1961 was an interesting one.
MAJOR EVENTS:
* Outgoing President Eisenhower issues warning of a "military industrial complex" developing in America
* President Kennedy establishes Peace Corps
* Cuban exiles fail in their bid to invade Cuba through the Bay of Pigs; President Kennedy accepts responsibility
* Soviets build wall dividing East and West Berlin
* Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann tried in Israel, found guilty
* "Freedom Riders" travel throughout the South to test and promote integration measures; many are assaulted and beaten
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY:
* Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes first human in space during a single-orbit flight
* Commander Alan Shephard Jr. becomes first American in space in a suborbital flight aboard Mercury 3; Virgil Grissom follows in similar fashion two months later
* Soviet space probe Venera 1 becomes the first man-made vehicle to reach another planet when it arrives at Venus
* First lasers developed
* Anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey discover Homo habilis in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania
SPORTS:
* World Series: New York Yankees over Cincinnati, 4-1
* Ty Cobb dies
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT:
* Movies: West Side Story, The Hustler, Judgment at Nuremburg
* Songs: Moon River, Where the Boys Are, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, Blue Moon, The Lion Sleeps Tonight
* TV Shows: Bullwinkle, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, Hazel, Dick Van Dyke Show, Top Cat
* Books: Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein; Catch-22, Joseph Heller; The Carpetbaggers, Harold Robbins; The Making of the President: 1960, Theodore White; The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone; The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck
* Henry Miller's 1934 novel Tropic of Cancer published legally in the U.S. for the first time
* Ernest Hemmingway dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound
* Gary Cooper dies
EVERYDAY LIFE:
* Electric toothbrushes introduced
* "Frito" corn chips appear
FUN FACTS:
* "Barbie" gets a boyfriend when the "Ken" doll is introduced
