On the retirement of de Valera, Sean Lemass succeeds him as leader of Fianna F´il and prime minister of Ireland

ETA (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna) is formed in Spain as a guerrilla organization to win Basque independence

The first prototype of the Hovercraft, designed by British engineer Christopher Cockerell, crosses the English Channel

Hiroshima Mon Amour is French director Alain Resnais' first feature film, with screenplay by Marguerite Duras

Keith Waterhouse has a wide success with his second novel, Billy Liar

Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 successfully strikes the moon, in the Palus Putredinus region

Asterix, written by René Goscinny and drawn by Albert Uderzo, makes his first appearance, in the French magazine Pilote

A group of dancers leave the Netherlands Ballet and establish their own Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague

Soviet spacecraft Luna 3, passing by the moon at a distance of some 40,000 miles, is able to photograph the far side

Harold Pinter's second play in London's West End, The Caretaker, immediately brings him an international reputation

British author Laurie Lee remembers a Cotswold boyhood in Cider with Rosie

Billy Wright becomes the first football player to win 100 caps for England

French choreographer Maurice Béjart is the first director of Belgium's new Ballet of the 20th Century

A Liverpool group of musicians call themselves Long John & the Silver Beatles – a name soon shortened to something more memorable

Italian firm director Michelangelo Antonioni makes L'Avventura, with Monica Vitti in the leading role

Soviet forces shoot down a US high-altitude U-2 spy plane and capture the pilot, Gary Powers

Cyprus becomes an independent nation, free of British colonial rule, with Archbishop Makarios as president

20-year-old Spanish tenor Placido Domingo sings his first major role, as Alfredo in La Traviata in the Mexican city of Monterrey

Italian film director Federico Fellini makes La Dolce Vita, an episodic study of life along the Via Veneto in Rome

English poet John Betjeman publishes his long autobiographical poem Summoned by Bells

Irish author Edna O'Brien publishes her first novel, The Country Girls

Jean-Luc Godard directs his first feature film, A Bout de Souffle ('Breathless'), a classic of French New Wave cinema

The English revue Beyond the Fringe has its premiere at the Edinburgh Festival

Paul Scofield plays Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons

British artist Anthony Caro begins welding and painting abstract metal sculpture