British Prime Minister Harold McMillan spoke of the winds of change blowing through the African continent.
Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in a U2 spy plane and Israeli special forces abducted Nazi butcher Adolf Eichman in Buenos Aires to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
A brash young black American boxer called Cassius Clay won the gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the Rome Olympics, the same Olympics in which New Zealand (with a population of only 2.4 million) achieved its greatest day on the world sporting stage when Peter Snell and Murray Halberg each won gold on the track in the space of one hour.
Ben Hur won a record 11 Oscars, Chubby Checker twisted his way to musical immortality and your writer entered the world in a modest South Dunedin hospital.
And yet, as significant as each of those landmark events undoubtedly was, December 9 of that unforgettable year, 1960, spawned a phenomenon which continues to influence the lives of millions around the globe to this very day.
A gritty working-class drama set in a drab northern English suburb made an unpretentious entrance on to the world stage - so unpretentious, in fact, that the Daily Mirror commented that ''this programme is doomed'' from the outset.
William Roache started a job that he's still doing - a job he started four months after I was born.
Coronation Street entered the living rooms, and then the hearts and minds, of Britons, and eventually, people all over the world (at one point it was shown in 27 countries).
Of course, it was 1964 before it made it to New Zealand screens.
My personal love affair with Coro (I know they call it Corrie in Britain but we Kiwis seem to prefer Coro) started at about the age of 10 in front of a small black and white television in my grandmother's living room in her house in Council St, St Kilda, right across the road from De Carle Park (or, as I and my sisters preferred, Grandma's park. For a treat, she used to give us all the leftover fat she had so we could feed it to the seagulls - we knew how to have fun in those days before Playstations and Facebook).
I'm not saying I was hooked immediately - it's not exactly aimed at 10-year-old kids but, hell, it was TV.
We didn't have a telly at home in those days (not to mention a car, inside toilet or a shower; tell that to the kids of today ... ) so any TV was good TV.
Plus, it was a great to spend time with Grandma - coal range, vegetable soup, freshly made chocolate cupcakes with endless cups of tea, as many chops (always those hogget centreloin ones with the yummy fatty tail) as I could eat and, this is a biggie, no goddam sisters to irritate me.
So it became a routine/tradition for us - her fussing over me and telly (and if Coro had to be part of that, then so be it).
Actually, years later - after I'd just finished university - Gran and I developed another TV ritual involving Aussie soap Prisoner.
I was unemployed and not particularly motivated. But I discovered that if you made a big deal of mealtimes, walking the dog and - the highlight of the day (think it was three days a week), Prisoner - then you could pretend you were having a life.
Watching Coro with the (few) women in my life also became a ritual.
Any serious relationship I've had has always been with a fellow Coro fan. So any single female Coro fans reading this, you'll be glad to know I'm still available.
I know there are people who don't get Coro, and I find that difficult to understand.
Over the years, the programme has tackled issues such as alcoholism, rape, racism, homosexuality, transgenderism, domestic violence, cancer, teenage pregnancy; you name it.
But, for me, it's about the humour and fantastic quirky characters.
How could you not be entertained by lovable butcher Fred Elliot? I say, how could you not be entertained by lovable butcher Fred Elliot?
I'll never forget that wonderful line of his on vegetarianism: ''If God didn't want us to eat animals, then why did he make them meat-flavoured?''
Or Kirk's recent (well, in New Zealand) line about school: ''School and I never saw eye to eye even though I were a pupil.''
The delivery was so deadpan, it took me a few seconds to realise what he'd said.
I remember thinking at the time, I must ask one of my fellow Coro watchers if they'd picked up on it. Sure enough, a few nights later at work, a colleague brought it up before I had the chance to.
He, like me, was blown away by the comic timing of the delivery.
And, as any Coro fan knows, Kirk's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, which made it just perfect.
For a little back street, Coro's sure had its fair share of murders, disasters and, of course, weddings.
When Deidre and Ken married - the first time on July 27, 1981 - the episode was watched by 24 million viewers. That's more ITV viewers than watched Prince Charles marry Lady Di two days later.
And what about when Deirdre Hunt/Barlow/Rashid was wrongfully imprisoned? There was a Free the Weatherfield One campaign and British prime minister Tony Blair even mentioned the whole issue in Parliament.
Talk about a television programme becoming part of the national (international) consciousness.
I remember watching a special Coro video, Viva Las Vegas, which was not part of the television series.
Jack and Vera are in Las Vegas and there's a marvellous scene in which Vera is talking to former character Ray Langton (before he came back to die, but that's another story), who is working as a waiter.
She describes the various events that have occurred in ''The Street'' since he moved away: weddings, murders, affairs etc etc.
After she's finished and left the room, he mutters to a co-worker to stop serving the sad old drunk, the implication being that so many bizarre incidents could never happen in a little back street.
I work nights, but with videos and, more recently, DVDs and MySky (how did I ever do without it?), that doesn't matter.
But, because New Zealand is so far behind Britain, I did miss over a year's worth of Coro when I moved to London in mid-1988 and stayed there for 20 months.
Mind you, it did mean I was there for the most-watched episode in Coro history: 26.9 million viewers watched Alan Bradley, who'd been terrorising Rita Fairclough, killed by a tram in Blackpool.
I know Ken Barlow's just been voted the most popular Coro character (Gail second - you must be kidding), but how could Jean Alexander (well, Hilda Odgen) not make the top 20?
In 1982, she was voted the fourth-most recognised woman in Britain after the Queen Mum, the Queen and Princess Di.
Having said that, it's hard not to be impressed that William Roache (Ken) has been playing the same character for almost as long as I've been alive.
He appeared in the first episode and, by March 1984, he was the only surviving character.
Happy Birthday, Coro. Here's to the next 50 years.
- Tony Love
