* 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 )

On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, reinforcing American fears about being left behind in a technological competition with the Soviet Union.

From 1961 to 1972, the Soviet Union caught 138 gray whales ( they originally reported not having taken any ).

Hoxha and Shehu continued their harangue against the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia at the APL's Fourth Party Congress in February 1961.

On July 25, 1961, Kennedy insisted in a presidential address that the U. S. would defend West Berlin, asserting its Four-Power rights, while making it clear that challenging the Soviet presence in Germany was not possible.

The first human spaceflight in history was accomplished on a derivative of R-7, Vostok, on 12 April 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961.

* 1961 – Soviet submarine S-80 sinks with all hands lost.

* 1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.

* 1961 – Aleksandr Kurlovich, Soviet weightlifter

* Viktor Kuznetsov ( swimmer ) ( born 1961 ), Soviet backstroke swimmer

* Fyodor Kuznetsov ( 1898 – 1961 ), a military commander of the Soviet Union

It succeeded in the first but not the second: in the first Mercury mission on 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space ; however the Soviet Union had put Yuri Gagarin into space one month earlier.

In the first Mercury mission on 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space and the second person following Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union who flew one month earlier.

Two suborbital flights were cancelled ; they began to look embarrassing after the Soviet Union had made a day-long orbital flight in August 1961.

* 1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a human dummy nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich, and demonstrating that Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.

Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev meeting with United States President John F. Kennedy, June 1961.

In 1961, North Korea concluded formal mutual security treaties with the Soviet Union ( inherited by Russia ) and China, which have not been formally ended.

* 1961 – Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya ; at 50 megatons of yield, it is still the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.

* 1961 – The Soviet Union performs the first armed test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, launching an R-13 from a Golf class submarine.

As a result, one of SAC's EC-135 Looking Glass aircraft was constantly airborne from 1961 until the dissoultion of the Soviet Union and the de facto end of the Cold War in 1990.

The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight ( Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1 ) in 1961, the first spacewalk ( by Aleksei Leonov ) in 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station ( Salyut 1 ) in 1971.