It Happened One Year - 1961 Trivia Quiz

The inauguration of the President of the United States of America takes place on January 20 (or January 21, if the 20th is a Sunday). John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th president on January 20, becoming the youngest person to be elected to that position (at the time). His presidency, which lasted until his assassination on 22 November 1963, was seen by many as heralding a new wave of energy at the start of the '60s. The phrase used in the hint was from his first inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country." On 1 March, Executive Order 10924 was to establish the Peace Corps, a program sending volunteers around the world to work in developing countries.

On 9 January Elvis Presley's 'Are You Lonesome tonight' ended its six-week run at #1 on Billboard's Top 40 chart. 25 January saw the US release of Walt Disney's animated film '101 Dalmatians'. Ham the chimpanzee became the first primate in space, completing a suborbital flight as part of Project Mercury on 31 January.

Famous births of the month included actress Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (13 Jan) and hockey player Wayne Gretzky (26 Jan). Erwin Schrodinger, a physicist associated with a famous cat analogy, dies on the 4th; author Dashiell Hammett dies on the 10th. Patrice Lumumba, controversial first prime minister of the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was executed by Belgian mercenaries hired by Mobutu, the leader of the coup d'etat a few months a few months earlier that had led to Lumumba being declared a rebel, sometime during the night of 17 January.

Hopefully the fact that figure skating is primarily a winter sport helped you place it in the right spot. Sabena flight 548 had left Idlewild Airport (later renamed JFK International Airport) in New York City seven and a half hours before it crashed while approaching Brussels Airport around 10pm local time, killing all 72 people onboard. This included all 18 members of the US figure skating team, who were on their way to compete at the World Figure Skating championships in Prague, as well as 16 others traveling with them - family, coaches and team officials. Sixteen-year-old Laurence Owen had just won the North American title, and was traveling with her mother (also a champion skater) and her older sister. The exact reason for the crash, the first fatal accident for a Boeing 707, has never been determined, but is thought to have been some mechanical failure.

On a lighter note, the Beatles performed at the Cavern for the first time on 9 February (although members of the group had performed there previously as the Quarrymen). The lineup at that time was John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe (who left the band in July 1961), and Pete Best (who was replaced as drummer by Ringo Starr in 1962). The Cavern Club at the time was a jazz venue, but experimenting with adding rock and roll at lunchtimes. The Beatles were to play around 290 gigs there (sources differ as to the exact number) before their final appearance on 3 August 1963.

'The Misfits', final film of both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, premiered in the US on 1 February.

Mohammed V, the last Sultan of Morocco (1925-57) and subsequently King of Morocco (1957-61) died on 26 February from complications of minor surgery. His nasab (statement of lineage) was Mohammed bin Yusef bin Hassan bin Muhammad bin Abd al-Rahman bin Hisham bin Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Ismail bin Sharif bin Ali bin Muhammad bin Ali bin Youssef bin Ali bin Al Hassan bin Muhammad bin Al Hassan bin Qasim bin Muhammad bin Abi Al Qasim bin Muhammad bin Al-Hassan bin Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Arafa bin Al-Hassan bin Abi Bakr bin Ali bin Al-Hasan bin Ahmed bin Ismail bin Al-Qasim bin Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya bin Abdullah al-Kamil bin Hassan al-Muthanna bin Hasan bin Ali bin Abi Talib bin Abd al-Muttalib bin Hashim. Each 'bin' indicated a link back to the previous generation, with the final Hashim being the great-grandfather of the prophet Muhammad, Abd al-Muttalib Muhammad's grandfather, Abi Talib his uncle, and Ali his cousin and son-in-law.

The fundraiser for the Pearl Harbor Memorial on 25 March was actually his third performance following a break while he was in the army (24 March 1958 - 5 March 1961), but the first two (on 25 February in Memphis) took place while he was still technically an enlisted soldier. His final performances before entering the army had also taken place in Honolulu, in November 1957.

Still in the world of entertainment, the 1961 Golden Globe awards, held on 16 March, saw 'Spartacus' named the best film of 1960. This was the only win from 7 nominations, but more success was to follow in April at the Academy Awards, where the film grabbed four awards, including Best supporting Actor for Peter Ustinov. Possibly the most significant thing about the film (aside from the its massive popular success) was the fact that Kirk Douglas (producer and star) publicly announced that Dalton Trumbo, a formerly blacklisted writer, was the screenwriter. This led to pickets outside screenings - one of which was notably crossed by President Kennedy, in a gesture signalising the effective end of the McCarthy blacklisting era.

