East Germany partially abrogates the Nazis' emendations to Paragraph 175.

The Mattachine Society was founded in Los Angeles. the first American homophile group, is founded in New York.

The RFSL (Swedish Federation for Lesbian and Gay Rights) is formed in Sweden.

Publication of James Barr's Quatrefoil.

North Korea invades the South.

Michael Kerns was born. He began his public career as The Happy Hustler and moved on to be the artistic director of LA's Celebration Theatre, as well as a founder of Artists Confronting AIDS and the Gay and Lesbian Theatre Alliance.

Publication of The Homosexual in America by Donald Webster Cory. (Edward Sagarin)

McCullers' Clock Without Hands.

Dale Jennings successfully uses the defense of entrapment against charges of solicitation.

ONE formed in California with one of six founders, a black man, suggesting the name from a quote of Thomas Carlyle.

Publication of ONE Magazine , first widely circulated gay periodical in North America.

Publicized transexual operation of Christine Jorgensen.

Prohibition of gays in federal employment by Eisenhower executive order.

Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female which quoted the figures that 2% of women identified themselves as exclusively homosexual, and 13% of women had enjoyed homosexual activities at least once.

The first wide-circulation gay periodical in North America, One Magazine: The Homosexual Viewpoint began to be published by the Mattachine Society .

Mattachine Foundation ends and Society forms, led by Ken Burns & Hal Call.

Dag Hammarskjold becomes UN Secretary General.

June 7 - Alan Turing dies from cyanide poisoning, 18 months after being given libido reducing hormone treatment for a year as a punishment for homosexuality.

Arcadie is formed; it is the first homophile group in France.

The Army-McCarthy Hearings televised.

Early homophile activists, Hull, Kepner and Rowland, travel to Mexico City to organize.

W. Somerset Maugham's Ten Novels and Their Authors.

Brown v. Board of Education.

Daughters of Bilitis founded in San Francisco, California.

Tennessee Williams awarded Pulitzer Prize for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".

Mattachine Review first published.

Rosa Parks arrested in Montgomery & Emmett Till lynched in Mississippi.

"The first documented gay church, the Church of ONE Brotherhood, is founded in Los Angeles by Chuck Rowland. It lasts only one year."

First publication of The Ladder , a lesbian magazine.

Soviet Union crushes Hungarian and Polish revolts.

Allen Ginsberg's Howl.

Cuban Revolution begins.

James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room.

FBI begins COINTELPRO.

The Sexual Offences Act became law and determined much police activity against homosexuals in the UK for the rest of the century despite amendments introduced by the Sexual Offences Act 1967 .

"The Catholic Church, while emphasizing that it believes homosexuality to be a sin, recommends its decriminalization by endorsing the Wolfden Report. This report published by the British government, recommended the legalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults."

The Wolfenden Report was published on 3rd. September. The Wolfenden Committee's report recommends decriminalizing consensual homosexual behaviour between adults in the United Kingdom.

Psychologist Evelyn Hooker publishes a study showing that gay men were as well adjusted as non-gay men, which was a major factor in the American Psychiatric Association removing homosexuality from its handbook of disorders in 1973.

Bernstein's "West Side Story" premiers on Broadway.

Ann Bannon's Odd Girl Out.

The Homosexual Law Reform Society is founded in the United Kingdom.

U.S. Supreme Court rules that ONE Magazine could be distributed through the mail.

Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums.

John Birch Society formed.

Publication of Galbraith's Affluent Society.

William Burroughs' Naked Lunch