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FDA approves "the pill"
FDA approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control bill–Enovid-10, made by the G.D. Searle Company of Chicago, Illinois. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fda-approves-the-pill -
JFK gives the "New Frontier" speech
In preparing for this moment, he sought both to inspire the nation and to send a message abroad signaling the challenges of the Cold War and his hope for peace in the nuclear age. He also wanted to be brief.
https://www.jfklibrary.org/ -
Debate Richard Nixon and JF.Kennedy
For the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is shown on television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, met in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S. domestic matters.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-kennedy-nixon-debate -
J.F. Kennedy - 35th president of the U.S
Democrat John F. Kennedy wins the U.S. Presidential Election after defeating Republican Richard Nixon.
https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1960 -
Formation of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam
Vietnamese political organization formed to effect the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government and the reunification of North and South Vietnam.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Liberation-Front-political-organization-Vietnam -
Temporary Peace Corps created
Kennedy issues an executive order creating a temporary Peace Corps and asks Congress to authorize the program permanently.
https://millercenter.org/president/john-f-kennedy/key-events -
First person in space
The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth, traveling in the capsule-like spacecraft Vostok 1.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-man-in-space -
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed attack launched by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to push Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016) from power.
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/bay-of-pigs-invasion -
The Freedom Riders
The original group of 13 Freedom Riders—seven African Americans and six whites—left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus.The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina, drawing little public notice.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-rides -
First American in space
Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. It major triumph for the NASA.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-first-american-in-space -
Construction of the Berlin Wall begins.
Construction of the wall was planned by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany). It cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall -
USSR Tests Hydrogen Bomb
The Soviet Union fires a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb, the biggest explosion in history. It was set off over Novaya Zemlya Island in the Russian Arctic Sea. The Soviet ‘Tsar Bomba’ had a yield of 50 megatons, or the power of around 3,800 Hiroshima bombs detonated simultaneously.
https://www.ctbto.org/specials/testing-times/30-october-1961-the-tsar-bomba/ -
The Albany Movement
It was a desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia. Local activists created the movement. It challenged all forms of racial segregation and discrimination in the city.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/albany-movement-1961-1962/ -
First U.S. helicopters arrive in South Vietnam
The U.S. sends helicopter units to South Vietnamese troops and becomes involved in combat operations.
https://www.chipublib.org/the-vietnam-war-extended-timelin/ -
President's Commission on the Status of Women.
President John F. Kennedy establishes the commission that will advise the President on issues related to women, along with encouraging policy and legislation pertaining to women’s
rights.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presidents-Commission-on-the-Status-of-Women -
"Happy Birthday Mr. President"
Marilyn Monroe sings "Happy Birthday" to the president at his 45th birthday party at Madison Square Garden.
http://www.presidential-power.org/presidencies-timelines/john-kennedy-presidency-timeline.htm -
Spider-Man comic book
The comic book character of Spider-Man makes his debut in the Amazing Fantasy #15 comic.
https://blog.mythicmarkets.com/posts/2020/8/5/behind-the-comic-amazing-fantasy-15-the-origin-of-spider-man -
Marilyn Monroe is found dead
On August 5, 1962, movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles. She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand. There were empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marilyn-monroe-is-found-dead -
"Love Me Do" by the Beatles
Love Me Do" is the Beatles' first single, backed by "P.S. I Love You". When the single was originally released in the United Kingdom, it peaked at number seventeen.
https://beatles.fandom.com/wiki/Love_Me_Do -
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban missile crisis, was a major confrontation that brought the United States and the Soviet Union close to war over the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. on October 28th, Kennedy committed the United States to never invading Cuba.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-missile-crisis -
Hotline agreement
To reduce the threat of an accidental nuclear war, the United States and the Soviet Union agree to establish a “hot line” communication system between the two nations. It would be a 24-hour-a-day communications link between Washington, D.C., and Moscow.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/united-states-and-soviet-union-will-establish-a-hot-line -
Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique.
