Kindergarten

• “Bonanza” premieres, first regularly scheduled TV aired in color
• TheXerox 914, the first plain paper copier, is introduced to the public.
• First large unit action of the Vietnam War takes place, when two companies of the ARVN‘s 23rd Division are ambushed by a well-organized Viet Cong force of several hundred, identified as the “2nd Liberation Battalion”.
• Rod Serling‘s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS.
• The Sound of Music, written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, premiered on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
• Greensboro sit-ins: In Greensboro, North Carolina, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar non-violent protests throughout the Southern United States, and six months later, the original four protesters are served lunch at the same counter.
• Vietnam War: The United States announces that 3,500 American soldiers will be sent to Vietnam.
• The Sharpeville massacre in South Africa results in more than 69 dead, 300 injured
• The 1960 United States Census begins. There are 179,323,175 U.S. residents on this day.
• The U-2 incident: Several Soviet surface-to-air missiles shoot down an American Lockheed U-2 spy plane. Its pilot, Francis Gary Powers of the Central Intelligence Agency, is captured.
• Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion announces that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann has been captured.
• The newly named Beatles begin a 48-night residency at the Indra Club in Hamburg, West Germany.

First Grade

• 1960 Summer Olympic Games: Muhammad Ali (at this time Cassius Clay) of the United States wins the gold medal in light-heavyweight boxing.
• Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a table at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, his way of protesting the discussion of the Soviet Union‘s policies toward Eastern Europe.
• 1960 United States presidential election: In a close race, Democratic U. S. Senator John F. Kennedy is elected over Republican U. S. Vice President Richard Nixon, to become (at 43) the second youngest man to serve as President of the United States, and the youngest man elected to this position.
• World population: 3,021,475,000
• President Dwight Eisenhower gives his final State of the Union Address to Congress. In a Farewell Address the same day, he warns of the increasing power of a “military–industrial complex.”
• The Beatles at The Cavern Club: Lunchtime – The Beatles perform under this name at The Cavern Club for the first time following their return to Liverpool from Hamburg, George Harrison‘s first appearance at the venue. On March 21 they begin regular performances here.
• “Barbie” gets a boyfriend, when the “Ken” doll is introduced in the United States.
• The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba begins; it fails two days later by April 19.
• U.S. Freedom Riders begin interstate bus rides, to test the new U.S. Supreme Court integration decision.  A Freedom Riders bus is fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama, and the civil rights protestors are beaten by an angry mob of Ku Klux Klan members.
• Mercury program: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space, aboard Mercury-Redstone 3.
• U.S. President John F. Kennedy gives a widely watched TV speech on the Berlin crisis, warning “we will not be driven out of Berlin.” Kennedy urges Americans to build fallout shelters, setting off a four-month debate on civil defense.

Second Grade

• Barack Obama, who in 2009 will become the first African-American president of the United States, is born in Honolulu , Hawaii
• Tom and Jerry make a return with their first cartoon short since 1958,
• Baseball player Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hits his 61st home run in the last game of the season, against the Boston Red Sox, setting a new record for the longer baseball season. The record for the shorter season is still held by Babe Ruth.
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s (film) was theatrically released by Paramount Pictures, to critical and commercial success.
• West Side Story is released as a film in the United States.
• The Soviet Union detonates a 58-megaton yield hydrogen bomb.
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is first published, in the US.
• U.S. President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam. American involvement in the Vietnam War officially begins, as the first American helicopters arrive in Saigon, along with 400 U.S. personnel.
• An Israeli war crimes tribunal sentences Adolf Eichmann to death, for his part in The Holocaust.
• Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism.
• Project Mercury: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes.
• The Rolling Stones make their debut at London’s Marquee Club, opening for Long John Baldry.
• Death of Marilyn Monroe: Marilyn Monroe is found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills and chloral hydrate at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles; it is officially ruled a “probable suicide” 

