1960 First descent to deepest point on Earth
- January 22: First crewed descent to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.
- March 21: The Sharpeville Massacre, in which the police opened fire against a protesting crowd at a police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in Transvaal, resulting in 69 deaths and 180 injuries.
- April 21: Construction of Brasília, Brazil’s new capital, finished.
- May 1: 1960 U-2 incident sparks deterioration in relations between superpowers.
- May 9: The birth control pill becomes commercially available.
- May 16: Construction of the first laser.
- May 22: An earthquake in Valdivia, Chile of magnitude 9.4 to 9.6, the highest ever recorded, causes 1,000 to 6,000 deaths.
- Sirimavo Bandaranaike becomes Prime Minister of Ceylon and the first female Prime Minister in the world.
- September 18 – 25: The first edition of the Summer Paralympic Games is hosted in Rome.
- October 12: Inejiro Asanuma, a Japanese socialist politician, is assassinated during a broadcast on TV.
- November 8: The 1960 United States presidential election marks the first televised debates between presidential candidates.
- European Free Trade Association formed.
- Year of Africa: Independence of 17 African nations.
- Khrushchev withdraws Soviet cooperation with China, initiating the Sino-Soviet split.
- Mau Mau Uprising ends.
- The Beatles form in Liverpool.
- January 17: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba begins the Congo Crisis.
- January 20: John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- April 12: Yuri Gagarin, flying the Vostok 1 spacecraft as part of the Vostok program, becomes the first human in space.
- April 17 – 20: Bay of Pigs Invasion by Cuban exiles ends in failure.
- May 25: In an address to Congress, John F. Kennedy declares the United States’ objective of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” by the end of the decade. This would be in fact achieved by the Apollo Project, despite several challenges and much doubt.
- August 13: Construction of the Berlin Wall.
- September 18: UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash.
- The Great Leap Forward ends in China after the deaths of roughly 20–45 million people.
- The Portuguese Colonial War begins with the Angolan War of Independence.
- March 19: The Algerian War ends with the independence of Algeria.
- July 2: Walmart founded in Rogers, Arkansas, by Sam Walton.
- September 26: A coup ends the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, establishing the Yemen Arab Republic and starting the North Yemen Civil War.
- October 11: The Second Vatican Council is opened by Pope John XXIII.
- October 16 – 29: The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly causes nuclear war.
- October–November: The Sino-Indian War, caused by a border dispute in Aksai Chin, ends with a Chinese victory.
- January 1: Premiere of the Astro Boy anime, the first to be broadcast overseas.
- January 20: Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation begins.
- March–April: Birmingham campaign, a key event in the 1954-1968 Civil rights movement
- March 22: The Beatles‘ first record, “Please Please Me“, and the beginnings of the British Invasion.
- May 8: Beginning of the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
- May 27: Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
- June 21: Paul VI becomes Pope.
- July 26: Launch of the first geostationary satellite, Syncom 2.
- August 28: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
- November 2: 1963 South Vietnamese coup: Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnamese President.
- November 22: Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumes office as President of the United States.
- December 10 – 12: Independence of Kenya and Zanzibar and creation of Malaysia.
- January 12: Zanzibar Revolution overthrows Afro Shiraz ruling class; Zanzibar merges with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.
- March 31 – April 1: A coup d’état establishes a military dictatorship in Brazil.
- March 27: The Great Alaska Earthquake has a magnitude of 9.2 and lasted almost three minutes resulting in the death of approximately 131 people.
- May 27: Colombian armed conflict begins.
- July 2: Civil Rights Act abolishes segregation in the USA.
- July 4: Rhodesian Bush War begins.
- July 6: Independence of Malawi.
- August 2: The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
- September 21: Independence of Malta.
- October 14: Leonid Brezhnev ousts Khrushchev and assumes power in the Soviet Union.
- October 16: China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
- November 28: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.
- January 24: Death of Winston Churchill.
- February 21: Assassination of Malcolm X.
- March 17: The Voting Rights Act of 1965, inspired by the Selma to Montgomery marches.
