| 1960-06-26
The former British Protectorate of British Somaliland gains its independence as Somaliland .
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| 1960-03-22
Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser.
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| 1960-01-01
The Republic of Cameroon achieves independence from France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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| 1960-08-19
Sputnik program: Sputnik 5 – the Soviet Union launches the satellite with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants.
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| 1960-08-12
Echo I, the first communications satellite, launched.
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| 1960-08-20
Senegal breaks from the Mali federation, declaring its independence.
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| 1960-09-26
Fidel Castro announces Cuba's support for the U.S.S.R.
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| 1960-12-31
The farthing coin ceases to be legal tender in the United Kingdom.
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| 1960-08-08
South Kasai secedes from the Congo.
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| 1960-11-11
A military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam is crushed.
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| 1960-08-24
A temperature of −88°C (−127°F) is measured in Vostok, Antarctica — a world-record low.
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| 1960-11-02
Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case
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| 1960-05-01
Cold War: U-2 incident – Francis Gary Powers, in a Lockheed U-2 spyplane, is shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking a diplomatic crisis.
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| 1960-10-24
Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash
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| 1960-01-07
The Polaris missile is test launched.
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| 1960-11-09
Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he quit to join the newly-elected John F. Kennedy administration.
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| 1960-02-13
Nuclear weapons testing: France tests its first atomic bomb.
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| 1960-05-07
Cold War: U-2 Crisis of 1960 – Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.
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| 1960-08-16
Joseph Kittinger parachutes from a balloon over New Mexico at 102,800 feet (31,330 m), setting three records that still stand today: High-altitude jump, free-fall, and highest speed by a human without an aircraft.
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| 1960-02-01
Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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| 1960-08-01
Communist Party of Independence and Work is banned in Senegal.
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| 1960-02-09
Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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| 1960-09-05
The poet Léopold Sédar Senghor is elected as the first President of Senegal.
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| 1960-08-13
The Central African Republic declares independence from France.
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| 1960-12-20
National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam is formed.
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| 1960-12-16
1960 New York air disaster: While approaching New York's Idlewild Airport, a United Airlines Douglas DC-8 collides with a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation in a blinding snowstorm over Staten Island, killing 134.
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| 1960-01-25
The National Association of Broadcasters reacts to the Payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accept money for playing particular records.
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| 1960-08-05
Burkina Faso, then known as Upper Volta, becomes independent from France.
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| 1960-04-21
Brasília, Brazil's capital, is officially inaugurated. At 9:30 am the Three Powers of the Republic are simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro.
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| 1960-02-13
Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.
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| 1960-05-13
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. Thirty-one students are arrested, and the Free Speech Movement is born.
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| 1960-10-30
Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
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| 1960-08-01
Islamabad declared as the federal capital of the Government of Pakistan.
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| 1960-07-08
Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union.
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| 1960-09-28
Mali and Senegal join the United Nations.
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| 1960-07-20
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first elected female head of government.
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| 1960-05-06
More than 20 million viewers watch the first televised royal wedding when Princess Margaret marries Anthony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey.
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| 1960-11-25
The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic are assassinated.
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| 1960-07-11
Independence of Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger.
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| 1960-05-16
Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
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| 1960-10-01
Nigeria gains independence from the United Kingdom.
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| 1960-12-15
Richard Paul Pavlick is arrested for attempting to blow up and assassinate the U.S. President-Elect, John F. Kennedy only four days earlier.
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| 1960-06-30
Congo gains independence from Belgium.
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| 1960-01-23
The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 m (35,798 feet) in the Pacific Ocean.
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| 1960-04-24
A severe earthquake shakes Lar in Fars province, Iran and kills more than 200 people.
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| 1960-09-29
Nikita Khrushchev, leader of Soviet Union, disrupts a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with a number of angry outbursts.
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| 1960-09-22
The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.
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| 1960-11-28
Mauritania becomes independent of France.
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| 1960-06-26
Madagascar gains its independence from France.
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| 1960-05-03
The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opens in New York City's Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
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| 1960-07-21
Sirimavo Bandaranaike is elected Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and becomes the world's first woman prime minister.
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| 1960-09-02
The first election of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration, in history of Tibet. The Tibetan community observes this date as the Democracy Day.
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| 1960-10-12
Inejiro Asanuma, Chair of the Japanese Socialist Party, is assassinated in Japan by Otoya Yamaguchi, a 17-year-old. The cameras were rolling at the time, so the moment was caught on film.
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| 1960-05-15
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4.
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| 1960-08-03
Niger gains independence from France.
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| 1960-01-20
Hendrik Verwoerd announces a plebiscite on whether South Africa should become a Republic.
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| 1960-10-12
Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe
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| 1960-10-07
Nigeria joins the United Nations.
