January 4 - New York City introduces a train that operates without a crew on-board.
January 5 - A replica of the miraculous statue, the Holy Infant of Good Health, is presented to Blessed Pope John XXIII.
January 8 - Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is exhibited in the United States for the first time at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
January 8 - The Harmelen train disaster kills 93 people in The Netherlands.
January 10 - Apollo Project: NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket booster. It became better known as the Saturn V moon rocket, which launched every Apollo moon mission.
January 11 - An avalanche on Huascaran in Peru causes 4,000 deaths.
January 22 - The Organization of American States suspends Cuba's membership.
January 26 - Ranger program: Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon. The space probe later missed the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km).
January 30 - Two of the high-wire Flying Wallendas are killed when their seven-person pyramid collapses during a performance in Detroit, Michigan.
February 5 - French President Charles De Gaulle calls for allowing Algeria to be an independent nation.
February 7 - The United States bans all Cuban imports and exports.
February 8 - Charonne massacre. 9 trade unionists are killed by French police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Paris Prefecture of Police.
February 9 - Jamaica becomes independent nation within the Commonwealth of Nations.
February 10 - Captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
February 14 - First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy takes television viewers on a tour of the White House.
February 17 - A storm kills more than 300 people in Hamburg, West Germany.
February 20 - Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to orbit the earth.
March 1 - American Airlines Flight 1 crashes on take off in New York.
March 2 - In Burma, the army led by General Ne Win seizes power in a coup.
March 2 - Wilt Chamberlain sets the single-game scoring record in the National Basketball Association by tallying 100 points.
March 4 - United States Atomic Energy Commission announces that the first atomic power plant at McMurdo Station in Antarctica is in operation.
March 13 - Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivers a proposal, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks in Guantanamo Bay, to Secretary of Defense Robert Mcnamara. The proposal is scrapped and President John F. Kennedy removes Lemnitzer from his position.
March 16 - A Flying Tiger Line Super Constellation disappears in the western Pacific Ocean, with 107 people missing.
March 18 - The Evian Accords put an end to the Algerian War of Independence, which began in 1954.
March 19 - Algerian War of Independence: A ceasefire takes effect.
March 23 - NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, was launched as a showcase for Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative.
April 2 - The first official Panda crossing is opened outside Waterloo station, London.
April 21 - The Seattle World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opens. It is the first World's Fair in the United States since World War II.
April 26 - NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.
May 6 - St. Martín de Porres is canonized by Pope John XXIII.
May 12 - Douglas MacArthur delivers his famous "Duty, Honor, Country" valedictory speech at the United States Military Academy.
May 19 - A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's infamous rendition of Happy Birthday.
May 22 - Continental Airlines Flight 11 crashes after bombs explode on board.
May 24 - Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
June 3 - An Air France Boeing 707 charter, Chateau de Sully crashed after aborted takeoff from Paris, killing 130. The largest single plane accident to date.
June 11 - Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin become the only prisoners to successfully escape from the prison on Alcatraz Island.
June 14 - Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler, murders Anna Slesers, his first victim.
June 14 - The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris – later becoming the European Space Agency.
June 14 - The New Mexico Supreme Court in the case of Montoya v. Bolack, 70 N.M. 196, prohibits state and local governments from denying Indians the right to vote because they live on a reservation.
June 15 - Students for a Democratic Society complete the Port Huron Statement.
June 22 - An Air France Boeing 707 jet crashes in bad weather in Guadeloupe, West Indies killing 113.
August 15 - James Joseph Dresnok defects to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea after running across the Korean DMZ. Dresnok still resides in the capital, Pyongyang.
August 16 - Pete Best replaced by Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) as drummer for The Beatles.
August 17 - East German border guards kill 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempts to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin becoming one of the first victims of the wall.
August 22 - An attempt to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle fails.
August 22 - The NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered cargo ship, completes its maiden voyage.
August 27 - The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by America's NASA.
August 30 - Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since the war and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.
August 31 - Trinidad and Tobago become independent.
September 1 - Channel Television launches to 54,000 households in the Channel Islands.
September 8 - Newly independent Algeria, by referendum, adopts a Constitution.
September 8 - Last run of the famous Pines Express over the Somerset and Dorset Railway line (UK) fittingly using the last steam locomotive built by British Railways, 9F locomotive 92220 'Evening Star'
September 15 - The Soviet ship Poltava heads toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.
September 18 - Rwanda, Burundi and Jamaica are admitted to the United Nations.
September 20 - James Meredith, an African-American, is barred from entering the University of Mississippi.
September 23 - The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City opens with the completion of the first building, the Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) home of the New York Philharmonic.
September 24 - United States court of appeals orders the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith.
September 25 - The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is formally proclaimed. Ferhat Abbas is elected President of the provisional government.
September 26 - The Yemen Arab Republic is proclaimed.
September 28 - Paddington tram depot fire destroys 65 trams in Brisbane, Australia.
September 29 - Alouette 1, the first Canadian satellite, is launched.
September 30 - Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez founds the United Farm Workers.
September 30 - James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying segregation.
October 1 - First broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
October 3 - Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with Astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.
October 7 - U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya, U.S.S.R.
October 8 - Spiegel scandal: Der Spiegel publishes the article "Bedingt abwehrbereit" ("Conditionally prepared for defense") about a NATO manoeuver called "Fallex 62", which uncovered the sorry state of the Bundeswehr (Germany's army) facing the communist threat from the east at the time. The magazine was soon accused of treason.
October 9 - Uganda becomes an independent Commonwealth realm.
October 11 - Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.
October 12 - Infamous Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with record wind velocities; 46 dead and at least U.S. $230 million in damages
October 14 - Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U-2 flight over Cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed.
October 16 - Cuban Missile Crisis between the United States and Cuba begins.
October 22 - Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American spy planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island nation.
October 25 - Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba
October 27 - Major Rudolph Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.
October 27 - A plane carrying Enrico Mattei, post-war Italian administrator, crashes in mysterious circumstances.
October 28 - Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
November 4 - In a test of the Nike-Hercules air defense missile, Shot Dominic-Tightrope is successfully detonated 69,000 feet above Johnston Island. It would also be the last atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States.
November 6 - Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
November 11 - Kuwait's National Assembly ratifies the Constitution of Kuwait.
November 17 - President John F. Kennedy dedicates Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C. region.
November 20 - Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
November 21 - The Chinese People's Liberation Army declares a unilateral cease-fire in the Sino-Indian War.
November 24 - The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.
November 30 - The United Nations General Assembly elects U Thant of Burma as its 3rd UN Secretary-General.
December 2 - Vietnam War: After a trip to Vietnam at the request of US President John F. Kennedy, US Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield becomes the first American official to not make an optimistic public comment on the war's progress.
December 13 - NASA "Relay 1" launch, first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.
December 14 - NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.
December 21 - Rondane National Park is established as Norway's first national park.
