Top News Stories from 1960

World Events

World Statistics

Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade
Nobel Peace Prize: Albert John Luthuli (South Africa)
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U.S. Events

U.S. Statistics

Vice President: Richard M. Nixon
Population: 180,671,158
Life expectancy: 69.7 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 18.9
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000) 17.3
Homicide Rate (per 100,000): 4.7
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Economics

US GDP (1998 dollars): $526.6 billion
Federal spending: $92.19 billion
Federal debt $290.5 billion
Consumer Price Index: $29.6
Unemployment: 5.5%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.04

Sports

World Series
Pittsburgh d. NY Yankees
NBA Championship
Boston d. St. Louis Hawks
Stanley Cup
Montreal d. Toronto
Wimbledon
Women: Maria Bueno d. S. Reynolds (8-6 6-0)
Men: Neale Fraser d. R. Laver (6-4 3-6 9-7 7-5)
Kentucky Derby Champion
Venetian Way
NCAA Basketball Championship
Ohio St. d. California
NCAA Football Champions
Minnesota (AP, UPI, NFF) (8-2-0) & Mississippi (FW) (10-0-1) 1960 Summer Olympics

Entertainment

Entertainment Awards

Pulitzer Prizes
Fiction: Advise and Consent, Allen Drury
Music: Second String Quartet, Elliott Carter
Drama: Fiorello! George Abbott, Jerome Weidman, Jerry Bock, and Sheldon Harnick
Academy Award, Best Picture: Ben-Hur, Sam Zimbalist, producer (MGM)
Nobel Prize for Literature: St. John Perse (Alexis St.-Léger Léger) (France)
Record of the Year: "Mack the Knife," Bobby Darin
Album of the Year: Come Dance With Me, Frank Sinatra (Capitol)
Song of the Year: "The Battle of New Orleans," Jimmy Driftwood, songwriter
Miss America: Lynda Lee Mead (MS)
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Events

  • Seventy million people watch the presidential debate between Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon.
  • John Coltrane forms his own quartet and becomes the voice of jazz's New Wave movement.
  • Ninety percent of U.S. homes have a television set.
  • Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho terrifies movie-goers and becomes one of the year's most successful films, as well as one of the most memorable psychological thrillers.

Movies

  • Psycho, The Apartment, The Sundowners, Sons and Lovers

Books

Science

Nobel Prizes in Science

Chemistry: Willard F. Libby (US), for “atomic time clock” to measure age of objects by measuring their radioactivity
Physics: Donald A. Glaser (US), for invention of ""bubble chamber"" to study subatomic particles
Physiology or Medicine: Sir Macfarlane Burnet (Australia) and Peter Brian Medawar (UK), for discovery of acquired immunological tolerance
More Nobel Prizes in 1998...

Death

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