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A fourth Soviet Mars-Molniya mission finally succeeds and reaches Martian orbit.

Cuban Missile Crisis: The US SAC flew 2,088 high-alert missions with nuclear weapons on board, approximately 50,000 flight hours in total, without a single incident. It must be said that the procedures, continuous and rigorous training, and discipline introduced by LeMay paid off in this

Khrushchev orders the dismantling of missile bases in Cuba

Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet President Khrushchev accepts

Cuban Missile Crisis: US President Kennedy publicly accepts the first Soviet proposal, and also secretly agrees to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey

Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet President Khrushchev makes second proposal, calling for withdrawal of US Jupiter missiles in Türkiye

On the very same day as the downing of a U-2 over Cuba, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, another U-2 aircraft flying over the Arctic Sea accidentally violates Soviet territorial space and enters Siberia. The pilot, Charles Maultsby, had orders to take atmospheric samples over

Cuban Missile Crisis: A U-2 spy plane is shot down over Cuba.

Mao’s China and India’s troops face each other in the western Himalayas, locked in a stalemate.

Cuban Missile Crisis. During an evening address to the nation by John F. Kennedy, the DEFCON level drops to 3, which means: submarines equipped with Polaris nuclear missiles leave American ports bound for locations off the coast of the USSR, US Air Force fighters take

Kennedy implements naval blockade of Cuba

Cuba. After the latest photos received from spy planes, the White House debates what to do. Ted Sorensen proposes sending in the 82nd Airborne, Curtis LeMay suggests deploying force, Vice President Johnson suggests cutting off the snake’s head, Dean Acheson says the Russians would retaliate

An early Soviet Venera-Molniya mission fails to enter Earth orbit.

Russians conduct first double launch: two Vostoks arrive within 5km of each other

Marilyn Monroe found dead. On August 5, 1962, the famous actress was found dead in her Los Angeles home. Born in 1926, Norma Jean Mortenson, aka Marilyn Monroe, remains one of the world’s most enduring sex symbols. She was the most famous actress of her

The first idea for a computer network was conceived at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

Gen Ne Win rises to power in Burma and establishes the “Burmese road to socialism”: every political party and every free newspaper are suppressed; he will remain in power for half a century.

Indonesia. After securing Dutch New Guinea, President Sukarno militarily attacked parts of Malaysia (including Sabah and Sarawak, on the island of Borneo), but then, given the Malaysian citizens’ disinclination to fall under Indonesian control, he abandoned the offensive.

Hungarian mathematician Tibor Rado invented the Busy Beaver Problem: given a halting Turing machine, how many “1s” can it write before it halts? If the Turing machine in question has n states, this number is denoted S(n) and grows faster than any computable function f(n).

Fanfani began forming the first center-left government, composed of the Christian Democrats (DC), the Italian Republican Party (PRI), and the Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI). The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) provided external support for the government by abstaining from the vote of confidence. Nenni declared

John Glenn completes the first full orbit for NASA, three orbits in total, on Fellowship 7 (Mercury missions, Atlas rocket); Glenn is one of the Original Seven of the Mercury missions, all Air Force pilots: Malcolm S. Carpenter, Leroy G. Cooper, John H. Glenn Jr.,

American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, a Soviet prisoner, is handed over to the Americans in Berlin along with student Frederic Pryor in exchange for KGB agent Colonel William Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel). This event is the subject of Spielberg’s film “Bridge of Spies,” starring

The United States has 27,297 nuclear weapons; the Soviet Union has 3,322.

First documented cases of communication between dolphins

Vietnam. American troops in the region rise to 12,000.

The number of democracies has reached a new high of 36, after a global low of 12 in 1942 (there were 29 in 1922).

Canada. Chemist Neil Bartlett creates the first noble gas compound in the laboratory. It is an orange crystalline solid, based on xenon. The reaction occurs at room temperature.