- April 24: Dominican Civil War: Forces loyal to former president Juan Bosch overthrow current leader Donald Reid Cabral.
- April 26: Establishment of Rede Globo, now the largest TV network in Brazil and Latin America and the second-largest in the world after ABC.
- May 18: Israeli spy Eli Cohen is hanged in Damascus.
- August 9: Singapore gains independence.
- August 30: Bob Dylan releases Highway 61 Revisited.
- August – September: Second Indo-Pakistani War.
- September 30: 30 September Movement in the Indonesia.
- November 24 – 25: Congo Crisis ends; Joseph Mobutu becomes dictator of the Congo.
- December 8: Second Vatican Council is closed by Pope Paul VI.
- December 30: Ferdinand Marcos becomes President of the Philippines.
- Beginning of the anti-Communist purge in Indonesia, which killed up to 500,000 people.
- May 16:
- The Beach Boys release Pet Sounds.
- China’s Cultural Revolution begins.
- August 11: The Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation ends.
- September 30: Independence of Botswana.
- October 4: Independence of Lesotho.
- October 21: The Aberfan disaster, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip (pile of waste coal mining material) in Aberfan, Wales results in 144 deaths.
- November 30: Independence of Barbados.
- December 15: Death of Walt Disney.
- Joseph Weizenbaum, a German computer scientist at MIT, completes ELIZA, the first chatbot.
- April 21: Greek military coup establishes a military dictatorship led by Georgios Papadopoulos. The dictatorship ends in 1974.
- June 5 – 10: The Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and Arab states that resulted in Israel occupying the Gaza Strip, the Sinal Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
- July 6: Attempted secession of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria triggers the Nigerian Civil War.
- July 17: Death of John Coltrane, American jazz saxophonist, clarinettist and composer.
- August 8: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) founded.
- May 26: The Beatles release their landmark album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
- October 21: The March on the Pentagon becomes a major event in public opposition to the Vietnam War
- December 17: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Victoria.
- First high-speed rail introduced in Tokyo.
- Mid-year: Summer of Love, in which as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco’s neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
- January – March: Protests erupt in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
- January – August: Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia crushed by the Eastern Bloc military intervention.
- January – September: The Tet Offensive occurs in South Vietnam.
- March 16: My Lai massacre, a mass murder and rape of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in the Vietnam War.
- March 21: Battle of Karameh in Jordan (part of the War of Attrition between Israel and Arab states).
- April 4: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
- June 5: Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
- August: 1968 Democratic National Convention protests (“The whole world is watching“)
- September 6: Swaziland gains independence from Great Britain
- September – Zond 5 travels to the Moon with the first lifeforms to reach Earth’s satellite
- December – Apollo 8 orbits the Moon with three NASA astronauts, becoming the first human spaceflight mission to enter the gravitational influence of another celestial body.
- Another new strain of a flu in Hong Kong spreads again.
- The Troubles begin in Northern Ireland.
- The Years of Lead, a period of social turmoil, political violence, and upheaval in Italy, begin.
- Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon begins.
- January 13: Samsung Electronics founded in Suwon, South Korea.
- January 20: Richard Nixon is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- March 2: Concorde 001 flies from the first time, from Toulouse, piloted by André Turcat.
- March – September: Sino-Soviet border conflict.
- April 28: Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France after a referendum on political reform is voted down.
- June 28 – July 3: The Stonewall riots in New York City instigate the gay rights movement.
- July 20: Apollo 11 Moon landing, in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first two humans on the Moon.
- August 8 – 9: The Manson Family Murders – Under Charles Manson‘s orders, his followers, the “Manson Family” cult, enter the home of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and murder her and four others.
- August: The Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, attracts an audience of more than 400,000.
- September 1: Muammar Gaddafi overthrows King Idris of Libya in a Coup d’état and establishes the Libyan Arab Republic.
- October 29: Creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the earliest incarnation of the Internet.
- November 10: Sesame Street premieres its debut episode.