Events from the year 1962 in the United States. [edit] Events [edit] January–March [edit] April–June - April 6 – Leonard Bernstein causes controversy with his remarks before a concert featuring Glenn Gould with the New York Philharmonic.
- April 9 – The 34th Academy Awards ceremony is held; West Side Story wins Best Picture.
- April 10 – In Los Angeles, California, the first MLB game is played at Dodger Stadium.
- April 14 – A Cuban military tribunal convicts 1,179 Bay of Pigs attackers.
- April 21 – The Century 21 Exposition World's Fair opens in Seattle, Washington.
- May 1 – Dayton Hudson Corporation opens the first of its Target discount stores in Roseville, Minnesota.
- May 24 – Project Mercury: Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth 3 times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
- June 3 – Air France charter flight Chateau de Sully, a Boeing 707, over-runs the runway at Orly Airport in Paris; 130 of 132 passengers are killed, 2 flight attendants survive. Most victims are cultural and civic leaders of Atlanta, Georgia.
- June 6 – President John F. Kennedy gives the commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
- June 11 – President John F. Kennedy gives the commencement address at Yale University.
- June 25 – Engel v. Vitale: The United States Supreme Court rules that mandatory prayers in public schools are unconstitutional.
- June 25 – MANual Enterprises v. Day: The United States Supreme Court rules that photographs of nude men are not obscene, decriminalizing nude male pornographic magazines.
- June 28 – The United Lutheran Church in America, Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, American Evangelical Lutheran Church, and Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church merge to form the Lutheran Church in America.
[edit] July–September - July 2 – The first Wal-Mart store opens for business in Rogers, Arkansas.
- July 10 – AT&T's Telstar, the world's first commercial communications satellite, is launched into orbit, and activated the next day.
- July 17 – Nuclear testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada Test Site.
- July 22 – Mariner program: The Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed.
- August 5 – Marilyn Monroe is found dead at age 36 from "acute barbiturate poisoning".
- August 15 – The New York Agreement is signed trading the West New Guinea colony to Indonesia.
- August 27 – NASA launches the Mariner 2 space probe.
- September 12 – President John F. Kennedy, at a speech at Rice University, reaffirms that the U.S. will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
- September 29 – The Canadian Alouette 1, the first satellite built outside the United States and the Soviet Union, is launched from Vandenberg AFB in California.
- September 30 – CBS broadcasts the final episodes of Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, marking the end of the Golden Age of Radio.
[edit] October–December - October 1 – The first black student, James Meredith, registers at the University of Mississippi, escorted by Federal Marshals.
- October 1 – Johnny Carson takes over as permanent host of NBC's Tonight Show, a post he would hold for 30 years.
- October 12 – 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 12 – Jazz bassist/composer Charles Mingus presents a disastrous concert at Town Hall in New York City. It will gain a reputation as the worst moment of his career.
- October 13 – Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens on Broadway.
- October 14 – Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U-2 flight over Cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed. A stand-off then ensues the next day between the United States and the Soviet Union, threatening the world with nuclear war.
- October 22 – In a televised address, U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces to the nation the existence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
- 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 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".
- November 17 – In Washington, D.C., U.S. President John F. Kennedy dedicates Dulles International Airport.
- November 20 – The Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
- 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 8 – The 1962 New York City newspaper strike begins, affecting all of the city's major newspapers; It would last for 114 days.
- 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 history.
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