January 2 –
NAACP Executive Secretary
Roy Wilkins praises U.S. President
John F. Kennedy's "personal role" in advancing civil rights.
January 4 –
New York City introduces a subway train that operates without a crew on board.
January 26 –
Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon but later misses its target by 22,000 miles.
January 30 – Two of the high-wire "
Flying Wallendas" are killed, when their famous 7-person pyramid collapses during a performance in
Detroit, Michigan.
March 5–9 –
Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962: One of the ten worst storms in the United States in the 20th century occurs, killing 40 people, injuring over 1,000, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage in six states.
June 3 –
Air France Flight 007,
Boeing 707Chateau de Sully on a charter flight carrying cultural and civic leaders of Atlanta, Georgia, overruns the runway at
Orly Airport in Paris; 130 of 132 passengers are killed.
Robert M. White flies the
X-15 to an altitude of 314,750 feet (59 miles, 96 km) to qualify him for
USAFAstronaut Wings becoming the first "winged" astronaut and one of a few who have flown into space without a conventional spacecraft.
July 22 –
Mariner program: the
Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed.
July 23 –
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American to be inducted into the Baseball Museum And Hall Of Fame.
The infamous
Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with wind gusts up to 170 mph (270 km/h); 46 are killed, 11 billion board feet (26 million m3) of timber is blown down, with $230 million U.S. in damages.
October 28 –
Cuban Missile Crisis:
Soviet Union leader
Nikita Khrushchev announces that he has ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in
Cuba. In a secret deal between
Kennedy and Khrushchev, Kennedy agrees to the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. The fact that this deal is not made public makes it look like the Soviets have backed down.
November
November 7 –
Richard M. Nixon loses the
California governor's race. In his concession speech, he states that this is his "
last press conference" and that "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more".
December 2 –
Vietnam War: after a trip to
Vietnam at the request of U.S. President
John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senate Majority Leader
Mike Mansfield becomes the first American official to make a non-optimistic public comment on the war's progress.
December 14 – U.S. spacecraft
Mariner 2 flies by
Venus, becoming the first probe to successfully transmit data from another planet.
December 24 –
Cuba releases the last 1,113 participants in the
Bay of Pigs Invasion to the U.S., in exchange for food worth $53 million.
December 30 – An unexpected storm buries Maine under five feet of snow, forcing the Bangor Daily News to miss a publication date for the first and only time in its history.
Undated
American advertising man Martin K. Speckter invents the
interrobang, a new English-language
punctuation mark.
January 2 –
NAACP Executive Secretary
Roy Wilkins praises U.S. President
John F. Kennedy's "personal role" in advancing civil rights.
January 4 –
New York City introduces a subway train that operates without a crew on board.
January 26 –
Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon but later misses its target by 22,000 miles.
January 30 – Two of the high-wire "
Flying Wallendas" are killed, when their famous 7-person pyramid collapses during a performance in
Detroit, Michigan.
March 5–9 –
Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962: One of the ten worst storms in the United States in the 20th century occurs, killing 40 people, injuring over 1,000, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage in six states.
June 3 –
Air France Flight 007,
Boeing 707Chateau de Sully on a charter flight carrying cultural and civic leaders of Atlanta, Georgia, overruns the runway at
Orly Airport in Paris; 130 of 132 passengers are killed.
Robert M. White flies the
X-15 to an altitude of 314,750 feet (59 miles, 96 km) to qualify him for
USAFAstronaut Wings becoming the first "winged" astronaut and one of a few who have flown into space without a conventional spacecraft.
July 22 –
Mariner program: the
Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed.
July 23 –
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American to be inducted into the Baseball Museum And Hall Of Fame.
The infamous
Columbus Day Storm strikes the U.S. Pacific Northwest with wind gusts up to 170 mph (270 km/h); 46 are killed, 11 billion board feet (26 million m3) of timber is blown down, with $230 million U.S. in damages.
October 28 –
Cuban Missile Crisis:
Soviet Union leader
Nikita Khrushchev announces that he has ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in
Cuba. In a secret deal between
Kennedy and Khrushchev, Kennedy agrees to the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. The fact that this deal is not made public makes it look like the Soviets have backed down.
November
November 7 –
Richard M. Nixon loses the
California governor's race. In his concession speech, he states that this is his "
last press conference" and that "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more".
December 2 –
Vietnam War: after a trip to
Vietnam at the request of U.S. President
John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senate Majority Leader
Mike Mansfield becomes the first American official to make a non-optimistic public comment on the war's progress.
December 14 – U.S. spacecraft
Mariner 2 flies by
Venus, becoming the first probe to successfully transmit data from another planet.
December 24 –
Cuba releases the last 1,113 participants in the
Bay of Pigs Invasion to the U.S., in exchange for food worth $53 million.
December 30 – An unexpected storm buries Maine under five feet of snow, forcing the Bangor Daily News to miss a publication date for the first and only time in its history.
Undated
American advertising man Martin K. Speckter invents the
interrobang, a new English-language
punctuation mark.