On 2 March Pablo Picasso (aged 79) married Jacqueline Rocque (35), who had been his favorite model and lover since 1953. They remained together until his death in 1973, and he produced over 400 portraits of her.

Sir Thomas Beecham, an English conductor who founded the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras died on March 8 at the age of 81.

As the American government was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the Cuban government of Fidel Castro, which had nationalised a number of American businesses after coming to power in 1959, a number of plans to remove him were contemplated. One of these, approved by President Eisenhower, involved providing covert financial support (and military training) to a group of Cuban exiles who wanted to invade Cuba and depose Castro. The invasion, launched from training bases in Guatemala and Nicaragua, arrived at the Bay of Pigs on the night of 17 April, and were soundly defeated within three days. The failure saw Castro's position made even more secure. (This is a very abbreviated summary of a complex political and military situation, but gives you an idea why this was selected as April's most significant historical event.)

In the world of sport, the NBA finals between the Boston Celtics and the St Louis Hawks started on 2 April. The series saw the Celtics win (4-1) on 11 April, powered to victory by Bob Cousy and Bill Russell. This was their fourth title, and the third of eight consecutive titles between 1959 and 1966. It was a good time to grow up a Celtics fan.

Meanwhile, Gary Player became the first overseas golfer to win the Masters in Augusta GA, and wear the coveted green jacket of 10 April. That day also saw the Washington Senators (a new baseball team established to replace the previous team of that name who moved to become the Minnesota Twins after the end of the 1960 season) play their first game. They lost, 4-3, to the Chicago White Sox.

Back to world events, on 12 April soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. His craft, Vostok I, took 108 minutes to complete an orbit of the Earth. It launched at 6:07am (UTC) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the site of all crewed Soviet and Russian spacecraft launches. There was some concern that the flight might not be recognised, as he ejected from the craft and landed by parachute, contravening what was then the requirement for flight recognition that the pilot must land with his craft. It was (and the FIA rewrote the rules to acknowledge that a safe return of the pilot was the intent of the requirement), and Gagarin became a national hero.

The article, titled 'The Forgotten Prisoners', was published on 28 May, and detailed the circumstances in which two Portuguese students were imprisoned following the heinous act of proposing a toast to freedom. Benenson formally set up a petition to collect other examples of prisoners of conscience around the world, and in July an international group met to set up a permanent working group, named Amnesty International. On 10 December, World Human Rights Day, the first Amnesty candle was lit in the church of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, London. The candle symbolises the intention to light up the dark corners of human rights violation, and a candle wrapped in barbed wire has become the group's logo.

May was a turbulent month for the American Civil Rights movement, with CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) setting up a program of Freedom Riders, in which African-Americans (accompanied by white supporters) from the northern part of the nation traveled to southern states where segregation of many facilities was still legal, and attempted to use white-only facilities. Their primary focus was on public transport. The first group left Washington DC on 4 May, intending to reach New Orleans on the 17th, to commemorate the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education which ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional. Their bus ride was, to put it mildly, eventful, with significant violent confrontations along the way slowing their progress, and leading to a number of them being imprisoned (ruled to be the instigators of the violence of which they were victims). It was not until the fall that the Interstate Commerce Commission changed their regulations to prohibit segregation in interstate transit terminals. The overturning of other so-called Jim Crow laws proceeded slowly.

On May 1 Harper Lee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird', which dealt with the trial of a black man falsely accused of rape. On the 5th Alan Shepard became the first American in space (but not in orbit - that would be John Glenn, in February 1962).

Rudolph Nureyev made his Paris stage debut with the Kirov Ballet in a series of performances starting in May; when the troupe proceeded to London, Nureyev was instructed to return to the USSR, and chose instead to defect and request political asylum on 16 June.

The film 'A Raisin in the Sun', based on Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play with a cast that was almost entirely African-American, opened on 29 May. It featured most of the original stage cast, including Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Roy Glenn, and Louis Gossett Jr. (in his film debut).
The month of May saw the death of one Hollywood legend (Gary Cooper, who died on 13 May at the age of 60) and the birth of another (George Clooney, born 6 May).

The Antarctic treaty was signed on 1 December 1959 by representatives of the twelve countries whose scientists had been active in and around Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year (1957-58). The aim was to ensure that "Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only (Article I);
freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and cooperation toward that end... shall continue (Article II); and scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available(Article III). Although some of the signatories have made land claims, some of them overlapping, these are not internationally recognised, and further articles of the treaty ensure that there will be no conflict over the territories. The treaty, which came into force on 23 June, has since been signed by a further 46 nations.

