On this day

April 17, 1961

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from April 17, 1961

Notable Births

1961Norman Cowans, Jamaican-English cricketer[†]

Norman George Cowans is a former cricketer who mainly played as a right-arm fast bowler. He was the 500th cricketer to play Test cricket for England, featuring between 1982 and 1985 in 19 Test matches and 23 One Day Internationals. Cowans also played first-class and List A cricket for both Middlesex and Hampshire.

Boomer Esiason

1961Boomer Esiason, American football player and sportscaster[†]

Norman Julius "Boomer" Esiason is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons, primarily with the Cincinnati Bengals. He played college football for the Maryland Terrapins and was selected in the second round of the 1984 NFL draft by the Bengals, where he spent 10 non-consecutive seasons. Esiason was also a member of the New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals.

1961Bella Freud, English fashion designer[†]

Isobel Lucia Freud, better known as Bella Freud, is a London-based fashion designer. Her work is known for its playful and often humorous use of language.

Notable Deaths

Elda Emma Anderson

1961Elda Anderson, American physicist and health researcher (born 1899)[†]

Elda Emma Anderson was an American physicist and health researcher. During World War II, she worked on the Manhattan Project at Princeton University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she prepared the first sample of pure uranium-235 at the laboratory. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, she became professor of physics at Milwaukee-Downer College in 1929. After the war, she became interested in health physics. She worked in the Health Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and established the professional certification agency known as the American Board of Health Physics.

Historical Events

Bay of Pigs Invasion

1961Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.[†]

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF), consisting of Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, clandestinely and directly financed by the U.S. government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

Historical Context for April 17, 1961

In 1961, the world population was approximately 3,064,869,675 people[†]