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Artificial Intelligence (AI): Vladimir Vapnik and Alexey Chervonenkis invented the Support Vector Machines technique, which was later developed in 1992 by Bernhard Boser, Isabelle Guyon, Vladimir Vapnik (SVM: Scholkopf & Smola)

The visionary Ted Nelson envisions a two-way hypertext system (already envisioned by Vannevar Bush). He calls it Xanadu. In practice, every single piece of information published on a global computer network would be published with the address it points to, as well as the address

Markers with acrylic fiber are produced

Tetra Pak invents the 1000B format

Edward Lorenz shows that the dynamics of chaos is extremely sensitive to initial conditions.

A skeleton of Titanis, a gigantic 770-pound, flightless bird that for millions of years was the largest carnivore in North America, has been discovered in Florida.

Aldo Moro is Prime Minister of Italy

James Webb reaffirms the choice of the LOR (Lunar Orbit Rendez-vous) and appoints Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. as prime-contractor for the construction of the Lunar Module (LM)

Charles Stark Draper, who heads the MIT lab, decides to bet on Fairchild’s recently invented integrated circuits for the Apollo Guidance Computer.

Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet President Khrushchev makes the first proposal: remove missiles from Cuba in exchange for an American commitment not to invade the island.

Cuban Missile Crisis: The Lebanese frigate Marucia, under Soviet command, is intercepted by the US Navy while attempting to violate the naval blockade.

At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the first squadron of 10 Minuteman I aircraft with 1-megaton W59 warheads was on full alert for the first time. The Americans also had several thousand nuclear warheads on 1,576 bombers, 183 Atlas and Titan ICBMs, and

Johnston Island; nuclear detonation of “BlueGill Triple Prime” from a high-altitude rocket; on the same day, the United States conducts a second nuclear test in the Pacific

A third Soviet Mars-Molniya mission fails to enter Earth orbit, exploding

Cuban Missile Crisis: US Strategic Air Command moves to DEFCON 2, one step below “Imminent Nuclear War”

Twenty Soviet cargo ships approach the American naval blockade off Cuba, which consists of 60 naval vessels. One passes through the blockade, and 19 reverse course. Among them is one with 20 more nuclear warheads, in addition to the 20 already stationed on the island.

Sino-Indian border in the Himalayas. Mao gives the order to attack. The offensive begins on October 20th, followed by a massive attack in mid-November that pushes the Chinese forward several kilometers, after which they retreat to their starting positions and remain there for an interim

Cuban Missile Crisis: Probably the closest thing to global thermonuclear war during the entire Cold War (1945-1991)

Nikita Khrushchev asked designer Vladimir Chelomei to build a rocket capable of carrying a huge payload of thermonuclear bombs to an enemy city. It would become the UR-500K Proton. Fortunately, it was never used for the task for which it was designed. It made its

Project Highwater: As part of the Apollo-Saturn program, the effect of releasing large quantities of liquid hydrogen and oxygen into the upper atmosphere was tested: the Saturn was launched and explosive charges tore it apart at an altitude of 105 km, 95 tons of water

The U-2 spy planes are replaced by the more modern Lockheed A-12/SR-71 Blackbird, covered in titanium and with a top speed of over Mach 3. The titanium comes from a shell company created by the CIA, which imported it from the Soviet Union, since the

John Gurdon of Cambridge University transplants the nucleus of a frog embryo cell into the egg of another frog; the animal develops to the tadpole stage and then dies.

Uganda becomes independent from Britain and Obote becomes president; General Amin is his right-hand man.

Peak of discovery of new oil fields

Antonio Segni President of the Italian Republic

Britain passes the Commonwealth Immigration Act to stop immigration from Commonwealth countries.

