March 1 — speculative exchange of U.S. dollars for gold leads to destabilization of the international monetary system. From March 15 to April 1, the London gold market is closed.
March 27 — Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, the first person from planet Earth to have been in space, died in an авиационной катастрофе while carrying out a training flight in a MiG-15UTI aircraft under the supervision of flight instructor V. S. Seryogin, near the village of Novosyolovo in the Kirzhachsky District of Vladimir Oblast.
In the USSR, a nationwide mourning period was declared.
This was the first case in the history of the USSR when a day of mourning was declared in connection with the death of a person who, at the time of death, was not the incumbent head of state. On March 28 at 21:15, the remains of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin were cremated. The urns containing the ashes of the deceased were interred in the Kremlin Wall.