* 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 – 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 )

* 1961 – Conrad Schumann flees from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall.

After World War II, the city became divided into East Berlin — the capital of East Germany — and West Berlin, a West German exclave surrounded by the Berlin Wall ( 1961 – 1989 ).

As a result of the political and economical tensions brought on by the Cold War, on 13 August 1961, East Germany began building of the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin and similar barriers around West Berlin, and events escalated to a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie on 27 October 1961.

From 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989, East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall.

Yerrington and Outland equated East Coast Swing to the New Yorker in 1961.

The most prominent frontier barrier was the Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961, which finally closed the loop hole in the East German border between East Berlin and West Berlin.

East German construction workers building the Berlin Wall, 20 November 1961

Some 2. 6 million people had fled East Germany by 1961 when he built the Berlin Wall to stop them — shooting those who attempted it.

With a booming economy short of unskilled workers, especially after the Berlin Wall cut off the steady flow of East Germans, the FRG negotiated migration agreements with Italy ( 1955 ), Spain ( 1960 ), Greece ( 1960 ), and Turkey ( 1961 ) that brought in hundreds of thousands of temporary guest workers, called Gastarbeiter.

The heavy outflow of talent from East Germany prompted the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, which worsened Cold War tensions and prevented East Germans from travel.

In 1961, the East German government under Walter Ulbricht erected a barbed-wire barrier around West Berlin, officially called the antifaschistischer Schutzwall ( anti-fascist protective barrier ).

Goa was invaded by India in 1961 and became an Indian state in 1987 ; East Timor was abandoned in 1975 and was then invaded by Indonesia.

Over the course of 1961, Adenauer had his concerns about both the status of Berlin and US leadership confirmed, as the Soviets and East Germans built the Berlin Wall.

The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and the sealing of borders by the East Germans made his government look weak.

From 1961 to 1965 the two states, along with Tanzania, were united in the East African Common Services Organization, a common market with a loose federal structure.

In 1961 East Germany began to erect a wall between East and West Berlin, which became famous as the Berlin Wall.

West Berlin inevitably chose the Kurfürstendamm and the area around the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, while East Berlin built up Alexanderplatz and turned Frankfurter Allee ( which they renamed Stalinallee in 1949, Karl-Marx-Allee in 1961 ), into their own showpiece boulevard.