The world in 1962

Why this year has a page

The year of Cuban Missile Crisis (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 1961

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: 1961Later: 1969 →

Events dated to 1962

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. 1962

   The map begins drawing Federation of South Arabia; the map stops drawing East Aden Protectorate, Aden (UK)

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1962-04-04

   On this day →
2. 1962

   The map begins drawing Burundi, Rwanda; the map stops drawing Ruanda-Urundi (Belgium)

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1962-07-01

   On this day →
3. 1962

   The map begins drawing Algeria; the map stops drawing Algeria (France)

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1962-07-05

   On this day →
4. 1962

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

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1962-08-06

   On this day →
5. 1962

   The map begins drawing Trinidad and Tobago; the map stops drawing Trinidad and Tobago (UK)

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1962-08-31

   On this day →
6. 1962

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

   the border record (CShapes 2.0) · 1962-10-09

   On this day →
7. 1962

   Cuban Missile Crisis

   October 1962 confrontation between the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States

   began 1962-10-14 · Wikidata Q128160

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 1962 — the map, with the years it stays the same Historical maps by region Countries On this day

All data sources →