January–April – An outbreak of smallpox spreading from Cardiff infects 45 people and kills 19 in South Wales; 900,000 people in the region are vaccinated against the disease.[1]
2 January – BBC Television broadcasts the first episode of Z-Cars, noted as a realistic portrayal of the police force.
22 January – James Hanratty goes on trial for the August 1961 A6 murder. He denies the murder of 36-year-old Michael Gregsten and the attempted murder of Mr Gregsten's mistress Valerie Storie, who is paralysed by a gunshot wound.[5]
4 February – The Sunday Times becomes the first newspaper to print a colour supplement.[6]
10 February – End of the Queen's 10th regnal year. From this year, Acts of Parliament are dated by calendar year.
16 February – The 430-ft high 275kV Tyne Crossing power lines collapse on the same day that the British highest wind speed of 177mph on Lowther Hill in south-west Scotland is recorded.[7]
2 April – Panda crossings are introduced (in London) but their complex sequences of pulsating and flashing lights cause confusion amongst drivers and pedestrians.[12]
4 April – James Hanratty is hanged at HM Prison Bedford for the A6 murder, despite protests from many people who believe he is innocent, and the late introduction into his trial of witnesses who claim to have seen him in Rhyl, North Wales, on the day of the murder.
23 April – This year's Aldermaston March culminates in a 150,000-strong demonstration against proliferation of nuclear weapons in Hyde Park, London.[4]
26 April – Ariel 1, the UK's first satellite, is launched from the United States.[14]
27 April – Opinion polls show that less than half of voters now approve of Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister.[15]
26 May – Acker Bilk's 1961 instrumental recording "Stranger on the Shore" becomes the first British recording to reach number one in the US Billboard Hot 100.
6 August – Jamaica becomes independent from the United Kingdom.[26]
12 August – The BMC ADO16 economy car series, best known as the Austin/Morris 1100, is launched; this becomes Britain's best selling car for most of the 1960s.
John Vassall, a former clerical officer in naval intelligence, is sentenced to 18 years imprisonment after admitting to passing secret material to the Soviet Union.[34]
24 October – GCHQ's interception station at Scarborough is the first to detect that Soviet merchant ships implicated in the Cuban Missile Crisis are returning to their bases.[35]
26 October – St Andrew's Hall, a concert hall in Glasgow, is destroyed in a fire thought to have been caused by a cigarette discarded during a Scotland versus Romania boxing match the previous day. The surviving facade is later incorporated into the Mitchell Library.[36]
2 November – Greville Wynne, a British trader acting as a courier for MI6, is arrested by the KGB in Budapest and imprisoned in Moscow after confessing to espionage.[38]
17 November – Seahamlife-boatGeorge Elmycapsizes entering harbour after service to cobleEconomy: all five crew and four of the five survivors are killed.
Britain's motorway network expands with the completion of the first phases of the M5 between Birmingham and north Gloucestershire and the M6 bypassing Stafford.[42]
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