1960

1950–1980	UK [television]	Watch With Mother, a series for young children featuring favourite characters such as Andy Pandy, the Flowerpot Men, Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, and the Woodentops, is shown on British television.
1956–1961	UK [television]	In addition to its successful run on radio, Hancock's Half-Hour, starring the comedian Tony Hancock, supported by Sid James, is shown on British television. It is scripted by Alan Simpson and Ray Galton.
1959–1960	USA [sculpture]	The US artist David Smith sculpts his Cubi series.
c. 1960	USA [sports]	Skateboarding is invented in California, USA, by surfers who fix roller-skate wheels to short surfboards. Soon afterwards the first skateboards are manufactured commercially, and over the decade the craze spreads east across the USA.
1960	USA [statistics and demography]	The median income for families in the USA is $5,620, or $5,835 for white families and $3,233 for blacks and other minorities.
1960	USA [statistics and demography]	In the USA, 22% of white males and 29% of white females have finished four years of high school; the corresponding numbers for black males and females are 12% and 15%.
1960	Scotland [psychology]	Scottish psychologist R D Laing publishes The Divided Self: A Study in Sanity and Madness.
1960	USA [television]	A television monitoring group in Los Angeles records in one week's viewing of US television 144 murders and 143 attempted murders. The increase in portrayed violence has been caused by a ratings war between stations.
1960	UK [television]	Coronation Street, which will become Britain's most successful soap opera, starts on British television. Early members of the cast include Violet Carson, Doris Speed, Pat Phoenix, Jack Howarth, and William Roache.
1960	USA [technology]	US physicist Theodore Maiman constructs the first laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), a device producing an intense beam of parallel or coherent light.
1960	USA [work and unemployment]	The US Xerox Corporation markets the Xerox 914 copier, which can make 23 × 35.5 cm/9 × 14 in copies on ordinary rather than coated paper. It begins a revolution in the office.
1960	USA, England [cinema and film]	The film Psycho, directed by the English film-maker Alfred Hitchcock, is released in the USA. Based on the book by Robert Bloch, it stars Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, and John Gavin.
1960	USA [cinema and film]	The film Spartacus, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is released in the USA, starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov, Charles Laughton, Tony Curtis, and Jean Simmons.
1960	France [fiction]	The French writer Claude Simon publishes his novel La Route des Flandres/The Road to Flanders.
1960	USA [fiction]	The US writer John Updike publishes his novel Rabbit Run, the first of four novels featuring the career of Harry ‘Rabbit’ Armstrong.
1960	USA [fiction]	The US writer Harper Lee publishes her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.
1960	USA [historical study]	The US journalist William L Shirer publishes The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
1960	Iraq [international organizations]	The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets for the first time, in Baghdad, Iraq. It raises the price of oil.
1960	England [painting]	The English artist David Hockney paints Adhesiveness.
1960	UK [plays]	The play The Caretaker, by the English dramatist Harold Pinter, is first performed, at the Arts Theatre in London, England.
1960	UK [plays]	The play A Man for All Seasons, by the English dramatist Robert Bolt, based on the life of Sir Thomas More, is first performed, at the Globe Theatre in London, England.
1960	France [plays]	The absurdist play Le Rhinocéros/The Rhinoceros, by the Romanian-born French dramatist Eugène Ionesco, is first performed, in Paris, France.
1960	USA [poetry]	The US writer Sylvia Plath publishes her poetry collection The Colossus.
1960	UK, Germany [popular music]	The first public performance by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Pete Best as the Beatles takes place, at Bruno Koschminder's Indra Club in Hamburg, West Germany.
1960	USA, UK [popular music]	The US rock singer Elvis Presley releases the single ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ It enters the US charts on 14 November 1960, and becomes the best-selling single of 1961 in Britain.
1960–1969	UK [popular music]	The Beatles' song ‘She Loves You’ is the best-selling single of the 1960s in Britain. The Beatles are responsible for five out of the top six singles in Britain in the 1960s.
1 January 1960	Cameroon [decolonization]	French Cameroon becomes the independent Republic of Cameroon.
6 January - 5 February 1960	UK, Africa [diplomacy]	The British prime minister Harold Macmillan visits Ghana, Nigeria, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and South Africa and, on 3 February, speaking in Cape Town to the South African parliament, he declares: ‘The wind of change is blowing through this continent..... and our national policies must take account of it.’
23 January 1960	Switzerland [exploration]	Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh descend to the bottom of Challenger Deep (10,916 m/35,810 ft), off the Pacific island of Guam, in the bathyscaph Trieste, setting a new undersea record.
13 February 1960	France [weapons]	France explodes an atomic bomb over the Sahara Desert, thus becoming the fourth atomic power.
21 March 1960	South Africa [political events]	The ‘Sharpeville massacre’ occurs in a township near Vereeniging (south of Johannesburg), South Africa, where members of the Pan-African Congress demonstrating against pass laws are fired on by police, killing 69 demonstrators and wounding 186 more.