It's credited to helping to popularize the women’s rights
movement. In the book, Friedan asserts that educated middle-class women find their traditional roles as housewives and
mothers unfulfilling.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-feminine-mystique-by-betty-friedan-is-published -
The Birmingham Campaign
King and Fred Shuttlesworth announced an agreement with the city of Birmingham to desegregate lunch counters, restrooms, drinking fountains, and department store fitting rooms, to hire blacks in stores as salesmen and clerks, and to release of hundreds of jail protesters on bond.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/birmingham-campaign-1963/ -
Equal Pay Act
The Equal Pay Act, signed in to law by President JFK, was one of the first federal anti-discrimination laws that addressed wage differences based on gender. It made it illegal to pay men and women working in the same place different salaries for similar work.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/equal-pay-act -
First woman in space
Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to go into space. She spent almost three days in space and orbited Earth 48 times in her space capsule, Vostok 6. That was her only trip into space.
https://www.space.com/21571-valentina-tereshkova.html -
March on Washington
More than 200,000 people took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation’s capital. The march was successful in pressuring the administration of JFK to initiate a strong federal civil rights bill in Congress. During this event, Martin Luther King delivered his memorable “I Have a Dream” speech.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/march-washington-jobs-and-freedom -
War Resisters League
First U.S. protest against the Vietnam War and "anti-Buddhist terrorism" by the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese regime with a demonstration at the US Mission to the UN in New York City.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_against_the_Vietnam_War -
Ngo Dinh Diem's assassination
Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated by his own generals as part of a coup d’état that is carried out with the tacit support of U.S. officials.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ngo-dinh-diem-assassinated-in-south-vietnam -
JFK is assassinated
Mortal shooting of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. His accused killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had embraced Marxism and defected for a time to the Soviet Union.
https://www.britannica.com/event/assassination-of-John-F-Kennedy -
LBJ's speech
LBJ addresses the nation and pledges to carry on Kennedy's progressive policies. The speech is credited with uniting the American people—and Congress—behind Johnson.
http://www.lbjlibrary.org/lyndon-baines-johnson/speeches-films/president-johnsons-special-message-to-the-congress-the-american-promise -
The mini-skirt
Mary Quant designs the mini-skirt in London and it becomes a fashion craze.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniskirt -
Economic Opportunity Act
Johnson introduced the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Economic Opportunity Act to Congress.
https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/great-society -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
It ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act -
First multi person spacecraft
The Soviets adapted the Vostok so it could carry more than one crew member. Voskhod 1 carried three cosmonauts—commander Vladimir Komarov, engineer Konstantin Feoktistov, and doctor Boris Yegorov—into Earth orbit.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Voskhod-spacecraft -
The Chicago Freedom Movement
Led by MLK, James Bevel, and Al Raby. It was created to challenge systematic racial segregation and discrimination in Chicago and its suburbs. The movement included rallies, protest marches, boycotts, and other forms of non-violent actions. It was the most ambitious civil rights campaign in the northern United States.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/chicago-freedom-movement-1965-1967/ -
Bloody Sunday
Activist John Lewis led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; and faced brutal attacks by oncoming state troopers, footage of the violence collectively shocked the nation and galvanized the fight against racial injustice.
https://www.history.com/news/selma-bloody-sunday-attack-civil-rights-movement -
Crystalline LSD synthesized
During the counterculture movement the LSD use was very popular among young people. During the Summer of Love it was very used.
https://vintagedancer.com/1960s/hippies-in-the-60s-fashion-festivals-flower-power -
First American spacewalk
NASA astronaut Ed White stepped out of his Gemini capsule and into space for the first American spacewalk. Ed White served as the mission pilot and James McDivitt as the mission commander. The crew of two spent the remainder of their flight conducting 11 experiments, which included Earth photography and spacecraft navigation.
https://spacecenter.org/mission-monday-five-fast-facts-about-the-first-american-spacewalk -
First successful Mars flyby
The Mariner 4 spacecraft was the first successful Mars flyby, by NASA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_4 -
Civil Rights Act of 1965
The act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. It banned the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests and the poll taxes.
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc -
The Housing and Urban Development Act
It provided federal funds to cities for urban renewal and development. Also, easier access to home mortgages and a controversial rent-subsidy program for vulnerable Americans who qualified for public housing.
https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/great-society -
Burning draft cards becomes illegal
The act of draft card burning was defended as a symbolic form of free speech, a constitutional right guaranteed by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court decided against the draft card burners; it determined that the federal law was justified and that it was unrelated to the freedom of speech.
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1076/draft-card-mutilation-act-of-1965 -
The National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act
It declared “the arts and humanities belong to all the people of the United States” and that culture is a concern of the government, not just private citizens.
https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/great-society -
The Underground Press Syndicate
A loose coalition of editors from five papers, founded the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS). Membership into the UPS increased rapidly over the next six years. Newspapers were required to send all issues of their papers to UPS, in addition to all other members of the Syndicate.
https://peopleslibrary.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/protest-history-underground-press-syndicate/ -
First soft landing on the Moon
Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data from the Moon's surface to Earth, preceding the U.S. Surveyor 1 soft lander by about 4 months.
