Serial Killing (Jan. 29): Charles Starkweather, 19, and Caril Ann Fugate, 14, are captured in Wyoming after a 110-mph car chase and shoot-out. Starkweather confesses to killing 10 people in or near Lincoln, Neb., telling the sheriff in Lincoln that he just wanted to "be somebody." Starkweather represents a new breed of American criminal: the serial killer. In June 1959, Starkweather will be put to death in Nebraska's electric chair. Fugate is sentenced to prison; she will be paroled in 1976.

Music Surmounts Tension (April 11): About 1,500 jam the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and thousands more wait outside to hear Van Cliburn, a tall young pianist from Texas, perform during the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition. Despite sky-high Cold War tensions, Cliburn brings down the house and wins first prize.

East vs. West (April 15): The national pastime goes coast to coast as major league baseball debuts in California. The New York Giants, moved to San Francisco, and the Brooklyn Dodgers, uprooted to Los Angeles, meet for the first big-league game at Seals Stadium in San Francisco, where the Giants defeat the Dodgers 8-0.

Arnie's Army (April 16): Arnold Palmer, son of a golf pro from Youngstown, Pa., wins the Masters by a stroke to claim his first major championship. By year's end, the popular Palmer is the tour's leading money winner, earning $42,000.

No Great Leap (May 23): Dissatisfied by his country's standing in the economic world order, Mao Tse-tung launches China on a "Great Leap Forward." Millions of peasants are organized into about 24,000 rural "people's communes." The program appears successful at first, but waste and mismanagement lead to disappointing results. Historians will later estimate that 20 million or more Chinese died in the resulting famine.

Soccer Star (June 28): Pele leads Brazil to the World Cup soccer title with a 5-2 win over Sweden.

Writer Denied (Oct. 23): Russian author Boris Pasternak wins the Nobel Prize for literature. His masterpiece, "Dr. Zhivago," published a year earlier in Italy, had been an instant best-seller. But the Soviet regime, uncomfortable with the book's critique of Marxism, the Russian Revolution and Christian themes, denounces the author as a traitor. In the end, Pasternak will turn down the Nobel honor.

Jet Setting (Oct. 26): The jet age dawns when Pan American World Airways launches trans-Atlantic flights between New York and Paris using a Boeing 707.

New Pope (Oct. 28): Angelo Giuseppe Cardinal Roncali, patriarch of Venice, is named pope to succeed Pius XII, who had died Oct. 9. The new pope will be known as John XXIII.