| January 3 | President Dwight Eisenhower announced that the United States had severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba. |
| January 3 | SL-1, an atomic reactor, exploded at National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho, killing 3 military technicians.< |
| January 12 | President Dwight Eisenhower gave his final State of the Union Address to Congress. |
| January 20 | John F. Kennedy becomes President of the United States |
| January 24 | US B-52 bomber with two 24-megaton nuclear bombs crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina< |
| January 25 | In Washington, DC John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential news conference. In it, he announces that the Soviet Union had freed the two surviving crewmen of a USAF RB-47 reconnaissance plane shot down by Soviet flyers over the Barents Sea July 1, 1960. (see RB-47H shot down)< |
| January 30 | President John F. Kennedy delivered his first State of the Union Address. |
| January 31 | Ham, a 37 pound male chimpanzee, was rocketed into space in a test of the Project Mercury capsule designed to carry U.S. astronauts into space |
| February 5 | The Sunday Telegraph publishes its first issue. |
| February 14 | Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized (Berkeley, California). |
| February 15 | A Boeing 707 crashes in Belgium killing 73, including the entire United States figure skating team and several coaches. |
| March 1 | President of the United States John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps. |
| March 8 | Max Conrad circumnavigates the earth in eight days, 18 hours and 49 minutes setting a new world record. |
| March 8 | First US Polaris submarines arrive at Holy Loch. |
| March 29 | The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, DC to vote in presidential elections |
| April 12 | Yuri Gagarin is the first human in space. |
| April 17 | Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba begins, ending in failure April 19. |
| April 25 | Robert Noyce is granted the first patent for an integrated circuit. |
| May 5 | Alan B. Shepard: is first American in space. |
| May 19 | Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (however the probe had lost contact with earth a month earlier and did not send back any data). |
| May 25 | Apollo program: President Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a ""man on the moon"" before the end of the decade. |
| June 4 | John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev meet during two days in Vienna. They talk about nuclear tests, disarmament and Germany. |
| June 25 | Iraqi president Abdul Karim Kassem announces he is going to annex Kuwait - Kuwaiti government ask British help in June 27. British army begin to send in troops. |
| July 21 | Mercury program: Gus Grissom piloting the Mercury 4 capsule ""Liberty Bell 7"" becomes the second American to go into space. It was a suborbital trajectory. |
| July 31 | At Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, the first All-Star Game tie in major league baseball history occurs when the game is stopped in the 9th inning due to rain. |
| August 13 | Construction of the Berlin Wall begins. Movement between East Berlin and West Berlin remains restricted for the next 28 years, until November 9, 1989. |
| October 19 | Arab League takes over protection of Kuwait - last British troops leave. |
| October 30 | Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates a 58 megaton yield hydrogen bomb over Novaya Zemlya (this is still the largest nuclear device to ever be detonated). |
| October 31 | In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's body is removed from Lenin's Tomb. |
| November 29 | Mercury program: Mercury-Atlas 5 is launched with Enos the chimp aboard (the spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed-down off the coast of Puerto Rico). |
| December 2 | Cold War: In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism. |
| December 11 | Vietnam War officially begins as the first American helicopters arrive in Saigon along with 400 U.S. personnel. |
