The world in 1961

Why this year has a page

Among the largest year-to-year changes in the records the map dates by year or by day: 25 names begin or stop being drawn between 1 July 1960 and 1 July 1961.

The year of Berlin Wall (dated events index, Wikidata).

Names on the map

As the map labels them, largest first by the area of the outline drawn. Areas are of the drawn outline, rounded, and approximate. The record column says which record draws the outline; a Wikidata item is given where the record links one.

What changed since 1960

Names counted are those the records date to the year or the day (CShapes, OpenHistoricalMap, Cliopatria). Outlines filled from the nearest historical-basemaps sheet are counted only when both years are years that sheet was drawn for — otherwise the change would be the switch between two sheets, not a change in the world. Names are compared as written, so a polity a record names differently in the two years (Carthaginian Empire, then Carthage) is in both lists.

← Earlier: 1960Later: 1962 →

Events dated to 1961

Every record of IntMap’s one index of dated events whose date falls in this year: what the border record (CShapes 2.0) states about its own outlines, IntMap’s war record, and the world events Wikidata dates — each with its source and the precision of its date.

1. 1961

   Vostok 1

   spaceflight of the Vostok programme

   launched 1961-04-12 · Wikidata Q182524

2. 1961

   The map begins drawing Sierra Leone; the map stops drawing Sierra Leone (UK)

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1961-04-27

   On this day →
3. 1961

   The map begins drawing Kuwait

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1961-06-19

   On this day →
4. 1961

   Berlin Wall

   barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic, enclosing West Berlin (1961–1989)

   founded 1961-08-13 · Wikidata Q5086

5. 1961

   The map stops drawing British Cameroons; new borders for Nigeria, Cameroon

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1961-10-01

   On this day →
6. 1961

   The map begins drawing Tanganyika; the map stops drawing Tanganyika (UK)

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1961-12-09

   On this day →

Sources and method

Borders and names: CShapes 2.0 (Schvitz et al. 2022, icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes) · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 + Cliopatria v0.2.1 (Seshat Global History Databank, github.com/Seshat-Global-History-Databank/cliopatria) · CC BY 4.0 · adapted by IntMap: simplified, BC years made astronomical, and the ground OpenHistoricalMap (1689–1885, and from 1886 where CShapes is silent) and CShapes (1886–2019) state removed on their own dates.

Which years have a page is worked out when the site is built, from three rules applied to the records themselves: every year the historical-basemaps atlas drew a world sheet for; every year whose change from the year before (names the dated records begin or stop drawing) is in the top 5% of all such year-to-year changes since the dated records begin, leaving out the years where one record hands over to another; and every year of a geopolitical, war or revolution event in the dated events index, up to the last year the border records cover (2019).

On each year the map is read on 1 July, the instant the app’s own year links open on. Names are the source’s own, translated where the source or IntMap’s name table has a translation. A name is what a record draws there, not a verdict of history.

World map in 1961 — the map, with the years it stays the same Historical maps by region Countries On this day

All data sources →