vidalin) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1961 for Luxembourg.
• March 29 - The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to vote in presidential elections.
• March 30 - The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed at New York.

April

• April 5 - The New Guinea Council of Western Papua is installed.
• April 11 - The trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem.
• April 12 - Vostok 1: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space.
• April 12 - Albert Kalonji takes the title Emperor Albert I Kalonji of South Kasai.
• April 13 - In Portugal, a coup attempt against António de Oliveira Salazar fails.
• April 17 - The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba begins; it fails by April 19.
• April 17 - The 33rd Academy Awards ceremony is held.
• April 18 - Portugal sends to Angola its first military reinforcement.
• April 20 - Fidel Castro announces that the Bay of Pigs invasion has been defeated.
• April 22 - Algiers putsch: Four French generals who oppose de Gaulle's policies in Algeria fail in a coup attempt.
• April 23 - Judy Garland performs in a legendary comeback concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
• April 24 - The Swedish ship Regalskeppet Vasa is removed from the water after being sunk 333 years earlier.
• April 27 - President Kennedy a delivers revealing speech: The President and the Press: Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association[4]

May

• May 4 - U.S. Freedom Riders begin interstate bus rides to test the new U.S. Supreme Court integration decision.
• May 5 - Mercury program: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space aboard Mercury-Redstone 3.
• May 6 - Tottenham Hotspur F.C. become the first team in the 20th century to win the league and cup double.
• May 8 - Briton George Blake is sentenced to 42 years imprisonment 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 15 Heinrich Matthaei alone performs the Poly-U-Experiment and is the first human to recognize and understand the genetic code. This is the birthdate of modern genetics. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, "Experimentalsysteme - Eine Geschichte der Proteinsynthese im Reagenzglas" Wallstein ISBN 3-89244-454-4
• May 16 - Park Chung Hee takes over in a military coup in South Korea.
• 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 does 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 put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
• May 27 - Tunku Abdul Rahman, Prime Minister of Malaya, holds a press conference in Singapore, announcing his idea to form the Federation of Malaysia, comprising Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, Brunei and North Borneo (Sabah).
• May 28 - Peter Benenson's article "The Forgotten Prisoners" is published in several internationally read newspapers. This is later considered the founding of the human rights organization Amnesty International.
• May 30 - 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.
• May 31 - In France, rebel generals Maurice Challe and Andre Zelelr are sentenced to 15 years in prison.
• May 31 - South Africa officially leaves the Commonwealth of Nations.
• May 31 - President John F. Kennedy and Charles De Gaulle meet in Paris.

June

• June 1 - 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 collapse, 17 kilometers of the main road north of Karakore are damaged by landslides and fissures, and 5,000 inhabitants in the area are left homeless.
• June 4 - Vienna summit: John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev meet during 2 days in Vienna. They discuss nuclear tests, disarmament and Germany.
• June 17 - A Paris-to-Strasbourg train derails near Vitry-le-François; 24 are killed, 109 injured.
• 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 19 - The British protectorate ends in Kuwait and it becomes an emirate.
• June 21 - Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev requests asylum in France while in Paris with the Kirov Ballet.
• June 22 - Moise Tshombe is released for lack of evidence of connection to the murder of Patrice Lumumba.
• June 24 - The Ayrshire (Earl of Carrick's Own) Yeomanry, a British Yeomanry Cavalry Regiment, is presented its first Guidon by General Sir Horatius Murray KBE CB DSO at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire.
• June 25 - Iraqi president Abdul Karim Kassem announces he is going to annex Kuwait.
• June 27 - Kuwait requests British help; the United Kingdom sends in troops.

July

• July 4 - The Soviet submarine K-19 reactor leak occurs in the North Atlantic.
• July 5 - The first Israeli rocket, Shavit 2, is launched.^[1][2]
• July 8 - A mine explosion in Czechoslovakia leaves 108 dead.
• July 21 - Mercury program: 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 is recovered in 1999).

• 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 (the only tie until 2002 in MLB All-Star Game history).
• July 31 - Ireland submits the first ever application to join the then European Economic Community.

August

• August - USA founds Alliance for Progress.
• August 5 - The Six Flags over Texas theme park officially opens to the public.
• August 6 - Vostok 2: Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov becomes the first human in space in more than one day.
• August 7 - Vostok 2 with Titov onboard lands in Soviet Union.
• August 10 - Britain applies for membership in the European Economic Community.
• August 13 - 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.
• August 21 - Jomo Kenyatta is released from prison in Kenya.

September

• September 10 - During the F1 Italian Grand Prix on the circuit of Monza, German Wolfgang Von Trips, driving a Ferrari, crashes into a stand, killing 14 spectators and himself.
• September 14 - The new military government of Turkey sentences 15 members of the previous government to death.
• September 17 - Military rulers in Turkey hang former president Adnan Menderes.
• September 17 - September 18 - UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in an air crash en route to Katanga, Congo.
• September 19 - The first Grey alien is reported.
• September 21 - In France, the OAS slips an anti-de Gaulle message into TV programming.
• September 24 - The old Deutsche Opernhaus in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg is returned to its newly rebuilt house as the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
• September 28 - A military coup in Damascus, Syria effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria.

October