T.G. Wilson and P.H. Trickey built what they called a “DC machine with solid-state commutation.” This was the first modern brushless DC motor. More than two decades later, the advent of fast and efficient IGBT transistors and powerful rare-earth permanent magnets (first samarium and then

Neil Armstrong makes one of the first excursions to the edge of space aboard an airplane: he reaches an altitude of 30 km

The X-15 flies over Mach 6 and above 70km in altitude

Vietnam. There are 3,200 American troops in the region.

NASA’s Ranger 6 lands on the Moon but the camera doesn’t transmit.

NASA’s Ranger 5 breaks its camera.

NASA’s Ranger 4 arrives on the Moon but electrical problems prevent it from transmitting to Earth.

The Soviets detonate a 100Mton thermonuclear device in the Arctic: the “Tsar” limited to 57Mton (Tsar Bomba); dropped from an aircraft; it is the most powerful thermonuclear explosion ever to occur on the planet; even in the “limited” version, it has a power three times

The first Saturn I lifts off from Cape Canaveral

Kennedy discusses with his staff the prospects of a possible nuclear conflict. General Maxwell Taylor, along with other advisors, argues that if a nuclear conflict is inevitable, then the United States should strike first.

The New York Times reports the development of an effective measles vaccine by John Franklin Enders, later considered the father of modern vaccines. It helps save 120 million lives (estimate updated to the early 21st century).

American President John F. Kennedy responded to the resumption of Soviet nuclear testing with the Dominic Plan, which called for 105 American nuclear tests to be conducted in 1962 in Nevada and the Pacific.

First Vostok missions (one man on board) (Russian Space Agency)

West Berlin. Kennedy orders 1,500 US Army soldiers to travel on the autobahn connecting West Germany to West Berlin. McNamara opposes the move, fearing it could trigger a nuclear conflict. The Soviets offer no resistance. Arriving in West Berlin, the soldiers are greeted by hundreds

Indonesia. President Sukarno orders all three branches of the armed forces to take control of the Dutch part of New Guinea (Western New Guinea). The United States will pressure the Netherlands and secure Dutch renunciation of New Guinea.

Titov orbits Earth for more than 24 hours

NASA’s Ranger 3 “misses” the Moon by 20,000 miles.

NASA’s Ranger mission program: 5 failures and 4 successes. Special mention goes to Ranger 4, which accidentally crashed into the far side of the Moon, remaining the only human-made object to touch that side for over half a century.

“Gus” Grissom in suborbital flight on Liberty Bell 7 launched by a Mercury-Redstone; upon reentry, the probe sank into the ocean.

Von Braun, at the president’s request, advises Johnson on how to beat the Soviets in space. He writes that it’s pointless to chase the Soviets on short-term objectives. They’re ahead. Their Venus spacecraft demonstrates that they can orbit masses 10 times greater than ours. We

Mercury-Atlas 3 explodes in flight

Yuri Gagarin orbits the Earth on the Russian Space Agency’s Vostok 1 (“East” in Russian); it lasts 108 minutes. As the rocket lifts off, Gagarin exclaims, “Поехали!” (Poyekhali!—Let’s go!), launching the human race into space. Upon returning to Earth, he steps onto the ground and

NASA, unaware of the Soviet plans, is ready to launch Shepard into space, but due to uncertainty about the reliability of the boosters and to allow Shepard to do extra training, the launch is postponed.

In the Kilby vs. Noyce case, pitting Texas Instruments against Fairchild Semiconductors for the first patent on integrated circuits, the patent was granted to Noyce of Fairchild, even though Fairchild filed the patent. But it wouldn’t end there: Texas filed a Priority Contest, which led

Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Final Solution, is put on trial in Jerusalem; cameras are allowed into the courtroom: it is the first televised trial in history.

In the first weeks of his term, thanks largely to photos from the CORONA spy satellites and U-2 spy planes, President Kennedy discovered that the missile gap with the Soviets did not exist; in fact, the Americans had the advantage. Khrushchev’s claim that the USSR

The United States began a 24/7 flight program to ensure prompt and reliable retaliation in the event of a sudden Soviet attack. Twelve B-52s armed with H-bombs were kept constantly in the air under all circumstances as part of Operation Chrome Dome. Every day, six

The Soviet nuclear submarine K-19 suffers a reactor accident shortly after its launch; several people lose their lives; the incident, which remained a military secret until 1991, was later adapted into the film “K-19.”

