The Weavers, one of the most significant popular-music groups of the postwar era, saw their career nearly destroyed during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Even with anti-communist fervor in decline by the early 1960s, the Weavers' leftist politics were used against them as late as January 2, 1962, when the group's appearance on The Jack Paar Show was cancelled over their refusal to sign an oath of political loyalty.

On January 10, 1962, the United States Air Force launches Operation Ranch Hand, a “modern technological area-denial technique” designed to expose the roads and trails used by the Viet Cong.

On January 10, 1962, an avalanche on the slopes of an extinct volcano kills more than 4,000 people in Peru. Nine towns and seven smaller villages were destroyed.

On January 13, 1962, Ernie Kovacs, a comedian who hosted his own television shows during the 1950s and is said to have influenced such TV hosts as Johnny Carson and David Letterman, dies at the age of 42 after crashing his Chevrolet Corvair into a telephone pole in Los Angeles, California, while driving in a rainstorm. Kovacs, who often appeared on camera with his trademark cigar, was found by police with an unlit cigar, leading to speculation that he had been reaching for the cigar and lost control of his vehicle. The Corvair was later made infamous by Ralph Nader’s groundbreaking 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, about unsafe practices in the auto industry.

American folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary take a decisive step on their path to success on January 29, 1962, when they sign their first recording contract with Warner Bros.

The first U.S. Air Force plane is lost in South Vietnam. The C-123 aircraft crashed while spraying defoliant on a Viet Cong ambush site.

The first U.S. helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. It was one of 15 helicopters ferrying South Vietnamese Army troops into battle near the village of Hong My in the Mekong Delta.

On February 7, 1962, President John F. Kennedy's Proclamation 3447 goes into effect, broadening the United States' restrictions on trade with Cuba. The ensuing embargo, which effectively restricts all trade between Cuba and the United States, has had profoundly negative effects on the island nation's economy and shaped the recent history of the Western Hemisphere.

On February 10, 1962, American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers is released by the Soviets in exchange for Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel, a senior KGB spy who was caught in the United States five years earlier.

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Herschel Glenn Jr. is successfully launched into space aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut.

On March 2, 1962, Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points against the New York Knicks during a home game in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was the first time that a professional basketball player had scored 100 points in a single contest; the previous record, 78, had been set by Chamberlain earlier in the season. During the game, Chamberlain sank 36 field goals and 28 foul shots, both league records.

On March 18, 1962, France and the leaders of the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) sign a peace agreement to end the seven-year Algerian War, signaling the end of 130 years of colonial French rule in Algeria.

On April 9, 1962, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno becomes the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar, for her role of Anita in West Side Story (1961).

Two commuter trains and a freight train collide near Tokyo, Japan, killing more than 160 people and injuring twice that number on May 3, 1962.

If you’d told a randomly selected group of American music fans in the spring of 1962 that a British act would soon achieve total dominance of the American pop scene, change the face of music and fashion and inspire a generation of future pop stars to take up an instrument and join a band, they would probably have scratched their heads and struggled to imagine such a thing. The Beatles were complete unknowns at this point. Instead, if there was any image that would have come to mind, it would have been of middle-aged men playing the clarinet in bowler hats and stripey waistcoats. Up to that point, the single, solitary Briton ever to have reached the top of the American charts in the rock and roll era was a man by the name of Mr. Acker Bilk. His instrumental single, “Stranger On the Shore” provided the first, false hint of the British Invasion to come when it went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 26, 1962.

Near Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” was executed for his crimes against humanity.

Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s famously controversial novel Lolita has its New York premiere on June 13, 1962. Even its advertising posters pose the question: “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?”

On July 9, 1962, folk singer Bob Dylan walks into a studio and records the song that would make him a star: “Blowin’ In The Wind.”

The United States Patent Office issues the Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin a patent for his three-point automobile safety belt “for use in vehicles, especially road vehicles” on July 10, 1962.

On August 5, 1962, movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles. She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand. Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was “caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide.”

