The Beginning of a New Era - 1961

Ephemerides

• A new step in the conquest of space takes place with the first manned flight around the Earth by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
• Cuban exiles in the United States disembark in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and are soundly trounced in their bid to overthrow Fidel Castro.
• American writer Ernest Hemingway commits suicide while in France, writer Céline (Louis-Ferdinand Destouches) dies.
• A new episode in the Cold War with the erection of the Berlin Wall that divides the German city into two sections, East and West Berlin.
• The remains of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin are removed from the mausoleum in Red Square in Moscow.