The 1960s were to become a decade of decolonisation around the world, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. On 19 June Kuwait became an independent nation, with the ending of the British protectorate that had been in place since 1899, and Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah became Emir of Kuwait. On 25 June Iraq claimed dominion of the region, refusing to acknowledge Kuwait as an independent nation. It was not until 1963 that the two nations agreed to the border between their two countries. Tensions between the two continued, with occasional skirmishes eventually culminating in the 1990 Gulf War caused by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Kuwait celebrates 26 February, the date in 1991 when Iraq left again as their national Liberation Day.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, considered the founder of analytic psychology, died on 6 June at the age of 85. Celebrity births in June 1961 included Canadian actor Michael J Fox (9th), British musician Boy George (14th) and Indonesian politician Joko Wododo (21st).

Admittedly, this was not his most significant career achievement, but it happened in the right year, when he was the top-ranked amateur tennis player in the world, and tennis fans enjoying the traditional Wimbledon fare of strawberries and cream saw an impressive victory. In 1962 the Australian leftie would become the second player to win all four of tennis's Grand Slam tournaments, before turning professional. He was ranked as the #1 professional player from 1965 through 1969, but was ineligible to compete in the Grand Slam events. When the era of open tennis arrived in 1968, allowing professionals to compete in the major tournaments again, he won Wimbledon; in 1969 he completed a second calendar-year Grand Slam, the first male player to do so. (I recall watching the final at Forest Hills, a rain-affected match against fellow Aussie Tony Roche, after spending the year following his progress through the newspapers, since tennis was not at that time a televised event.)

In another sporting highlight, the second Major League Baseball All-Star Game ended in a 1-1 tie, a rarity for baseball games. The first game, held at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on July 11, saw the National League win 5-4 in the bottom of the tenth inning. The second game saw the American League as home team, in Boston's Fenway Park, on July 31. The American League team scored on a home run by Rocky Calavito in the first inning; the National League team responded with a bases-loaded single in the sixth inning. After nine innings the score remained 1-1, and the game was called off due to rain, leading to the first tied All-Star Game. A second was to occur in 2002, when the game ended in a 7-7 tie because both teams ran out of available pitchers.

In the realm of transport, 1961 saw the first scheduled full-length inflight movie when TWA's first-class passengers flying from New York to Los Angeles were able to view 'By Love Possessed' on July 19. You may note that the previous sentence had a string of qualifications - although this is often cited as the first in-flight movie, there had been earlier chances for airplane passengers to see a film. The very first screening was a short silent film called 'Howdy Chicago!', shown in a 1921 Aeromarine flight for 11 passengers who enjoyed a joyflight circling Chicago. In 1925 an Imperial Airways flight from London to Paris showed 'The Lost World', the first full-length inflight movie, with musical accompaniment broadcast by radio from Berlin. These and other showings before 'By Love Possessed' were more promotional gimmicks than serious efforts to entertain people during a long flight, and often involved extremely cumbersome projectors being carried onto the flight. TWA introduced a new projector designed by David Flexer, which allowed convenient in-flight film display.

Significant deaths in July included the suicide of author Ernest Hemingway on the 2nd, and the death from cancer of baseball legend Ty Cobb on the 17th.

Athlete Carl Lewis and Lady Diana Spencer both greeted the world on the first of the month.

Following World War II, Germany was divided into four sectors, controlled by the four Allies (USA, United Kingdom, France, USSR); the city of Berlin, located in the USSR's sector, was similarly divided into four sectors, which merged into a single zone (designated as West Berlin) in 1947. Increasing tensions between East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, established in 1955) and West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany, established in 1949) and concerns about the possible impact of Stalin's policies on East Germany led to significant migration from the GDR. the border between the two parts of Germany was closed by a barbed-wire fence in 1955, but Berlin remained open. On 12 August 1961 a decree to close the border and erect a wall to separate West Berlin from the other half of the city, as well as the surrounding territory of the GDR, was signed, and construction of a barbed-wire fence began at midnight. By the morning of Sunday 13 August the border was closed, and the Berlin Wall was in place. This preliminary structure was followed by a more substantial concrete wall in the following days, with a wide area inside the perimeter cleared to keep traffic (vehicular and pedestrian) well clear of the wall. The East German government described the action as being to protect their citizens from the West; they allowed crossings at nine places, each accessible to a specific (highly restricted) group of people. Over subsequent years, the wall became increasingly formidable, before it was removed (almost as quickly as it first went up) in 1989.