Third Grade

• Bob Dylan premieres his song “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall“, at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
• The animated sitcom The Jetsons premieres on ABC in the U.S.
• The Beatles‘ first single in their own right, “Love Me Do“/”P.S. I Love You”, is released in the U.K. on EMI‘s  Parlophone label. This version is recorded on September 4, at Abbey Road Studios in London, with Ringo Starr as drummer.
• The beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis: A U-2 flight over Cuba in the Caribbean photographs Soviet nuclear weapons being installed. A stand-off then ensues for another 12 days, after President Kennedy is told of the pictures, between the United States and the Soviet Union, threatening the world with nuclear war. Cuban Missile Crisis: In a televised address, U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
• October 24 – Cuban Missile Crisis: The first confrontation occurs between the U.S. Navy and a Soviet cargo vessel; the vessel changes course.
• The end of the Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that he has ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba. In a secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev, Kennedy agrees to the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. 
•  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn‘s novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Russian: Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича, Odin den’ Ivana Denisovicha), the author’s pseudo-autobiographical account of life in the gulag, is published in Novy Mir, in an unprecedented acknowledgement of the Soviet Union‘s Stalinist past.
• Earliest recorded use of the term “personal computer“, in the report of a speech by computing pioneer John Mauchly in The New York Times.[
• After a trip to Vietnam at the request of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield becomes the first American official to make a pessimistic public comment on the war’s progress.
•  David Lean‘s epic film Lawrence of Arabia, featuring Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins and Anthony Quinn, premieres in London; 6 days later, it opens in the U.S.
• The 35th Academy Awards ceremony is held. Lawrence of Arabia wins Best Picture.
• Pope John XXIII issues his final encyclical, Pacem in terris, entitled On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty,[8] the first papal encyclical addressed to “all men of good will”, rather than to Roman Catholics only.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. issues his “Letter from Birmingham Jail“.
• John F. Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into law.
• John F. Kennedy gives his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in West Berlin, Germany.[
• August 28 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of at least 250,000, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It is, at that point, the single largest protest in American history.
  

Fourth Grade

• American civil rights movement: The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, in Birmingham, Alabama, kills 4 and injures 22.
• South Vietnamese coup: Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnamese President.
• Malcolm X makes an historic speech in Detroit, Michigan (“Message to the Grass Roots“). Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam. An all-white jury in Jackson, Mississippi, United States, trying Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers in June 1963, reports that it cannot reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial. Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner – On the first full day of Freedom Summer, three Congress of Racial Equality workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, are abducted and murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, by local members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan with local law enforcement officials involved in the conspiracy. President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, officially abolishing racial segregation in the United States.
• Assassination of John F. Kennedy: In a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, U.S. President John F. Kennedy is fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, and Governor of Texas John Connally is seriously wounded at 12:30 CST. Upon Kennedy’s death, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the 36th President of the United States. A few hours later, President Johnson is sworn in aboard Air Force One, as Kennedy’s body is flown back to Washington, D.C. 
• The musical Hello, Dolly! opens in New York’s St. James Theatre
• Plans to build the New York City World Trade Center are announced.
• Meet the Beatles!, the first Beatles album from Capitol Records in the United States, is released. The Beatles vault to the #1 spot on the U.S. singles charts for the first time, with “I Want to Hold Your Hand“, starting the British Invasion in the United States. The Beatles arrive from the UK at New York City’s JFK International Airport, receiving a tumultuous reception from an estimated 4,000, marking the first occurrence of “Beatlemania” in the United States.[13] The “Fab Four” stayed in suites 1260, 1263, 1264 and 1273 of the Plaza Hotel. The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, marking their first live performance on American television. Seen by an estimated 73,000,000 viewers
• The Government of the United States authorizes the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, outlawing the poll tax.
• New York Times Co. v Sullivan (376 US 254 1964): The United States Supreme Court rules that under the First Amendment, speech criticizing political figures cannot be censored.
• The U.S. sends 5,000 more military advisers to South Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
• Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.
• Walt Disney‘s Mary Poppins has its world premiere in Los Angeles. It will go on to become Disney’s biggest moneymaker, and winner of 5 Academy Awards, including a Best Actress. It is the first Disney film to be nominated for Best Picture.

