Timeline of the history of the United States (1950-1970)
List of years in the United States
1960 in U.S. states and territories
States
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Territories
American Samoa
Guam
Puerto Rico
United States Virgin Islands
Washington, D.C.
List of years in the United States by state or territory
Events from the year 1960 in the United States.
Incumbents
Federal government
President: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-Kansas/Pennsylvania)
Vice President: Richard Nixon (R-California)
Chief Justice: Earl Warren (California)
Speaker of the House of Representatives: Sam Rayburn (D-Texas)
Senate Majority Leader: Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas)
Congress: 86th
Governors and lieutenant governors
Governors
Governor of Alabama: John M. Patterson (Democratic)
Governor of Alaska: William A. Egan (Democratic)
Governor of Arizona: Paul Fannin (Republican)
Governor of Arkansas: Orval Faubus (Democratic)
Governor of California: Pat Brown (Democratic)
Governor of Colorado: Stephen L. R. McNichols (Democratic)
Governor of Connecticut: Abraham A. Ribicoff (Democratic)
Governor of Delaware: J. Caleb Boggs (Republican) (until December 30), David P. Buckson (Republican) (starting December 30)
Governor of Florida: LeRoy Collins (Democratic)
Governor of Georgia: Ernest Vandiver (Democratic)
Governor of Hawaii: William F. Quinn (Republican)
Governor of Idaho: Robert E. Smylie (Republican)
Governor of Illinois: William G. Stratton (Republican)
Governor of Indiana: Harold W. Handley (Republican)
Governor of Iowa: Herschel C. Loveless (Democratic)
Governor of Kansas: George Docking (Democratic)
Governor of Kentucky: Bert T. Combs (Democratic)
Governor of Louisiana: Earl K. Long (Democratic) (until May 10), Jimmie H. Davis (Democratic) (starting May 10)
Governor of Maine: John H. Reed (Republican)
Governor of Maryland: J. Millard Tawes (Democratic)
Governor of Massachusetts: Foster Furcolo (Democratic)
Governor of Michigan: G. Mennen Williams (Democratic)
Governor of Minnesota: Orville L. Freeman (Democratic)
Governor of Mississippi: James P. Coleman (Democratic) (until January 19), Ross R. Barnett (Democratic) (starting January 19)
Governor of Missouri: James T. Blair Jr. (Democratic)
Governor of Montana: J. Hugo Aronson (Republican)
Governor of Nebraska: Ralph G. Brooks (Democratic) (until September 9), Dwight W. Burney (Republican) (starting September 9)
Governor of Nevada: Grant Sawyer (Democratic)
Governor of New Hampshire: Wesley Powell (Republican)
Governor of New Jersey: Robert B. Meyner (Democratic)
Governor of New Mexico: John Burroughs (Democratic)
Governor of New York: Nelson Rockefeller (Republican)
Governor of North Carolina: Luther H. Hodges (Democratic)
Governor of North Dakota: John E. Davis (Republican)
Governor of Ohio: Michael DiSalle (Democratic)
Governor of Oklahoma: J. Howard Edmondson (Democratic)
Governor of Oregon: Mark Hatfield (Republican)
Governor of Pennsylvania: David L. Lawrence (Democratic)
Governor of Rhode Island: Christopher Del Sesto (Republican)
Governor of South Carolina: Ernest Hollings (Democratic)
Governor of South Dakota: Ralph Herseth (Democratic)
Governor of Tennessee: Buford Ellington (Democratic)
Governor of Texas: Price Daniel (Democratic)
Governor of Utah: George Dewey Clyde (Republican)
Governor of Vermont: Robert T. Stafford (Republican)
Governor of Virginia: J. Lindsay Almond (Democratic)
Governor of Washington: Albert D. Rosellini (Democratic)
Governor of West Virginia: Cecil H. Underwood (Republican)
Governor of Wisconsin: Gaylord A. Nelson (Democratic)
Governor of Wyoming: John J. Hickey (Democratic)
Lieutenant governors
Lieutenant Governor of Alabama: Albert B. Boutwell (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Alaska: Hugh Wade (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas: Nathan Green Gordon (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of California: Glenn Malcolm Anderson (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Colorado: Robert Lee Knous (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: John N. Dempsey (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Delaware: David P. Buckson (Republican) (until December 30), vacant (starting December 30)
Lieutenant Governor of Georgia: Garland T. Byrd (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii: James Kealoha (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of Idaho: W. E. Drevlow (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: John William Chapman (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: Crawford F. Parker (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of Iowa: Edward J. McManus (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Kansas: Joseph W. Henkle, Sr. (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: Wilson W. Wyatt (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: Lether Frazar (Democratic) (until May 10), C. C. Aycock (Democratic) (starting May 10)
Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: Robert F. Murphy (Democratic) (until October 6), vacant (starting October 6)
Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: John B. Swainson (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota: Karl Rolvaag (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi: Paul B. Johnson Jr. (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: Edward V. Long (Democratic) (until September 23), vacant (starting September 23)
Lieutenant Governor of Montana: Paul Cannon (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska: Dwight W. Burney (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: Rex Bell (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico: Ed V. Mead (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of New York: Malcolm Wilson (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: Luther E. Barnhardt (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota: Clarence P. Dahl (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of Ohio: John W. Donahey (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma: George Nigh (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania: John Morgan Davis (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: John A. Notte Jr. (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: Burnet R. Maybank Jr. (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota: John F. Lindley (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee: William D. Baird (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Texas: Ben Ramsey (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Robert S. Babcock (Republican)
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: Allie Edward Stokes Stephens (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Washington: John Cherberg (Democratic)
Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: Philleo Nash (Democratic)
Demographics
Events
January
January 2 – U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy (D-MA) announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
January 19 – The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan is signed in Washington, D.C.
