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Top Song(s)
• Trini Lopez - If I Had a Hammer
• Elvis Presley - (You're The) Devil in Disguise
• Paul & Paula - Hey Paula
• The Ronettes - Be My Baby
• Kingsmen - Louie Louie
Top Film(s)
• High and Low
• Hud
• Charade
• The Great Escape
• Winter Light
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
• Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
• The Spy Who Came In from the Cold - John Le Carre
• Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• Planet of the Apes - Pierre Boulle
Famous Deaths
• January 9 – Enea Bossi, Sr., Italian-born American aerospace engineer and aviation pioneer
• February 28 - Rajendra Prasad, Indian politician, 1st President of India
• March 20 – Manuel Arteaga y Betancourt, Cuban Roman Catholic cardinal
• April 4 - Gaetano Catanoso, Italian Roman Catholic priest and saint
• May 11 – Herbert Spencer Gasser, American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
• July 6 – George, Duke of Mecklenburg, head of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
• August 22 – William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield, British businessman and philanthropist
• September 4 – Robert Schuman, French statesman, a founding father of the European Union
• October 21 – Jean Decoux, French admiral, Governor-General of French Indochina
• December 14 - Hubert Pierlot, Belgian lawyer and jurist, 32nd Prime Minister of Belgium
Medical/Science/Technology
• Soviet Luna reaches Earth orbit but fails to reach the Moon.
• Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane coins the word "clone".
• Niko Tinbergen poses his four questions to be asked of any animal behavior.
• Kenneth Hudson's Industrial Archaeology: an introduction published in London.
• Walter Feit and John G. Thompson state the Feit–Thompson theorem.
• Edward Lorenz publishes his discovery of the 'butterfly effect', significant in the development of chaos theory.
• Guy Alexandre performs the first kidney transplantation from a heart-beating, brain-dead donor.
• Thomas Starzl performs the first liver transplantation, at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
• James D. Hardy performs the first lung transplantation.
• Measles vaccines are introduced commercially.
Political
• January 14 – George Wallace becomes governor of Alabama
• February 11 – The CIA's Domestic Operations Division is created.
• February 8 – Travel, financial, and commercial transactions by U.S citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the Kennedy Administration.
• June 4 – President John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 11110.
• June 10 - President John F. Kennedy delivers "A Strategy of Peace" speech at the American University in Washington, D.C.
• June 11 - Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in the door of the University of Alabama to protest against integration.
• June 11 - President John F. Kennedy delivers a historic Civil Rights Address, in which he promises a Civil Rights Bill.
• August 5 – The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign a nuclear test ban treaty.
• August 30 – The Moscow–Washington hotline (a direct teleprinter link) is inaugurated by President Kennedy.
• November 22 – In a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, U.S. President John F. Kennedy is fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald,
National
• January 8 – Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the only time.
• February 12 – Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 705 crashes in the Florida Everglades, killing everyone aboard.
• March 21 – The Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closes.
• April 10 – The U.S. nuclear submarine Thresher sinks 220 mi east of Cape Cod; all 129 aboard die.
• April 12 – Martin Luther King Jr., and others are arrested in a Birmingham protest for "parading without a permit".
• May 1 – The Coca-Cola Company debuts its first diet drink, TaB cola.
• June 23 - Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room opens at Disneyland, premiering the first Audio-Animatronics in the park.
• July 1 – ZIP codes are introduced in the U.S.
• August 18 – James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
• August 28 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Worldwide
• January 2 – Vietnam War – Battle of Ap Bac: The Viet Cong win their first major victory.
• January 29 – French President Charles de Gaulle vetoes the United Kingdom's entry into the European Common Market.
• March 17 – Mount Agung erupts on Bali, killing approximately 1,500.
• May 4 – The Le Monde Theater fire in Dioirbel, Senegal, kills 64 people.
• June 16 – Vostok 6 carries Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman into space.
• July 26 - An earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia (present-day North Macedonia) leaves 1,800 dead.
• August 8 – The Great Train Robbery takes place in Buckinghamshire, England.
• September 24 – The U.S. Senate ratifies the nuclear test ban treaty.
• October 30 – The car manufacturing firm Lamborghini is founded in Italy.
• November 14 – A volcanic eruption under the sea near Iceland creates a new island, Surtsey.