Timeline May 1960

Events in May 1960 9

• 1890 – 1960 Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Died 30 May 1960, aged 70 Russian poet and novelist best known for Doctor Zhivago, for which he was awarded and then forced to decline the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died at his home in Peredelkino near Moscow.
• 1960 Roy Orbison releases Only the Lonely Monument Records His breakthrough, with his operatic falsetto.
• 1960 Dwight D. Eisenhower and the U-2 incident A U-2 spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union, wrecking the Paris summit two weeks later.
• 1960 U-2 spy plane shot down over Soviet Union Gary Powers captured, Paris summit collapses Soviet forces shoot down an American U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk and capture its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. The incident derails a planned Paris summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev and deepens Cold War tensions.
• 1960 Franco Baresi born in Travagliato Franchino Baresi is born on 8 May 1960 in Travagliato, a small town in the province of Brescia in northern Italy, the youngest of five siblings in a farming family. His mother dies when Franco is 11; his father dies three years later, leaving both Franco and his older brother Giuseppe orphaned at 14. The brothers are taken in by relatives and continue playing football, which becomes the structure around which their difficult adolescence is organised.
• 1960 FDA approves the birth control pill Enovid becomes the first approved oral contraceptive The US Food and Drug Administration approves Enovid, the first oral contraceptive pill, for general use. Its introduction transforms reproductive choices for women in the United States and, later, worldwide.
• 1960 Adolf Eichmann captured in Argentina Mossad agents seize former Nazi official in Buenos Aires Israeli Mossad agents capture former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he had been living under a false identity. He is smuggled to Israel to stand trial for his role in organizing the Holocaust.
• 1960 First working laser demonstrated Theodore Maiman builds a ruby laser Physicist Theodore Maiman operates the first working laser at Hughes Research Laboratories in California, using a synthetic ruby crystal. The invention opens the way for technologies ranging from fiber optics to surgery.
• 1960 Valdivia earthquake strikes Chile Most powerful earthquake ever recorded A magnitude 9.5 earthquake strikes southern Chile near Valdivia, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded. The quake and resulting tsunamis kill thousands and cause damage as far away as Hawaii and Japan.