American Popular Culture in the 20th Century

  • JFK elected

    JFK elected
    The 1960 United States presidential election was the 44th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. In a closely contested election, Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee.
  • Berlin Wall is Constructed

    Berlin Wall is Constructed
    The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989.
  • James Meredith Registers at Ole Miss

    James Meredith Registers at Ole Miss
    Integrating Ole Miss: A Transformative, Deadly Riot Fifty years ago Monday, James Meredith became the first black student enrolled in the University of Mississippi. His attendance sparked a violent uprising on campus, requiring President Kennedy to send National Guard and Army troops.
  • Marilyn Monroe Dies

    Marilyn Monroe Dies
    Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, model, and singer. Famous for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and was emblematic of the era's attitudes towards sexuality.
  • Cuban Missile Crisis

    Cuban Missile Crisis
    The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by the American discovery of Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba
  • JFK Assassination

    JFK Assassination
    John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza
  • The Beatles arrive in the US

    The Beatles arrive in the US
    7 February 1964 was the day The Beatles' American invasion began. The band's Boeing 707, Pan Am flight 101, left London Airport early on the morning of 7 February 1964, bound for New York City.
  • Gulf of Tonkin

    Gulf of Tonkin
    The Gulf of Tonkin incident, also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It involved either one or two separate confrontations involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.
  • Summer of Love Begins

    Summer of Love Begins
    The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
  • First NFL Football Super bowl

    First NFL Football Super bowl
    The first AFL-NFL World Championship Game in professional American football, known retroactively as Super Bowl I and referred to in some contemporaneous reports, including the game's radio broadcast, as the Super Bowl, was played on January 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California.
  • Beatles release Sgt. Pepper's Album

    Beatles release Sgt. Pepper's Album
    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26 May 1967 in the United Kingdom and 2 June 1967 in the United States, it spent 27 weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart and 15 weeks at number one in the US.
  • Thurgood Marshall Nominated to Supreme Court

    Thurgood Marshall Nominated to Supreme Court
    Thurgood Marshall appointed to Supreme Court. President Lyndon Johnson appoints U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. On August 30, after a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall's nomination by a vote of 69 to 11
  • Tet Offensive

    Tet Offensive
    The Tet Offensive was a series of surprise attacks by the Vietcong (rebel forces sponsored by North Vietnam) and North Vietnamese forces, on scores of cities, towns, and hamlets throughout South Vietnam. It was considered to be a turning point in the Vietnam War.
  • Robert Kennedy Assassination

    Robert Kennedy Assassination
    On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Earlier that evening, the 42-year-old junior senator from New York was declared the winner in the South Dakota and California presidential primaries in the 1968 election
  • Richard Nixon was elected

    Richard Nixon was elected
    he 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
  • Moon Landing

    Moon Landing
    Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong
  • Woodstock Concert

    Woodstock Concert
    Woodstock was a music festival held between August 15–18, 1969, which attracted an audience of more than 400,000. Billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", it was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm near White Lake in Bethel, New York, 43 miles southwest of Woodstock.