Timeline February 1960

Events in February 1960 5

• 1960 – 1961 Mack the Knife -- live Berlin recording Fitzgerald's live recording at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin in February 1960 -- released as 'Ella in Berlin: Mack the Knife' -- captures one of jazz's most celebrated unrehearsed moments. Performing 'Mack the Knife,' she forgets the words after the first chorus and improvises entirely new lyrics, narrating her own memory lapse with brilliant wit and rhythmic invention. The recording wins the Grammy for Best Female Vocal Performance. It is the most famous demonstration of Fitzgerald's improvisational genius and her ability to transform a mistake into a triumph.
• 1960 Greensboro sit-ins begin Student protest against segregated lunch counters spreads Four Black college students stage a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The protest sparks a wave of similar sit-ins across the American South and energizes the civil rights movement.
• 1960 – 1996 Jonathan Larson (1960-1996) Died 25 January 1996, aged 35 Jonathan Larson was an American composer and playwright who wrote the rock musical "Rent," a reimagining of "La Bohème" set among artists in New York's East Village. He died suddenly of an aortic dissection the night before the show's first Off-Broadway preview. "Rent" went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical.
• 1960 France conducts its first nuclear test Gerboise Bleue detonated in the Algerian desert France detonates its first atomic bomb, code-named Gerboise Bleue, in the Sahara desert near Reggane, Algeria. France becomes the world's fourth nuclear power.
• 1960 1960 Winter Olympics VIII Winter Games - Squaw Valley The only time bobsleigh was not included because the track was too expensive. Winner: Soviet Union.