The Soviet MP-1 spaceplane, weighing 1,750 kg and designed by Chelomei, made a 405 km suborbital apogee flight over Kapustin Yar. In 1964, Chelomei (guilty of association with deposed Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev) fell out of favor with the new Soviet government. In the wake

In just a few weeks, Steve Russell produced one of the first, or the first, video games: Spacewar. He used a DEC PDP-1. He invented a way to maneuver two points on the screen, then converted them into two spaceships, and then created another subroutine

After four months of deliberation, the court in Jerusalem has decided: Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Final Solution, has been sentenced to death; he will be the only person sentenced to death in the history of the State of Israel.

Frascati, Italy, near Rome. The first particle accelerator built to collide particles from opposite directions at speeds approaching the speed of light is tested. It is called ADA: Storage Ring. It is the “grandfather” of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. ADA is therefore

Unexpectedly, after Yuri Gagarin’s defeat, 1961 became the year of American revenge: Sergei Korolev, now tired, eased the pressure of his powerful machine; the Americans instead launched 41 satellites in one year, 29 of which were successful, many of them telecommunications, in addition to the

At the first international conference on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Frank Drake presents in Green Bank, West Virginia, the formula N = R * fp * ne * fl * fi * ft * L with N = communicative civilizations, R = solar stars

Angola. An attack on prisons in Luanda by Angolan nationalists causes panic among Portuguese settlers, sparking a brutal hunt for blacks that results in countless victims, often killed in their own homes.

The head of the Soviet program, Korolyov, suffers a heart attack the night after the failed return of Korabl-Sputnik 3. Doctors treat him and also discover that he has the common kidney problems typical of former Gulag prisoners. They prescribe a reduction in workload and

The Soviet capsule Korabl-Sputnik 3, with two dogs on board, Muchka and Psholka, fails upon reentry and is incinerated in a fireball.

The first Mercury-Atlas prototype rocket explodes in flight; the Air Force’s Atlas is one of two Mercury launch vehicles; the other, the US Navy’s, is the Redstone; the two teams are in fierce competition with each other.

The USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered submarine, launched two Polaris missiles while under the sea. It will be on patrol in November with 16 nuclear warheads aboard.

Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin joins the Communist Party. He’s already a candidate to become the first cosmonaut, and this is obviously a necessary step.

Adolf Eichmann is kidnapped. Eichmann, who used the alias Ricardo Klement, was captured by the Israeli secret service in 1960 and brought from Argentina to Israel to stand trial for all the crimes he had committed during World War II. An SS officer, he was

The nouveau franc (heavy franc = 100 francs) is introduced in France.

Leonid Ilych Brezhnev becomes president of the Praesidum of the Supreme Soviet

Frank Drake pointed the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia (part of the Ozma project to search for intelligent civilizations in space) at Epsilon Eridani; it recorded regular series of eight pulses per second for five minutes; two weeks later it was discovered that

Paul Baran of RAND worked (and published) on concepts that would become key to the internet, such as non-centralized, fully distributed networks. He aimed to achieve “almost unlimited resilience and survivability” through redundancy. He also developed packet switching, which splits a message into packets measuring

The aircraft use “TurboProp Jet” (ATP) engines

Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal invents Lincos (cosmic language), consisting of logical symbols and three-letter words with which to define new symbols or words

R. Kalman (Hungarian-American) introduces the concepts of controllability, reachability and observability

China. The so-called “Great Leap Forward” promoted by Mao causes a terrible famine, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of people. Estimates range from a minimum of 15 million to a maximum of 40 million people in a single year. The Great Leap

First documented AIDS epidemic.

Emilio Gino Segre’ and Owen Chamberlain win the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the antiproton.

Olivetti produces the Elea 9003, with a futuristic design by Ettore Sottsass, equipped with high-performance transistors: it is perhaps the first computer made entirely with solid-state components.

Physicist Hugh Everett (the creator of the “Many World Interpretation” in Quantum Mechanics), invited to Copenhagen by Niels Bohr, while drinking beer at the Hotel Osterport, writes on the hotel stationery an important refinement of Everett’s algorithm, also known as the Lagrange Multiplier Method; the

First launch of a CORONA spy satellite. It will take several launches (13!) to achieve full success. The program is a collaboration between the government (CIA and US Air Force) and private industry, involving: Douglas (for the Thor missile), Lokheed (for the Agena orbital stage),

United States. Coors mass-produces the first beer cans made of aluminum, which is much lighter and more corrosion-resistant than steel. Just ten years later, the use of steel for cans is almost extinct.

