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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 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
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
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
In an effort to stem the tide of refugees attempting to leave East Berlin, the communist government of East Germany begins building the Berlin Wall to divide East and West Berlin. Construction of the wall caused a short-term crisis in U.S.-Soviet bloc relations, and the wall itself came to symbolize the Cold War. -
Roger Maris of the Yankees breaks Babe Ruth's single season home run record
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 about democratic ideals. It's about America's emergence from World War II as the beacon of those ideals and about our country's failure to be faithful to them. ... The reason The Port Huron Statement remains an important document is that it is a model political manifesto of the American left. -
Marilyn Monroe dies
Monroe dies of a barbiturate overdose. -
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. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
he 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. No" the first James Bond movie premiers
Dr. No is a 1962 British spy film, starring Sean Connery, with Ursula Andress and Joseph Wiseman, filmed in Jamaica and England. It is the first James Bond film. -
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
Crowds of excited people lined the streets and waved to the Kennedys. The car turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza around 12:30 p.m. As it was passing the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire suddenly reverberated in the plaza. Bullets struck the president's neck and head and he slumped over toward Mrs. Kennedy. -
The Beatles arrive in the United States
The day The Beatles' American invasion began. The Beatles' Boeing 707, Pan Am flight 101, left London Airport early on the morning of 7 February 1964, bound for New York City. -
The Beatles appear on Ed Sullivan
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
The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair held over 140 pavilions, 110 restaurants, for 80 nations, 24 US states, and over 45 corporations to build exhibits or attractions at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, NY. -
Gulf of Tonkin Incident
North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox (DD-731) while the destroyer was in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. There is no doubting that fact. -
Lyndon B Johnson defeats Barry Goldwater
Incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee. ... Johnson championed his passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and his campaign advocated a series of anti-poverty programs collectively known as the Great Society. -
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. -
Watts race riots
Marquette Frye, an African-American motorist on parole for robbery, was pulled over for reckless driving. -
"Star Trek" TV show airs
Star Trek is an American space opera media franchise based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. The first television series, simply called Star Trek and now referred to as "The Original Series", debuted in 1966 and aired for three seasons on the television network NBC. -
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 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California. -
Boxer Muhammed 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
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. -
Thurgood Marshall nominated to the Supreme Court
In 1967, Johnson successfully nominated Marshall to succeed retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. -
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 -
San Francisco "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. -
Tet Offensive
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. -
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1954 until his death in 1968 -
Robert Kennedy is assassinated
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight Pacific Daylight Time at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. -
Protests 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 US government
LSD, 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 in elected
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
Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins were the astronauts on Apollo 11. Four days later, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. They landed on the moon in the Lunar Module. -
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, which attracted more than 400,000 people. -
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.
