• The Cuban Missile Crisis threatens the world with nuclear holocaust for 13 days in October.
• Rachel Carson's book on the effects of DDT on birds, Silent Spring, is published for the first time and helps launch the modern Environmentalism movement.
• The Space Race is in full swing as American President John F. Kennedy declares the US will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Meanwhile John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, making three circuts in 4 hours, 55 minutes aboard Friendship 7, and AT&T's Telstar becomes the world's first-ever communications satellite.
• Decolonization continues across the World. The bloody Algerian War between France and Algerian freedom fighters finally comes to an end, with Algeria gaining its independence with the signing of peace accords at Évian. In India, the Indian army liberates Goa from the Portuguese, encountering no resistance. Meanwhile, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago gain independence through peaceful means.
• The Sino-Indian War briefly errupts between India and China over a disputed border 14,000 feet high in the Himalaya.
• The US trade embargo on Cuba begins.
• Ringo Starr joins The Beatles, replacing Pete Best, and the group releases its first UK single, Love Me Do. The B-side is P.S. I Love You.
• Escorted by Federal marshals, James Meredith becomes the first black student to register at the University of Mississippi.
• In Engel v. Vitale, the US Supreme Court rules against mandatory prayer in public schools.
• In the so-called "Night of the Long Knives," British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan purges one-third of his Cabinet.
• Pope John XXIII convenes the Second Vatican Council.
• The Boston Strangler begins his two year long killing spree that will ultimately claim the lives of 13 women.
• Convicted felons Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin become the only prisoners ever to escape from Alcatraz Prison, but they are never seen again and are presumed to have died in the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay.
• The "Century 21 Exposition" World's Fair bequeaths the Space Needle to Seattle, Washington.
• Johnny Carson takes over as host of The Tonight Show, beginning a 30-year run.
• Columbian mystic Samael Aun Weor declares the dawning of the New Age of Aquarius.
• Martin K. Speckter invents the interrobang punctuation mark.

These people were born in 1962:

• American actors Tom Cruise, Wesley Snipes, Jodie Foster, and Demi Moore.
• Canadian commedian Jim Carrey.
• American commedians Jon Stewart and Craig Kilborn.
• American rock stars Axl Rose and Jon Bon Jovi.
• American hip-hop icon MC Hammer.
• American football legend Jerry Rice.
• American baseball legend Roger Clemens.
• American football and baseball legend Bo Jackson.
• American basketball greats John Stockton and Patrick Ewing.
• American country singer Garth Brooks.
• Hong Kong action star Michelle Yeoh.
• American pop icon Paula Abdul.
• British commedian Eddie Izzard.
• American singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow.
• American author David Foster Wallace.
• American football greats Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie.
• British actor Cary Elwes.
• Visionary American baseball executive Billy Beane.

These people died in 1962:

• American actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, apparently of suicide, from an overdoes of sleeping pills.
• Danish physicist Niels Bohr.
• Nazi Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, hanged for his crimes following his conviction at a trial in Israel.
• American author William Faulkner.
• American poet e.e. cummings.
• German author Hermann Hesse.
• Japanese ethnologist Yanagita Kunio.
• American first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
• Former bassist for The Beatles, Stuart Sutcliffe, of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 21.
• Japanese haiku master Iida Dakotsu.
• American baseball great Mickey Cochrane.
• American gangster Lucky Luciano.
• Richard Faughnan and Dieter Schepp, members of the famous daredevil act the "Flying Wallendas", killed when their human pyramid collapses at a performance in Detroit.
• Lovelorn French skunk Pepé le Pew makes his last ever appearance, in the cartoon Louvre Come Back to Me.

These films appeared in 1962:

• Dr. No, the first-ever James Bond film
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Lolita
• The Manchurian Candidate
• To Kill a Mockingbird

These books were first published in 1962:

• Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
• Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time
• Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange
• Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire

1961 - 1962 - 1963

20th century