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  Rosa Parks rode at the front of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus on the day the Supreme Court's ban on segregation of the city's buses took effect. A year earlier, she had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus.
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  The Act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights.
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  Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States, and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year.
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  National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the federal agency that is responsible for aerospace research, aeronautics, and the civilian space program.
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  Alaska was bought by the US in 1867 and became the 49th state in 1959. Hawaii ceded itself to the USA in 1898 and became a state in 1959 being the 50th state.
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  He was killed riding through Dallas, Texas.
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  On March 8, 1965, the first American combat troops – the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade – waded ashore at China Beach north of Da Nang.
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  MLK led the civil rights movement from 1955. Ames Earl Ray ended up shooting Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
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  Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969. The American economy made a lot of money off this event.
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  The 26th Amendment is ratified, allowing 18-year-olds to vote.