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On April 30, 1939, the New York World's Fair opens in New York City. The opening ceremony, which featured speeches by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and New York Governor Herbert Lehman, ushered in the first day of television broadcasting in New York. -
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in 1960 in the wake of student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters across the South and became the major channel of student participation in the civil rights movement. -
The first-ever televised debate between presidential candidates was held on September 26, 1960. An estimated total of sixty to seventy million viewers watched the first and the successive debates, which came to be known as “the Great Debates.” -
The very first episode aired on September 30, 1960. Titled "The Flintstone Flyer" (P-2), it was actually the second Flintstones episode produced (after The Swimming Pool, P-1), but the first to air. -
It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. In a closely contested election, Democratic United States Senator John F. Kennedy defeated the incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee. -
On April 12, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes. -
The Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete wall “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” the split East and West Berlin. -
On October 1, 1961, in New York's final game of the regular season, Yankees slugger Roger Maris hits his 61st home run, becoming the first player in Major League Baseball to hit more than 60 in a season. He tops former Yankees great Babe Ruth, who hit 60 home runs in 1927. -
It was written by SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers (UAW) retreat outside of Port Huron, Michigan (now part of Lakeport State Park), for the group's first national convention. -
Marilyn Monroe died inside her Los Angeles home on August 4, 1962 at age 36. It was ruled a suicide by barbiturate overdose. -
James Meredith enrolled in Ole Miss, the all-white public university. Meredith wanted to take a stand against segregation and white supremacy, and Ole Miss was the place to do it. As he'd later state, ''It was the Ivy League of the Southern way of life''. -
In 1962 the Soviet Union began to secretly install missiles in Cuba to launch attacks on U.S. cities. The confrontation that followed, known as the Cuban missile crisis, brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles. -
In the film, James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a fellow British agent. The trail leads him to the underground base of Dr. Julius No, who is plotting to disrupt an early American space launch from Cape Canaveral with a radio beam weapon. -
I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr., during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. -
The Beatles arrived at John F Kennedy airport in New York, greeted by thousands of screaming fans. This Daily Mirror article documents Beatlemania crossing the Atlantic, as the band dubbed the Fab Four arrived to play their first concerts in America. -
At 8 o'clock on February 9th 1964, America tuned in to CBS and The Ed Sullivan Show. But this night was different. 73 million people gathered in front their TV sets to see The Beatles' first live performance on U.S. soil. -
It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1964. Incumbent Democratic United States President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee, in a landslide. With 61.1% of the popular vote, Johnson won the largest share of the popular vote of any candidate since the largely uncontested 1820 election. -
Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Islam until 1964, he was a vocal advocate for black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the black community. -
The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in the Watts neighborhood and its surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old African American man, was pulled over for drunken driving. -
Star Trek aired on NBC from September 8, 1966, to June 3, 1969. It was first broadcast on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network. Star Trek's Nielsen ratings while on NBC were low, and the network cancelled it after three seasons and 79 episodes. -
The Summer of Love began on January 14, 1967, when some 30,000 people gathered in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. They came to take part in counterculture poet Allen Ginsberg and writer Gary Synder's "Human Be-In" initiative, part of the duo's call for a collective expansion of consciousness -
The first AFL-NFL World Championship Game was an American football game played on January 15, 1967, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California. The National Football League champion Green Bay Packers defeated the American Football League champion Kansas City Chiefs by the score of 35–10 -
Prior to his match against Foley, Ali received news he had been drafted to fight in Vietnam. When Ali arrived to be inducted in the United States Armed Forces, however, he refused, citing his religion forbade him from serving. -
The Beatles had brought the values of the counterculture into the mainstream. By breaking traditional rules about what a “rock album” should be, Sgt. Pepper gave other musicians new ideas and new attitudes to the approach of music. The production of the record also set new standards in expertise and innovation. -
President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated distinguished civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. -
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. -
His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among Black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era. -
An American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. Senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968. Where he was killed by Sirhan Sirhan a 24 year old Palestinian. -
Protest activity against the Vietnam War took place prior to and during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1968, counterculture and anti-Vietnam War protest groups began planning protests and demonstrations in response to the convention, and the city promised to maintain law and order. -
On October 24, 1968, possession of LSD was made illegal in the United States. The last FDA approved study of LSD in patients ended in 1980, while a study in healthy volunteers was made in the late 1980s. -
In 1968, he made another run for the presidency and was elected, defeating Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace in a close contest. Nixon formally ended American involvement in Vietnam combat in 1973, and with it, the military draft, that same year. -
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States of America. -
American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first humans ever to land on the moon. -
Was a music festival held August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 40 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock. -
On December 6, 1969, about 300,000 gathered at the Altamont Speedway in Tracy, California to see the Rolling Stones perform a free concert that was seen as a 'Woodstock West. ' It was also supposed to be a triumphant conclusion for the band that year, following their successful U.S. tour.