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An operation undertaken by the Kennedy administration at the Bay of Pigs failed in its attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow the Castro government.
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Rosa Parks was arrested after she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This inspired the Montgomery bus boycott.
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Nine African American teenagers were escorted to school by the United States 101st Airborne Division as the students integrated to Little Rock Central High in Arkansas.
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The Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit.
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Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel to space as the Soviet Union launched him into orbit.
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Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, triggering riots across the nation.
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The United States' Apollo 11 became the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, manned by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
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The Equal Rights Amendment, intended to eliminate legal distinctions based on sex from United States institutions, was approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, however, it never got enough support from state legislatures to be ratified.
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The last American soldiers in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, signaling that U.S. troops had left the Vietnam War.
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United States President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald and succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.