* 1961 – Rory Bremner, Scottish comedian

* 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 )

Claude Piron ( 26 February 1931 – 22 January 2008 ) was a psychologist and a translator for the United Nations ( from Chinese, English, Russian and Spanish into French ) from 1956 to 1961.

* 1961 – Andre Andersen, Russian / Danish multi-instrumentalist and composer

English edition, Wiley 1961 ; Methuen & Co, New York 1962 ; Russian, Moscow 1961 ; Spanish, Mexico 1962 ; Roumanian, Bucharest 1969 ; Chinese, Shanghai 1963 ; Second printing of the 1962 first English edition, Dover, New York 2001.

* 1961 – Maria Filatova, Russian gymnast

In 1961, they published their first paper on the subject in the Russian Journal of Scientific and Applied Photography.

* 1875 – Alexander Goldenweiser, Russian pianist, teacher, and composer ( d. 1961 )

< u > Russian and the West, under Lenin and Stalin </ u >, NY Mentor Books, 1961 pp 318, 319 </ ref > Stalin's invasions were, however ( as the intent to accomplish these was not communicated to the Germans beforehand ), a severe irritant to Berlin and prompted concern that Stalin was seeking to form an anti-German bloc .< ref > Cartier, Raymond.

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth aboard Vostok 1 manned spacecraft on 12 April 1961.

After a military coup d ' état in 1961, this force was expanded and modernized with the assistance of Russian and Cuban advisors.

* 1880 – Metropolitan Benjamin, Russian missionary and bishop ( d. 1961 )

** Metropolitan Benjamin ( Fedchenkov ), Orthodox missionary and writer, Exarch of Russian Church in North America ( d. 1961 )

At the 1961 conference, a 32-year old Russian Orthodox Bishop named Aleksey Ridiger was sent as delegate to the assembly, and then appointed to the WCC's central committee.

The earliest examples of longer-wheelbase wagon-type SUVs were the Chevrolet Carryall Suburban ( 1935, RWD only ), GAZ-61 ( 1938, 4x4 ), Willys Jeep Wagon ( 1948 ), Pobeda M-72 ( GAZ-M20 / 1955 ), which Russian references credit as possibly being the first modern SUV ( with unitary body rather than body-on-frame ), International Harvester Travelall ( 1953 ), Land Rover Series II 109 ( 1958 ), and the International Harvester Scout 80 ( 1961 ).

Astana ( Russian /, formerly known as Akmola ( Kazakh: Ақмола / Aqmola, until 1998 ), Целиноград / Tselinograd until 1992 ) and Akmolinsk ( Russian: Акмолинск, until 1961 ), has been the capital of Kazakhstan since 1997, and is the country's second largest city ( after Almaty, the former capital ) with an officially estimated population of 708, 794 as of 1 August 2010.

For example, the 1961 Russian adaptation Ukroshchenie stroptivoy directed by Sergei Kolosov ; the 1964 French adaptation La mégère apprivoisée, directed by Pierre Badel, which aired on RTF ; the 1971 Polish adaptation Poskromienie złośnicy, directed by Zygmunt Hübner, which aired on TVP1 ; the 1974 German adaptation Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung, directed by Otto Schenk, which aired on Das Erste ; the 1975 Dutch adaptation De getemde feeks, directed by Robert Lussac and Senne Rouffaer, which aired on KRO ; another Dutch production, from 1990, under the same name, directed by Berend Boudewijn and Dirk Tanghe, which also aired on KRO ; and the 1990 Polish adaptation Poskromienie złośnicy, directed by Michał Kwieciński, which aired on TVP1.

* Once There Was a Russian ( 1961 )

The Venera ( Cyrillic: Венера ) series probes were developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather data from Venus, Venera being the Russian name for Venus.

In 1957, 1957 – 1958 and 1961 he made a number of half-hour programmes on ITV in which he lectured without notes on a variety of topics, such as the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War.

* Mikhail Romanov ( footballer ) ( 1895 – 1961 ), Russian international footballer

Tuva remained an autonomous republic ( Tuvan ASSR within the Russian SFSR ) from 10 October 1961 until 1992.

* The Day The Earth Caught Fire: A 1961 science fiction film, starring Janet Munro and Leo McKern where concurrent Russian and U. S. nuclear tests alter the Earth's orbit, sending it spinning towards the Sun.

Globus IMP electro-mechanical devices including five-inch globes have been used in Soviet and Russian spacecraft from 1961 to 2002 as navigation instruments.