The 1960s in five headlines

1960

The first episode went out live in December. Critics were unconvinced that a programme about a back street in Salford would hold an audience, and one reviewer gave it three weeks. It is now the longest-running television soap opera in the world.

1961

Yuri Gagarin completed a single orbit and ejected from his capsule to parachute down separately, a detail the Soviet Union concealed for years to protect the flight record. The Americans put a man in space three weeks later, and lost the argument about who had been first.

1962

Thirteen days in October, and the closest the Cold War came to a nuclear exchange. The blockade was carefully called a quarantine, because a blockade is legally an act of war. The crisis produced the Moscow–Washington hotline the following year.

1966

A colliery spoil tip above the Welsh village of Aberfan slid down the hillside on a wet October morning and buried Pantglas Junior School minutes after lessons began. The subsequent tribunal blamed the National Coal Board directly. It remains one of the darkest days in modern British history.

1969

An estimated 600 million people watched, then roughly a fifth of everyone alive. The lunar module landed with under a minute of fuel remaining, and the guidance computer had less processing power than a modern washing machine.