1959

From top to bottom, left to right: Fidel Castro takes over Cuba; Tsarong Dazang Dramdul and several Tibetan monks captured by the PLA during the 1959 Tibetan uprising; The MOSFET (MOS transistor) is invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs.; Site of Australopithecus boisei discovery in Tanzania.; Surface weather analysis of Typhoon Vera; Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev at the American National Exhibition; The Day the Music Died: The wreckage of the Bonanza at the crash site that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper; Damage to the Congolese Public Market in Léopoldville from the Léopoldville riots.

Calendar year

Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century 20th century 21st century
Decades:	1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s
Years:	1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962

1959 by topic
Subject
Animation Archaeology Architecture Art Aviation Awards Comics Film Literature Poetry Meteorology Music Country Jazz Rail transport Radio Science Spaceflight Sports Football Television American Australian British Scottish Canadian Danish Irish Italian
By country
Afghanistan Australia Belgium Brazil Bulgaria Canada China Denmark France Germany India Ireland Iran Israel Japan Luxembourg Malaya Mexico New Zealand Norway Pakistan Philippines Portugal Singapore South Africa South Korea Soviet Union Spain Sweden Thailand Turkey United Kingdom United States
Lists of leaders
Sovereign states Sovereign state leaders Territorial governors Religious leaders Law
Birth and death categories
Births Deaths
Establishments and disestablishments categories
Establishments Disestablishments
Works category
Works Introductions
v t e

1959 in various calendars

Gregorian calendar	1959 MCMLIX
Ab urbe condita	2712
Armenian calendar	1408 ԹՎ ՌՆԸ
Assyrian calendar	6709
Baháʼí calendar	115–116
Balinese saka calendar	1880–1881
Bengali calendar	1366
Berber calendar	2909
British Regnal year	7 Eliz. 2 – 8 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2503
Burmese calendar	1321
Byzantine calendar	7467–7468
Chinese calendar	戊戌年 (Earth Dog) 4656 or 4449     — to — 己亥年 (Earth Pig) 4657 or 4450
Coptic calendar	1675–1676
Discordian calendar	3125
Ethiopian calendar	1951–1952
Hebrew calendar	5719–5720
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2015–2016
- Shaka Samvat	1880–1881
- Kali Yuga	5059–5060
Holocene calendar	11959
Igbo calendar	959–960
Iranian calendar	1337–1338
Islamic calendar	1378–1379
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 34 (昭和３４年)
Javanese calendar	1890–1891
Juche calendar	48
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4292
Minguo calendar	ROC 48 民國48年
Nanakshahi calendar	491
Thai solar calendar	2502
Tibetan calendar	阳土狗年 (male Earth-Dog) 2085 or 1704 or 932     — to — 阴土猪年 (female Earth-Pig) 2086 or 1705 or 933

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 1959.

1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1959th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 959th year of the 2nd millennium, the 59th year of the 20th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1950s decade.

Events

January

• January 1 – Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance.^[1]
• January 2 – Soviet lunar probe Luna 1 is the first human-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reaches the vicinity of Earth's Moon, where it was intended to crash-land, but instead becomes the first spacecraft to go into heliocentric orbit.
• January 3
  • Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
  • The southernmost island of the Maldives archipelago, Addu Atoll, declares its independence from the Kingdom of the Maldives, initiating the United Suvadive Republic.^[2]
• January 4
  • In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana.
  • Léopoldville riots: At least 49 people are killed during clashes between the police and participants of a meeting of the ABAKO Party in Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo.
• January 6 – The International Maritime Organization is inaugurated.
• January 7 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
• January 8 – Charles de Gaulle is inaugurated as the first president of the French Fifth Republic.
• January 9 – The Vega de Tera disaster in Spain, a flood caused by a dam collapse, nearly destroys the town of Ribadelago and kills 144 residents.^[3]
• January 10 – The Soviet government recognizes the new Castro government of Cuba.
• January 11 – The Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques is founded in Monaco.
• January 15 – The Soviet Union conducts its first census after World War II.
• January 21 – The European Court of Human Rights is established.
• January 22 – Knox Mine disaster: Water breaches the River Slope Mine in Port Griffith, near Pittston, Pennsylvania, United States; 12 miners are killed.
• January 25
  • American Airlines begins the first U.S. domestic jet service with a Boeing 707 airliner flight between New York and Los Angeles.^[4]
  • Pope John XXIII announces that the Second Vatican Council will be convened in Rome.
• January 30 – Danish passenger/cargo ship MS Hans Hedtoft, returning to Copenhagen after its maiden voyage to Greenland, strikes an iceberg and sinks off the Greenland coast with the loss of all 95 on board.^[5]

February

• February 2 – Nine ski hikers mysteriously perish in the northern Ural Mountains in the Dyatlov Pass incident and are all found dead a few weeks later.
• February 3
  • A chartered plane transporting musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper with pilot Roger Peterson goes down in foggy conditions near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all four on board. The tragedy is later termed "The Day the Music Died", popularized in Don McLean's 1971 song "American Pie".
  • American Airlines Flight 320, a Lockheed L-188 Electra from Chicago crashes into the East River on approach to New York City's LaGuardia Airport, killing 65 of the 73 people on board.
• February 6 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.
• February 9 – Yugoslavia and Spain set trade relations (not diplomatic ones).
• February 13 – TAT-2, AT&T's second transatlantic telephone cable goes into operation between Newfoundland and France.
• February 16 – Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba.
• February 17 – Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, is launched to measure cloud cover for the United States Navy.
• February 18
  • Jesús Sosa Blanco, a colonel in the Cuban army of Fulgencio Batista, is executed in Cuba after being convicted of committing 108 murders for Batista.
  • Women in Nepal vote for the first time.
• February 19 – First of the London and Zürich Agreements under which the United Kingdom agrees to grant independence to Cyprus.
• February 20 – The Canadian Government cancels the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow interceptor aircraft project.

March

• March 1
  • The USS Tuscaloosa, USS New Orleans, USS Tennessee and USS West Virginia are stricken from the United States Naval Vessel Register.
  • Archbishop Makarios returns to Cyprus from exile.
• March 3 – Lunar probe Pioneer 4 becomes the first American object to escape dominance by Earth's gravity.
• March 9 – Mattel's Barbie doll debuts in the United States.
• March 10 – The Tibetan uprising erupts in Lhasa when Chinese officials attempt to arrest the Dalai Lama.
• March 11 – The Eurovision Song Contest 1959, staged in Cannes, is won for the Netherlands by "'n Beetje" sung by Teddy Scholten (music by Dick Schallies, lyrics by Willy van Hemert).
• March 17 – Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama escapes Tibet and arrives in India.
• March 18 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Hawaii Admission Act, granting statehood to Hawaii.
• March 19 – The other two southern islands of the Maldives, Huvadhu Atoll and Fuvahmulah, join Addu Atoll in forming the United Suvadive Republic (abolished September 1963).
• March 28 – The Kashag, the government of Tibet, is abolished by an order signed by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. The Dalai Lama is replaced in China by the Panchen Lama.
• March 31 – The Dalai Lama is granted asylum in India.

April

• April 6 – The 31st Academy Awards ceremony is held in Hollywood. Musical film Gigi receives a record 9 Oscars.
• April 8 – The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) is established.
• April 9 – NASA announces its selection of seven military pilots to become the first U.S. astronauts, later known as the 'Mercury Seven'.
• April 10 – Crown Prince Akihito of Japan marries Shōda Michiko, the first commoner to marry into the Imperial House of Japan.
• April 25 – The Saint Lawrence Seaway linking the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean officially opens to shipping.
• April 27 – National People's Congress elects Liu Shaoqi as Chairman of the People's Republic of China, as a successor of Mao Zedong.

