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The Rolling Stones Host the Altamont Music Festival
(October 24, 1951 – December 6, 1969) was an 18-year-old African American who was killed at the 1969 Altamont Free Concert. During the performance by The Rolling Stones, Hunter approached the stage, and was violently driven off by members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club who had agreed to serve as security guards. -
SNCC Formed
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the major American 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
The first general election presidential debate was held on September 26, 1960, between U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy, 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"
The Flintstones premiered on September 30, 1960, at 8:30 pm, and quickly became a hit. It was the first American animated show to depict two people of the opposite sex (Fred and Wilma; Barney and Betty) sleeping together in one bed, although Fred and Wilma are sometimes depicted as sleeping in separate beds. -
President Kennedy is 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 United States Senator John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee. -
Russians Send the First Man into the 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. -
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. -
Berlin Wall is Constructed
Construction of the Wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) on 13 August 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. -
SDS Releases Its Port Huron Statement
The Port Huron Statement was written in Port Huron, Michigan, at a meeting of Students for a Democratic Society. Tom Hayden, the driving force behind the manifesto, was a student at the University of Michigan and came from a working-class family. The Port Huron Statement reflects the dissatisfaction and disillusionment many young people were feeling in the 1960s. -
Marilyn Monroe Dies
Died from a Barbiturate overdose -
"Dr. No" the First James Bond Movie Premiers
Dr. No is a 1962 British spy film based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. Starring Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, and Jack Lord, it is the first film in the James Bond franchise, and was adapted by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather, and directed by Terence Young. -
James Meredith Registers at Ole Mass
James Meredith, an African American man, attempted to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi in 1962. Chaos soon broke out on the Ole Miss campus, with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many others arrested, after the Kennedy administration called out some 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce order. -
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. -
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 was assassinated on November 22, 1963 at 12:30 p.m. while riding in a motorcade in Dallas during a campaign visit. -
The Beatles Arrive in the United States
In February 1964, the Beatles arrived in the United States and their televised performances on The Ed Sullivan Show were viewed by approximately 73 million people. It established the Beatles' international stature, changed attitudes to popular music in the US and sparked the British Invasion phenomenon. -
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. A record setting 73 million people tuned in that evening making it one of the seminal moments in television history. -
New York World's Fair Begins
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. -
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. -
Lyndon B Johnson Defeats Barry Goldwater
The 1964 United States presidential election was the 45th quadrennial American presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1964. Incumbent Democratic United States President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee. -
Malcom X Assassinated
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. -
Watts Race Riot
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. -
LSD Declared Illegal By the U.S. Government
In 1966 Congress passed the Drug Abuse Control Amendment, which banned the individual manufacturing or sale of LSD and other similar hallucinogens. The law greatly restricted LSD by allowing only legitimate wholesale manufacturing, distribution, and use in research and medical situations. While illegal manufacturing and sale could be prosecuted, the law did not address personal possession of the drug. -
"Star Trek" TV Show Airs
Star Trek aired on NBC from September 8, 1966, to June 3, 1969, and was actually seen first on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network. Star Trek's Nielsen ratings while on NBC were low, and the network cancelled it after three seasons and 79 episodes. -
San Francisco "Summer of Love" Begins
The Summer of Love began on January 14, 1967, when some 30,000 people gathered in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. They came to take part in counterculture poet Allen Ginsberg and writer Gary Synder's "Human Be-In" initiative, part of the duo's call for a collective expansion of consciousness. -
First NFL Football Super Bowl
Packers beat Chiefs in first Super Bowl. On January 15, 1967, the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL) smash the American Football League (AFL)'s Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10, in the first-ever AFL-NFL World Championship, later known as Super Bowl I, at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. -
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. -
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 on the Billboard Top LPs chart in the US. -
Monterrey 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. -
Thurgood Marshall Nominated to the 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
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. -
Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Christian minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. -
Robert Kennedy is Assassinated
Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. -
Protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
Protest activity against the Vietnam War took place prior to and during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1967, counterculture and anti-Vietnam War protest groups had been promising to come to Chicago and disrupt the convention, and the city promised to maintain law and order. -
Richard Nixon is Elected
The 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial U.S. 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. -
Stonewall Riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that began 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 blasted off on July 16, 1969. 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–LaBianca murders were perpetrated by members of the Charles Manson "Family" in Los Angeles, California. They murdered five people on August 8–9, 1969, and two more the following evening 5 were killed in total -
Woodstock Concert
Woodstock was a music festival held August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 40 miles southwest of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" and alternatively referred to as the Bethel Rock Festival, it attracted an audience of more than 400,000.
