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Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events[link]

January[link]

• January 1
  • Cultivars of plants named after this date must be named in a modern language, not in Latin.
  • Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance.
• January 2
  • CBS Radio cuts four soap operas: Backstage Wife, Our Gal Sunday, The Road of Life, and This is Nora Drake.
  • Castro's troops approach Havana.
  • Soviet Union successfully launches Luna 1 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome.
• January 3
  • The island of Addu in the Maldives declares independence.
  • Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
• January 4
  • In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana.
  • In Léopoldville, 42 people are killed during food fights between the police and participants of a meeting of the Abako Party.
• January 6
  • Fidel Castro arrives in Havana.
  • The International Maritime Organization is inaugurated.
• January 7 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
• January 8 – Charles De Gaulle is inaugurated as the first president of the French Fifth Republic.
• January 12
  • Caves of Nerja are discovered in Spain.
  • Motown Records founded by Berry Gordy, Jr.

January 3 Alaska

• January 13 – Cuban communists execute 71 supporters of Fulgencio Batista.
• January 22 – Knox Mine Disaster: Water breaches the River Slope Mine near Pittston City, Pennsylvania in Port Griffith; 12 miners are killed.
• January 25 – Pope John XXIII announces that the Second Vatican Council will be convened in Rome.
• January 29 – Walt Disney releases his 16th animated film, Sleeping Beauty in Beverly Hills. It is Disney's first animated film to be shown in 70mm and modern 6-track stereophonic sound.^[1] Also on the program is Disney's new live-action short subject Grand Canyon, which uses the music of Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite. Grand Canyon wins an Oscar for Best Documentary Short.
• January 30 – Danish passenger/cargo ship MS Hans Hedtoft, returning to Copenhagen after its maiden voyage to Greenland, strikes an iceberg and sinks off the Greenland coast with the loss of all 95 on board.^[2]

February[link]

February 3: Crash kills musicians and pilot.

• February 1 – A referendum in Switzerland turns down female suffrage.
• February 3
  • A chartered plane transporting musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper and pilot Roger Peterson goes down in foggy conditions near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all 4 occupants on board. The tragedy is later termed "The Day the Music Died", popularized in Don McLean's 1972 song "American Pie".
  • American Airlines Flight 320, a Lockheed L-188 Electra heading from Chicago to New York City, crashes into the East River, killing 65 of the 73 people on board.
• February 6 – At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first successful test firing of a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile is accomplished.
• February 9 – Yugoslavia and Spain set trade relations (not diplomatic ones)
• February 13 – TAT-2 cable goes into operation.
• February 16
  • Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba.
  • A blizzard causes a massive power outage in Newfoundland.
• February 17 – The United States launches the Vanguard II weather satellite.
• February 18
  • Jesús Sosa Blanco, murderer of 108 people, is executed in Cuba.
  • Women in Nepal vote for the first time.
• February 19 – The United Kingdom decides to grant Cyprus its independence.
• February 20 – The Canadian Government cancels the CF-105 Arrow project.
• February 22 – Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500.

March[link]

• March 1
  • The USS Tuscaloosa, USS New Orleans, USS Tennessee and USS West Virginia are struck from the Naval Vessel Register.
  • Archbishop Makarios returns to Cyprus from exile.
• March 2 – Recording sessions for the album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis take place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City.
• March 8 – The Marx Brothers make their last TV appearance, in The Incredible Jewel Robbery.
• March 9 – The Barbie doll debuts.
• March 10 – A Tibetan uprising against 10 years of Chinese rule erupts in Lhasa.
• March 11
  • Een beetje by Teddy Scholten (music by Dick Schallies, text by Willy van Hemert) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1959 for the Netherlands.
  • A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry opens on Broadway in New York.
• March 17 – Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, starts to flee Tibet and travels to India.
• March 18 – American President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill allowing for Hawaiian statehood.
• March 19 – Two other islands join Addu in the United Suvadive Republic (abolished September 1963), in the Maldives Islands.
• March 31
  • Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida is dedicated and opens its gates.
  • The Dalai Lama flees from Tibet and is granted asylum in India.

April[link]

• April 6 – The 31st Academy Awards ceremony is held.
• April 8 – The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) is established.
• April 9 – NASA announces its selection of 7 military pilots to become the first U.S. astronauts (see Mercury Seven).
• April 10 – Japanese Prince Akihito marries Shōda Michiko.
• April 22 – Recording sessions for the album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis take place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City.
• April 25 – The St. Lawrence Seaway linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean officially opens to shipping.
• April 27 – National People's Congress elects Liu Shaoqi as Chairman of the People's Republic of China, as a successor of Mao Zedong.

