Cutting off Cuba (Jan. 3): Washington breaks diplomatic ties with Cuba, where two years earlier Fidel Castro had staged a revolution that took the nation into the Soviet camp.

	President and Mrs. Kennedy arriving at an inaugural ball

Kennedy Inaugural (Jan. 20): The newly inaugurated 35th president, John F. Kennedy, outlines for the nation a future fraught with challenge and danger. "In the long history of the world only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it," Kennedy says.

Soviet in Space (April 12): Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, 27, is launched into Earth orbit from a secret Soviet complex in Central Asia.

Ill-Fated Invasion (April 17): Seeking to overthrow the Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba, 1,500 armed Cuban exiles land at the Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron). The invasion soon turns into a disaster. The United States, which had trained the force, failed to provide adequate military support. Within 72 hours, more than a third of the force will be dead, and nearly all the survivors will be captured by Cuban forces. Although the plan had been set in motion during the Eisenhower administration, President Kennedy will accept full responsibility for the debacle.

Dominican Troubles (May 30): The brutal 31-year reign of Dominican Republic president Rafael Trujillo ends in assassination by rival military officers. Political squabbles over his successor take the Caribbean nation from one crisis to another for the next several years.

TV Wasteland (May 9): The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, issues an indictment of TV programming: "You will see a vast wasteland: a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families ... blood and thunder ... mayhem, violence, sadism, murder ... private eyes, more violence, and cartoons .. and, endlessly, commercials ... ."

Asylum Seeker (June 17): Rudolf Nureyev, a promising star in Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, requests asylum in the West. His defection is a coup for the West -- and for Nureyev. Within a week, he is one of the highest-paid dancers in Europe.

	Hemingway

Being Ernest (July 2): Years of heavy drinking and health problems finally catch up with celebrated novelist Ernest Hemingway. In April, he had entered the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to get treatment for severe depression. Two days after returning home to Ketchum, Idaho, he takes his life with a hunting rifle.

Berlin Barrier (Aug. 13): Soldiers string barbed wire across the occupied metropolis of East Berlin, separating the communist east from the capitalist west. Eventually, the barbed wire is replaced by concrete walls, electrified fences and sentry towers and is called the Berlin Wall.

Blowing in the Wind (September): Music critics take notice of a young folk singer named Bob Dylan playing in a Greenwich Village coffeehouse.

	Maris

More Games, More Homers (Oct. 1): Roger Maris hits his 61st home run against the Boston Red Sox in the last game of the season at a half-empty Yankee Stadium. The round-tripper catapults Maris into the record books as the first slugger to break Babe Ruth's 1927 record of 60 home runs in a single season. But the baseball commissioner has ruled that, to break Ruth's record, a player must hit 61 home runs in 154 games -- the same number of games in which Ruth hit 60. The American League has added two teams in 1961, forcing the regular season to 162 games.