1st Cameroon gains independence

10th Nasser lays the foundation stone of the Aswan High Dam (right)

12th Author Nevil Shute dies aged 60

12th The only feature film made in 'Smell-O-Vision', Scent of Mystery, opens in Chicago

20th The government announces curbs on the sale of 'pep-pills'

23rd Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh break a depth record in the bathyscaphe USS Trieste,         descending 35,820 feet to the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean

31st Gene Vincent walks out of a Bradford concert after audience heckling.

Joe Meek launches the 'Triumph' record label

9th The Hollywood 'Walk Of Fame' (right) is dedicated

17th Elvis Presley achieves his first 'Gold' album

18th The 1960 Winter Olympics open in Squaw Valley, Idaho U.S.A.

19th Prince Andrew is born, the first to a reigning British monarch since 1857

21st Fidel Castro nationalises all American owned businesses in Cuba

22nd The government announces plans to build a supersonic airliner

26th Princess Margaret's engagement to Anthony Armstrong-Jones is announced

2nd Elvis Presley visits the U.K. for the only time while his plane is refuelled in Scotland

5th Elvis gets his discharge papers from the U.S. Army

10th Record Retailer / Music Week publishes the first U.K. L.P. chart listing

10th Record Retailer / Music Week publishes the first U.K. top 50 singles chart

14th The government announces plans for a Thames Barrier to prevent floods

17th A new style £1 note goes into circulation

18th Last naming of a British steam locomotive

21st The Sharpeville massacre in Witwatersrand, South Africa results in over 200 deaths and injuries

24th Chuck Berry is jailed and fined in the U.S.A.

The Everly Brothers visit Britain for the first time

1st Tiros 1 the first meteorological satellite is launched, built by RCA (right)

9th British Musicians' Union bans performances by members in South Africa

13th Stirling Moss receives a 1 year ban for dangerous driving

13th British Government announces plans to scrap the 'Blue Streak' project

17th Eddie Cochran is killed in car crash near Chippenham. Gene Vincent and Sharon Sheeley are also hurt

21st Pirate radio ship 'Veronica' begins broadcasting

21st Brasilia succeeds Rio de Janeiro as capital of Brazil

23rd Jack Good's Wham! debuts on ABC

American film star Tommy Sands starts his national service in the U.S.A.F.

1st Gary Powers is shot down in a U2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk

6th 29 year old Princess Margaret marries Anthony Armstrong-Jones

5th The Beetals (Beatles) fail an audition to become Billy Fury's backing band

16th Krushchev kills Paris Summit Conference because of U-2

17th The Queen Mother opens the Kariba Dam on the Zambesi river

18th Real Madrid win football's European Cup for the 5th time in a row

22nd Midas 2, the first infra red 'spy' satellite, is launched

23rd Adolf Eichmann is found living in Argentina and captured by the Israelis

30th Nobel Prize winning author Boris Pasternak dies aged 70

B.B.C.s Desert Island Discs celebrates its 500th edition

4th ABC cancels Wham! Jack Good: "ABC thinks there is no longer a public for teenage rock-'n'-roll       type programmes"

7th The first N.H.S. hearing aids are issued

9th Armstrong-Siddeley cars announces that it is to cease production

19th Jaguar takes over the Daimler Motor Company

19th Two British drivers, Chris Bristow and Alan Stacey are killed in the Belgian Grand Prix.
       Other Grand Prix standard drivers killed in 1960 were Harry Blanchard and Harry Schell

23rd The Royalty theatre opens in London

23rd BOAC signs a contract for the Vickers VC-10

29th The B.B.C. Television Centre in West London opens

The laser is first demonstrated by Theodore Maiman (right) at Hughes Research Laboratories

1st A Soviet MiG fighter shoots down a six-man RB-47 plane north of Murmansk in the Barents Sea

6th Politician Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan dies aged 62

12th Kruschev vows to back Cuba in expulsion of U.S. from its Guantanamo naval base

18th Donald Campbell makes the first test run in the new £1 million Bluebird car

20th Ceylon (Sri Lanka) elects Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first female head of government.

21st Francis Chichester sets a new cross-Atlantic sailing record of 40 days in Gypsy Moth II

27th Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) founded

Skynet, in a joint experiment with NASA, launched the Echo satellite

7th Cuba begins confiscation of $770 million of U.S. property

10th Discoverer 13 launched, the first successful test (after 12 failures) of the CORONA system that
returned film to Earth in a canister

16th Cyprus gains independence. Archbishop Makarios is elected the first President

18th The CORONA satellite launched, orbiting Earth for a day taking high-res images of the Soviet Union
and returning them to Earth on the 19th.
More images were taken in this one day than during the entire 'U2' program.

22nd Belka and Strelka, launched on the 19th, are the first dogs to return alive from a space shot

17th The Beatles begin performing at the Indra Club, Hamburg

18th 'The Pill' goes on sale in the U.S.A. after the American FDA approves the use of Enovid-10.
        The U.K. has to wait another 12 months

19th Penguin books are prosecuted for obscenity over plans to publish 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'

19th Gary Powers sentenced to prison for 10 years - freed in February 1962 in exchange for Soviet spy.