May[link]

• May
  • The first Ten Tors event is held in Dartmoor.
  • Import tariffs are lifted in the United Kingdom.
• May 2 – 1959 FA Cup Final: Nottingham Forest defeats Luton Town 2–1.
• May 18 – The National Liberation Committee of Côte d'Ivoire is launched in Conakry, Guinea.
• May 21 – Gypsy: A Musical Fable, starring Ethel Merman in her last new musical, opens on Broadway and runs for 702 performances
• May 24 – British Empire Day is renamed Commonwealth Day.
• May 28 – Two monkeys, Able and Miss Baker are the first living beings to successfully return to Earth from space aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18.

June[link]

• June 3 – Singapore becomes a self-governing crown colony of Britain with Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister.
• June 5 – A new government of the State of Singapore is sworn in by Sir William Goode. Two former ministers are re-elected to the Legislative Assembly.
• June 8 – The USS Barbero and United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail.
• June 9 – The USS George Washington is launched as the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles.
• June 14
  • Disneyland Monorail System, the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere, opens to the public in Anaheim, California.
  • A 3-front revolutionary invasion by air and sea takes place in the Dominican Republic, consisting of exiles aided by Fidel Castro and the Venezuelan government, whose objective is to overthrow dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Within a few days most are captured and executed. Only four are released by the government. Trujillo is killed less than two years later by men partly inspired by the deaths of the 1959 revolutionaries.
• June 18 – The film The Nun's Story, based on the best-selling novel, is released. Audrey Hepburn stars as the title character; she later says that this is her favorite film role. The film is a box-office hit, and is nominated for several Oscars.
• June 23
  • Sean Lemass becomes the third Taoiseach of Ireland.
  • Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only 9 years in a British prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany (where he resumes a scientific career).
• June 26
  • Elizabeth II (Queen of Canada) and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower open the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
  • Darby O'Gill and the Little People, a film based on H.T. Kavanagh's short stories, is released in the U.S. by Walt Disney, after world premiering in Ireland.

July[link]

• July 1 – The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway by Canada and the United States, officiated by Queen Elizabeth II.
• July 2 – Prince Albert of Belgium marries Italian Donna Paola Ruffo di Calabria.
• July 4 – With the admission of Alaska as the 49th U.S. state earlier in the year, the 49-star flag of the United States debuts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• July 7 – At 14:28 UT Venus occults the star Regulus. The rare event (which will next occur on October 1, 2044) is used for determining the diameter of Venus and the structure of Venus' atmosphere.
• July 8 – Charles Ovnand and Dale R. Buis become the first Americans killed in action in Vietnam.
• July 14 Groups of Kurdish and communist militias under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani committed the Kerkuk 1959 Massacre in which tens of unarmed civilians were killed.^[3]
• July 15 – A strike occurs against the U.S. steel industry.
• July 17 – The first skull of Australopithecus is discovered by Louis Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania.
• July 22 – Kumamoto University medical research group studying Minamata disease comes to the conclusion that mercury is the cause.
• July 24 – At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a "kitchen debate".
• July 25 – The SR-N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours, on the 50th anniversary of Louis Bleriot's first crossing by heavier-than-air craft.

August[link]

• August 4 – Martial law is declared in Laos.
• August 7
  • Explorer program: The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
  • United States The Roseburg Oregon Blast kills 14 and causes $12 million worth of damage.
• August 8 – A flood in Taiwan kills 2,000.
• August 14 – Explorer 6 sends the first picture of Earth from orbit.
• August 15 – Cyprus gains independence.
• August 17
  • The Hebgen Lake Earthquake in southwest Montana kills 28.
  • Columbia Records releases Miles Davis' groundbreaking album, Kind of Blue.
• August 19 – The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) is established.
• August 21 – Hawaii is admitted as the 50th U.S. state.
• August 24 – Cyprus joins the United Nations.
• August 26 – The original Mini designed by Sir Alec Issigonis is launched.

September[link]

• September 14 – Luna 2 becomes the first man-made object to crash on the Moon.
• September 17 – The first Navy Navigation Satellite System Transit 1A is launched but fails to reach orbit.
• September 23 – The M/S Princess of Tasmania (Australia's first passenger RO/RO diesel ferry) makes its maiden voyage across the Bass Strait.
• September 25 – Ceylon's prime minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike is assassinated.
• September 26
  • Typhoon Vera hits central Honshū, Japan, killing an estimated 5,098, injuring another 38,921, and leaving 1,533,000 homeless. Most of the victims and damage are centered in the Nagoya area.
  • The first official large unit action of the Vietnam War took place when two companies of the ARVN 23d Division were ambushed by a well-organized Vietcong force of several hundred identified as the "2d Liberation Battalion".
• September 30 – Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev meets Mao Zedong in Beijing.

September 13: Luna 2.

October[link]

• October 2 – Rod Serling's classic anthology series The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS.
• October 7 – The U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 sends back the first ever photos of the far side of the Moon.
• October 12 – At the national APRA Congress in Peru, a group of leftist radicals is expelled from the party; they later form APRA Rebelde.
• October 13 – The United States launches Explorer 7.
• October 21 – In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) opens to the public.
• October 31 – Riots break out in the Belgian Congo.