istoryworld
USA timeline
Alfred Hitchcock directs Cary Grant in North by Northwest
Billy Wilder directs Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot
Saul Bellow publishes Henderson the Rain King, in which an American millionaire acquires a strange role in an African tribe
US author William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, an account of the horrors of a junkie's life, is published in Paris
Philip Roth publishes his first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a novella and five short stories
William Gibson's play The Miracle Worker dramatizes the extraordinary story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan
Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum opens in New York after seventeen years of work on the project
US film director Jules Dassin makes Never on Sunday, starring the Greek actress Melina Mercouri
US jazz saxophonist John Coltrane forms his own 'hard bop' group
The Colossus is US author Sylvia Plath's first collection of poems
Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail is the first of many collections of poems by US poet Charles Bukowski
The birth control pill wins FDA approval in the US and goes on sale
US author Harper Lee publishes her first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird
Alfred Hitchcock directs Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins in Psycho
US novelist John Barth publishes The Sot-Weed Factor, a picaresque life of Edmund Cook set on a family tobacco plantation in Maryland
US author John Updike begins to chart the fictional progress of Harry Angstrom, known as Rabbit, in Rabbit, Run
Democrat candidate John F. Kennedy defeats Republican Richard Nixon in the US presidential election
President Kennedy appoints his younger brother Robert to the position of US attorney-general
Political activist Jane Jacobs publishes an influential polemic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
President Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps, enabling US volunteers to work abroad
J.D. Salinger publishes Franny and Zooey, the second of his collections of stories about the Glass family
US astronaut Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space, with a suborbital flight in Freedom 7
Arthur Miller writes the screenplay for The Misfits for his wife, Marilyn Monroe
US author Joseph Heller publishes his first novel, Catch-22, set in the last months of World War II
President Kennedy commits the US to placing a man on the moon and bringing him back safely by 1970