Fifth Grade

• In Jacksonville, Florida, during a tour of the United States, John Lennon announces that the Beatles will not play to a segregated audience.
• Three thousand student activists at the University of California, Berkeley, surround and block a police car from taking a CORE volunteer arrested for not showing his ID, when he violated a ban on outdoor activist card tables. This protest eventually explodes into the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
• American civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States.
•  United States National Security Council members, including Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and Maxwell Taylor, agree to recommend a plan for a 2-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam, to President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
• First recognition of cosmic microwave background radiation as a detectable phenomenon.
• Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in for a full term as President of the United States.
• The state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill takes place in London with the largest assembly of dignitaries in the world until the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II.
• The “Turnaround Tuesday” march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., stops at the site of “Bloody Sunday”, to hold a prayer service and return to Selma, in obedience to a court restraining order. On the same day, White supremacists attack three white ministers, leaving Unitarian Universalist minister James J. Reeb in a coma.
• In response to the events of March 7 and 9 in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon B. Johnson sends a bill to Congress that forms the basis for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It is passed by the Senate May 26, the House July 10, and signed into law by Johnson August 6.
• Muhammad Ali knocks out Sonny Liston in the first round of their championship rematch with the “Phantom Punch” at the Central Maine Civic Center in Lewiston.
• Rock musician Bob Dylan‘s influential single “Like a Rolling Stone” is released by Columbia Records.
• War on Poverty: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.
• The Watts riots, protesting police treatment of African Americans, begin in Los Angeles, ending on the 16th after resulting in 34 deaths and over 3,000 arrests.
• The rock group Jefferson Airplane debuts at the Matrix in San Francisco and begins to appear there regularly.
• The Beatles perform the first stadium concert in the history of music, playing before 55,600 people at Shea Stadium in New York City.  The sound system is designed to announce baseball plays.
• The Tom & Jerry cartoon series makes its world broadcast premiere on CBS in the United States.
• Fidel Castro announces that Che Guevara has resigned and left the country.
• Pope Paul VI visits the United States. He appears for a Mass in Yankee Stadium and makes a speech at the United Nations.
• The House of Representatives of the US state of Georgia refuses to allow African-American representative Julian Bond to take his seat, because of his anti-war stance.
• United States President Lyndon Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.
• The Vatican abolishes the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
• The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded in Washington, D.C.
• Richard Speck murders 8 student nurses in their Chicago dormitory. He is arrested on July 17.
• The Beatles hold a press conference in Chicago, during which John Lennon apologizes for his “more popular than Jesus” remark, saying, “I didn’t mean it as a lousy anti-religious thing.” The Beatles end their U.S. tour with a concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It is their last performance as a live touring band.

Sixth Grade

• The classic science fiction series Star Trek premieres on NBC in the United States with its first episode, titled “The Man Trap” (actually seen first on September 6 on CTV in Canada).
• Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton found the Black Panther Party in the United States.
• LSD is made illegal in the United States and controlled so strictly that not only are possession and recreational use criminalized, but all legal scientific research programs on the drug in the country are shut down as well.
• Louis Leakey announces the discovery of pre-human fossils in Kenya; he names the species Kenyapithecus africanus.
• U.S. astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee are killed when fire breaks out in their Apollo spacecraft during a launch pad test.
• The American Basketball Association is formed.
• New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claims he will solve the John F. Kennedy assassination, and that a conspiracy was planned in New Orleans.
• Mohammad Mosaddegh deposed Iranian prime minister, dies after fourteen years of house arrest.
• The Velvet Underground‘s first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, is released in the United States. It is initially a commercial failure but receives widespread critical and commercial acclaim in later years.
• The Grateful Dead debut their first album ‘the Grateful Dead’ consisting of the songs; The Golden Road, Beat it down on the Line, Good morning little schoolgirl, Cold rain and snow, Sitting on top of the world, Morning dew, New new minglewood blues, and Viola Lee blues
• In ongoing campus unrest, Howard University students protesting the Vietnam War, the ROTC program on campus and the draft, confront Gen. Lewis Hershey, then head of the U.S. Selective Service System, and as he attempts to deliver an address, shout him down with cries of “America is the Black man’s battleground!”
• Charles Manson is released from Terminal Island. Telling the authorities that prison had become his home, he requested permission to stay. Upon his release, he relocates to San Francisco where he spends the Summer of Love.
• In San Francisco, 10,000 march against the Vietnam War.
• April 15 – Large demonstrations are held against the Vietnam War in New York City and San Francisco. The march, organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, from Central Park to the United Nations drew hundreds of thousands of people, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, James Bevel, and Dr. Benjamin Spock, who marched and spoke at the event. A simultaneous march in San Francisco was attended by Coretta Scott King
• In the NBA, the Philadelphia 76ers defeat the San Francisco Warriors 125–122 in game six to win the title. Some say this team is arguably the greatest of all time.
• In Houston, Texas, boxer Muhammad Ali refuses military service. He is stripped of his boxing title and barred from professional boxing for the next three years.
• Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu are married in Las Vegas.
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience release their debut album, Are You Experienced.
• The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 
• Six-Day War begins: Israel launches Operation Focus, an attack on Egyptian Air Force airfields; the allied armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan invade Israel. Battle of Ammunition Hill, start of the Jordanian campaign. USS Liberty incident: A U.S. Navy ship is attacked by Israeli forces, apparently in error, killing 34 crew.
• The Monterey Pop Festival begins and is held for 3 days.
• Murderer Richard Speck is sentenced to death in the electric chair for killing 8 student nurses in Chicago.
•  Israel declares the annexation of East Jerusalem.
• The EEC joins with the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Community, to form the European Communities (from the 1980s usually known as European Community [EC]).
• The British Parliament decriminalizes homosexuality.
• The Bee Gees release their first international album Bee Gees’ 1st in the UK.
• Pink Floyd releases their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in the United Kingdom.
• The first line-up of Fleetwood Mac makes their live debut at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival.

