1961

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.
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.
1961	USA [popular music]	The twist dance craze takes off in the USA, inspired by Chubby Checker's song ‘The Twist’. It will change the way young people dance, introducing a more freeform style.
1961	UK, USA [popular music]	The US rock singer Elvis Presley's album G I Blues, the soundtrack from the film, is this year's best-selling album in Britain.
1961	USA [physics]	US physicist Murray Gell-Mann and Israeli physicist Yuval Ne'eman independently propose a classification scheme for subatomic particles that comes to be known as the Eightfold Way.
1961	England [plays]	The play Luther, by the English dramatist John Osborne, is first performed at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham, England.
1961	Switzerland [plays]	The play Andorra, by the Swiss writer Max Frisch, is first performed in Zürich, Switzerland.
1961	Russia [poetry]	The Russian writer Yevgeny Yevtushenko publishes his long poem Babi Yar.
1961	UK [popular music]	The British rock group the Rolling Stones is formed. Founder members include Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, and Ian Stewart; the long-standing bassist Bill Wyman joins in late 1962, and drummer Charlie Watts in January 1963.
1961	USA [consumer products]	The Squibb Co., New York City, manufactures the first electric toothbrush.
1961	USA [consumer products]	Dr William Scholl invents the Scholl sandal in the USA. The functional footwear will enjoy a revival as a fashion accessory in the mid-1990s.
1961	USA [psychology]	US psychologist Carl Rogers publishes On Becoming a Person.
1961	USA [political events]	The US Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization publishes The Family Fallout Shelter, a 31-page guide that explains how to build a fallout shelter in case of nuclear war.
1961	England [music]	The English composer Benjamin Britten completes his choral work War Requiem and his Cello Sonata No. 1.
1961	Hungary, Austria [orchestral music]	The Hungarian-born Austrian composer György Ligeti completes his orchestral work Atmosphères.
1961	England [biology]	English molecular biologist Francis Crick and South African chemist Sydney Brenner discover that each base triplet on the DNA strand codes for a specific amino acid in a protein molecule.
1961	USA [cinema and film]	The film Breakfast at Tiffany's, directed by Blake Edwards, is released in the USA. Based on the novella by Truman Capote, it stars Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard.
1961	USA [computing]	IBM introduces the Selectric typewriter which has some basic word-processing capacity. Characters are arranged on a rotating sphere or ‘golf ball’, rather than on individual arms. Because the sphere rotates there is no need for a moving carriage. It will account for over 70% of the electric typewriter market by the mid-1970s.
1961	Israel [crime and punishment]	Adolf Eichmann is tried in Israel and found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people during the Holocaust of World War II. He is to be executed on 31 May 1962.
1961	USA [clothing and fashion]	Barbara Terry, the daughter of a hairdresser, invents the Afro hairstyle in the USA.
1961	USA [fiction]	The US writer Joseph Heller publishes his novel Catch-22.
1961	Scotland [fiction]	The Scottish writer Muriel Spark publishes her novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
1961	USA [fiction]	The US writer Tillie Olsen publishes her story collection Tell Me a Riddle.
1961	USA [health and medicine]	Jean Nidetch founds Weight Watchers in New York City. Her system for losing weight is based on a low-protein diet and setting up networks of people to give mutual support at regular meetings. Weight Watchers is later bought by the food company Heinz.
1961	USA [manufacturing]	US inventor George Devol and US businessman Joseph Engelberger develop the first true robot, a programmable manipulator called ‘Programmed Article Transfer’. Installed at General Motors by their company Unimation, it is used to unload parts from a die-casting operation.
1961	USA [maths]	US meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovers a mathematical system with chaotic behaviour, leading to a new branch of mathematics known as chaos theory.
1961	Netherlands, Japan [sports]	Anton Geesink of the Netherlands becomes the first non-Japanese winner of the World Judo Championships, in Paris, France.
1961	USA [statistics and demography]	US cigarette manufacturers spend over $110 million on television advertising, compared to $40 million in 1957.
1 January 1961	UK [family planning]	The first oral contraceptive pill, Conovid, goes on sale in Britain, manufactured by the British firm G D Searle. From 4 December, it is available on the NHS.
4 January 1961	Austria [births and deaths]	Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist who developed the wave theory of matter, dies in Vienna, Austria (73).
1 February 1961	UK [postal services]	The General Post Office introduces a recorded delivery service in Britain.
21 March 1961	UK [popular music]	The British rock group the Beatles make their British debut at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, England.
April 1961	UK [radio]	The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio programme Children's Hour stops broadcasting, because it has lost most of its audience to television.
17 April - 20 April 1961	Cuba, USA [political events]	One thousand five hundred Cuban exiles, trained by US military instructors and supported by the CIA, land on Cuba in the ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion. An expected sympathetic uprising fails to occur and the invaders are killed or captured.
27 April 1961	Sierra Leone [decolonization]	The British colony of Sierra Leone wins independence within the Commonwealth.
5 May 1961	USA [space exploration]	US astronaut Alan Shepard in the Mercury capsule Freedom 7 makes a 14.8-minute single sub-orbital flight. He is the first US astronaut in space.
28 May 1961	France, Romania [railways]	The last journey of the ‘Orient Express’, between Paris, France, and Bucharest, Romania, takes place after 78 years of service.
31 May 1961	South Africa [political events]	South Africa becomes an independent republic outside the Commonwealth, with Charles Swart as president.
6 June 1961	Switzerland [births and deaths]	Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist who founded analytic psychology, dies in Küsnacht, Switzerland (85).
1 July 1961	England [births and deaths]	Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, humanitarian, and charity worker, born at Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk (– 1997).
2 July 1961	USA [births and deaths]	Ernest Hemingway, US novelist who wrote A Farewell to Arms (1929) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1941), commits suicide in Ketchum, Idaho (61).
17 August - 18 August 1961	East Germany, West Germany [political events]	East German building workers begin constructing the Berlin Wall, a near-impregnable physical barrier sealing off West Berlin and preventing the escape of East Germans to the West.
6 September 1961	USA [musical performers]	The US folk/rock singer Bob Dylan makes his debut at the Gaslight Café in Greenwich Village, New York City, appearing with blues musician John Lee Hooker.
28 September 1961	Syria [revolution]	An army coup in Damascus, Syria, overthrows the government there. On 29 September, Syria secedes from the United Arab Republic and forms the Syrian Arab Republic.
30 September 1961	world [international organizations]	The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), established the previous year by an international convention. is founded. It is a successor to the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), but the OECD includes the USA and Canada among its founder members.
30 October 1961	Italy [births and deaths]	Luigi Einaudi, first president of the Republic of Italy (1948–55), dies in Rome, Italy (87).
November 1961	UK [motor vehicles]	The first self-service petrol station in Britain opens at Southwark Bridge in London, England.
9 December 1961	Tanganyika [decolonization]	Tanganyika becomes an independent state within the British Commonwealth.