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Vietnam, a now independent country, is split between a communist north and a pro-west south. This conflict lasts 20 years, with Vietnam fighting American troops until 1973.
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Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery Bus to a white passenger. Martin Luther King Jr. leads protestors in a boycott of the Civil Rights system, resulting in the Supreme Court ruling bus segregation as unconstitutional.
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President Eisenhower sends troops to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce integration of black students.
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Explorer I, the first American satellite, is launched by the Army at Cape Canaveral.
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Alaska is admitted as the 49th state of America.
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Hawaii is admitted as the 50th state in America.
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The Civil Rights march on Washington, D.C. results in Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
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President Kennedy is assassinated while in a motorcade through downtown Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald.
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Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, Jr., become the first men to land on the moon.
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The 26th Amendment reduced the legal voting age to 18.
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The ERA, which would outlaw sex discrimination in the workplace, was passed by Congress but was not ratified by the states.