WHAT ALL HAPPENED JANUARY TO JULY 1960
Find out what all happened January to July 1960

Togo gains independence from French-administered UN trusteeship. (27. April 1960)

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of "a wind of change", an increasing national consciousness blowing through colonial Africa, signalling that his Government is likely to support decolonisation. (3. February 1960)

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. (1. May 1960)

Danny Heater sets a worldwide high school basketball scoring record when he records 135 points for Burnsville High School (West Virginia) (26. January 1960)

Black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. (13. February 1960)

Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union. (8. July 1960)

President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opens construction on the Aswan Dam by detonating ten tons of dynamite to demolish twenty tons of granite on the east bank of the Nile. (9. January 1960)

Cameroon achieves independence from France and the United Kingdom. (1. January 1960)

In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office. (27. May 1960)

The former British Protectorate of British Somaliland gains its independence as Somaliland. (26. June 1960)

USS George Washington a modified Skipjack class submarine successfully test fires the first ballistic missile while submerged. (16. July 1960)

The National Football League announced expansion teams for Dallas to start in the 1960 NFL season and Minneapolis-St. Paul for 1961 NFL season. (28. January 1960)

Two cryptographers working for the United States National Security Agency left for vacation to Mexico, and from there defected to the Soviet Union. (25. June 1960)

Avianca Flight 671 crashes and burns upon landing at Montego Bay, Jamaica, killing 37. It is the worst air disaster in Jamaica's history and the first for Avianca. (21. January 1960)

Henry Lee Lucas, once listed as America's most prolific serial killer, commits his first known murder. (11. January 1960)

Madagascar gains its independence from France. (26. June 1960)

New Zealand's first official television broadcast commences at 7.30 pm from Auckland. (1. June 1960)

Cuban photographer Alberto Korda takes his iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. (5. March 1960)

Apartheid in South Africa: Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180. (21. March 1960)

Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. (16. May 1960)