East German guards gun down a young man trying to escape across the Berlin Wall into West Berlin and leave him to bleed to death. It was one of the ugliest incidents to take place at one of the ugliest symbols of the Cold War.

On August 22, 1962, President Charles de Gaulle of France survives one of several assassination attempts against him thanks to the superior performance of the presidential automobile: The sleek, aerodynamic Citroen DS 19, known as “La Deesse” (The Goddess).

On August 25, 1962, a diminutive, 17-year-old singer named Eva Narcissus Boyd scored her first and only #1 pop hit with “The Loco-Motion.”

On September 15, 1962, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' "Sherry" hits the top of the pop music charts. It was the start of a remarkable run of hits.

Rachel Carson’s watershed work Silent Spring is first published on September 27, 1962. Originally serialized in The New Yorker magazine, the book shed light on the damage that man-made pesticides inflict on the environment. Its publication is often viewed as the beginning of the modern environmentalist movement in America.

In Oxford, Mississippi, James H. Meredith, an African American student, is escorted onto the University of Mississippi campus by U.S. Marshals, setting off a deadly riot. Two men were killed before the violence was quelled by more than 3,000 federal soldiers. The next day, Meredith successfully enrolled and began to attend classes amid continuing disruption.

On October 1, 1962, Johnny Carson takes over from Jack Paar as host of the late-night talk program The Tonight Show. Carson went on to host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for three decades, becoming one of the biggest figures in entertainment in the 20th century.

Pope John XXIII convenes an ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church—the first in 92 years. In summoning the ecumenical council—a general meeting of the bishops of the church—the pope hoped to bring spiritual rebirth to Catholicism and cultivate greater unity with the other branches of Christianity.

The Cuban Missile Crisis begins on October 14, 1962, bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. Photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane offered incontrovertible evidence that Soviet-made medium-range missiles in Cuba—capable of carrying nuclear warheads—were now stationed 90 miles off the American coastline.

On October 20, 1962, the quirky and spooky song “Monster Mash” hits No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, just in time for Halloween. The self-described “graveyard smash” becomes a literal smash hit, spending the last two weeks of October at the top of the charts—and remaining a beloved Halloween classic decades later.

On October 20, 1962, the White House press corps is told that President John F. Kennedy has a cold; in reality, he is holding secret meetings with advisors on the eve of ordering a blockade of Cuba.

In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, President John F. Kennedy announces on October 22, 1962 that U.S. spy planes have discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. These missile sites—under construction but nearing completion—housed medium-range missiles capable of striking a number of major cities in the United States, including Washington, D.C.

On October 24, 1962, soul singer James Brown gives an electrifying performance on Black America’s most famous stage—a performance recorded and later released as Live at the Apollo (1963). It was the first breakthrough album of Brown’s career—a major step toward his eventual crossover and conquest of the mainstream pop music world.

Complicated and tension-filled negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union finally result in a plan to end the two-week-old Cuban Missile Crisis. A frightening period in which nuclear holocaust seemed imminent began to come to an end.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders withdrawal of missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.

On November 3, 1962, female vocal act the Crystals score a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with the song “He’s A Rebel”—a record on which the credited artists had not sung a single note.

On November 6, 1962, the United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution condemning South Africa’s racist apartheid policies and calling on all its members to end economic and military relations with the country.

On November 8, 1962, the famous Ford Rotunda stands in Dearborn, Michigan for the last time: the next day, it is destroyed in a massive fire. Some 1.5 million people visited the Rotunda each year, making it the fifth most popular tourist attraction in the U.S. (behind Niagara Falls, Smokey Mountain National Park, the Smithsonian, and the Lincoln Memorial).

On December 25, 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird, a film based on the 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Harper Lee, opens in Los Angeles. The Great Depression-era story of racial injustice and the loss of childhood innocence is told from the perspective of a young Alabama girl named Scout Finch, played in the film by Mary Badham, who lives with her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford) and their widowed attorney father Atticus (Gregory Peck). While Scout, Jem and their friend Dill (John Megna) become fascinated by the mysterious shut-in Boo Radley (Robert Duvall), Atticus goes to court to defend a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.