May

• May – In the United Kingdom:
  • Import tariffs are lifted.
  • The first Ten Tors event is held on Dartmoor.
• May 2 – 1959 FA Cup Final: Nottingham Forest defeats Luton Town 2–1 at Wembley Stadium.
• May 18 – The National Liberation Committee of Côte d'Ivoire is launched in Conakry, Guinea.
• May 21 – Gypsy: A Musical Fable, starring Ethel Merman in her last new musical, opens on Broadway and runs for 702 performances.
• May 23 – In Laos the Laotian Civil War begins between the Kingdom of Laos and the communist rebels the Pathet Lao.
• May 24 – British Empire Day is renamed Commonwealth Day.
• May 28 – Jupiter AM-18 rocket launches two primates, Miss Baker and Miss Able, into space from Cape Canaveral in the United States along with living microorganisms and plant seeds. Successful recovery makes them the first living beings to return safely to Earth after space flight.

June

• June 3
  • Singapore becomes a self-governing crown colony of Britain with Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister.
  • Real Madrid beats Stade Reims 2–0 at Neckarstadion, Stuttgart and wins the 1958–59 European Cup (Association football).
• June 5 – A new government of the State of Singapore is sworn in by Sir William Goode. Two former ministers are re-elected to the Legislative Assembly.
• June 8 – The USS Barbero and United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail.
• June 9 – The USS George Washington is launched as the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles.
• June 14 – A 3-front invasion of the Dominican Republic by exile forces backed by Fidel Castro and Venezuela attempt to overthrow Rafael Trujillo.
• June 18 – The film The Nun's Story, based on the best-selling novel, is released. Audrey Hepburn stars as the title character; she later says that this is her favorite film role. The film is a box-office hit, and is nominated for several Oscars.
• June 23
  • Seán Lemass becomes the third Taoiseach of Ireland.
  • Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after nine years in a British prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.
• June 26 – Elizabeth II (as monarch of Canada) and United States President Dwight Eisenhower open the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
• June 30 – Twenty-one students are killed and more than a hundred injured when a North American F-100 Super Sabre jet crashes into Miamori Elementary School on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The pilot ejected before the plane struck the school.^[6]

July

• July 2 – Prince Albert of Belgium marries Italian Donna Paola Ruffo di Calabria.
• July 4 – With the admission of Alaska as the 49th U.S. state earlier in the year, the 49-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia.
• July 7 – At 14:28 UT Venus occults the star Regulus. The rare event (which will next occur on October 1, 2044) is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of Venus' atmosphere.
• July 9 – Wing Commander Michael Beetham flying a Royal Air Force Vickers Valiant sets a record of 11 hours 27 minutes for a non-stop London-Cape Town flight.^[7]
• July 14 – Groups of Kurdish and communist militias rebel in Kirkuk, Iraq against the central government.^[8]
• July 17 – The first skull of Australopithecus is discovered by Louis Leakey and his wife Mary in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania.
• July 22 – A Kumamoto University medical research group studying Minamata disease concludes that it is caused by mercury.
• July 24 – At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, United States Vice President Richard Nixon and USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev engage in the "Kitchen Debate".
• July 25 – The SR.N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours, on the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot's first crossing by heavier-than-air craft.

August

• August 4 – Martial law is declared in Laos.
• August 7
  • Explorer program: The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
  • The Roseburg Blast in Oregon, caused when a truck carrying explosives catches fire, kills 14 and causes $12 million worth of damage.
• August 8 – A flood in Taiwan kills 2,000.
• August 14 – Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from orbit.
• August 15 – Cyprus gains independence.
• August 17 – In the United States:
  • The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake in southwest Montana kills 28.
  • Miles Davis' influential jazz album Kind of Blue is released.
• August 19 – The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) is established.
• August 21 – Hawaii is admitted as the 50th and last U.S. state.
• August 26 – The original Mini car, designed by Sir Alec Issigonis, is launched in England.
• August 30 – 1959 South Vietnamese legislative election: South Vietnamese opposition figure Phan Quang Dan is elected to the National Assembly despite soldiers being bussed in to vote for President Ngo Dinh Diem's candidate.^[9]
• August 31 – The Workers' Stadium sports venue in Beijing (China) is officially opened.^[10][11]

September