Greensboro sit-in begins | February 1, 1960 | HISTORY

On February 1, 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four Black college students spark a nationwide civil rights movement by refusing to leave a “whites-only” lunch counter at a popular retail store after they are denied service. The North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State students—Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond—become known as the “Greensboro Four.”

An idea floated by a Hollywood business leader in 1953 comes to fruition on February 8, 1960, when construction begins on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—today one of the Los Angeles area’s main tourist attractions.

Adolph Coors disappears while driving to work from his Morrison, Colorado, home. The grandson of the Coors’ founder and chairman of the Golden, Colorado, brewery was kidnapped and held for ransom before being shot to death. Surrounding evidence launched one of the FBI’s largest manhunts: the search for Joe Corbett.

The Payola scandal reaches a new level of public prominence and legal gravity on February 11, 1960, when President Eisenhower called it an issue of public morality and the FCC proposed a new law making involvement in Payola a criminal act.

Two decades before the famed "Miracle on Ice," another underdog U.S. Olympic hockey team defeats the Soviet Union team in the semifinals at the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California on February 27, 1960. The next day, the U.S. beats Czechoslovakia to win its first-ever Olympic gold medal in hockey.

After 20 tumultuous years of marriage, actress Lucille Ball files for divorce from her husband and collaborator, Desi Arnaz, on March 4, 1960. The breakup of the couple, stars of the hit sitcom "I Love Lucy" and owners of the innovative Desilu Studios, was one of the highest-profile divorces in American history at the time.

Moments before he was shot to death by a soldier of the Bolivian government, the revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara told his executioner, “Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!” Guevara died a short time later, on October 9, 1967 at the age of 39, but he was correct in his assertion that this would not be the end of his legacy. Today, that legacy almost always takes the form of a single photograph, Guerrillero Heroico, which some have called the most famous photograph in the world.

In the Black township of Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, South Africa, Afrikaner police open fire on a group of unarmed Black South African demonstrators, killing 69 people and wounding 180 in a hail of submachine-gun fire. The demonstrators were protesting against the South African government’s restriction of nonwhite travel. In the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, protests broke out in Cape Town, and more than 10,000 people were arrested before government troops restored order.

On March 28, 1960, the first permanent star is laid in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at the intersection of Hollywood and Gower. It honors film producer and director Stanley Kramer.

Clocking in at three hours and 32 minutes, William Wyler’s Technicolor epic Ben-Hur is the behemoth entry at the 32nd annual Academy Awards ceremony, held on this day in 1960, at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Setting an Oscar record, the film sweeps 11 of the 12 categories in which it was nominated, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Charlton Heston).

On April 14, 1960, the Montreal Canadiens defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup for a record fifth year in a row.

Eddie Cochran, the man behind “Summertime Blues” and “C’mon Everybody,” is killed on April 17, 1960 when the taxi carrying him from a show in Bristol, England, crashed en route to the airport in London, where he was to catch a flight back home to the United States. A raw and exciting rocker with a cocky, rebellious image, Eddie Cochran was very different from the polished and packaged idols being heavily marketed to American teenagers in the years between the rise of Elvis Presley and the arrival of the Beatles. And while he may have faded from popular memory in the years since his tragic and early death, his biggest hits have not.

An American U-2 spy plane is shot down while conducting espionage over the Soviet Union. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month.

On May 2, 1960, Dick Clark concludes his second day of testimony in the so-called Payola hearings—testimony that both saved and altered the course of his career. If Alan Freed, the disk jockey who gave rock and roll its name, was Payola’s biggest casualty, then Dick Clark was its most famous survivor.

Leonid Brezhnev, one of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s most trusted proteges, is selected as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet—the Soviet equivalent to the presidency. This was another important step in Brezhnev’s rise to power in Russia, a rise that he later capped by taking control of the Soviet Union in 1964.

On May 9, 1960, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control pill—Enovid-10, made by the G.D. Searle Company of Chicago, Illinois.

On May 11, 1960, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question," is captured in Argentina. On May 23, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announces to the world that he will stand trial in Israel.

In the wake of the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, 1960, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at the United States and President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a Paris summit meeting between the two heads of state. Khrushchev’s outburst angered Eisenhower and doomed any chances for successful talks or negotiations at the summit.

On May 21, 1960, the first tremor of a series hits Valdivia, Chile. By the time they end, the quakes and their aftereffects kill 5,000 people and leave another 2 million homeless. Registering a magnitude of 7.6, the first earthquake was powerful and killed several people. It turned out to be only a foreshock, however, to one of the most powerful tremors ever recorded.

A tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Chile travels across the Pacific Ocean and kills 61 people in Hilo, Hawaii, on May 23, 1960. The massive 9.5-magnitude quake had killed thousands in Chile the previous day.

