April 1959

Thursday 09:

Mercury program: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts which the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven".

Saturday 25:

David Carr, a 25-year-old Briton, enters Royal Manchester Infirmary in England. His death later that year was in 1990 attributed to AIDS by a director at the infirmary, Gerald Corbitt; a 1995 by Corbitt cowrote an update noting that the virus was from 1990.