* 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 )

* 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 ).

Brian and his brothers Carl and Dennis Wilson along with Mike Love and Al Jardine first appeared as a music group in the summer of 1961, initially named the Pendletones.

Brian Wilson and his bandmates, following a set by Ike and Tina Turner, performed their first major live show at The Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance on New Year's Eve, 1961.

In June 1996 Burke performed at the Avery Fisher Hall, on the same bill as Wilson Pickett, with whom he sang their 1961 hit, " If You Need Me " as the finale.

By comparison, Arnold Palmer earned just $ 5, 000 in 1961 endorsing Wilson golf equipment, and NFL quarterback Joe Namath made just $ 10, 000 in 1968 to famously shave off his moustache with a Schick razor.

After leaving St. Mark's — " I got kicked out ", he recalled with a laugh in a 2004 interview — he then attended a school in the Lakewood area of Dallas, Woodrow Wilson High School, from which he graduated in 1961.

Other familiar titles are: Anzio by Edward Dmytryk, in 1968, his last Hollywood film appearance ; The North Star ( 1943 ), directed by Lewis Milestone with a script by playwright Lillian Hellman, with Erich von Stroheim ; Edge of Darkness ( 1943 ), also by Milestone, his first film role, where he played his first film German soldier role, opposite Judith Anderson ; Wilson ( 1944 ), where he played the German ambassador to Washington, D. C. during World War I, Count von Bernstorff ; The Cross of Lorraine ( 1943 ), with Gene Kelly ; The Hitler Gang, playing the Nazi official Alfred Rosenberg and Romanoff and Juliet ( 1961 ), written, directed and starring Peter Ustinov, and an Italian-American adaptation of Homer's Iliad, Helen of Troy ( 1956 ), directed by Robert Wise, with Rossanna Podesta, Jacques Sernas, and in two featured roles, Tonio Selwart playing opposite a then almost unknown Brigitte Bardot, in 1956.

* Funeral for former first lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson ( 1961 )

From 1961 on, Johnson periodically staged events he called " Nothings ", described to his friend William Wilson as “ an attitude as opposed to a happening ”, which would parallel the “ Happenings ” of Allan Kaprow and later Fluxus events.

Taylor, reviewing Collier's biography “ Brasshat ” (" The Times " 10 August 1961 ) said Wilson was “ too absurd to be a donkey ”.

# Raymond Blattenberger ( 1953 – 1961 ), John M. Wilson ( Acting, 1961 – 1961 ), Felix E. Cristofane ( Acting, 1961 – 1961 )

* Robert Wilson ( footballer born 1961 ), UK football player

During the following year, he was a professor of public administration at Cornell, then from 1954 – 64, taught government at Columbia University, where he received a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in 1961.

Gaitskell as Leader and Brown as Deputy Leader were not viewed by most of the Labour left as a balanced ticket, and Brown was challenged for the job in both 1961, by Barbara Castle, and 1962, by Harold Wilson.

* Coil, Henry Wilson ( 1961, repr.

* Andrew Wilson ( historian ) ( born 1961 ), British historian

In 1961, the Ford and Edison Foundations commissioned a study of co-operative education, published as Work-study college programs ; appraisal and report of the study of cooperative education, ( James Warner Wilson and Edward H Lyons, New York: Harper ).

* Charles Erwin Wilson ( 1890 – 1961 ), United States Secretary of Defense ( 1953 – 1957 ) and Head of General Motors ( also known as " Engine Charlie ")

Charles Erwin Wilson ( July 18, 1890 – September 26, 1961 ), American businessman and politician, was United States Secretary of Defense from 1953 to 1957 under President Eisenhower.