Chemical Engineering - 1961

• January 2 - US breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba.
• January 20 - John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as president of the United States; poet Robert Frost recites "The Gift Outright".
• April 12 - Moscow announces putting the first man in orbit around earth, Major Yuri A. Gagarin.
• April 17 - Bay of Pigs invasion crushed by Castro.
• May 5 - First US spaceman, Navy Cmdr Alan B. Shepard Jr. rockets 116.5 miles up in 302-mile trip.
• July 21 - Virgil Grissom becomes second American astronaut making a 118 mile-high, 303 mile-long rocket flight over the Atlantic.
• August 13 - East Germans erect Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin to halt flood of refugees.
• October 29 - USSR fires 50-megaton hydrogen bomb, biggest explosion in history.
• There are 2000 US military advisors in South Vietnam.

Gayle Hix

Larry Hutteball