1959

This article is about the year. For the song by The Sisters of Mercy, see the album Floodland.

Template:Year nav Template:C20YearInTopic Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar.

Events

January

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January 2: Castro's guerilla troops

January 1 - Cultivars of plants named after this date must be named in a modern language, not in Latin.
January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when forces of Fidel Castro advance.
January 2 - CBS Radio cuts four soap operas: Backstage Wife, Our Gal Sunday, Road of Life, and This is Nora Drake.
January 2 - Castro's troops approach Havana.

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Che

January 3 - Island of Addu in the Maldives declares independence.
January 3 - Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.

January 4 - In Cuba, rebel troops lead by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana.

January 4 - In Léopoldville 42 people are killed during clashes between the police and participants of a meeting of the Abako party.

January 6 - Fidel Castro arrives in Havana.

January 7 - The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.

January 8 - Charles De Gaulle inaugurated as the first president of French Fifth Republic.
January 13 - Cuban communists execute 71 supporters of Fulgencio Batista.

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Jan.3 Alaska

January 22 - Knox Mine Disaster - water breaches River Slope mine in Port Griffith, Pennsylvania - 12 miners dead.

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February

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Feb. 3: Crash kills musicians

February 1 - A referendum in Switzerland turns down female suffrage.
February 3 - The chartered plane transporting musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper goes down in an Iowa snowstorm, killing all four occupants on board. The tragedy is later termed "The Day the Music Died" popularized in Don McLean's song American Pie.
February 6 - At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.
February 16 - Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba.
February 16 - A blizzard causes a massive power outage in Newfoundland.
February 17 - USA launches the Vanguard II weather satellite.
February 18 - Jesus Sosa Blanco, murderer of 108 people, executed in Cuba.
February 18 - Women in Nepal vote for the first time.
February 19 - The United Kingdom grants Cyprus its independence.

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February 22: The first Daytona 500.

February 22 - Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500.

February 26 - Author Walter Mene throws acid on a Rubens painting in Munich.

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March

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March 1 - USS Tuscaloosa, USS New Orleans, USS Tennessee and USS West Virginia struck from the Naval Vessel Register.
March 1 - Archbishop Makarios returns to Cyprus from exile.
March 8 - Last television appearance of The Marx Brothers, in The Incredible Jewel Robbery.
March 9 - The Barbie doll debuts.
March 11 - Een beetje by Teddy Scholten (music by Dick Schallies, text by Willy van Hemert) wins Eurovision Song Contest 1959 for Netherlands.
March 12 - Production of the first solid gold "Glaussen Pennies".
March 17 - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, flees Tibet and travels to India.
March 18 - American President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs bill allowing for Hawaiian statehood.
March 19 - Two other islands join Addu in the United Suvadive Republic (abolished September 1963), in the Maldives Islands.
March 31 - Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida is dedicated and opens its gates.
March 31 - Dalai Lama leaves Tibet.

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April

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April 9 - NASA announces its selection of seven military pilots to become the first US astronauts (see Mercury Seven).
April 9 - Frank Lloyd Wright, arguably the most influential American architect of the 20th century dies from an abdominal obstruction.
April 10 - Japanese prince Akihoto married Shōda Michiko.
April 25 - The St. Lawrence Seaway linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean officially opens to shipping.

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May

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May - First Ten Tors event held in Dartmoor.
late May / early June - import tariffs lifted in the United Kingdom.
May 24 - British Empire Day becomes Commonwealth Day.

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June

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June 3 - Singapore becomes a self governing crown colony of Britain with Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister.
June 5 - A new government of the State of Singapore is sworn in by Sir William Goode. Two former Ministers were 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 three-front revolutionary invasion by air and sea takes place in the Dominican Republic consisting of exiles aided by Fidel Castro whose purpose was to overthrow dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Within a few days all but four are captured and executed. Trujillo is killed less than two years later by men partly inspired by the deaths of the 1959 martyrs.
June 23 - Sean Lemass becomes the third Taoiseach of Ireland.
June 23 - Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany (where he resumed a scientific career).
June 26 - Queen Elizabeth II and US Dwight Eisenhower open Saint Lawrence Seaway.

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July

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July - The medical research group studying Minamata disease comes to the conclusion that mercury is the cause. [1]
July 2 - Royal wedding in Belgium: Prince Albert marries the Italian princess 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, Pennsylvania.
July 7 - 14:28 UT Venus occulted the star Regulus. The rare event which will next occur on October 1, 2044 was used for determining the diameter of Venus and the structure of Venus' atmosphere.
July 8 - Charles Ovnand and Dale R. Buis become the first Americans killed in action in Vietnam
July 15 - Steel industry strike in USA, Famous Jazz singer Billie Holiday dies.
July 24 - At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, US vice-president Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev have a "kitchen debate."

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August

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August 4 - Martial law declared in Laos.
August 7 - Explorer program: The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
August 8 - Flood in Taiwan leaves 2,000 dead.
August 14 - Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from space.
August 15 - Cyprus gains independence.
August 21 - Hawaii is admitted as the 50th U.S. state.
August 24 - Cyprus joins United Nations.

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September

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September 13 - Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon as the first man-made object.
September 25 - Ceylon's prime minister SWRD Bandaranaike assassinated.
September 26 - Typhoon Vera, worst storm to hit Japan kills more than 5,000 people.

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Sept.13: Luna 2.

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October

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October 2 - Rod Serling's classic anthology series The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS.
October 7 - U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 sends back first ever photos of the far side of the Moon.
October 12 - At the national congress of APRA in Peru a group of leftist radicals are expelled from the party. They will later form APRA Rebelde.
October 12 - Large scale diamond robbery in London.
October 13 - USA launches Explorer VII.
October 21 - Mau Mau leader Dedan Kimathi is arrested in Nyeri, Kenya.
October 21 - In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
October 31 - Riots in the Belgian Congo.
October 31 - Lee Harvey Oswald announces in Moscow he won't ever return to U.S.

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November

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November 2 - The first section of the M1 motorway was opened between the present junctions 5 and 18.
November 8 - Leeds City Tramways closes down
November 15 - The Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas were brutally murdered.

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December

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December 1 - Cold War: Antarctic Treaty signed - 12 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign a landmark treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on that continent (this was the first arms control agreement established during the Cold War).
December 2 - Malpasset dam in southern France collapses and water flows over the town of Frejus - 412 dead.
December 13 - MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939 film) is telecast for only the second time, but it gains an even larger viewing audience than the first telecast, spurring CBS to make it an annual tradition on television.
December 14 - Makarios selected first president of Cyprus.

Unknown date

The neutrino is first experimentally detected, by Cowan and Reines.
TAT-2 cable goes into operation(February 13).
Pantyhose is invented.
Workers World Party is founded by Sam Marcy.
The first skull of Australopithecus is discovered by Louis Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.
Serengeti becomes a nature preserve.
The first known human with HIV dies in Congo. PMID 9468138
"Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry opens on Broadway in New York.
The current (as of 2006) design of the Japanese 10 yen coin was put into circulation.
Darby O'Gill and the Little People, a film based on H.T. Kavanagh's short stories was released around the world by Walt Disney