1961

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• On 17 January in the Congo (later Zaïre, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), former prime minister Patrice Lumumba is murdered.

• On 17 April, in the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, supported by the United States, 1,500 exiled Cubans fail to inspire a sympathetic uprising to topple Fidel Castro. The invaders are either killed or captured.

• On 21 April in Algeria, a revolt by rebels in the French army – who are also members of the OAS (Secret Army Organisation) – causes President de Gaulle to declare a state of emergency in France. The coup collapses on 26 April; eight of the rebel leaders are sentenced to death on 11 July.

• On 30 May, President Rafael Trujillo Molina, dictator of the Dominican Republic since 1930, is assassinated.

• On 31 May, South Africa becomes a republic, outside the Commonwealth.

• On 13 August, the East German government seals off the border between East and West Berlin, closing the Brandenburg Gate. During the night of 17/18 August, East German workers build the Berlin Wall to stop people from travelling to the West.

• In September, 89-year-old British philosopher Bertrand Russell – a leader of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) – is imprisoned for taking part in a sit-down demonstration in Whitehall, London.

• On 9 December, the former German, then British colony of Tanganyika becomes independent under Prime Minister Julius Nyerere. On 26 April 1964, Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania, with Nyerere as president.

• On 12 April, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space and the first to orbit the Earth. On 5 May, American astronaut Alan Shepard makes a 15-minute sub-orbital flight.

• French academic Michel Foucault publishes Histoire de la folie (published in English as Madness and Civilisation), while militant Franz Fanon publishes The Wretched of the Earth. Novels include Joseph Heller's influential Catch-22.

• The American film The Misfits, written by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston, becomes the last film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe.

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