January 3, 1961. President Dwight Eisenhower announces the severing of diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba.

January 17, 1961. Imprisoned former prime minister Patrice Lumumba of Republic of Congo is executed by firing squad. The CIA, the Belgian authorities in Congo, and the president of Congo, President Tshombe, may all have been involved in Lumumba’s death. “We are not Communists, Catholics, Socialists. We are African nationalists.” ~Patrice Lumumba.

January 31, 1961. The United States sends a monkey named Ham 150 miles into space in a Mercury capsule. Ham safely splashes down and receives an apple as a reward for his performance as the first monkey astronaut.

April 12, 1961. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbits the earth and becomes the first human in space.

April 19, 1961. The United States sponsors and funds 1500 Cuban exiles in an invasion of Cuba at The Bay of Pigs. The invasion fails, and President Kennedy and Soviet premier Krushchev warn one another not to interfere in the internal affairs of Cuba.

June 16, 1961. The United Kingdom ends its protectorate over the tiny sheikdom of Kuwait, and Iraq claims the territory as part of Iraq. Kuwait successfully resists Iraq and remains independent.

August 13-31, 1961. East German authorities build a huge wall of concrete blocks and electric fences and barbed wire separating East and West Berlin. Since the post World War II partition of Germany, more than two million Germans have fled East Germany into the West.

September 28, 1961. A military coup in Damascus, Syria effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria.

October 1, 1961. The formerly British Southern Cameroons unites with French Cameroun to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon.

November 18, 1961. U.S. President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.

December 9, 1961. Tanganyika gains independence and declares itself a republic, with Julius Nyerere as its first President.