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After agreeing to train South Vietnamese troops, the U.S. got pulled into a war against the North Vietnamese which would last 20 years
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Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, refuses to give up her seat on the bus to a white man which led to the declaration that bus segregation laws were unconstitutional.
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The interstate highway system begins with the signing of the Federal-Aid Highway Act.
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Gordon Gould, an American physicist, invents the laser. Gould was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991.
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U.S. Congress approves the first civil rights bill since reconstruction with the additional protection of voting rights.
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The Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite, is launched at Cape Canaveral.
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NASA selects the first seven men to become the first astronauts of the United States. The Mercury Seven included John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Gus Griscom, Wally Scare, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.
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The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba is repulsed by Cuban forces in an attempt by Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro.
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The construction of the Berlin Wall begins by the Soviet bloc, segregating the German city. The wall would last for twenty-eight years.
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The Civil Rights march on Washington, D.C. for Jobs and Freedom culminates with Dr. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Over 200,000 people participated.
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The Outer Space Treaty is signed into by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union.
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Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray.
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Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida, expanding the Disney empire to the east coast.
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The United States Supreme Court rules in Roe vs. Wade that a woman cannot be prevented by a state in having an abortion (In the first six months of pregnancy).
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The four-part Vietnam peace pacts were signed in Paris. The announcement of the military draft ending also occurred on that date.