Top, L-R: A soldier lays on the ground during the Vietnam War; The Beatles, part of the British Invasion, change music in America and around the world. Centre, L-R: The bombing of the Mount of Olives during the Six-Day War; John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1963, after serving the office of president for three years; Martin Luther King Jr. makes his famous I Have a Dream Speech to a crowd of over a million; Millions participate in the Woodstock Festival of 1969. Bottom, L-R: China's Mao Zedong puts forward the Great Leap Forward plan; For the first time in history, a human being sets his foot on the Moon, in the Moon landing of July 1969.

The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969.^[1] It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.

The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe. This "cultural decade" is more loosely defined than the actual decade, beginning around 1963 and ending around 1974.^[2][3]

In the United States, "the Sixties", as they are known in popular culture, is a term used by historians, journalists, and other objective academics; in some cases nostalgically to describe the counterculture and social revolution near the end of the decade; and pejoratively to describe the era as one of irresponsible excess and flamboyance. The decade was also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the fall or relaxation of some social taboos especially relating to sexism and racism that occurred during this time.

The 1960s have become synonymous with the new, radical, and subversive events and trends of the period, which continued to develop in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and beyond. In Africa the 1960s was a period of radical political change as 32 countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers.

Some commentators^[4] have seen in this era a classical Jungian nightmare cycle, where a rigid culture, unable to contain the demands for greater individual freedom, broke free of the social constraints of the previous age through extreme deviation from the norm. Christopher Booker charts the rise, success, fall/nightmare and explosion in the London scene of the 1960s. This does not alone however explain the mass nature of the phenomenon.

Several governments turned to the left in the early 1960s. In the United States, John F. Kennedy, a Keynesian^[5] and staunch anti-communist, pushed for social reforms such as civil rights for African Americans and healthcare for the elderly and the poor. He was elected to the Presidency, also pledging to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, a feat that was accomplished in 1969. Italy formed its first left-of-centre government in March 1962 with a coalition of Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, and moderate Republicans. Socialists joined the ruling block in December 1963. In Britain, the Labour Party gained power in 1964.^[6] In Brazil, João Goulart became president after Jânio Quadros resigned.

Politics and wars[link]

Wars[link]

Vietnam War (1955–1975)

The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961

• The Cold War:
  • The Vietnam War (1955–1975)
    • 1961 – Substantial (approximately 700) American advisory forces first arrive in Vietnam.
    • 1962 – By mid-1962, the number of U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam had risen from 700 to 12,000.
    • 1963 – After the overthrow of the Diem Regime in early November 1963, Kennedy increased the number of U.S. military advisers from 800 to more than 16,000 to cope with rising guerrilla activity in Vietnam.
    • 1964 – In direct response to the minor naval engagement known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident which occurred on August 2, 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress, was passed on August 10, 1964. The resolution gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of military force in Southeast Asia. The Johnson administration subsequently cited the resolution as legal authority for its rapid escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.^[7]
    • 1966 – After 1966 with the draft in place more than 500,000 troops are sent to Vietnam by the Johnson administration and college attendance soars.
  • The Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961) – an unsuccessful attempt by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba with support from US government armed forces, to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
  • Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974) – the war was fought between Portugal's military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies. It was a decisive ideological struggle and armed conflict of the cold war in African (Portuguese Africa and surrounding nations) and European (mainland Portugal) scenarios. Unlike other European nations, the Portuguese regime did not leave its African colonies, or the overseas provinces, during the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1960s, various armed independence movements, most prominently led by communist-led parties who cooperated under the CONCP umbrella and pro US groups, became active in these areas, most notably in Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea. During the war, several atrocities were committed by all forces involved in the conflict.

Pakistan and India go to war in September 1965.

• Arab–Israeli conflict (early 20th century-present)
  • Six Days War (June 1967) – a war between Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The Arab states of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria also contributed troops and arms.^[8] At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day.

A child suffering the effects of severe hunger and malnutrition during the Nigerian blockade of Biafra 1967–1970.

• The Algerian War came to a close in 1962.
• The Nigeria Civil War begins in 1967.