During a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge charges that the Soviet Union has engaged in espionage activities at the U.S. embassy in Moscow for years. The charges were obviously an attempt by the United States to deflect Soviet criticisms following the downing of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia earlier in the month.

On June 18, 1960, Arnold Palmer shoots a 65 to win the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver, Colorado. The extraordinary tournament featured three players who each defined consecutive eras in the game with their dominance: Ben Hogan, Palmer and the then-amateur champion Jack Nicklaus.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev trade verbal threats over the future of Cuba. In the following years, Cuba became a dangerous focus in the Cold War competition between the United States and Russia.

On July 11, 1960, the 34-year-old novelist Nelle Harper Lee publishes her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

In Los Angeles, California, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts is nominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party Convention, defeating Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. The next day, Johnson was named Kennedy’s running mate by a unanimous vote of the convention.

On July 21, 1960, the German government passes the “Law Concerning the Transfer of the Share Rights in Volkswagenwerk Limited Liability Company into Private Hands,” known informally as the “Volkswagen Law.”

In the USSR, captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for his confessed espionage.

On September 10, 1960, Hurricane Donna hits the Florida Keys as a Category 4 storm. Having formed near Cape Verde off the African coast, it would go on to cause 150 deaths from Puerto Rico to New England over the course of two weeks.

Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. Castro’s visit stirred indignation and admiration from various sectors of American society, and was climaxed by his speech to the United Nations on September 26.

On September 26, 1960, for the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is broadcast on live television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, met in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S. domestic matters.

Sylvia Pankhurst, British suffragette and international socialist, dies in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the age of 78.

On September 28, 1960, at Boston’s Fenway Park, Red Sox star Ted Williams hits a home run in the last at-bat of his 21-year career.

On October 7, 1960, the first episode of the one-hour television drama "Route 66" airs on CBS. The program had a simple premise: It followed two young men, Buz Murdock (George Maharis) and Tod Stiles (Martin Milner), as they drove across the country in an inherited Corvette (Chevrolet was one of the show’s sponsors), doing odd jobs and looking for adventure.

In the second of four televised debates, Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon turn their attention to foreign policy issues. Three Cold War episodes, in particular, engendered spirited confrontations between Kennedy and Nixon. The first involved Cuba, which had recently come under the control of Fidel Castro. Nixon argued that the island was not “lost” to the United States, and that the course of action followed by the Eisenhower administration had been the best one to allow the Cuban people to “realize their aspirations of progress through freedom.” Kennedy fired back that it was clear that Castro was a communist, and that the Republican administration failed to use U.S. resources effectively to prevent his rise to power. He concluded that, “Today Cuba is lost for freedom.”

In one of the most surreal moments in the history of the Cold War, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev pounds his fist on the table, and according to some reports, removes his shoe and threatens to pound a table with it in protest against a speech critical of Soviet policy in Eastern Europe.

On November 2, 1960, a landmark obscenity case over Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence, ends in the acquittal of Penguin Books. The publisher had been sued for obscenity in publishing an unexpurgated version of Lawrence’s novel, which deals with the affair between the wife of a wealthy, paralyzed landowner and his estate’s gamekeeper. The book had been published in a limited English-language edition in Florence in 1928 and Paris the following year. An expurgated version was published in England in 1932. In 1959, the full text was published in New York, then in London the following year.

In a groundbreaking discovery, primatologist Jane Goodall witnesses a chimpanzee in the act of making and using tools on November 4, 1960—an ability previously believed to be exclusive to humans.

John F. Kennedy, 43, becomes the youngest man ever to be elected president of the United States, narrowly beating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon. He was also the first Catholic to become president.

On November 14, 1960, a court order mandating the desegregation of schools comes into effect in New Orleans, Louisiana. Six-year-old Ruby Bridges walks into William Frantz Elementary School, accompanied by federal marshals and taunted by angry crowds, instantly becoming a symbol of the civil rights movement, an icon for the cause of racial equality and a target for racial animosity.

On November 24, 1960, Philadelphia Warrior Wilt Chamberlain snags 55 rebounds in a game against the Boston Celtics and sets an NBA record for the most rebounds in a single game.

On November 25, 1960, a car carrying three Dominican political dissidents, the Mirabal sisters, is stopped as they travel to visit a prison where two of their husbands are being held. Members of the Dominican Republic’s secret police, including the alleged “right-hand man” of dictator Rafael Trujillo, beat the sisters and their driver to death, placing their bodies in the car and pushing it over a cliff in an attempt to make the murders look like an accident. The cover-up fools nobody, and the Mirabal sisters become martyrs of the Dominican resistance. Within a year, Trujillo will also be killed in a roadside ambush.

On December 16, 1960, two airplanes collide over New York City, killing 134 people on the planes and on the ground. The improbable mid-air collision was the only such accident to have occurred over a major city in the U.S.

North Vietnam announces the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of the South at a conference held “somewhere in the South.” This organization, more commonly known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), was designed to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule.