January 1: European Economic Community (EEC) founded. - First Carrefour store opens, in Annecy.

January 3: Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third overland journey to the South Pole, and the first to use powered vehicles.

January 4: Sputnik 1 (launched on October 4, 1957) falls to Earth from its orbit and burns up.

January 8: 14-year-old Bobby Fischer wins the United States Chess Championship.

January 18: Armed Lumbee Indians confront a handful of Klansmen in Maxton, North Carolina. - The first of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic is telecast by CBS. The Emmy-winning series (one concert approximately every three months except for the summer) will run for more than fourteen years. It will make Bernstein's name a household word, and the most famous conductor in the U.S.

January 20: Anne de Vries releases the fourth and final volume of Journey Through the Night.

January 28: Hall of Fame baseball player Roy Campanella is involved in an automobile accident that ends his career and leaves him paralyzed.

January 31: The first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, is launched into orbit. (source: Wikipedia)