Ernesto Valente of Faema designs the first automatic espresso machine.

The US Navy deploys its first Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carrier.

Rai 2, Italy’s second largest television channel, is launched.

Brenner and Jakob discover the role of mRNA

MOSFET (Metal Oxide Silicon Field Effect Transistor) transistors are introduced to the market

Jean Hoerni and three other of Fairchild’s eight founders left to found Teledyne, along with Arthur Rock. Rock pioneered a new investment strategy that would shape the entire history of electronics and the Computer Age: venture capitalism.

Paynter, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), publishes the article “Analysis and Design of Engineering Systems”, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, where he illustrates the principles of Bond Graphs

Sweden. An analysis conducted by Sten Forshufvud on Napoleon’s hair samples discovered elevated levels of arsenic. This supported the hypothesis that the emperor had been poisoned. A sample of the gold and green wallpaper from Napoleon’s rooms, made by Scheele at the time from copper

The Soviets build the Berlin Wall

Americans build NORAD under Cheyenne Mountain

South Korea. A staunch anti-communist, Park Chung Hee, comes to power in a coup. During World War II, he served in the Japanese Kwantung Army under the name Takagi Masao. His main supporter is Japanese Prime Minister Kishi Nobusake, himself a Kwantung Army veteran.

In his farewell address to the nation, Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower sounded a grave warning about the enormous and growing military spending and the associated risk to democracy and freedom, and the risk of a technocracy.

Corona Program (first American spy satellites): After an endless series of failures, a Corona satellite (the fourteenth!) finally flies successfully over the USSR. It’s the same day Gary Powers hears his sentencing in Moscow, while an American satellite photographs the Kremlin overhead.

The fourteenth CORONA mission (mission 9009, known to the public as Discoverer XIV) and the first fully operational mission. The cargo is recovered on the fly by Captain Harold Mitchell’s C-119 (later replaced by the more capable C-130). The film is returned and recovered. It

The thirteenth CORONA mission and the first functional mission, but with a full instrument load, therefore inoperative. The first fully functional and operational mission will be the next one, launched and returning the following week. The payload is simply an American flag, which is delivered

The Soviets launch the Vostok missions, and the Americans launch the Mercury missions in parallel. These are single-passenger flights, with no control. Each mission lasts six missions. Then comes the Soviet Soyuz and American Apollo missions. Finally, the Soviet Voskhod and the American Gemini. But

The Soviets launched Sputnik 4, which was actually Vostok 1, which, due to problems with the retrorockets’ misfiring, was placed in the wrong orbit and the cabin re-entered the atmosphere in 1965.

Lockheed U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers leaves Peshawar, Pakistan, to fly over the USSR and land in Bodø, Norway. The goal: to photograph ICBM launch sites around Sverdlovsk and Plesetsk. The Soviets launch 14 SA-2 guided missiles at it. One of the

At the Marshall Rocket Center in Hunstville, Alabama, all eight engines of the Saturn I are fired for a full eight seconds.

NASA selects Douglas Aircraft Company (later part of McDonnell Douglas) as the contractor for the S-IV, the third stage of the Saturn V.

The first family of Soviet communications satellites was the Molniya (lightning) satellites, built by the NPO Design Bureau in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. It became famous for its peculiar orbits, and the Americans initially didn’t understand their usefulness. It had a period of 12 hours, with an

Crustal samples from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge show progressively greater age as one moves away from the ridge.

The first French nuclear bomb, Gerboise Bleue, explodes in the Algerian Sahara: 60-70 Kton; it is the first of 217 French nuclear tests.

Jacques Picard (Switzerland) and Don Walsh (US Navy) descend with the bathyscaphe Trieste to 10,918 m in the Mariana Trench

The capital of Brazil is moved to Brasilia