| 9-11th January 1960 | Aswan High Dam construction begins in Egypt. |
| 3rd February 1960 | Prime Minister Harold Macmillan makes the 'Wind of Change’ speech to the South African Parliament in Cape Town. He had originally made the speech in Accra on 10th January 1960, but it had received little publicity. |
| 13th February 1960 | France tests its first atomic bomb, in the Sahara desert. |
| 18th February 1960 | The 1960 Winter Olympics open in Squaw Valley, California. |
| 3rd March 1960 | Elvis Presley returns home from Germany after being away on military duty for two years. |
| 21st April 1960 | Brazil's Federal District is moved from Rio de Janeiro to the capital city of Brasilia. |
| 26th June 1960 | British Somaliland gains independence from the United Kingdom. Five days later, it unites with the former Italian Somaliland to create the modern Somali Republic. |
| 10th July 1960 | The Soviet Union beats Yugoslavia 2-1 to win the first ever European Football Championship. |
| 11th July 1960 | Harper Lee releases her critically acclaimed novel "To Kill a Mockingbird". |
| 21st July 1960 | Francis Chichester, English navigator and yachtsman, arrives in New York aboard 'Gypsy Moth II', having made a record solo Atlantic crossing in forty days. |
| 16th August 1960 | Cyprus gains independence from the United Kingdom. |
| 25th August 1960 | The 1960 Summer Olympics open in Rome, Italy. |
| 29th October 1960 | Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali, wins his first professional fight in Louisville, Kentucky. |
| 30th October 1960 | Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom, at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. |
| 2nd November 1960 | Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the 'Lady Chatterley's Lover’ case. |
| 15th November 1960 | The Polaris missile is test-launched. |
| 2nd December 1960 | The Archbishop of Canterbury talks with Pope John XXIII for approximately one hour in the Vatican. It is the first time in more than 500 years that a head of the Anglican Church had visited the Pope. |
| 9th December 1960 | The first episode of the long-running drama "Coronation Street" airs on ITV. It was originally planned to be a sixteen-part drama, but became such a success that it is still running today, with highly impressive ratings. |