* 1961 – Rory Bremner, Scottish comedian

* 1961 – The Russian ( Soviet ) cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 ( Vostok 1 ).

* 1961 – Enedina Arellano Félix, Mexican drug trafficker

* 1961 – Lisa Gerrard, Australian singer, musician, and composer ( Dead Can Dance )

* 1961 – Charles Mann, American football player

* 1961 – Magda Szubanski, Australian actress

* 1961 – K-19, the first Soviet nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear missiles, is commissioned.

* 1961 – Isiah Thomas, American basketball player

* 1961 – Yolanda Adams, American singer, producer, and actress

* 1961 – Tom Ford, American fashion designer and director

* 1961 – Helmut Winklhofer, German footballer

* 1881 – Leo Carrillo, American actor ( d. 1961 )

* 1961 – Brad Gilbert, American tennis player

* 1961 – John Key, New Zealand politician, 38th Prime Minister of New Zealand

* 1961 – Amy Stiller, American comedian and actress

* 1961 – East Germany closes the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to thwart its inhabitants ' attempts to escape to the West.

* 1961 – Sam Champion, American weatherman

* 1961 – Christos Christodoulou, Greek basketball player

* 1961 – Dawnn Lewis, American actress

* 1961 – Stuart Maconie, English journalist, author, and broadcaster

* 1961 – Neil Mallender, England cricketer

* 1961 – Tom Perrotta, American novelist

* 1961 – Sunil Shetty, Indian actor and producer

* 1961 – Cary Stayner, American serial killer

* 1886 – John Alexander Douglas McCurdy Canadian pilot and engineer ( d. 1961 )

Now again in 1961, in England, there is perhaps nothing in the religious sphere so popularly discussed as Christian unity.

Many people seem hopeful, yet it is difficult to predict whether or not there will be any more real attainment of Christian unity in 1961 than there was in 1861.

* Bryan R. Wilson, Sects and Society: A Sociological Study of the Elim Tabernacle, Christian Science and Christadelphians ( London: Heinemann, 1961 ; Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961 ).

* 1961 – Eva O, American musician, singer / song writer ( Christian Death, Shadow Project and Super Heroines )

In 1961 an English scholar of Arabic Dr. E. E. Elder and William M. Miller, an openly hostile Christian minister, published a second English translation, Al-Kitab Al-Aqdas, through the Royal Asiatic Society.

* Pat Robertson – TV evangelist, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network ( in 1961 )

In McGowan v. Maryland ( 1961 ), the Supreme Court of the United States held that contemporary Maryland blue laws ( typically, Sunday rest laws ) were intended to promote the secular values of " health, safety, recreation, and general well-being " through a common day of rest, and that this day coinciding with majority Christian Sabbath neither reduces its effectiveness for secular purposes nor prevents adherents of other religions from observing their own holy days.

Unitarian Universalism was formed from the merger in 1961 of two historically Christian denominations, the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association, both based in the United States.

The Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship ( UUCF, founded 1945 ) predates the consolidation of the American Unitarian Association ( AUA ) and Universalist Church of America ( UCA ) into the Unitarian Universalist Association ( UUA ) in 1961.

Subsequent mergers were with the International Missionary Council in 1961 and the World Council of Christian Education, with its roots in the 18th century Sunday School movement, in 1971.

* Joseph Gill, Eugenius IV, Pope of Christian Union ( Westminster, Md., Newman Press, 1961 ).

Brandt was the SPD candidate for the Chancellorship in 1961, but he lost to Konrad Adenauer's conservative Christian Democratic Union of Germany ( CDU ).

As noted in The National League Story ( 1961 ) by Lee Allen, Mathewson was a devout Christian and never pitched on Sunday.

In 1961, he was elected President of the First World Christian Democratic Party Congress, held in Santiago, Chile.

Christian Archibald Herter ( March 28, 1895December 30, 1966 ) was an American politician and statesman ; 59th governor of Massachusetts from 1953 to 1957, and United States Secretary of State from 1959 to 1961.

Just two weeks later, on October 13, 1961, Rwagasore was assassinated while taking his dinner at the Hotel Tanganyika by a Greek national named Georges Kageorgis, allegedly in the pay of the pro-Belgian Christian Democratic Party ( PDC ).

" Christian Wolff's Doctrine of the Soul ," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1961, 22: 339 – 354.

Renamed WYAH-TV ( known today as WGNT ), the station began broadcasting Christian programming to the Hampton Roads area on October 1, 1961.

in Christian Education in 1961 from the same institutionand a Ph. d. in biblical studies from Louisiana Baptist University in 2004.

When his Free Democratic Party reentered government in a coalition with Konrad Adenauer's Christian Democratic Union in 1961, Scheel was appointed federal minister of economic cooperation and development.

* John Robert Lucas ( born 1961 ), American Christian author

Vellore: Christian Medical College of Vellore, 1961

During this period, though, De Laurentiis produced such films as Barabbas ( 1961 ) a Christian religious epic, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, an imitation James Bond film ; Navajo Joe ( 1966 ), a spaghetti western ; Anzio ( 1968 ), a World War II film ; Barbarella ( 1968 ) and Danger: Diabolik ( 1968 ), both successful comic book adaptations ; and The Valachi Papers made to coincide with the popularity of The Godfather.