WORLD HISTORY · 1960 日本語
Events of 1960Showa 35 (Japan) · Year of the Rat
What happened in 1960?
In 1960, amid the Anpo protests, the revised U.S.–Japan Security Treaty took effect automatically, and Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato announced his plan to double national income. In Africa, 17 countries became independent, earning it the name "Year of Africa."
- Seventeen African nations gain independenceAfrica
- Revised U.S.–Japan Security Treaty signedAsia
- Soviet Union shoots down U.S. U-2 spy planeEurope
- Chilean earthquake tsunami crosses the PacificLatin America
- Revised security treaty takes effect automaticallyAsia
- Republic of the Congo gains independenceAfrica
- Socialist leader Asanuma Inejiro assassinatedAsia
- Ikeda announces income-doubling planAsia
Tap an event to jump to it in the timeline below.
1960 at a glance
| Japanese era | Showa 35 |
|---|---|
| Chinese zodiac | Year of the Rat |
| Age of people born in 1960 | Turn 66 in 2026 |
| Previous / next year | 1959 (Showa 34) ／ 1961 (Showa 36) |
| Events | 135 |
| AP World History | Unit 8 (Cold War and Decolonization) |
| AP U.S. History | Period 8 |
Famous people born in 1960
Our birthday pages list 722 people born in 1960. Here are some of them.
- Diego MaradonaBorn October 30 · turns 66 this year · Argentine soccer star who captained Argentina to victory at the 1986 FIFA World…
- Ayrton SennaBorn March 21 · turns 66 this year · Brazilian racing driver who won three Formula One world championships with McLa…
- Kenneth BranaghBorn December 10 · turns 66 this year · Northern Irish actor and director known for bringing Shakespeare to the screen…
- Tony RobbinsBorn February 29 · turns 66 this year · American motivational speaker, self-help author, and entrepreneur known for lar…
- BonoBorn May 10 · turns 66 this year · Irish singer and activist who fronts the rock band U2, known for albums like Th…
- John ElwayBorn June 28 · turns 66 this year · Hall of Fame quarterback who led the Denver Broncos to back-to-back Super Bowl…
- Antonio BanderasBorn August 10 · turns 66 this year · Spanish actor known for The Mask of Zorro, Desperado, and voicing Puss in Boots…
- Cal Ripken Jr.Born August 24 · turns 66 this year · Hall of Fame Baltimore Orioles shortstop nicknamed the "Iron Man" for playing 2…
- Colin FirthBorn September 10 · turns 66 this year · English actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing King George…
- Tim CookBorn November 1 · turns 66 this year · American business executive who led Apple as CEO from 2011, guiding it to becom…
- Julianne MooreBorn December 3 · turns 66 this year · American actress who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Still Alice.
- Kōichi SatōBorn December 10 · turns 66 this year
Show 28 more
- Stanley TucciBorn November 11 · turns 66 this year
- Hideaki AnnoBorn May 22 · turns 66 this year
- Sarah BrightmanBorn August 14 · turns 66 this year
- Jeffrey DahmerBorn May 21 · turns 66 this year
- Franco BaresiBorn May 8 · turns 66 this year
- James SpaderBorn February 7 · turns 66 this year
- John LeguizamoBorn July 22 · turns 66 this year
- Russell SpenceBorn January 3 · turns 66 this year
- Gavin MillerBorn January 4 · turns 66 this year
- Michael StipeBorn January 4 · turns 66 this year
- Glenn StrömbergBorn January 5 · turns 66 this year
- Howie LongBorn January 6 · turns 66 this year
- Kari JalonenBorn January 6 · turns 66 this year
- Nigella LawsonBorn January 6 · turns 66 this year
- Paul AzingerBorn January 6 · turns 66 this year
- Loretta SanchezBorn January 7 · turns 66 this year
- Dave WecklBorn January 8 · turns 66 this year
- Lisa WaltersBorn January 9 · turns 66 this year
- Benoît PelletierBorn January 10 · turns 66 this year
- Brian CowenBorn January 10 · turns 66 this year
- Gurinder ChadhaBorn January 10 · turns 66 this year
- Richard BartleBorn January 10 · turns 66 this year
- Dominique WilkinsBorn January 12 · turns 66 this year
- Oliver PlattBorn January 12 · turns 66 this year
- Eric BetzigBorn January 13 · turns 66 this year
- Kevin AndersonBorn January 13 · turns 66 this year
- Matthew BourneBorn January 13 · turns 66 this year
- Chili DavisBorn January 17 · turns 66 this year
Events of 1960 (timeline · 135)
Tip: the PC view is best for studying
On a computer, each region has its own vertical line, so you can follow the flow of events and see what was happening in different parts of the world at the same time.