Castro is sworn in. On February 16, 1959, after six years of guerrilla warfare against dictator Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro is sworn in as Cuba’s prime minister. Although initially denying any communist affiliation, Castro launched a program of agrarian reform, nationalized American assets on the

Frank Lloyd Wright dies

The Soviets launch the Lunik 1 probe, which passes within 6,000 km of the Moon on January 3rd and then becomes the first human spacecraft to orbit the Sun.

Eniwetok Atoll, Operation HardTack I, “Wahoo” detonation underwater at 150m depth on a 1000m seabed, 9Kton

Eisenhower approves the WS117L (Weapon System 117L) program. This is the first space-based photographic reconnaissance system. It is managed by the U.S. Air Force and the CIA (CIA-managed projects generally have all-capitalized acronyms) and will evolve into the CORONA spy satellites (initially known to the

Jack S. Kilby of Texas Instruments creates the first integrated circuit

In the article “Infrared and Optical Masers” in Physical Review, Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes of Bell Labs theorize the laser

In 1957 the Soviets launched 2 satellites, zero failures, the Americans zero satellites, one failure

John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and J. Robert Schrieffer show that electrons can form pairs whose quantum properties allow them to move without resistance: superconductivity.

Hugh Everett III proposes the Many-Worlds Interpretation: the entire universe splits at every measurement because of the R (probabilistic) part of quantum mechanics

Soon after the discovery of the P (Parity) violation, the C (Charge) parity violation was also discovered in reactions involving antimatter: the CP transformation was then introduced to pass from matter to antimatter.

Leon Lederman measures the helicity of the muon resulting from the decay of the pion and discovers that parity is not conserved! In other words, seeing the same reaction in a mirror, we can say with certainty that it is a mirror image (i.e., in

First formation round-the-world flight: B52 Octaturbogetto

Successful launch of the single-stage Thor rocket

International Geophysical Year (IGY): Both the Soviets (125) and the Americans (210) will launch satellites into space

Joe Kittinger and David Simons reached and exceeded the altitude of 30 km in their hot air balloons several times.

New Mexico. The navigator of a B-36 bomber loses his balance after an air pocket and grabs the first handhold he finds, the bomb’s manual release handle. It’s an H-bomb, fortunately without a nuclear core, which falls in a desert area not far from the

The ABMA makes the crucial decision to use clustered engines, meaning multiple engines in the same stage rather than one large engine.

Soviet Union. The military takes control of the Plesetsk launch base.

The thesis committee accepts the doctoral thesis Hugh Everett, Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, a drastically rewritten and shortened version of the previous thesis The theory of the Universal Wave Function, which instead demonstrated the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

In Chelyabinsk, Urals, at the Mayak plant, a 100-ton container of radioactive cesium explodes: thousands of people die and the contaminated area is immense, but the full extent of the damage will only be discovered decades later; more than 2 million Curies are released into

At Brookhaven Laboratory, a particle accelerator is used to test the nature of neutrinos. The proton beam is fired at a beryllium target, producing pions (combined up and down quarks), which rapidly decay into muons and neutrinos. They then encounter a 13-meter steel barrier (made

Israelis withdraw from occupied Sinai

The U.S. Navy contracts Swiss inventor Auguste Piccard for consulting and the use of the Trieste bathyscaphe, which is brought to San Diego, California. Two years later, it will be sent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Treaty of Rome: the European Economic Community (EEC), later the European Union (EU) was born

Independence of Ghana; first independent state in Black Africa

John von Neumann dies. He had been diagnosed with bone cancer and underwent emergency surgery two years earlier. Edward Teller, who was frequently at his side during his final days, reports that John was not only dedicated to his thoughts but benefited from them. Perhaps