The Thread of Random Internetz

January 14 - Reserve Bank and Commonwealth Bank are created in Australia.

January 19 - The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan is signed in Washington, DC.

January 21 - A mine collapses at Coalbrook, South Africa, killing 437.

January 22 - In France, President Charles de Gaulle fires Jacques Massun, commander-in-chief for the French troops in Algeria.

January 23 - Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descend into the Marianas Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste, reaching the depth of 10,916 meters.

January 24 - A major insurrection occurs in Algiers against French colonial policy.

January 25 - In Washington, DC, the National Association of Broadcasters reacts to the payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accepted money for playing particular records.

February 1 - In Greensboro, North Carolina, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the Southern United States, and 6 months later the original 4 protesters are served lunch at the same counter.

* February 3 - Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Harold Macmillan makes the Wind of Change speech to the South African Parliament in Cape Town (although he had first made the speech, to little publicity, in Accra, Gold Coast - now Ghana - on January 10 the same year).

February 5 - The CERN particle accelerator is inaugurated in Geneva, Switzerland.