Willie Nelson may have written 'Crazy', but it was Patsy Cline whose recording turned it into a Country Classic. The first session took place on 21 august, but only the instrumental sections were recorded then, as she was unable to sing due to incomplete recovery from an automobile accident. Vocals were added on 15 September, and the single, released in October, made the top 10 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles (#2), Billboard Hot 100 (#9) and Billboard's Easy Listening - now known as the Adult Contemporary chart (#2).

On August 4, Barack Obama (later to be the first African-American president of the United States) was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. On the 6th, cosmonaut Gherman Titov started a space flight of 17 orbits over a full day, the longest to that date. During the course of the flight, he reported the first case of motion sickness in space. On the 15th, Japan got its first toll road, with the official opening of the Keiyo Road between Tokyo and Chiba, a distance of 37 km. On the 21st Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta was released from jail following imprisonment for political activism seeking independence; he was to become Kenya's prime minister in 1963, and its first president in 1964.

On 18 September the second Secretary-General of the United Nations was killed when his plane crashed in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) while flying to negotiate a cease-fire in the Congo. The cause of the crash remains unclear, with a Rhodesian inquiry deciding on pilot error, despite evidence suggesting the plane had been shot down - which the CIA attributed to the KGB. President Truman used the phrase "they killed him" in discussing the death. In 1998 documents came to light suggesting a plan (backed by the CIA, MI6 and a Belgian mining group) to eliminate Hammarskjold because UN interference in the Congo was becoming troublesome. A Belgian mercenary later claimed to have shot down the plane, but this contradicted earlier statements from him, and could not be substantiated. African politics were complex during the 1960s, to put it mildly.

The month of September saw a resumption of the testing of nuclear weapons by both the USA and the USSR and the start of the Eritrean War of Independence, while James Meredith was refused enrollment at the University of Mississippi.

On a more positive note, September 11 saw the founding of the international conservation group World Wildlife Fund in Morges, Switzerland. In 2025, the group stated its goals to be:
*Create a climate-resilient and zero-carbon world
*Rebuild food systems to nourish people and nature
*Conserve the world's most important forests
*Protect freshwater resources and landscapes
*Achieve healthy oceans and nature-positive seascapes
*Conserve wildlife and wild places

September marked the new television season in the USA, and the 1961 season saw a number of fondly-recalled shows debut. These included 'Dr Kildare' (starring Richard Chamberlain, who became a teen idol in his first featured role) and 'Hazel' (with Shirley Booth in the title role). 'Ben Casey', another medical drama that starred Vince Edwards as the young medico, did not debut until October, when 'The Dick van Dyke Show' and 'Mr Ed' also premiered.

Sporting highlights of September included watching Roger Maris in pursuit of Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a season (he posted #60 on the 26th), Jack Nicklaus's victory at the US Amateur Golf Championship at the age of 21 on the 15th, football legendary quarterback Fran Tarkenton playing his first NFL game on the 17th, and 42yo Argentinian Antonio Albertondo completing the first 'double crossing' of the English channel (from England to France and back, with a 4-minute rest in France) in 43 hours and 10 minutes on the 21st and 22nd.

The saga of Roger Maris's quest to surpass Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a single season had been followed throughout the baseball season, with the record tied on 26 September and broken on 1 October, in the final day of the regular season. For years the feat was entered in the record books with an asterisk, because Maris had a longer season. However, although there were more games (162 vs 154), he missed a number of them through injury, and actually scored his first 60 in three fewer at bats than had been required by the Babe (684 vs 687). Babe Ruth's achievement had been considered unsurpassable (after all, it had stood for 34 years, and his total was more than the combined home runs in the other American League teams for the season), but the record has since been extended several times: Mark McGwire hit 65 in 1998, a record that lasted five days until Sammy Sosa hit 66, a record that stood for 43 minutes before McGwire reclaimed the lead, ending the season with 70 home runs. In 2001 Barry Bonds managed 73 runs, an event that got less coverage than Maris's race against Mantle and McGwire's against Sosa. All three of these players' records have their own asterisks in many minds, due to the widespread use of steroids.

That was not the only record of Babe Ruth's that was broken in October of 1961. Although now remembered primarily as a hitter, Ruth had been a more-than competent pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, and his record of pitching 29-2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in the World Series was broken by Whitey Ford, making him the MVP for the series, which the Yankees won 4-1 over the Cincinnati Reds.