23rd Oscar Hammerstein II dies

24th High altitude and continous darkness in winter combine to make interior Antarctica the coldest place on Earth. The lowest tempeature ever recorded is -126.9 F o(-88.3 C) at 11,500 feet above sea level, at the Russian station of Vostok

25th The 1960 Olympic Games open in Rome

31st East Germany closes its border with West Berlin

8th President Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama (right)

12th The M.O.T. test for vehicles over 10 years old is introduced

14th OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) is founded

19th Traffic wardens and parking tickets are seen for the first time in London. 344 tickets are issued

24th The USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched

26th The first televised presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon is broadcast

27th The first 'travelator' opens at Bank underground station

30th Nigeria gains independence

The Hawker-Siddeley VTOL P1127 'Harrier' makes its first flight

1st Nigeria gains independence - Nnamdi Azikiwe is the first native Governor General

1st Melody Maker announces the arrival of Sony transistor radios

2nd Anthony Wedgwood-Benn resigns from Labour's National Executive Committee

3rd Brigitte Bardot leaves hospital following a suicide attempt

5th White South Africans vote to make the country a republic.

9th Southern England is hit by the worst flooding since 1953

21st Britain's first nuclear submarine H.M.S. Dreadnought is launched

24th An R-16 ICBM explodes on the launch pad at Baikonur, USSR. 92 are killed, including Marshal        Mitrofan Nedelin

25th The Severn Railway Bridge at Sharpness is destroyed - two spans drop onto two tanker
        barges which are swept into it whilst bound for Sharpness in thick fog

28th Britain's first urban motorway, the M62, opens in Manchester

29th Cassius Clay wins his first professional fight, against Tunney Hunsaker, in Louisville, Kentucky

OPEC is set up to control world oil prices

1st Prime Minister Macmillan announces that the US will use the UK for Polaris bases

2nd The courts decide that 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' can be published

5th Comedian Mack Sennett dies

5th Actor Ward Bond of 'Wagon Train' dies

5th 33 year old singer Johnny Horton is killed in a car crash

8/9th John F.Kennedy is elected 35th President of the United States

10th The Royal Shakespeare Company is formed under director Peter Hall

10th Penguin's initial print run of 200,000 of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' sells out on the first day

13th Sammy Davis Jr marries Mai Britt despite death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. 
Interracial marriage is still illegal in 31 US states out of 50

15th The Polaris missile is test launched (right)

16th Actor Clark Gable dies aged 59

28th Mauritania becomes independent of France

31st The official end of National Service is declared as the last 2,049 men are inducted

31st Chas Newby plays bass with the Beatles for the last time, having decided to return to school

1st The Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Francis Fisher, talked with Pope John XXIII in the Vatican.
      It was the first time in more than 500 years that the head of the Anglican church had visited the Pope.

2nd Vivien Leigh (right) and Laurence Olivier become divorced

4th The admission of Mauritania to the United Nations was vetoed by the USSR

5th Leyland Motors announces that it is to take over Standard-Triumph International

9th The first episode of Coronation Street is shown on television

14th The Australia vs West Indies test match ends in the first ever 'tied' game

16th U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter announced that the USA would commit five atomic         submarines and 80 Polaris missiles to NATO by the end of 1963

19th A fire aboard USS Constellation, the U.S.'s largest aircraft carrier, while it is under construction in
       a Brooklyn Navy Yard , kills 50 and injures a further 150

20th Richard Baer, the last Kommandant of Auswitz, is arrested in West Germany

20th Discoverer XIX is launched into polar orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, to measure radiation

27th France detonates its third nuclear test blast at its atomic proving grounds at Reggane in Algeria.

January 3 Joan Chen, actress
January 4 Michael Stipe, singer for R.E.M.
January 6 Nigella Lawson, writer
January 11 Stanley Tucci, actor
January 12 Oliver Platt, actor
January 13 Kevin Anderson, actor
January 22 Michael Hutchence, musician with INXS
January 28 Robert von Dassanowsky, writer, producer
January 29 Greg Louganis, Olympic diving gold medalist
February 7 James Spader, actor
February 11 Richard Mastracchio, astronaut
February 13 Pierluigi Collina, football referee
February 14 Jim Kelly, American football quarterback
February 19 Prince Andrew, second son of Queen Elizabeth II
March 4 Mykelti Williamson, actor
March 7 Ivan Lendl, tennis player
March 13 Adam Clayton, bassist with U2
March 18 Richard Biggs, actor
March 21 Ayrton Senna, F1 racing driver
March 24 Nena Kerner, German singer
March 26 Marcus Allen, American football star
March 29 Marina Sirtis, Star Trek actress
April 2 Linford Christie, British track athlete
April 3 Elizabeth Gracen, actress, model
April 4 Jane Eaglin, English soprano
April 4 Hugo Weaving, actor
April 14 Brad Garrett, actor
April 26 Roger Taylor, musician with Duran Duran
May 10 Bono, singer with U2
May 18 Jari Kurri, Hockey Hall of Fame
May 18 Yannick Noah, tennis player
May 20 John Billingsley, actor
May 21 Jeffrey Dahmer, serial killer
June 6 Gary Graham, actor
June 6 Steve Vai, musician
June 8 Mick Hucknall singer/songwriter with Simply Red
June 20 John Taylor, musician with Duran Duran
June 28 John Elway, American Football Hall of Fame
August 7 David Duchovny, X-Files actor
August 10 Antonio Banderas, actor
August 19 Morten Andersen, American football player
August 24 Cal Ripken, Jr., Baseball star
August 26 Branford Marsalis, jazz musician
September 9 Hugh Grant, actor
September 10 Colin Firth, actor
September 17 Damon Hill, F1 racing driver
October 5 Daniel Baldwin, actor
October 7 Kyosuke Himuro, Japanese rock singer
October 30 Diego Maradona, football player
November 3 Karch Kiraly, volleyball player
November 10 Neil Gaiman, author
November 25 John F. Kennedy, Jr., lawyer and journalist
December 4 Glynis Nunn, Australian heptathlete
December 10 Kenneth Branagh, actor, film director
December 27 Maryam d'Abo, actress