November 19 - Phyllis Haver, American actress (b. 1899)
November 24 - Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, (b. 1882)
November 28 - Richard Wright, American author (b. 1908)
December 7 - Clara Haskil, Swiss pianist (b. 1895)
December 29 - Eden Phillpotts, British writer (b. 1862)
Events
January 1 - The Republic of Cameroon achieves independence from France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
January 20 - Hendrik Verwoerd announces a plebiscite on whether South Africa should become a Republic.
January 23 - The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 m (35,798 feet)in the Pacific Ocean.
January 25 - The National Association of Broadcasters reacts to the Payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accepted money for playing particular records.
January 30 - The African National Party is founded in Chad, through the merger of traditionalist parties.
February 1 - Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
February 8 - Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor".
February 9 - Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
February 13 - Nuclear testing: France tests its first atomic bomb.
February 21 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro nationalizes all businesses in Cuba.
February 29 - An earthquake in Morocco kills over 3,000 people and nearly destroys Agadir in the southern part of the country.
March 4 - French freighter 'La Coubre' explodes in Havana, Cuba killing 100. Fidel Castro blames the U.S.
March 5 - The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis originates when Alister Hardy publicly announces his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due to a coastal phase.
March 17 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program that will ultimately lead to the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
March 21 - Apartheid: Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.
March 22 - Arthur Leonard Schawlow & Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser.
April 8 - The U.S. Senate approves the Civil Rights Act of 1960 despite Southern senators' marathon filibuster effort.
April 19 - Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against their president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
April 21 - Brasília, Brazil's capital, is officially inaugurated. At 9:30 am the Three Powers of the Republic are simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro.
April 21 - Founding of the Orthodox Bahá'í Faith in Washington, D.C.
April 27 - Togo gains independence from French-administered UN trusteeship.
May 1 - Formation of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
May 1 - Cold War: U-2 Crisis – Francis Gary Powers, in a Lockheed U-2 spyplane, is shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking a diplomatic crisis.
May 3 - The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opens in New York City's Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
May 3 - The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
May 6 - More than 20 million viewers watch the first televised royal wedding when Princess Margaret marries Anthony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey.
May 9 - The FDA announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making Enovid the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill.
May 10 - The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth.
May 11 - In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, living under the assumed name Ricardo Klement.
May 11 - The first contraceptive pill is made available on the market.
May 13 - Hundreds of UC Berkeley students congregate for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Thirty-one students are arrested, and the Free Speech Movement is born.
May 16 - Nikita Khrushchev demands an apology from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower for U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union thus ending a Big Four summit in Paris.
May 16 - Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
May 22 - An earthquake measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, now known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, hits southern Chile. It is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.
May 23 - Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion announces that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann had been captured.
May 27 - In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.
July 1 - Ghana becomes a Republic and Kwame Nkrumah becomes its first President as Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom ceases to be the Head of state.
July 4 - Due to the post-Independence Day admission of Hawaiˈi as the 50th U.S. state on August 21, 1959, the 50-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania almost ten and a half months later (see Flag Act).
July 8 - Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union.
July 11 - Independence of Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger.
July 11 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published.
July 12 - Orlyonok, the main Young Pioneer camp of the Russian SFSR, is founded.
July 20 - Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government.
July 20 - The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
July 20 - Belgium defends its intervention in the Congo to the United Nations Security Council while the government of the Congo appeals to the Soviet Union to send troops to push back the Belgians. The governments of the United States and France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warn the Soviets to stay out of the dispute.
July 20 - The head of the Physics Department at the Israel Institute of Technology, Kurt Sitte, is arrested for espionage.
July 21 - Sirimavo Bandaranaike is elected prime minister of Sri Lanka and becomes the first woman prime minister in the world.
August 1 - Dahomey (later renamed Benin) declares independence from France.
August 1 - Communist Party of Independence and Work is banned in Senegal.
August 1 - Islamabad declared as the federal capital of the Government of Pakistan.
August 12 - Echo I, the first communications satellite, launched.
August 13 - The Central African Republic declares independence from France.
August 15 - Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) declares its independence from France.
August 16 - Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
August 16 - Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico at 102,800 feet (31,330 m), setting three records that still stand today: High-altitude jump, free-fall, and fastest speed by a human without an aircraft.
August 17 - Decolonization: Gabon gains independence from France.
August 19 - Cold War: in Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.
August 20 - Senegal breaks from the Mali federation, declaring its independence.
August 24 - A temperature of −88°C (−127°F) is measured in Vostok, Antarctica — a world-record low.
September 2 - The first election of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration, in history of Tibet. The Tibetan community observes this date as the Democracy Day.
September 5 - The poet Léopold Sédar Senghor is elected as the first President of Senegal.
September 8 - In Huntsville, Alabama, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA had already activated the facility on July 1).
September 11 - The Young Americans for Freedom, meeting at home of William F. Buckley, Jr., promulgate the Sharon Statement.
September 12 - John F. Kennedy avers he does not speak for the Roman Catholic Church, and neither does the Church speak for him.
September 14 - The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.
September 18 - Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations.
September 22 - The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.
September 26 - In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
September 26 - Fidel Castro announces Cuba's support for the U.S.S.R.
September 29 - Nikita Khrushchev, leader of Soviet Union, disrupts a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with a number of angry outbursts.
October 1 - Nigeria gains independence from the United Kingdom.
October 4 - Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashes after a bird strike on takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport, killing 62 of 72 on board.
October 12 - Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonialist policy being conducted in Eastern Europe
October 12 - Inejiro Asanuma is assassinated in Japan by Otoya Yamaguchi, a 17-year-old. The camera was rolling at that time.
October 13 - 1960 World Series: Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski becomes the first person to end a World Series with a home run, as the Pirates beat the New York Yankees, four games to three.
October 19 - The United States government places an embargo on Communist Cuba.
October 24 - Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash
October 29 - In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
October 30 - Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
November 1 - While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps.
November 2 - Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case
November 9 - Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he quit to join the newly-elected John F. Kennedy administration.
November 11 - A military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam was crushed.
November 15 - The Polaris missile is test launched.
November 25 - The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic are assassinated.
November 28 - Mauritania becomes independent of France.
December 1 - Paul McCartney and Pete Best arrested then deported from Hamburg, Germany for accusation of attempted arson.
December 9 - The first episode of Britain's longest running soap opera Coronation Street is broadcast.
December 11 - A violent clash occurred with French forces cracking down on protesters in French Algeria during a visit by French president Charles de Gaulle.
December 15 - Richard Paul Pavlick is arrested for attempting to blow up and assassinate the U.S. President-Elect, John F. Kennedy only four days earlier.
December 16 - 1960 New York air disaster: While approaching New York's Idlewild Airport, a United Airlines Douglas DC-8 collides with a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation in a blinding snowstorm over Staten Island, killing 134.
December 20 - National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam is formed.
December 31 - The farthing coin ceases to be legal tender in the United Kingdom.
