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). If the Turing machine has 4 states, it writes 13 ones; if it has 5 states, it writes at least 4098 ones (Buntrock-Marxen beaver, 1989); if it has 6 states, it writes an enormous number of ones, not yet calculated but certainly > 4096^4096 (M.W. Green’s Theorem, 1964).

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 that they would continue to provide external support only if three important reforms were implemented: the nationalization of the electricity industry, a unified middle school system, and the creation of the regions. Fanfani accepted the conditions. The Fanfani IV government lasted until June 22, 1963.

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., Virgil I. Grissom, Walter M. Schirra Jr., Alan B. Shepard Jr., and Donald K. Slayton.

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 Tom Hanks. Gary Powers had been captured 22 months earlier over Sverdlovsk, after his plane was shot down.

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 neodymium) paved the way for brushless AC motors with sinusoidal control.

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 greater than that of the largest American device.

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 of thousands of cheering people and by Vice President Johnson, who is now feeling better… Twelve days later, the USSR breaks its moratorium on nuclear tests and conducts 57 before the end of the year.

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 can’t even beat them in orbiting a laboratory with one or more astronauts. A possible challenge is to place a transmitting station on the Moon within a couple of years, or even launch a spacecraft with three men on board into lunar orbit. The outlook becomes more optimistic when it comes to putting a man on the Moon. Von Braun writes, “The USA has an excellent chance of beating the Soviets.” Not even the Soviets have the rocket necessary for the task, so they have to do it from scratch. The challenge is on. Von Braun predicts that it might be possible to achieve the goal between 1967 and 1968, investment permitting and “all-out effort,” working on it around the clock. When NASA Director Jim Webb receives the letter on his desk, he jumps in his seat: “We can’t make the commitment to land on the Moon in 1967!!!” At the end of a complicated negotiation with the President and his staff, Jim Webb agrees to a more vague commitment: “By the end of the decade.”

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 sees a woman with a little girl and a calf nearby. He shouts, “They’re yours, comrades, they’re yours!” They are Anna Akimomovna Takhtarova, the wife of a forest ranger, and her six-year-old granddaughter Rita. “You haven’t come from space, have you?” asks the woman. “That’s right,” Gagarin replies.

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 to the Kilby vs. Noyce case, which dragged on for several years. In June 1964, the patent was granted to Kilby and his priority was recognized. In February 1967, the final verdict confirmed this position. Fairchild then appealed, and the court ruled in November 1969 that Noyce was in favor. Texas appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. Ultimately, however, the integrated circuit market was so vast and advanced compared to the original patent that the two companies agreed to grant each other cross-licenses.

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 was churning out 250 ICBMs a year was a complete bluff. In reality, the Soviet missile program was struggling, and on October 24, 1960, it had suffered a tremendous blow with the explosion on the launch pad of an R-16, resulting in the deaths of many scientists and the Minister in charge of Strategic Missile Forces, Nedelin.