January 23 – Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descend into the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste, reaching the depth of 10,916 meters.
January 25 – In Washington, D.C., the National Association of Broadcasters reacts to the payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys accepting money for playing particular records.
A section of lunch counter from the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth's where the Greensboro sit-ins began on February 1 preserved in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History
January 28 – 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.
February
February 1 – Greensboro sit-ins: In Greensboro, North Carolina, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the Southern United States, and six months later, the original four protesters are served lunch at the same counter.
February 9
Adolph Coors III, the chairman of the board of the Coors Brewing Company, is kidnapped in the United States, and his captors demand a ransom of $500,000. Coors is later found murdered, and Joseph Corbett Jr. is indicted for the crime.
Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
February 11 – The airship ZPG-3W is destroyed in a storm in Massachusetts.
February 13 – Nashville sit-ins begin.
February 18 – The 1960 Winter Olympics open in Squaw Valley, Placer County, California.
February 29 – The first Playboy Club opens in Chicago.
March
March 3 – Elvis Presley returns home from Germany to the United States, after being away on military duty for 2 years.
March 5 – Elvis Presley receives his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army.
March 6 – Vietnam War: The United States announces that 3,500 American soldiers will be sent to Vietnam.
March 17 – Northwest Airlines Flight 710 crashes near Tell City, Indiana, killing all 61 on board.
March 22 – Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser.
March 28 – Director Stanley Kramer receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[1]
April
April 4
The 32nd Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Bob Hope, is held at RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. William Wyler's Ben-Hur wins eleven awards (breaking the record set by Gigi the previous year), including Best Motion Picture and Wyler's third Best Director win (his first since 1946). The film also receives the most nominations with 12.
Elvis Presley's song "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" is recorded for the first time.
April 13 – The United States launches navigation satellite Transit I-b.
April 17 – Russwood Park, a baseball stadium in Memphis, Tennessee, burns to the ground shortly after a Chicago White Sox versus Cleveland Indians game.
May
May 1 – A Soviet missile shoots down an American Lockheed U-2 spy plane; the pilot Gary Powers is captured.
May 3 – The Fantasticks, the world's longest-running musical, opens at New York City's Sullivan Street Playhouse, where it will play for 42 years.
May 4 – A. J. Liebling promulgates Liebling's Law in The New Yorker Magazine: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
May 6 – President Dwight Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law.
May 9 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announces that it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making it the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill.
May 10 – The nuclear submarine USS Triton, under the command of Captain Edward L. Beach Jr., completes the first underwater circumnavigation of the Earth.
May 16
Theodore Maiman operates the first laser.
Nikita Khrushchev demands an apology from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower for U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union, thus ending the 1960 Paris summit.
May 20 – In Japan, police carry away Socialist members of the Diet who are protesting the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan; the Japanese House of Representatives then approves the treaty.
June
June 7 – U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary.
June 16 – Psychological horror film Psycho is released, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
June 22 – The United States Naval Research Laboratory SOLRAD 1 Galactic Radiation and Background program satellite is successfully launched by a Thor-Ablestar rocket (along with navigation satellite Transit 2A), serving as the first successful U.S. reconnaissance satellite over the Soviet Union and returning the first real-time X-ray and ultraviolet observations of the Sun.
June 23 – Little Missouri National Grassland is established.
June 29 – Bhumibol Adulyadej becomes the first Thai monarch to address the United States Congress.
July
July 4: The 50-star U.S. flag is adopted
July 1 – A Soviet MiG fighter north of Murmansk in the Barents Sea shoots down a 6-man RB-47. Two United States Air Force officers survive and are imprisoned in Moscow's dreaded Lubyanka prison.
July 4 – Following the admission of Hawaii as the 50th U.S. state the previous year, the 50-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
July 11 – Harper Lee releases her critically acclaimed novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
July 13 – U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy is nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California.
July 21 – Francis Chichester, English navigator and yachtsman, arrives in New York aboard Gypsy Moth II, having made a record solo Atlantic crossing in 40 days.