The Associations Law comes into force in Iraq, allowing registration of political parties.
National Airlines Flight 2511 is destroyed in mid-air by a bomb, while en route from New York City to Miami.
President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opens construction on the Aswan Dam by detonating ten tons of dynamite to demolish twenty tons of granite on the east bank of the Nile.
The Reserve Bank of Australia, the country's central bank and banknote issuing authority authorized by the 1959 Reserve Bank Act, is established.
Capital Airlines Flight 20 crashes into a farm in Charles City County, Virginia, killing all 50 aboard, the third fatal Capital Airlines crash in as many years.
Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 871 crashes near Ankara Esenboğa Airport in Turkey, killing all 42 aboard.
Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia, with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey, on board.
The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) in the Pacific Ocean.
Algerian War: Some units of European volunteers in Algiers stage an insurrection known as the "barricades week", during which they seize government buildings and clash with local police.
The National Association of Broadcasters in the United States reacts to the "payola" scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accept money for playing particular records.
The National Football League announces expansion teams for Dallas to start in the 1960 NFL season and Minneapolis-St. Paul for the 1961 NFL season.
The African National Party is founded in Chad, through the merger of traditionalist parties.
Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of "a wind of change", signalling that his Government is likely to support decolonisation.
Queen Elizabeth II issues an Order-in-Council, proclaiming the House of Windsor and declaring that her descendants will take the name Mountbatten-Windsor.
Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.
With the success of a nuclear test codenamed "Gerboise Bleue", France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.
The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.
A New York-bound Alitalia airliner crashes into a cemetery in Shannon, Ireland, shortly after takeoff, killing 34 of the 52 persons on board.
A Kyiv-bound Aeroflot airliner crashes on approach to Snilow Airport in Lviv, killing 32 of the 33 people on board.
The 5.7 Mw Agadir earthquake shakes coastal Morocco with a maximum perceived intensity of X (Extreme), destroying Agadir and leaving 12,000 dead and another 12,000 injured.
Indonesian President Sukarno dismisses the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR), 1955 democratically elected parliament, and replaces it with DPR-GR, the parliament of his own selected members.
Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner implants for the first time a shunt he invented into a patient, which allows the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis.
Northwest Airlines Flight 710 explodes and crashes near Cannelton, Indiana, killing 63.
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.
Apartheid: Sharpeville massacre, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.
Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser.
France agrees to grant independence to the Mali Federation, a union of Senegal and French Sudan.
The Netherlands and West Germany sign an agreement to negotiate the return of German land annexed by the Dutch in return for 280 million German marks as Wiedergutmachung.
Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa and architect of apartheid, narrowly survives an assassination attempt by a white farmer, David Pratt in Johannesburg.
The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world's first satellite navigation system.
At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker leads a conference that results in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
Brasília, Brazil's capital, is officially inaugurated. At 09:30, the Three Powers of the Republic are simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro.
Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after 12 years of dictatorial rule.
Cold War: U-2 incident: Francis Gary Powers, in a Lockheed U-2 spyplane, is shot down over the Sverdlovsk Oblast, Soviet Union, sparking a diplomatic crisis.
More than 20 million viewers watch the first televised royal wedding when Princess Margaret marries Antony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey.
Cold War: U-2 Crisis of 1960: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.
The Food and Drug Administration announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making Enovid the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill.
Hundreds of University of California, Berkeley students congregate for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
The Great Chilean earthquake, measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, hits southern Chile, becoming the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.
A tsunami caused by an earthquake in Chile the previous day kills 61 people in Hilo, Hawaii.
Following the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the largest ever recorded earthquake, Cordón Caulle begins to erupt.
In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celâl Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.
Trans Australia Airlines Flight 538 crashes near Mackay Airport in Mackay, Queensland, Australia, killing 29.
The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at four cents/acre in the 1863 treaty.
The Mali Federation gains independence from France (it later splits into Mali and Senegal).
The United States Food and Drug Administration declares Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world.
Cold War: Two cryptographers working for the United States National Security Agency left for vacation to Mexico, and from there defected to the Soviet Union.
The former British Protectorate of British Somaliland gains its independence as Somaliland.
Ghana becomes a republic and Kwame Nkrumah becomes its first President as Queen Elizabeth II ceases to be its head of state.
The Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland) gains its independence from Italy. Concurrently, it unites as scheduled with the five-day-old State of Somaliland (the former British Somaliland) to form the Somali Republic.
The 50-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia following the admission of Hawaii as the 50th U.S. state over ten months prior (August 21, 1959), in accordance with the Flag Acts.
Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union.
Congo Crisis: The State of Katanga breaks away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
France legislates for the independence of Dahomey (later Benin), Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso) and Niger.
Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 1-11 ditches off Polillo Island in the Philippines, killing one person and injuring 44.
Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her study of chimpanzees in the wild.
The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike is sworn in as prime minister of Ceylon, becoming the world's first democratically elected female head of government.
Cuban Revolution: Cuba nationalizes American and foreign-owned property in the nation.
Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico, United States, at 102,800 feet (31,300 m), setting three records that held until 2012: High-altitude jump, free fall, and highest speed by a human without an aircraft.
Cold War: In Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.
Sputnik program: Korabl-Sputnik 2: The Soviet Union launches the satellite with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, two rats and a variety of plants.
Air France Flight 343 crashes on approach to Yoff Airport in Senegal, killing all 63 aboard.
The first election of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile. The Tibetan community observes this date as Democracy Day.
Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) wins the gold medal in the light heavyweight boxing competition at the Olympic Games in Rome.
In Huntsville, Alabama, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA had already activated the facility on July 1).
At the Summer Olympics in Rome, Abebe Bikila becomes the first sub-Saharan African to win a gold medal, winning the marathon in bare feet.
Congo Crisis: Mobutu Sese Seko seizes power in a military coup, suspending parliament and the constitution.
Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistani President Ayub Khan sign the Indus Waters Treaty for the control and management of the Indus, Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas rivers.
The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.
USS Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched.
In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
Eastern Airlines flight 375 crashes on takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport, killing 62 people of the 72 aboard.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at the United Nations to protest a Philippine assertion.
Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100 people, including Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin.
An airplane carrying the Cal Poly football team crashes on takeoff in Toledo, Ohio.
Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley's Lover case.
The land that would become the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is established by an Act of Congress after a year-long legal battle that pitted local residents against Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials wishing to turn the Great Swamp into a major regional airport for jet aircraft.
At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.
John F. Kennedy is elected as the 35th President of the United States, defeating incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, who would later be elected president in 1968 and 1972.
Robert McNamara is named president of the Ford Motor Company, becoming the first non-Ford family member to serve in that post. He resigns a month later to join the newly elected John F. Kennedy administration.
Ruby Bridges becomes the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in Louisiana.
Patrice Lumumba is arrested by Mobutu Sese Seko's men on the banks of the Sankuru River, for inciting the army to rebellion.
The musical Camelot debuts at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. It will become associated with the Kennedy administration.
The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.
French forces crack down in a violent clash with protesters in French Algeria during a visit by French president Charles de Gaulle.
While Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visits Brazil, his Imperial Bodyguard seizes the capital and proclaims him deposed and his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Emperor.
King Mahendra of Nepal suspends the country's constitution, dissolves parliament, dismisses the cabinet, and imposes direct rule.
Richard Pavlick is arrested for plotting to assassinate U.S. President-Elect John F. Kennedy.
A United Air Lines Douglas DC-8 and a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation collide over Staten Island, New York and crash, killing all 128 people aboard both aircraft and six more on the ground.
Munich C-131 crash: Twenty passengers and crew on board as well as 32 people on the ground are killed.
Troops loyal to Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia crush the coup that began December 13, returning power to their leader upon his return from Brazil. Haile Selassie absolves his son of any guilt.
Vietnam War: The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, popularly known as the Viet Cong, is formally established in Tân Lập village, present day Tây Ninh province.
Hilkka Saarinen née Pylkkänen is murdered in the so-called "oven homicide" case in Krootila, Kokemäki, Finland.
Source: Wikipedia date pages ("January 1" … "December 31") / CC BY-SA 4.0. Regions are assigned by the site editors.
FAQ
What year was 1960 in the Japanese calendar?
1960 was Showa 35 in the Japanese era system.
What Chinese zodiac animal is 1960?
1960 is the Year of the Rat.
How old is someone born in 1960?
They turn 66 on their birthday in 2026.
What happened in 1960?
In 1960, amid the Anpo protests, the revised U.S.–Japan Security Treaty took effect automatically, and Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato announced his plan to double national income. In Africa, 17 countries became independent, earning it the name "Year of Africa."
Dates and events are based on Wikipedia and other references. Summaries and regions are written by the site editors.