Internal conflicts[link]

• Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976) – a period of widespread social and political upheaval in the People's Republic of China which was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China. Mao alleged that "liberal bourgeois" elements were permeating the party and society at large and that they wanted to restore capitalism. Mao insisted that these elements be removed through post-revolutionary class struggle by mobilizing the thoughts and actions of China's youth, who formed Red Guards groups around the country. The movement subsequently spread into the military, urban workers, and the party leadership itself. Although Mao himself officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, the power struggles and political instability between 1969 and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 are now also widely regarded as part of the Revolution.
• The Troubles in Northern Ireland began with the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the mid 1960s, the conflict continued into the later 1990s.
• The Compton's Cafeteria Riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. This incident was one of the first recorded transgender riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City by three years.
• The Stonewall riots occurred in June 1969 in the New York City. The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
• The May 1968 student and worker uprisings in France.
• Mass socialist or Communist movement in most European countries (particularly France and Italy), with which the student-based new left was able to forge a connection. The most spectacular manifestation of this was the May student revolt of 1968 in Paris that linked up with a general strike of ten million workers called by the trade unions; and for a few days seemed capable of overthrowing the government of Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle went off to visit French troops in Germany to check on their loyalty. Major concessions were won for trade union rights, higher minimum wages and better working conditions.
• University students protested in their hundreds of thousands in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome with the huge crowds that protested against the Vietnam War.
• In Eastern Europe students also drew inspiration from the protests in the West. In Poland and Yugoslavia they protested against restrictions on free speech by communist regimes.
• The Tlatelolco massacre – was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City.

Coups[link]

The most prominent coups d'état of the decade include:

• On April 21, 1967 in Greece a group of colonels established a military dictatorship for seven years.
• In 1968 a coup in Iraq led to the overthrow of Abdul Rahman Arif by the Arab Socialist Baath Party.
• On September 1, 1969, a small group of military officers led by the army officer Muammar al-Gaddafi overthrows monarchy in Libya.

Nuclear threats[link]

Pictures of Soviet missile silos in Cuba, taken by United States spy planes on October 14, 1962.

• The Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) – a near military confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union about the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. After an American Naval (quarantine) blockade of Cuba the Soviet Union under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove their missiles in exchange the US would remove its missiles from Turkey.
• On October 16, 1964 China detonated its first atomic bomb. China possessed a hydrogen bomb by 1967. President Johnson secretly considered a preemptive strike on China's nuclear facilities, but then dismissed the idea as too risky.^{[citation needed]}

Decolonization and independence[link]

• The transformation of Africa from colonialism to independence in what is known as the decolonisation of Africa dramatically accelerated during the decade, with 32 countries gaining independence between 1960 and 1968. Marking the end of the great European empires that once dominated the African continent, However The noble aspirations of these new nations quickly faded,^{[citation needed]} and many states descended into anarchy, kleptocracy, dictatorships, and/or civil war. The road to prosperity has been difficult: As of 2011^[update], by many measures Africa continues to possess the poorest population^[9] in the world as well as the lowest life expectancy.

Prominent political events[link]

Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963

United States

• 1960 – United States presidential election, 1960 – The key turning point of the campaign was the series of four Kennedy–Nixon debates; they were the first presidential debates held on television.
• 1961 – Newly elected President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson take office in 1961; Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
• 1963 – Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C. on August 28.
• 1963 – President Lyndon Johnson becomes president and presses for civil rights legislation.
• 1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson is elected in his own right, defeating United States Senator Barry Goldwater in November.
• 1964 – Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This landmark piece of legislation in the United States outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places, and employment.
• 1964 – Wilderness Act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3.
• 1965 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey take office in January.
• 1965 – National Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the United States.
• 1968 – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon is elected defeating Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey in November.
• 1969 – U.S. President Richard Nixon is inaugurated in January 1969; promises "peace with honor" to end the Vietnam War.

Canada

• The Quiet Revolution in Quebec altered the province into a more secular society. The Jean Lesage Liberal government created a welfare state (État-Providence) and fomented the rise of active nationalism among Francophone Québécois.
• On February 15, 1965, the new maple leaf flag was adopted in Canada, after much acrimonious debate known as the Great Flag Debate.
• In 1960, the Canadian Bill of Rights becomes law, and Universal suffrage, the right for any Canadian citizen to vote, is finally adopted by John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government. The new election act allows first nations people to vote for the first time.

Europe

East German construction workers building the Berlin Wall, November 20, 1961.

• Construction of the Berlin Wall started in 1961.
• British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivers his Wind of Change speech in 1960.
• Pope John XXIII calls the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church, continued by Pope Paul VI, which met from October 11, 1962, until December 8, 1965.
• In October 1964, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was expelled from office due to his increasingly erratic and authoritarian behavior. Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin then became the new leaders of the Soviet Union.
• In Czechoslovakia 1968 was the year of Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring, a source of inspiration to many Western leftists who admired Dubček's "socialism with a human face". The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August ended these hopes and also fatally damaged the chances of the orthodox communist parties drawing many recruits from the student protest movement.