Seventh Grade

• Jim Morrison and The Doors defy CBS censors on The Ed Sullivan Show, when Morrison sings the word “higher” from their #1 hit Light My Fire, despite having been asked not to.
• Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia; they are executed the following day.
• The musical Hair opens off-Broadway. It moves to Broadway the following April.
• Walt Disney‘s 19th full-length animated feature The Jungle Book, the last animated film personally supervised by Disney, is released and becomes an enormous box-office and criticyal success.
• The Abortion Act 1967 passes in the British Parliament and receives royal assent two days later.
• U.S. Navy pilot John McCain is shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner. His capture is confirmed two days later, and he remains a prisoner of war for more than five years.
• U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson holds a secret meeting with a group of the nation’s most prestigious leaders (“the Wise Men”) and asks them to suggest ways to unite the American people behind the war effort. They conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.
• The “population clock” of the United States Census Bureau records the U.S. population at 200 million people
• The Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour in the U.S. as a full album. The songs added to the original six songs on the double EP include “All You Need Is Love“, “Penny Lane“, “Strawberry Fields Forever“, “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” and “Hello, Goodbye“. 
• The first pulsar to be discovered by Earth observers is found in the constellation of Vulpecula by astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish,
• U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces his resignation to become president of the World Bank. McNamara’s resignation follows U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson‘s outright rejection of McNamara’s early November recommendations to freeze troop levels, stop the bombing of North Vietnam, and hand over ground fighting to South Vietnam.
• U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy announces his candidacy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, challenging incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson over the Vietnam War.
• Christiaan Barnard carries out the world’s first heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
• Jim Morrison is arrested on stage in New Haven, Connecticut for attempting to spark a riot in the audience during a concert.
• Professor John Archibald Wheeler coined the astronomical term black hole.
• The Green Bay Packers become the first team in the modern era to win their third consecutive NFL Championship. They defeat the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 in what becomes known as “The Ice Bowl”.
• Gunsmoke, after 12 seasons and with declining ratings, almost gets cancelled, but protests from viewers, network affiliates and even members of Congress and especially William S. Paley, the head of the network, lead the network to move the series from its longtime late Saturday time slot to early Mondays for the fall—displacing Gilligan’s Island, which initially had been renewed for a fourth season but is cancelled instead. Gunsmoke would remain on CBS until 1975.
• Gabriel García Márquez‘s influential novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is published (in Spanish).
• The Tet Offensive begins as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam.   A Viet Cong officer named Nguyễn Văn Lém is executed by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. The event is photographed by Eddie Adams. The photo makes headlines around the world, eventually winning the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and sways U.S. public opinion against the war.
• NET televises the very first episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
• U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson barely edges out antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a vote which highlights the deep divisions in the country, and the party, over Vietnam.
• My Lai Massacre: American troops kill scores of civilians. The story will first become public in November 1969 and will help undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam.
• U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.
• The film 2001: A Space Odyssey premieres in Washington, D.C.
• Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech in Memphis, Tennessee.
• American movie Planet of the Apes is released in theaters.
• Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: Martin Luther King Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
• The Standard & Poor’s 500 index in the United States closes above 100 for the first time, at 100.38.
• Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
• The horror film Rosemary’s Baby premieres in the U.S.
• Saddam Hussein becomes Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d’état.
• 150 women (members of New York Radical Women) arrive in Atlantic City, New Jersey to protest against the Miss America Pageant, as exploitative of women. Led by activist and author Robin Morgan, it is one of the first large demonstrations of Second Wave Feminism as Women’s Liberation begins to gather much media attention.
• The 1968 Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago and would continue until August 30. During the event, riots would break out as police clashed with anti-war protesters. The Democratic Party nominated Hubert Humphrey for president, and Edmund Muskie for vice president. The riots and subsequent trials would become an essential part of the activism for the Youth International Party, but would also taint the image of the Democrats in the November elections.

