60's era timeline

  • Newport Jazz Festival

    Newport Jazz Festival
    The Newport Jazz Festival is a music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. It was established in 1954 by socialite Elaine Lorillard, who, together with husband Louis Lorillard, financed the festival for many years.
  • nixon-kennedy debates

    nixon-kennedy debates
    In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first televised presidential debates in American history. The Kennedy-Nixon debates not only had a major impact on the election’s outcome, but ushered in a new era in which crafting a public image and taking advantage of media exposure became essential ingredients of a successful political campaign.
  • Apollo 11 Moon Landing

    Apollo 11 Moon Landing
    The primary objective of Apollo 11 was to complete a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961: perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth.
  • the assassination of JFK

    the assassination of JFK
    Most importantly, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was shot twice, and an hour after his death Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime
  • the beatles

    the beatles
    On February 9th, 1964, The Beatles, with their Edwardian suits and mop top haircuts, made their first American television appearance—LIVE—on The Ed Sullivan Show
  • The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

    The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
    The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
  • march of the pentgon

    march of the pentgon
    Demonstrators including radicals, liberals, black nationalists, hippies, professors, women’s groups, and war veterans march on the Pentagon.
  • Riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention

    Riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention
    Protest activity took place prior to and during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1967, counterculture protest groups had been promising to come to Chicago and disrupt the convention, and the city promised to maintain law and order. For eight days,
  • My Lai Massacre

    My Lai Massacre
    In one of the most horrific incidents of violence against civilians during the Vietnam War, a company of American soldiers brutally killed the majority of the population of the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai in March 1968.
  • Chicago 8 Trial

    Chicago 8 Trial
    The trial for eight antiwar activists charged with the responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International party.
  • Operation Rolling Thunder

    Operation Rolling Thunder
    Operation Rolling Thunder was the title of a gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the US 2nd Air Division (later Seventh Air Force), US Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968,
  • woodstock

    woodstock
    The Woodstock Festival was a three-day concert (which rolled into a fourth day) that involved lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll - plus a lot of mud. The Woodstock Music Festival of 1969 has become an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture.
  • The Beatles Break Up

    The Beatles Break Up
    Although in September 1969 John Lennon privately informed the other Beatles that he was leaving the group, there was no public acknowledgement of the break-up until Paul McCartney announced on 10 April 1970 he was quitting the Beatles.
  • kent state protest

    kent state protest
    On April 30, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon appeared on national television to announce the invasion of Cambodia by the United States and the need to draft 150,000 more soldiers for an expansion of the Vietnam War effort. This provoked massive protests on campuses throughout the country. At Kent State University in Ohio, protesters launched a demonstration that included setting fire to the ROTC building, prompting the governor of Ohio to dispatch 900 National Guardsmen to the campus
  • Roe vs. Wade

    Roe vs. Wade
    Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. It was decided simultaneously with a companion case,