July 25 – The Woolworth's counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, the subject of a sit-in that sparked sit-ins and pickets across the southern United States in February 1960, serves its first black customer.
July 25–28 – In Chicago, the Republican National Convention nominates U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon for president and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. for vice president.
August
August 6 – Cuban Revolution: In response to a United States embargo against Cuba, Fidel Castro nationalizes American and foreign-owned property in the nation.
August 16 – Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico at 102,800 feet (31,300 m). He sets world records for: high-altitude jump; free-fall by falling 16 miles (26 km) before opening his parachute; and fastest speed by a human without motorized assistance, 982 km/h (614 mi/h). These records would stand unbeaten for over 60 years.
August 17 – The trial of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers begins in Moscow.
August 18 – United States president Dwight Eisenhower is briefed on the Congo crisis at a meeting with the U.S. National Security Council, and asks whether the U.S. "can't get rid of this guy" (Patrice Lumumba).[2]
August 19 – Cold War: In Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.
August 25 – The USS Seadragon surfaces at the North Pole, where the crew plays softball.
August 29 – Hurricane Donna kills 50 in Florida and New England.
September
September 26: The first televised U.S. presidential election debate
September 1 – Disgruntled railroad workers effectively halt operations of the Pennsylvania Railroad, marking the first shutdown in the company's history (the event lasts two days).
September 5 – 1960 Summer Olympics: Cassius Clay wins the gold medal in boxing.
September 8 – In Huntsville, Alabama, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (activated by NASA on July 1).
September 26 – The two leading U.S. presidential candidates, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, participate in the first televised presidential election debate.
September 30 – Animated sitcom The Flintstones airs its first episode on the ABC network in the United States, becoming Hanna-Barbera's first television series episode lasting half an hour.
October
October 7 – Frank McGee hosts the second presidential debate.
October 12 – John F. Kennedy speaks before the Ministerial Association of Houston, Texas, saying, in part, "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the American President, should he be Catholic, how to act; and where no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote."
October 13
The third John F. Kennedy – Richard M. Nixon presidential debate takes place.[3]
The Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the New York Yankees in the seventh game of the World Series in baseball on Bill Mazeroski's walk-off home run.
October 14 – U.S. presidential candidate John F. Kennedy first suggests the idea for the Peace Corps.
October 21 – Quincy Howe hosts the final debate of the 1960 election.
October 26 – Robert F. Kennedy calls Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., and secures her husband's release from jail on a traffic violation in Atlanta, Georgia.
October 29
In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
California Polytechnic State University football team plane crash: A Curtiss C-46 carrying the Cal Poly Mustangs football team crashes during takeoff from Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, resulting in 22 deaths.
November
USS Oklahoma City (CLG-5) steams under Golden Gate Bridge, 16 November 1960.
November 8 – 1960 United States presidential election: In a close race, Democratic U. S. Senator John F. Kennedy is elected over Republican U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon, becoming (at 43) the youngest man elected president.
November 13 – Sammy Davis Jr. marries Swedish actress May Britt.
November 14 – New Orleans school desegregation crisis: Ruby Bridges and the McDonogh Three become the first black children to attend an all-white elementary school in Louisiana.
November 15 – The Polaris missile is test-launched.
November 24 – Basketball player Wilt Chamberlain grabs 55 rebounds in a single game, the all-time record in the NBA.
December
The Texas Zephyr in Dallas, December 26
December 2 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes the use of $1 million for the relief and resettlement of Cuban refugees, who have been arriving in Florida at the rate of 1,000 a week.
December 5 – Boynton v. Virginia: The U.S. Supreme Court declares segregation in public transit to be illegal.
December 9 – The first Domino's Pizza location opens in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
December 11 – MGM's The Wizard of Oz is rerun on CBS only a year after its previous telecast, thus beginning the tradition of annual telecasts of the film in the United States.
December 12 – The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a Federal Court ruling that Louisiana's segregation laws are unconstitutional.
December 13 – Navy Commander Leroy Heath (Pilot) and Lieutenant Larry Monroe (Bombardier/Navigator) establish a world altitude record of 91,450.8 feet (27,874.2 metres) in an A3J Vigilante carrying a 1,000-kilogram payload, besting the previous record by over 4 miles.
December 16
U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter announces that the United States will commit five atomic submarines and eighty Polaris missiles to NATO by the end of 1963.
1960 New York air disaster: United Airlines DC-8 collides with a TWA Lockheed Constellation over Staten Island, New York City. All 128 passengers and crew on both planes are killed, as are 6 persons on the ground.
December 19 – Fire sweeps through the USS Constellation, the largest U.S. aircraft carrier, while it is under construction at a Brooklyn Navy Yard pier, killing 50 and injuring 150.
December 20 – Discoverer 19 is launched into polar orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, to measure radiation.