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SNCC Formed
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the major Civil Rights Movement organizations of the 1960s. It emerged from the first wave of student sit-ins and formed at a May 1960 meeting organized by Ella Baker at Shaw University. -
First Televised Presidential Debate
1960 Kennedy–Nixon debates. The first general election presidential debate was held on September 26, 1960, between U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee, and Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee, in Chicago at the studios of CBS's WBBM-TV. -
First Airing of "The Flintstones"
It was originally broadcast from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, in a prime time slot, the first such instance for an animated series. The continuing popularity of The Flintstones rested heavily on its juxtaposition of modern everyday concerns in the Stone Age setting. -
President Kennedy is Elected
The United States presidential election of 1960 was the 44th quadrennial presidential election, 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. -
Russians Send the First Man into Space
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. -
Berlin Wall is Constructed
The Berlin Wall. During the early years of the Cold War, West Berlin was a geographical loophole through which thousands of East Germans fled to the democratic West. In response, the Communist East German authorities built a wall that totally encircled West Berlin. It was thrown up overnight, on 13 August 1961. -
Roger Maris of the Yankees Breaks Babe Ruth's Single Season Home Run Record
Roger Maris breaks home-run record. On October 1, 1961, New York Yankee Roger Maris becomes the first-ever major-league baseball player to hit more than 60 home runs in a single season. The great Babe Ruth set the record in 1927; Maris and his teammate Mickey Mantle spent 1961 trying to break it. -
SDS Releases its Port Huron Statement
The Port Huron Statement is a 1962 political manifesto of the North American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written primarily by Tom Hayden, a University of Michigan student and then the Field Secretary of SDS, with help from 58 other SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers retreat in Port Huron, Michigan (now Lakeport State Park), for the group's first national convention. -
Marilyn Monroe Dies
Marilyn Monroe was found dead of a barbiturate overdose in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 5, 1962, at her 12305 Fifth Helena Drive home in Los Angeles, California. She was a major sex symbol and one of the most popular Hollywood stars during the 1950s and early 1960s. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films had grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962. -
James Meredith Registers at Ole Miss
James Meredith was the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi. The school had originally rejected his application, and a legal battle ensued. In 1962, segregationists protesting his admittance to Ole Miss led to bloody riots on campus. -
"Dr. No" the First James Bond Movie Premieres
In his autobiography, My Word Is My Bond, Moore says he was never approached to play the role of Bond until 1973, for Live and Let Die. Moore appeared as Simon Templar on the television series The Saint, airing in the United Kingdom for the first time on 4 October 1962, only one day before the premiere of Dr. No. -
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 American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. -
Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" Speech
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
John F. Kennedy is Assassinated
President John F. Kennedy is shot and killed as his motorcade drives through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy’s suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was believed to have used a mail-order rifle in order to shoot the president from the sixth story window of the Texas School Book Depository. -
The Beatles Arrive in the United States
An estimated four thousand Beatles' fans were present on 7 February 1964 as Pan Am Flight 101 left Heathrow Airport. Among the passengers were the Beatles, on their first trip to the United States as a band, with their entourage of photographers and journalists, and Phil Spector. -
The Beatles Appear on Ed Sullivan
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. -
New York World's Fair Begins
he 1964/1965 New York World's Fair held over 140 pavilions, 110 restaurants, for 80 nations (hosted by 37), 24 US states, and over 45 corporations to build exhibits or attractions at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, NY. The immense fair covered 646 acres (261 ha) on half the park, with numerous pools or fountains, and an amusement park with rides near the lake. -
Gulf of Tonkin Incident
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. -
Lyndon B Johnson Defeats Barry Goldwater
The United States presidential election of 1964, the 45th quadrennial American presidential election, was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1964. Incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee. -
Malcolm X Assassinated
Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. -
Watt's Race Riots
The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion, took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, an African-American motorist on parole for robbery, was pulled over for reckless driving. -
"Star Trek" TV Show Airs
The first episode of the show aired on 6 September 1966 on CTV in Canada, followed by a 8 September 1966 airing on NBC in America. 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 Enterprise. -
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. -
San Francisco "Summer of Love" Speech
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. -
Boxer Muhammad Ali Refuses Military Service
Clay v. United States, 403 U.S. 698 (1971), was Muhammad Ali's appeal of his conviction in 1967 for refusing to report for induction into the United States military forces during the Vietnam War. His local draft board had rejected his application for conscientious objector classification. -
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. -
Monterey Music Festival Held
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. Crowd estimates for the festival have ranged from 25,000 to 90,000 people, who congregated in and around the festival grounds. -
Thurgood Marshall Nominated to the Supreme Court
Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as the United States Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson successfully nominated Marshall to succeed retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. Marshall retired during the administration of President George H. W. -
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. -
Matin Luther King Jr. Assassinated
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Robert Kennedy is Assassinated
Robert Francis Kennedy was an American politician and lawyer 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. -
Protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
The Democratic Convention of 1968 was held August 26-29 in Chicago, Illinois. As delegates flowed into the International Amphitheatre to nominate a Democratic Party presidential candidate, tens of thousands of protesters swarmed the streets to rally against the Vietnam War and the political status quo. -
LSD Declared Illegal By the U.S. Government
SD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, is a hallucinogenic drug that was first synthesized a Swiss scientist in the 1930s. During the Cold War, the CIA conducted clandestine experiments with LSD (and other drugs) for mind control, information gathering and other purposes. Over time, the drug became a symbol of the 1960s counterculture, eventually joining other hallucinogenic and recreational drugs at rave parties. -
Richard Nixon is Elected
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. -
Stonewall Riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. -
American Astronauts Land on the Moon
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20, 1969. -
Manson Family Murders Sharon Tate
The Tate murders were a series of killings conducted by members of the Manson Family on August 8–9, 1969, which claimed the lives of five people. Four members of the Family invaded the home of married celebrity couple, actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles. -
Woodstock Concert
Woodstock was a music festival held on a dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains, northwest of New York City, between August 15–18, 1969, which attracted an audience of more than 400,000. -
The Rolling Stones Host the Altamont Music Festival
The Altamont Festival brings the 1960s to a violent end. Altamont was the brainchild of the Rolling Stones, who hoped to cap off their U.S. tour in late 1969 with a concert that would be the West Coast equivalent of Woodstock, in both scale and spirit.
