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| 1961, April 12 |
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| Maj. Yuri A. Gagarin, in the spaceship Vostok I, became the first man successfully to orbit the earth; he circled the earth for 108 minutes at a maximum altitude of 203 miles. | 1 |
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| July 8 |
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| Khrushchev announced the suspension of planned Soviet reductions in the armed forces and an increase in defense expenditures as a result of the Berlin crisis (See July 17). | 2 |
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| Aug. 31 |
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| The resumption of nuclear testing was announced. | 3 |
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| Oct. 17 |
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| Khrushchev, in an address opening the CPSU's 22nd Congress in Moscow, offered to delay the year-end deadline for signing a German peace treaty, declared that the USSR would “probably” test a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb, and attacked Albania for pursuing Stalinist policies. | 4 |
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| Oct. 30 |
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| A 50-plus-megaton bomb was detonated in the Arctic. | 5 |
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| Oct. 31 |
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| Stalin's body was removed from Lenin's Tomb in Red Square. | 6 |
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