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Top Song(s)
• Ray Charles - I Can't Stop Loving You
• Pat Boone - Speedy Gonzales
• The Tornados - Telstar
• Elvis Presley - Return to Sender
• Little Eva - The Loco-Motion
Top Film(s)
• Harakiri
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
• Lawrence of Arabia
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Sanjuro
Best Selling Book(s)
• A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
• A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Famous Deaths
• January 1 – Diego Martínez Barrio, Spanish politician, 2-time Prime Minister of Spain
• February 6 - Hussein Khalidi, Jordanian statesman, 29th Prime Minister of Jordan
• March 24 - Auguste Piccard, Swiss physicist, aeronaut and explorer
• June 4 – William Beebe, American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist and entomologist
• July 6 - William Faulkner, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate
• July 26 - George Preca, Maltese Roman Catholic priest and saint
• August 31 – Felicjan S?awoj Sk?adkowski, Prime Minister of Poland
• September 21 – Ouyang Yuqian, Chinese playwright, director and Peking opera performer
• October 12 – Alberto Teisaire, Argentine Navy officer and Vice President of the Republic
• November 14 - Alwi bin Thahir al-Haddad, Yemeni-born Malaysian Islamic scholar
Medical/Science/Technology
• Penumbral lunar eclipse.
• Douglas Harold Copp discovers of the hormone calcitonin.
• Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling publish a paper introducing what will become known as the molecular clock concept.
• The first nude mouse strain is discovered by N. R. Grist at Ruchill Hospital's Brownlee virology laboratory in Glasgow.
• At MIT, Ivan Sutherland uses the TX-2 computer to write Sketchpad.
• English orthopedic surgeon John Charnley makes the first successful whole hip replacement operation.
• Joseph Murray performs the first permanent cadaveric kidney transplantation.
• Nodding disease is first documented, in southern Tanzania.
• James W. Black synthesizes propranolol, the first beta blocker.
• Wade-Dahl-Till valve, a cerebral shunt, is developed by hydraulic engineer Stanley Wade.
Political
• January 1 - The United States Navy SEALs are activated.
• January 2 – NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins praises John F. Kennedy's "personal role" in advancing civil rights.
• February 3 – The United States embargo against Cuba is announced.
• February 6 – Negotiations between U.S. Steel and the United States Department of Commerce begin.
• February 7 – The United States Government bans all U.S.-related Cuban imports and exports.
• February 14 – First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House.
• March 26 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that federal courts can order state legislatures to reapportion seats.
• June 11 – President John F. Kennedy gives the commencement address at Yale University.
• June 25 – U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Engel v. Vitale: that mandatory prayers in public schools are unconstitutional.
• September 12 - President John F. Kennedy, at a speech at Rice University with the words "We choose to go to the Moon".
National
• January 4 – New York City introduces a subway train that operates without a crew on board.
• January 26 – Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon but later misses its target by 22,000 miles.
• February 4 – Danny Thomas founds St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
• March 21 – The Taco Bell fast food restaurant chain is founded by Glen Bell, in Downey, California.
• April 14 – A Cuban military tribunal convicts 1,179 Bay of Pigs attackers.
• May 24 – Project Mercury: Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth 3 times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
• July 2 – The first Wal-Mart store opens for business in Rogers, Arkansas.
• September 12 - The first Kohl's department store opens in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• November 7 – Richard M. Nixon loses the California governor's race.
• December 9 – Petrified Forest National Park is established.
Worldwide
• January 9 – Cuba and the Soviet Union sign a trade pact.
• February 10 – Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers is exchanged for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, in Berlin.
• March 26 – France shortens the term for military service from 26 months to 18.
• April 6 – Belgium reestablishes diplomatic relations with the Congo.
• May 3 – Mikawashima train crash: 160 die in a triple-train disaster near Tokyo.
• June 22 – Air France Flight 117 crashes during bad weather in Guadeloupe, killing all 113 on board.
• July 12 – The Rolling Stones make their debut at London's Marquee Club, opening for Long John Baldry.
• August 11 – King Kong vs. Godzilla is released in Japan, becoming the first Godzilla and King Kong film in color.
• September 27 – A flash flood in Barcelona, Spain, kills more than 440 people.
• November 21 – The Sino-Indian War ends with a Chinese ceasefire.