China

• Relations with the United States remained hostile during the 1960s, although representatives from both countries held periodic meetings in Warsaw, Poland (since there was no US embassy in China). President Kennedy had plans to restore Sino-US relations, but his assassination, the war in Vietnam, and the Cultural Revolution put an end to that. Not until Richard Nixon took office in 1969 was there another opportunity.
• Following Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's expulsion in 1964, Sino-Soviet relations devolved into open hostility. The Chinese were deeply disturbed by the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, as the latter now claimed the right to intervene in any country it saw as deviating from the correct path of socialism. Finally, in March 1969, armed clashes took place along the Sino-Soviet border in Manchuria. This drove the Chinese to restore relations with the US, as Mao Zedong decided that the Soviet Union was a much greater threat.

Mexico

• The peak of the student and New Left protests in 1968 coincided with political upheavals in a number of other countries. Although these events often sprung from completely different causes, they were influenced by reports and images of what was happening in the United States and France.

Middle East

• On September 1, 1969, the Libyan monarchy was overthrown, and a radical, anti-Israel, anti-Western government headed by Col. Muammar al-Qadaffi took power.

South America

• In 1964, a successful coup against the democratically elected government of Brazilian president João Goulart, initiates a military dictatorship of over 20 years of oppression.
• The Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara travelled to Africa and then Bolivia in his campaigning to spread worldwide revolution. He was captured and executed in 1967 by the Bolivian army, and afterwards became an iconic figure for leftists around the world.
• Juan Velasco Alvarado took power in Peru in 1968.

India

• In India a literary and cultural movement started in Calcutta, Patna, and other cities by a group of writers and painters who called themselves "Hungryalists", or members of the Hungry generation. The band of writers wanted to change virtually everything and were arrested with several cases filed against them on various charges. They ultimately won these cases.

Assassinations[link]

John F. Kennedy assassination – President Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and Texas Governor John Connally in the presidential limousine, minutes before his assassination.

The 1960s were marked by several notable assassinations:

• January 17, 1961 – Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo. Assassinated by a Belgian and Congolese firing squad outside Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• May 27, 1963 - Grigoris Lambrakis, Greek left-wing MP by far-right extremists with connections to the police and the army in Thessaloniki.
• June 12, 1963 – Medgar Evers, an NAACP field secretary. Assassinated by a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Jackson, Mississippi.
• November 2, 1963 – Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam, along with his brother and chief political adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Assassinated by Duong Hieu Nghia and Nguyen Van Nhung in the back of an armoured personnel carrier.
• November 22, 1963 – John F. Kennedy, President of the United States. Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963 while in his open convertible car riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. According to the 1964 report issued by the Warren Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald, killed the president, but there has been consistent speculation ever since that Kennedy's death was the result of a conspiracy. See JFK assassination for more details.
• February 21, 1965 – Malcolm X. Assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam in New York City. There is a dispute about which members killed Malcolm X.
• September 6, 1966 – Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa and architect of apartheid was stabbed to death by Dimitri Tsafendas, a parliamentary messenger. He survived a previous attempt on his life in 1960.
• August 25, 1967 – George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party. Assassinated by John Patler in Arlington, Virginia.
• April 4, 1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader. Assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
• June 5, 1968 – Robert F. Kennedy, United States Senator. Assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, California, taking California in the presidential national primaries.

Disasters[link]

• 1960 Valdivia earthquake or Great Chilean Earthquake is to date the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, rating 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale. It caused localized tsunamis that severely battered the Chilean coast, with waves up to 25 meters (82 ft). The main tsunami raced across the Pacific Ocean and devastated Hilo, Hawai'i.
• 1969 – Cuyahoga River catches fire in Ohio. Fires had erupted on the river many times, including June 22, 1969, when a river fire captured the attention of Time magazine, which described the Cuyahoga as the river that "oozes rather than flows" and in which a person "does not drown but decays." Helped spur legislative action on water pollution control resulting in the Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
• 1969 – Hurricane Camille hits the Gulf Coast at Category 5 Status on the night of August 17. To date it is the strongest hurricane ever recorded at landfall in means of sustained windspeed in the Atlantic Basin, reaching sustained winds of 190 mph and a low pressure of 905 mbs. It is one of only three hurricanes in the Atlantic to ever make landfall at Category 5 Status and one of only four hurricanes worldwide to reach a maximum sustained windspeed of 190 mph.

Science and technology[link]

Science[link]

Space exploration[link]

The Apollo 11 mission landed the first humans on the Moon in July 1969.

The Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union would dominate the 1960s. The Soviets sent the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into outer space during the Vostok 1 mission on 12 April 1961 and scored a host of other successes, but by the middle of the decade the US was taking the lead. In May 1961, President Kennedy set for the United States the goal of a manned spacecraft landing on the Moon by the end of the decade.

In 1966 the Soviet Union launched Luna 10, which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.

The tragic deaths of astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward Higgins White, and Roger B. Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire on 27 January 1967 put a temporary hold on the US space program, but afterwards progress was steady, with the Apollo 8 crew (Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders) being the first manned mission to orbit another celestial body (the moon) during Christmas of 1968.

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11, the first human spaceflight landed on the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried mission Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. Apollo 11 fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s, which he had expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

The Soviet program lost its sense of direction with the death of chief designer Sergey Korolyov in 1966. Political pressure, conflicts between different design bureaus, and engineering problems caused by an inadequate budget would doom the Soviet attempt to land men on the moon.

A succession of unmanned American and Soviet probes travelled to the Moon, Venus, and Mars during the 1960s, and commercial satellites also came into use.

Other scientific developments[link]

The birth control pill was introduced in 1960.

• 1960 – The female birth control contraceptive, the pill, was released in the United States after Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
• 1967 – First heart transplantation operation by Professor Christiaan Barnard in South Africa.

Technology[link]

Automobiles[link]

As the 1960s began, American cars showed a rapid rejection of 1950s styling excess, and would remain relatively clean and boxy for the entire decade. The horsepower race reached its climax in the late 1960s, with muscle cars sold by most makes. The compact Ford Mustang, launched in 1964, was one of the decade's greatest successes. The "Big Three" American automakers enjoyed their highest ever sales and profitability in the 1960s, but the demise of Studebaker in 1966 left American Motors Corporation as the last significant independent. The decade would see the car market split into different size classes for the first time, and model lineups now included compact and mid-sized cars in addition to full-sized ones.

Electronics and communications[link]

Examples of 1960s technology, including two rotary-dial telephones, and a Kodak camera.

• 1960 – The first working laser was demonstrated in May by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories.
• 1962 – First trans-Atlantic satellite broadcast via the Telstar satellite.
• 1962 – The first computer video game, Spacewar!, is invented.
• 1963 – The first geosynchronous communications satellite, Syncom 2 is launched.
• 1963 – First trans-Pacific satellite broadcast via the Relay 1 satellite.
• 1963 – Touch-Tone telephones introduced.
• 1963 – Sketchpad was the first touch interactive computer graphics program.
• 1963 – Video recorder The Nottingham Electronic Valve company produces the first home video recorder called the "Telcan".
• 1964 – The first successful Minicomputer, Digital Equipment Corporation's 12-bit PDP-8, is marketed.
• 1964 – The programming language BASIC was created.
• 1967 – PAL and SECAM broadcast color TV systems start publicly transmitting in Europe.
• 1967 – The first Automatic Teller Machine is opened in Barclays Bank, London.
• 1968 – The first public demonstration of the computer mouse, the paper paradigm Graphical user interface, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email, and hypertext.
• 1969 – Arpanet, the research-oriented prototype of the Internet, was introduced.
• 1969 – CCD invented at AT&T Bell Labs, used as the electronic imager in still and video cameras.

Social and political movements[link]

Counterculture/social revolution[link]

Flower Power Bus

In the second half of the decade, young people began to revolt against the conservative norms of the time, as well as remove themselves from mainstream liberalism, in particular the high level of materialism which was so common during the era. This created a "counterculture" that sparked a social revolution throughout much of the western world. It began in the United States as a reaction against the conservatism and social conformity of the 1950s, and the US government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam. The youth involved in the popular social aspects of the movement became known as hippies. These groups created a movement toward liberation in society, including the sexual revolution, questioning authority and government, and demanding more freedoms and rights for women and minorities. The Underground Press, a widespread, eclectic collection of newspapers served as a unifying medium for the counterculture. The movement was also marked by the first widespread, socially accepted drug use (including LSD and marijuana) and psychedelic music.

Anti-war movement[link]

The war in Vietnam would eventually lead to a commitment of over half a million American troops, resulting in over 58,500 American deaths and producing a large-scale antiwar movement in the United States. As late as the end of 1965, few Americans protested the American involvement in Vietnam, but as the war dragged on and the body count continued to climb, civil unrest escalated. Students became a powerful and disruptive force and university campuses sparked a national debate over the war. As the movement's ideals spread beyond college campuses, doubts about the war also began to appear within the administration itself. A mass movement began rising in opposition to the Vietnam War, ending in the massive Moratorium protests in 1969, as well as the movement of resistance to conscription ("the Draft") for the war.^{[citation needed]}