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1966-006A -
The National Organization for Women
NOW, a lobbying group for women’s equality, is founded. Women’s rights activists were frustrated with the federal government failure to enforce new anti-discrimination laws. The first president of the group is Betty Friedan.
https://now.org/ -
First episode of Star Trek
The show was created by Gene Roddenberry as a "Wagon Train to the Stars". Star Trek was set in the 23rd century and featured the voyages of the starship USS Enterprise.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series -
Start of Operation Cedar Falls
The goal of the operation was to rout out Viet Cong base camps in the Iron Triangle. The Viet Cong did not choose to fight, but 750 Vietcong were killed, as opposed to 72 American deaths.
https://www.historycentral.com/Vietnam/cedarfalls.html -
Tragic flight aboard Soyuz-1
Soviet Union announced the launch of a spacecraft called Soyuz-1 with veteran cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov onboard. However, the next day, the USSR announced that Komarov had tragically died on landing due to a failure of the parachute system.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz1.html -
Summer of Love
Social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. It encompassed the hippie music, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war, and free-love scene throughout the West Coast of the United States, and as far away as NYC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love -
The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published
It was founded in San Francisco by Jann Wenner, who is still the magazine's publisher, and music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
https://pop-culture.fandom.com/wiki/Rolling_Stone#:~:text=Rolling%20Stone%20is%20an%20American,Gleason. -
Youth International Party
Known as the Yippies, it was an American anarchist and communist political party that was founded during the counterculture movement. The Yippies were anti-Vietnam War and promoted free speech, and their members were predominantly college-age anarchist youths and hippies who were known for their love for marijuana, their pranks, and their humor.
https://historica.fandom.com/wiki/Youth_International_Party -
My Lai Massacre
500 unarmed villagers are killed by U.S. Army troops. Groups of women, children, and elderly men are shot at close range by elements of Charlie Company.
https://www.britannica.com/list/vietnam-war-timeline -
MLK is assassinated
Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike. He was 39 years old.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dr-king-is-assassinated -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
The act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and since 1974, sex.
https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/discover/artifacts/civil-rights-act-1968. -
First manned Apollo mission
Apollo 7, launches on a Saturn 1 for an 11-day mission in Earth orbit. The mission also featured the first live TV broadcast of humans in space.
https://www.space.com/4422-timeline-50-years-spaceflight.html -
Operation Rolling Thunder ends
President Lyndon Johnson announces that the bombing operation in North Vietnam will halt in anticipation of peace talks in Paris between South and North Vietnam. He asserts that the US has no intention of dictating the future of the people of South Vietnam.
https://www.wnyc.org/story/president-johnson-halts-bombing-in-vietnam/ -
Ivy League Education for women
Elite all-male colleges including Princeton and Yale begin admitting women.
https://libguides.princeton.edu/c.php?g=84581&p=543232 -
First humans land on the Moon
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step on the moon. He and Aldrin walked around for three hours. They did experiments. They picked up bits of moon dirt and rocks.They put a U.S. flag on the moon. They also left a sign on the moon.
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/first-person-on-moon.html -
Woodstock Music Festival
The grooviest event in music history–the Woodstock Music & Art Fair–draws to a close after three days of peace, love and rock ‘n’ roll in upstate New York. The idea was to make enough money from the event to build a recording studio near the arty New York town of Woodstock.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/woodstock-music-festival-concludes -
Ho Chi Minh dies
President Ho Chi Minh of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam dies of a heart attack in Hanoi. North Vietnamese officials announced his death the next day.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ho-chi-minh-dies -
Nixon announces policy of Vietnamization
President Richard Nixon said in a televised address, that the United States would no longer take the lead in the fight against the North Vietnamese. Instead, US forces would train the South Vietnamese military to handle the conflict on its own.
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/vietnamization -
"Sesame Street" debuts
“Sesame Street,” a pioneering TV show that would teach generations of young children the alphabet and how to count, makes its broadcast debut
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sesame-street-debuts#:~:text=On%20November%2010%2C%201969%2C%20%E2%80%9C,count%2C%20makes%20its%20broadcast%20debut. -
Anti war protests
Millions of people across the United States take to the streets to protest the continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The antiwar demonstrations represent the largest public protests in U.S. history to date.
https://www.britannica.com/list/vietnam-war-timeline
