The year 1961 is first and foremost a year of great stories. It's the year when man flew into space for the first time, but also the year when Berlin, Europe and the whole world were divided by a wall. With its ambivalence, the first year of the "sixties" seemed to foreshadow the entire coming decade - a decade of great hopes and deep disappointments.

But the main thing is the hopes. The world is looking ahead, the war and post-war hardships are forgotten and people believe that despite many problems it will only get better. Even on our side of the Iron Curtain, there is much more optimism. Working hours are shortened, new schools are built, shops offer a more varied assortment, but the relaxation is most noticeable in the area of ​​culture.

Granddaughters are learning modern Charleston from their grandmothers again, Karel Zeman is shooting the movie Baron Prášil – a film filled to the brim with incredible ideas and tricks – and Waldemar Matuška and Eva Pilarová are entering the popular music scene with a vengeance as the first representatives of the generation that will dominate Czechoslovak pop music for the next few decades.

The new generation is also taking over the reins in world culture. It is true that only eighteen spectators arrive at the first concert of The Beatles at the Cavern Club, but the legendary story can already begin. Classmates Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meet at a railway station in Dartford, UK, and are surprised to discover that they both enjoy rock. For the first time in the USA, "American Schweik", the famous Chapter XXII by Joseph Heller, is released, and the musical West Side Story invades the cinema screens, which will determine the rules of musical creation for generations of artists.

So let's remember the year when Otto Wichterle completed the development of contact lenses with the help of the Mercury kit, when the heir to the Rockefeller family disappeared in the cannibals' territory and the population of the Earth reached three billion.