1961

A good year to be born, my birthday isn’t until Saturday, but I’ve reached 1961 blips today (spanning 10 years) so here’s a list of other good things that happened that year.


Park Hill Flats, Sheffield, opened

Birth control pills become available on the NHS after their availability is backed by Health Minister Enoch Powell

In a referendum on Sunday opening of public houses in Wales, the counties of Anglesey, Cardiganshire, Caernarfonshire, Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire, Merionethshire, Montgomeryshire and Pembrokeshire all vote to stay "dry", that is, opposed to the Sunday sale of alcohol. Wonder what they’d think of lockdown?!

25 October – The first edition of Private Eye, the satirical magazine, is published in London.

October – Acker Bilk's Stranger on the Shore released.

31 August – Premiere of the film Victim, notable as the first in English to use the word "homosexual. I’ve not heard of this film... anyone?

3 August – Suicide Act 1961 decriminalises acts of, or attempts at suicide in England and Wales.
10 August – The UK applies for membership of the EEC. Sadly didn’t make it to 60!!

28 May – Peter Benenson's article "The Forgotten Prisoners" is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding of the human rights organisation Amnesty International.
21 March – The Beatles perform at the legendary Cavern Club in Liverpool for the first time. But for me, more importantly
17 October – Former schoolfriends Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, later of The Rolling Stones, meet each other again by chance on Dartford railway station on the way to their respective colleges and discover their mutual taste for rock and roll.