WHAT ALL HAPPENED FEBRUARY TO DECEMBER 1960
Find out what all happened February to December 1960

Mauritania becomes independent of France. (28. November 1960)

Hundreds of University of California, Berkeley students congregate for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Thirty-one students are arrested, and the Free Speech Movement is born. (13. May 1960)

The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom. (9. December 1960)

John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the twentieth century to become the 35th president of the United States. (8. November 1960)

An airplane carrying the Cal Poly football team crashes on takeoff in Toledo, Ohio. (29. October 1960)

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

The farthing coin ceases to be legal tender in the United Kingdom. (31. December 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)

Senegal breaks from the Mali Federation, declaring its independence. (20. August 1960)

Formation of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Also known as "Maharashtra Day" (1. May 1960)

Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe (12. October 1960)

South Kasai secedes from the Congo. (8. August 1960)

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

France legislates for the independence of Dahomey (later Benin), Upper Volta (later Burkina) and Niger. (11. July 1960)

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann who is living under the alias of Ricardo Klement. (11. May 1960)

More than 20 million viewers watch the first televised royal wedding when Princess Margaret marries Anthony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey. (6. May 1960)

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

USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched. (24. September 1960)

The U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe. (16. February 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)