* Brett Austin ( 1959 – 1990 ), New Zealand swimmer

British Medical Journal, Jan. 3, 1959, 1 ( 5113 ): 1 – 6.

* 1959 – Gail Shea, Canadian politician

* 1883 – Dally Messenger, Australian footballer ( d. 1959 )

* 1959 – Paul Gross, Canadian actor, director, and writer

* 1959 – Stephen Harper, Canadian politician, 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

* 1959 – W. Thomas Smith, Jr, American author and columnist

* 1909 – Lester Young, American saxophonist ( d. 1959 )

* 1959 – Gerhard Berger, Austrian race car driver

* 1959 – Downtown Julie Brown, English television host and actress

* 1959 – Juan Fernando Cobo, Colombian painter and sculptor

* 1959 – András Petöcz, Hungarian author

* 1959 – Jeanette Winterson, English novelist

* 1959 – Rajendra Singh Indian water conservationist

* 1875 – Albert Ketèlbey, English conductor, composer, and pianist ( d. 1959 )

* 1959 – Kurtis Blow, American rapper and producer

* 1959 – Stuart Hughes, Canadian actor

* 1959 – Michael Kors, American fashion designer

* 1959 – Toni Servillo, Italian actor and director

* 1959 – Danny Bonaduce, American actor

* 1959 – Michael Bradley, Irish bass player and radio host ( The Undertones )

* 1959 – Bruce French, English cricketer

* 1959 – Tom Niedenfuer, American baseball player

* 1959 – Victoria Jackson, American comedian, actress, and singer

* 1959 – Apollonia Kotero, American singer and actress ( Apollonia 6 )

* 1959 – Project Vanguard: Vanguard 2 – The first weather satellite is launched to measure cloud-cover distribution.

* 1959 – Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumes a scientific career.

In 1959, von Braun, head of the Development Operations Division at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, submitted his final Project Horizon plans to the U. S. Army.

The United States tested twenty different sizes and designs during Project Rover and NASA's NERVA program from 1959 through 1972 at the Nevada Test Site, designated Kiwi, Phoebus, NRX / EST, NRX / XE, Pewee, Pewee 2 and the Nuclear Furnace, with progressively higher power densities culminating in the Pewee ( 1970 ) and Pewee 2.

Since 1959 ( when the Bentham Committee was first established ) UCL has hosted the Bentham Project, which is progressively publishing a definitive edition of Bentham's writings.

In April 1959, despite the fact that Glenn had not earned the required college degree, he was assigned to NASA as one of the original group of seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury.

According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-singer J. P. " The Big Bopper " Richardson was the first to coin the phrase " music video ", in 1959.

* Scott Carpenter, one of the original Mercury Seven NASA astronauts selected in 1959 for Project Mercury

In June 1959, a secret study on Project Horizon was completed by ABMA, detailing plans for using the Saturn booster in establishing a manned Army outpost on the moon.

In Project Horizon, prepared by the U. S. Army in 1959, a space station would be built by assembling spent booster rockets.

The Limerick University Project Committee was founded in September 1959 as a project of the 1957 Mayor of Limerick, Ted Russell.

But mills in Henniker were closed in 1959 by the Hopkinton-Everett Lakes Flood Control Project.

Kununurra was built on land resumed from Ivanhoe Station pastoral lease before 1961, as the town for the Ord River Irrigation Area which started as the Ord River Project or Ord Scheme, with survey work starting in 1959.

He is best known as one of the original seven astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury in April 1959.

After being chosen for Project Mercury in 1959, Carpenter served as backup pilot for John Glenn, who flew the first U. S. orbital mission aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962.

To combat these shortcomings, the Delphi method was developed by Project RAND during the 1950-1960s ( 1959 ) by Olaf Helmer, Norman Dalkey, and Nicholas Rescher.

After the launch of mankind's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, Mao decided during the National Congress of the CCP on May 17, 1958 to make China an equal with the superpowers (“”), by adopting Project 581 with the objective of placing a satellite in orbit by 1959 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the PRC's founding.

Project Emily: The Thor IRBM and the Royal Air Force 1959 – 1963.

In 1959 AT & E, later Plessey, became the Prime Contractor for a new UK Air Defence System, known by the Company under the name Plan Ahead and, from 1961, as Project Linesman.

The classified, underground facility, named " Project Greek Island ", was built at the same time as the West Virginia Wing, an above-ground addition to the hotel, from 1959 to 1962.

From 1959 through 1975 every astronaut in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project programs spent hours in celestial navigation training at the planetarium.

Project Mercury astronaut s on board a C-131 Samaritan flying as the " Vomit Comet ", 1959.

In 1959, Project Mercury astronauts trained in a C-131 Samaritan aircraft, which was dubbed the " Vomit Comet ".

The horn antenna at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, was constructed in 1959 to support Project Echo — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's passive communications satellite project, which used orbiting aluminized plastic balloons as reflectors to bounce radio signals from one point on Earth to another.