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 B-52s headed north and circumnavigated Canada, four crossed the Atlantic and circled the Mediterranean, and two circled over the Thule base in Greenland. Known as Thule Monitor, it required pilots to maintain constant visual contact with the base, as it was considered the first target the Soviets would hit in the event of conflict. The physical existence of Thule would serve as proof to the Americans that World War III had not yet broken out. Furthermore, half the B-52s were kept on ground alert, loaded with bombs and with the pilots sleeping alongside the aircraft, already on the runway.

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 arsenide or copper acetoarsenate, was then found and analyzed in 1982. The article published in Nature in 1982 confirmed the presence of arsenic in the wallpaper, which would provide the reason for the high levels of arsenic in the hair. Subsequent analyses (2008) found similar levels of arsenic in the hair of his wife Josephine and other family members: arsenic was found everywhere at the time…

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 contains detailed photographs of more territory than dozens of U-2 flights combined. Quickly, in the space of just a year, CORONA will assume the role that cracking ENIGMA had in World War II.

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 to Eisenhower. Lockheed is thrilled with the long-awaited achievement, and during the celebrations at a Palo Alto hotel, program manager James Plummer is thrown into the pool in his suit and tie, and then everyone follows.

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 here the comparison ends: the Americans successfully assemble and test the Gemini probe, originally designed for two passengers, while the Soviets encounter numerous problems with the Voskhod, which has struggled since the beginning of its development.

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 Soviet MiGs sent in pursuit is shot down by SA-2 missiles. Eventually, the U-2 is also hit and makes an emergency landing. Gary Powers survives unharmed, is captured, and convicted of espionage. Twenty-two months later, he is handed over to the Americans in Berlin along with the student Frederic Pryor in exchange for KGB agent Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel). The SA-2 rocket was designed by Chelomei’s team, Korloyov’s arch-rival. Gary Power’s U-2 mission over the Soviet Union was the last of 24 overflight missions over the USSR in four years. With the CORONA spy satellite program, the amount of intelligence received in a single mission in August 1960 exceeded the sum of all U-2 missions combined. Furthermore, the A-12/SR-71 Blackbird (April 1962) would outperform the U-2 somewhat. But the U-2 had not exhausted its mission: 104 more would be built, the latest, updated models, built in the 1980s. Most will still be in service at the beginning of the 21st century.

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 apogee of 36,000 km (like the GEO satellites, and usually over Siberia) but a perigee of only 600 km (usually over the Americas for good photographic resolution). The idea was actually Bill Hilton’s, who presented it to the British Interplanetary Society in 1960. It evidently had a wider audience than he thought… The first successful launch took place in April 1965, and a constellation of eight satellites was maintained. The last Molniya was launched in June 2003: it was the 144th.

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

Rome Olympics

Construction of the Arecibo radio telescope begins, to be completed 3 years later

In an accident during the launch of a prototype of a Soviet ICBM rocket, 126 people were killed by the burning of the missile’s propellant, another 50 people died from the burns they sustained.

First UNIMATE robot, based on Devol’s ‘programmed parts handler’ design

Marketing of the pill in the USA

United States. Ronald Coase publishes “The Problem of Social Cost,” in which he argues that the smartest thing to do with externalities like pollution is to make them tradable. This is essentially the idea of the carbon tax, which would see the light of day decades later, particularly with the Clean Air Act of 1990 in the United States.

Carlos Rivera, a Chilean physicist at the Catholic University of Santiago, is sitting alone at the Hotel Continental in Buenos Aires, scribbling formulas on a paper napkin. A curious waiter says to him, “I know another man with this habit. He’s a customer who comes in every now and then for a meal or a coffee. His name is Ettore Majorana. He was a very important physicist and fled Italy a long time ago.” Ettore is said to be 54 years old. Rivera doesn’t immediately follow up on the lead, and when he tries, the waiter is no longer reachable. This isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, sighting of Majorana in Buenos Aires.