30 March 1960	South Africa [human rights]	Following demonstrations, strikes, and marches by blacks demanding civil rights, the South African government proclaims a state of emergency (–31 August) and passes the Unlawful Organizations Act. On 8 April the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-African Congress are banned, and Nelson Mandela and others form Umkonto we Sizwe (‘Spear of the Nation’), as the guerrilla wing of the ANC.
1 April 1960	UK [consumer products]	R Griggs & Co. begin to produce Doc Martens boots under licence in Britain.
27 April 1960	French West Africa, Togo [decolonization]	The French-governed part of Togoland becomes the independent Republic of Togo, Africa's smallest independent country.
1 May 1960	USSR, USA [crime and punishment]	Soviet military forces shoot down a US high-altitude U-2 spy aircraft over the Ural Mountains, USSR. On 19 August, the pilot Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years of imprisonment for espionage.
3 May 1960	Europe [international organizations]	The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) comes into force, with 20% tariff cuts between members from July.
31 May 1960	USA [psychiatry]	The President's Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health in the USA reports that 25% of Americans suffer from mental illness at some point in their lives.
6 June 1960	USA [health and medicine]	A study by the American Heart Association finds that men who smoke are 50–150% more likely to die from coronary disease than nonsmokers.
20 June 1960	USA, Sweden [boxing]	In beating Ingemar Johansson of Sweden in five rounds of their fight in New York City, US boxer Floyd Patterson becomes the first boxer to regain the world heavyweight title.
26 June 1960	Madagascar [decolonization]	The French colony of Madagascar is proclaimed independent as the Malagasy Republic (but remains within the French Community). It is admitted to the United Nations (UN) on 20 September.
26 June 1960	British Somaliland, Somalia [decolonization]	British Somaliland becomes independent and, on 27 June, unites with Somalia.
30 June 1960	South Africa [legislation]	The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act comes into force in South Africa, establishing separate ‘homelands’ for blacks.
4 July 1960	USA [everyday life]	The 50-star US flag, recognizing Hawaii's statehood of August 1959, becomes the official flag.
5 July - 6 July 1960	Congo Republic [revolution]	The army in the newly independent Congo Republic mutinies, and Europeans in the country flee from the Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) area to Brazzaville (French Congo).
6 July 1960	England [births and deaths]	Aneurin Bevin, British Labour politician who introduced the National Health Service (NHS), dies in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, England (62).
31 July 1960	Malaya [political events]	The official end of the ‘Malayan Emergency’ (British and Mayalan operations against communist insurgents in Malaya, beginning in 1948) is announced.
August 1960	Japan [consumer products]	The Japan Stationery Company, in Tokyo, markets Pentel, the first felt-tip pens.
16 August 1960	Cyprus [law and government]	Cyprus becomes an independent republic with Greek Cypriot Archbishop Makarios as president and Turkish Cypriot Dr Fazil Kütchük as vice-president.
9 September 1960	Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela [international organizations]	Representatives of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela meet in Baghdad, Iraq, and vote to establish the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC), a permanent organization to represent their interests. OPEC is finally formed in 1961.
9 September 1960	USA [American football]	A crowd of 21,597 watches the Denver Broncos defeat the Boston Patriots 13–10 in Boston, Massachusetts, in the first American Football League (AFL) regular season game. The AFL was formed earlier this year as a rival to the National Football League (NFL).
26 September 1960	USA [elections]	US presidential candidates John F Kennedy and Richard M Nixon debate on television, establishing a precedent for several subsequent elections. Viewers consider the outcome to be a draw, but radio listeners believe Nixon to be the winner, indicating that style and appearance are as much a part of Kennedy's campaign as substance.
October 1960	world [weights and measures]	The 11th general Conference on Weights and Measures replaces the metric system with the International System (SI) of weights and measures. It redefines the seven basic units of measurement, from which all others are derived, in atomic terms. The metre, for instance is redefined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line in the krypton-86 spectrum.
November 1960	USA [elections]	Americans elect John F Kennedy president and Lyndon B Johnson vice president in the closest popular vote in US history (49.7% to 49.6%). In the Congressional elections, Democrats retain majorities in the House (263-174) and Senate (65-35).
November 1960	USA [computing]	US computer scientist Kenneth Olsen, at Digital Equipment Corporation, introduces the PDP-1 computer. It has a memory of 26 megabytes and is the first to use a monitor and keyboard. It is the forerunner of the minicomputer.
28 November 1960	Mauritania, France [decolonization]	The colony of Mauritania proclaims independence from France as an Islamic Republic.
16 December 1960	USA [transport disasters]	The worst airline disaster to date occurs when a United Air Lines and a TWA plane collide in fog over New York City killing 132 passengers and crew members.