Eighth Grade

• Hawaii Five-O debuts on CBS, and eventually becomes the longest-running crime show in television history, until Law & Order overtakes it in 2003.
• 60 Minutes debuts on CBS and is still on the air as of 2022.
• Night of the Living Dead premieres in the United States.
• Tlatelolco massacre: A student demonstration ends in bloodbath at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, Mexico, 10 days before the inauguration of the 1968 Summer Olympics. 300-400 are estimated to have been killed.
• In Mexico City, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic men’s 200 metres.
• The Gun Control Act of 1968 is enacted.
• Led Zeppelin makes their first live performance, at Surrey University in England
• Republican candidate Richard Nixon defeats the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and American Independent Party candidate George Wallace.
• Yale University announces it is going to admit women.
• The Beatles release their self-titled album popularly known as the White Album.
• The Rolling Stones release Beggars Banquet, which contains the classic song “Sympathy for the Devil.”
• Mao Zedong advocates that educated urban youth in China be sent for re-education in the countryside. 
• Led Zeppelin makes their American debut in Denver.
• Elvis Presley steps into American Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, recording “Long Black Limousine”, thus beginning the recording of what becomes his landmark comeback sessions for the albums From Elvis in Memphis and Back in Memphis. The sessions yield the popular and critically acclaimed singles “Suspicious Minds”, “In the Ghetto”, and “Kentucky Rain”.
• After 147 years, the last weekly issue of The Saturday Evening Post is published in the United States.
• The novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo is first distributed to booksellers by the publisher G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
• An American teenager known as ‘Robert R.‘ dies in St. Louis, Missouri, of a baffling medical condition. In 1984 it will be identified as the earliest confirmed case of HIV/AIDS in North America.
• The rock group Blind Faith plays its first gig in front of 100,000 people in London’s Hyde Park.
• Gay intercourse is officially legalized in Canada.
• The Stonewall riots in New York City mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.
• Chappaquiddick incident: US Senator Edward M. Kennedy drives off a bridge into a tidal pond after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, killing Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy does not report the accident for nine or ten hours.
• The very first U.S. troop withdrawals from  Vietnam are made.
• Apollo 11 (Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins) lifts off from Cape Kennedy in Florida towards the first manned landing on the Moon. Apollo program Moon landing: At 3:17 pm ET (20:17 UTC) Apollo 11‘s Lunar Module Eagle lands on the Moon’s surface. At 10:56 pm ET (02:56 UTC July 21), an estimated 650 million people worldwide, the largest television audience for a live broadcast at this time, watch in awe as Neil Armstrong takes his first historic steps on the surface.
• The Beatles at 11:30 have photographer Iain Macmillan take their photo on a zebra crossing on Abbey Road.
• Members of the Manson Family invade the home of actress Sharon Tate and her husband Roman Polanski in Los Angeles. The followers killed Tate (who was 8.5 months pregnant),
• The Woodstock Festival is held near White Lake, New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.

Freshman Year High School

• Ho Chi Minh, the president of North Vietnam, dies at the age of 79.
• Lieutenant William Calley is charged with six counts of premeditated murder for the 1968 My Lai Massacre deaths of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, Vietnam.
• At a meeting between The Beatles (minus George Harrison) and business manager Allen Klein, John Lennon announces his intention to quit the group.
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford) opens to limited release in the United States.
• Scooby-Doo aired its first episode on CBS.
• The Chicago Eight trial begins in Chicago, Illinois.
• The Beatles release their Abbey Road album which is an enormous commercial success and, although receiving mixed reviews at this time, comes to be viewed by many as the group’s best.
• The Brady Bunch aired its first episode on ABC.
• Monty Python’s Flying Circus first airs on BBC One.
• Days of Rage: In Chicago, the Illinois National Guard is called in to control demonstrations involving the radical Weathermen, in connection with the “Chicago Eight” Trial.
• Led Zeppelin release Led Zeppelin II to critical acclaim and commercial success.
• A group of American Indians, led by Richard Oakes, seizes Alcatraz Island as a symbolic gesture, offering to buy the property for $24 from the U.S. government. A longer occupation begins 11 days later. The act inspires a wave of renewed Indian pride and government reform.
• My Lai Massacre: Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai story.
• Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States since World War II is held.
• The Rolling Stones album Let It Bleed is released.
•  Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched toward the Moon.
• April 13 – An oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission and return in four days.
• April 17 – Apollo program: Apollo 13 splashes down safely in the Pacific.
• Kent State shootings: Four students at Kent State University in Ohio, USA are killed and nine wounded by Ohio National Guardsmen, at a protest against the incursion into Cambodia.
• Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat Ra II, to sail the Atlantic Ocean.

