April 30 » J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory announces his discovery of the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1,800 times smaller than a proton (in the atomic nucleus), at a lecture at the Royal Institution in London.
July 2 » British-Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London.
November 1 » The first Library of Congress building opens its doors to the public; the library had previously been housed in the Congressional Reading Room in the U.S. Capitol.
December 6 » London becomes the world's first city to host licensed taxicabs.
December 9 » Activist Marguerite Durand founds the feminist daily newspaper La Fronde in Paris.
December 30 » The British Colony of Natal annexes Zululand.
Day of death February 11, 1961
The temperature on February 11, 1961 was between 6.4 °C and 10.9 °C and averaged 8.5 °C. There was 4.4 mm of rain during 3.8 hours. There was 0.6 hours of sunshine (6%). The heavily clouded was. The average windspeed was 4 Bft (moderate breeze) and was prevailing from the west-southwest. Source: KNMI
February 16 » Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched.
March 29 » The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to vote in presidential elections.
April 12 » Cold War: Space Race: The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, Vostok 1.
September 16 » Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.
September 18 » U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in an air crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
November 18 » United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Eva Drenth, "Family tree Diverse", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-drenth/I42352.php : accessed February 6, 2026), "Berend Pongers (1897-1961)".
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