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| 1960-12-11
French forces crack down in a violent clash with protesters in French Algeria during a visit by French president Charles de Gaulle.
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| 1960-07-04
Due to the post-Independence Day admission of Hawaii as the 50th U.S. state on August 21, 1959, the 50-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania almost ten and a half months later (see Flag Act).
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| 1960-05-03
The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
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| 1960-02-03
British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of the "a wind of change" of increasing national consciousness blowing through colonial Africa, signalling that his Government was likely to support decolonisation.
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| 1960-12-14
Ian Meckiff of Australia is run out by the West Indies, causing the first Tied Test in the history of cricket.
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| 1960-03-17
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.
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| 1960-04-27
Togo gains independence from French-administered UN trusteeship.
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| 1960-01-21
Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board.
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| 1960-05-10
The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes Operation Sandblast, the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth.
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| 1960-05-22
An earthquake measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, now known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, hits southern Chile. It is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.
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| 1960-07-11
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published.
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| 1960-05-11
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann who is living under the alias of Ricardo Klement.
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| 1960-05-27
In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.
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| 1960-02-29
Family Circus makes its debut.
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| 1960-07-20
The head of the Physics Department at the Israel Institute of Technology, Kurt Sitte, is arrested for espionage.
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| 1960-05-09
The FDA announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making Enovid the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill.
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| 1960-09-14
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.
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| 1960-09-26
In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
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| 1960-10-04
Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashes after a bird strike on takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport, killing 62 of 72 on board.
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| 1960-09-18
Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations.
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| 1960-09-08
In Huntsville, Alabama, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA had already activated the facility on July 1).
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| 1960-08-19
Cold War: in Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.
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| 1960-05-01
Formation of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
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| 1960-08-06
Cuban Revolution: in response to a United States embargo, Cuba nationalizes American and foreign-owned property in the nation.
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| 1960-07-14
Jane Goodall arrives at the Gombe Stream Reserve in present-day Tanzania to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild.
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| 1960-06-17
Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres of land undervalued (4 cents/acre) in the 1863 treaty.
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| 1960-04-04
Senegal independence day.
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| 1960-03-21
Apartheid: Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.
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| 1960-03-04
French freighter 'La Coubre' explodes in Havana, Cuba killing 100.
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| 1960-07-01
Ghana becomes a Republic and Kwame Nkrumah becomes its first President as Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom ceases to be its Head of state.
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| 1960-05-16
Nikita Khrushchev demands an apology from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower for U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union thus ending a Big Four summit in Paris.
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| 1960-03-05
Alister Hardy publicly announces his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due to a coastal phase, giving rise to the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis.
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| 1960-11-01
While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps.
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| 1960-04-19
Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against their president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
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| 1960-08-17
Decolonization: Gabon gains independence from France.
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| 1960-06-20
Independence of Mali and Senegal.
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| 1960-04-21
Founding of the Orthodox Bahá'í Faith in Washington, D.C.
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| 1960-07-01
Independence of Somalia.
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| 1960-12-13
While Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia visits Brazil, his Imperial Bodyguard seizes the capital and proclaim him deposed and his son, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, Emperor.
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| 1960-08-07
Côte d'Ivoire becomes independent.
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| 1960-08-01
Dahomey (later renamed Benin) declares independence from France.
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| 1960-02-29
An earthquake in Morocco kills over 3,000 people and nearly destroys Agadir in the southern part of the country.
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| 1960-12-09
The first episode of Britain's longest running television soap opera Coronation Street is broadcast.
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| 1960-05-24
Following the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the largest ever recorded earthquake, Cordón Caulle begins to erupt.
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| 1960-07-16
USS George Washington a modified Skipjack class submarine successfully test fires the first ballistic missile while submerged.
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| 1960-07-12
Orlyonok, the main Young Pioneer camp of the Russian SFSR, is founded.
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| 1960-08-15
Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) becomes independent from France.
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| 1960-07-20
Belgium defends its intervention in the Congo to the United Nations Security Council while the government of the Congo appeals to the Soviet Union to send troops to push back the Belgians. The governments of the United States and France and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warn the Soviets to stay out of the dispute.
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| 1960-10-22
Independence of Mali from France.
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| 1960-06-01
New Zealand's first official television broadcast commences at 7.30pm from Auckland.
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| 1960-10-29
In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
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| 1960-01-30
The African National Party is founded in Chad, through the merger of traditionalist parties.
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| 1960-12-01
Paul McCartney and Pete Best are arrested then deported from Hamburg, Germany, after accusations of attempted arson.
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| 1960-08-16
Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
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| 1960-12-17
Troops loyal to Haile Selassie I 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.
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| 1960-07-20
The Polaris missile is successfully launched from a submarine, the USS George Washington, for the first time.
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| 1960-02-08
Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issues an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor".
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| 1960-08-11
Chad declares independence.
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