Sophomore Year

• Alvin Toffler publishes his book Future Shock.
• The landmark United States television sitcom All in the Family, starring Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker, debuts on CBS.
• Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos.
• Evel Knievel sets a world record and jumps 19 cars on a motorbike in Ontario, California.
• In Belfast, a Led Zeppelin show includes the first public performance of “Stairway to Heaven,” a song from the band’s fourth album.
• The musical fantasy film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, based on the novel Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and starring Gene Wilder and Jack Albertson, is released.

Junior Year

• Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas.
• The Miss World 1970 beauty pageant, hosted by Bob Hope at the Royal Albert Hall, London is disrupted by Women’s Liberation protesters.
• The Italian Chamber of Deputies accepts the new divorce law.
• Chilean Socialist Senator Salvador Allende wins 36.2% of the vote in his run for presidency defeating former right-wing President Jorge Alessandri with 34.9% of the votes and Christian Democrat Radomiro Tomic with 27.8% of the votes.
• Dawson’s Field hijackings, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacks four passenger aircraft from Pan Am, TWA and Swissair on flights to New York from Brussels, Frankfurt and Zürich and flies them to a desert airstrip in Jordan.
• Luna 16 lands on the Moon and lifts off the next day with samples, landing back on Earth September 24.
• Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• Paul McCartney sues in Britain to dissolve The Beatles‘s legal partnership.
• In Los Angeles, Charles Manson and 3 female “Family” members are found guilty of the 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders.
• Evel Knievel sets a world record and jumps 19 cars on a motorbike in Ontario, California.
• In Belfast, a Led Zeppelin show includes the first public performance of “Stairway to Heaven,” a song from the band’s fourth album.
• “Fight of the Century“: Boxer Joe Frazier defeats Muhammad Ali in a 15-round unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden.
• An estimated 200,000 people in Washington, D.C. and a further 125,000 in San Francisco march in protest against the Vietnam War.
• Vietnam War: The New York Times begins to publish the Pentagon Papers.
• Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, dies of a heart failure due to a heroin overdose at the age of 27 in the bathtub of his apartment on the 3rd floor of the Rue Beautreillis 17 in Paris, France.
• Michael S. Hart posts the first e-book, a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, on the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign‘s mainframe computer, the origin of Project Gutenberg.
• Right to vote: The 26th Amendment to the United States Constitution, formally certified by President Richard Nixon, lowers the voting age from 21 to 18.
• President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system. He also imposes a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents.

Senior Year

• John Lennon releases his second studio album Imagine.
• Walt Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida.
• The United Nations General Assembly admits the People’s Republic of China and expels the Republic of China (or Taiwan).
• Vietnam War – Vietnamization: The total number of American troops still in Vietnam drops to a record low of 196,700 (the lowest since January 1966).
• Led Zeppelin release their fourth studio album Led Zeppelin IV, which goes on to sell 23,000,000 copies in the United States.
• U.S. President Richard M. Nixon makes an unprecedented 8-day visit to the People’s Republic of China and meets with Mao Zedong.
• Sculpted figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson are completed at Stone Mountain in the U.S. state of Georgia.
• Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull is released,
• Eisenstadt v. Baird: Supreme Court rules that unmarried people have the right to access contraception on the same basis as married couples
• Nguyen Hue Offensive: Prompted by the North Vietnamese offensive, the United States resumes bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.
• The first Boston Marathon in which women are officially allowed to compete.
• The fourth anniversary of the Broadway musical Hair is celebrated with a free concert at a Central Park bandshell, followed by dinner at the Four Seasons. There, 13 Black Panther protesters and the show’s co-author, Jim Rado, are arrested for disturbing the peace and for using marijuana.
• The Magnavox Odyssey video game system is first demoed, marking the dawn of the video game age; it goes on sale to the public in August.
• Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty in Moscow, as well as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and other agreements.
• Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee.
• President Richard M. Nixon and White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the C.I.A. to obstruct the F.B.I.‘s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.