On 5 October the film 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' had its premiere, memorable both for Audrey Hepburn's performance as Holly Golightly and for Henry Mancini's music - 'Moon River' was to win the Academy Award for Best Song. Best Picture, however, was awarded to 'West Side Story', which opened on the 17th. On the 18th, Henri Matisse's picture 'Le Bateau' was famously placed on display hanging upside down at MOMA, remaining in that position for 47 days. Also in New York City, the musical 'How to succeed in Business Without Really Trying', starring Robert Morse and Rudy Vallée, began a run of 1415 performances that would garner 9 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize on the 14th of the month. 'Bye Bye Birdie', an award-winning musical playing on the hysteria that had surrounded Elvis's army enlistment starring dick van Dyke, had closed on the 7th.

Although 'Bob Dylan' was not released until March of 1962, the recording took place at NYC's Columbia Studios in three sessions between the 20th and 22nd of November. It contained mostly traditional folk songs or covers of earlier artists' material, but 'Song to Woody', a tribute to Woody Guthrie, was one of the two original Dylan pieces. Earlier that month, on the 2nd, Dylan had performed what has been called his Carnegie Hall debut, which is somewhat accurate. He performed in a small room in the complex called Carnegie Chapter Hall, a room holding 200 people. Tickets for this first time he actually appeared anywhere in concert (rather than just as one of the performers on a program at places like Gerde's Folk City) were $2; it is recorded that 53 were sold. The program for the event included a biography that showed Dylan's propensity to reinvent himself, with wildly inaccurate statements about his earlier life (all 20 1/2 years of it). He performed 22 songs, most of which have surfaced into more or less official recordings made by audience members with portable tape recorders. As you may imagine, the quality is not the best!

Over in the United Kingdom, a young man running a music shop in Liverpool was intrigued by the stream of requests he was getting for the music of a local band. Brian Epstein went to see the Beatles perform one of their regular lunch sets at the Cavern Club on 9 November, and decided to try his hand at managing a band. They signed a contract in January 1962, and things took off.

November 9 was also the day when the Professional Golfers Association officially removed the Caucasians only rule for their competition that had been in effect since the PGA was established in 1934. This followed nearly 20 years of attempts to compete by players including Bill Spiller and Ted Rhodes, both winners of tournaments that allowed African-American competitors and which should have qualified them for a spot in a PGA event. By this time, these two wer ewell past their best playing years. Bill Spiller had one year on the tour, with a best result of 14th place in the Labatt Open. The first black player to win a PGA event was Pete Brown, who won the Waco Turner Open in 1964. Tiger Woods became the first non-Caucasian winner of a major event when he won the Masters in 1997, and began an era of dominance in the sport.

The Green Bay Packers were established in 1919, named after the company that employed their first owner, and provided funds for its establishment. They joined the American Professional Football League (later called the National Football League, NFL) in 1921, and won their first ever title in 1929. they had periods of success over the years, but their heyday came with the arrival of Vince Lombardi as coach in 1959, following a decade of inglorious results. They won the NFL title in 1961, and again in 1962 and 1965. In 1966 they won the NFL title before proceeding to win the first Super Bowl (contested between the NFL and the AFL champions) in January 1967. They won again the following year, once again defeating the Dallas cowboys. Following Vince Lombardi's death from cancer in 1970, the trophy awarded to the Super Bowl champions was renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy in recognition of his accomplishments.

This event was chosen to represent December primarily because it seemed easier to place in the correct order than some of the more significant world events of the month. On 2 December Fidel Castro declared himself a Marxist, and stated his plans to move Cuba to a Communist economy. On 9 December Tanganyika declared independence, continuing the decolonization of Africa that was to characterize the decade. (Tanganyika was short-lived as a state, joining with the offshore archipelago of Zanzibar in 1964 to form Tanzania.) On the 12th Adolf Eichmann was found guilty of war crimes by a tribunal in Jerusalem and on the 15th he was sentenced to death; following appeals, the hanging took place a few minutes after midnight in the morning of 1 June 1962.

And in the world of pop culture, Elvis's album 'Blue Hawaii' (the soundtrack of the movie with the same title in which he starred) hit #1 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, where it stayed for 20 weeks, on 11 December. The single 'Can't Help Falling in Love' was to reach the top of Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, but only managed second spot on the Hot 100.