Notable Events 1967-1971

It Happened While We Were in College!

1967
Between receiving admittance letters and starting freshman year:
April — McDonald’s introduced the “Big Mac”
April-October — test videophone calls made at World’s Fair in Montreal
“Summer of Love” in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco
Summer of race riots in Detroit, Newark, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, etc.

After arriving on campus:
August — American Nazi party leader George Lincoln Rockwell killed by follower
August — Thurgood Marshall appointed 1st African-American Supreme Court Justice
October — musical Hair opened off-Broadway
October — March on Washington to protest war in Vietnam
October — US Navy Lt Cmdr. John McCain captured by North Vietnamese
November — Corporation for Public Broadcasting established
November — Carl Stokes elected 1st African-American mayor of a major U.S. city
November — first issue of Rolling Stone magazine published
November — Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara resigned in Vietnam protest
November — Eugene McCarthy announced run against President Johnson
December — prototype of Concorde supersonic aircraft shown in France
December — Dr. Barnard performed first successful human heart transplant

Other notable deaths included: Spencer Tracy, Dorothy Parker, John Coltrane, Carl Sand-burg, Woody Guthrie

1968
January – USS Pueblo seized by North Korea
February — Peggy Fleming won Olympic gold in figure skating at Grenoble
March — President Johnson said he would not seek re-election
April — Martin Luther King assassinated
May — Vietnam peace talks begun in Paris
June — Robert Kennedy assassinated
August — Democratic convention in Chicago; “Chicago Seven” arrested
August — USSR invaded Czechoslovakia to crush “Prague Spring” liberalization movement
October — two U.S. athletes expelled after giving black power salute in Mexico City Olym-pics
September — activists converge on Atlantic City, NJ, to protest the image of womanhood conveyed by the Miss America Pageant
November — Nixon elected over Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace

Other notable deaths included: Helen Keller, Yuri Gagarin, John Steinbeck, Tallulah Bank-head, Upton Sinclair

1969
January — Czech student set himself on fire to protest Soviet invasion
January — massive oil spill off Santa Barbara coast
January — last public Beatles performance (on roof of Apple Records)
February — Boeing 747 flown for first time
March — Golda Meir elected first female prime minister of Israel
April — SDS members seized Harvard Univ. administration building
May — American teenager died; identified in 1984 as first confirmed case of HIV/AIDS in North America
June — TV show Hee Haw premiered
June — Weatherman faction seized control of SDS at national convention
June — last episode of TV show Star Trek
June — oil slick on Cleveland’s polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire, and became a symbol of the nation’s ecological crisis
June — the Stonewall riots (by patrons and neighbors in response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village) help lead to gay rights movement
July — Apollo 11 moon landing; Neil Armstrong took first steps on moon

July — Sen. Ted Kennedy’s car plunged off Chappaquiddick bridge; Mary Jo Kopechne killed
July — Pres. Nixon began “Vietnamization” of war
August — Charles Manson and followers murder Sharon Tate and four others, then (the next day) Leno LaBianca and his wife
August — Woodstock music festival (“three days of peace & music”)
September — TV show Brady Bunch premiered
September — first ATM machine in U.S. installed
September — California enacts first “no-fault” divorce law in the U.S.
October — “Days of Rage” in Chicago; Illinois National Guard called to control “Chicago Eight” demonstrations by Weathermen
October — “Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam” demonstrations held across the U.S.
November — Pres. Nixon asked “silent majority” to support Vietnam policy
November — Native Americans seized Alcatraz Island and offered to buy it from USG for $24
November — first African-American woman, Shirley Chisholm, elected to Congress (She taught at MHC in the 1980s)
November — TV show Sesame Street aired first episode
December — first Vietnam draft lottery held
December — free Altamont concert held in California; attendant violence seen as “end of the sixties”

Other notable deaths included: Judy Garland, Boris Karloff, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower, Rocky Marciano, Ho Chi Minh, Jack Kerouac

1970
January — Biafran forces gave up independence fight in Nigeria
January — Pan Am offered first commercial Boeing 747 service from JFK
February — “Chicago Seven” found not guilty of conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968
Democratic National Convention; five guilty of lesser charges
March — total solar eclipse passed along Atlantic coast
March — postal workers in key cities go on strike for two weeks
March — San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto proclaimed first Earth Day
April — first Earth Day celebrated throughout United States
April — Apollo 13 mission (“Houston, we have a problem….”)
April — law signed banning cigarette ads on TV starting January 1971
April — U.S. invaded Cambodia, sparking widespread antiwar protests
May — four students shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsmen and nine wounded at Kent State University protest against Cambodian invasion
May — large antiwar protest in Washington, DC
June — U.S. ground troops withdrew from Cambodia
June — The Who, first to perform rock music (Tommy) at Metropolitan Opera House, NYC
September — Elvis Presley began his first concert tour since 1958
September — Jimi Hendrix died
September — Monday Night Football premiered on TV
September — the first women-only tennis tournament held in Houston
October — Janis Joplin died
October — PBS succeeded National Educational Television
October — Garry Trudeau’s comic strip “Doonesbury” debuted
October — The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer became international bestseller and important text in women’s rights movement
November — American Indian Movement seized Mayflower replica in Boston
December — Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established
December — Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) signed into law
December — Paul McCartney sued to dissolve Beatles’ legal partnership

Other notable deaths included: John Dos Passos, E.M. Forster, Charles de Gaulle, Jack Jones, Gypsy Rose Lee, Vince Lombardi

1971
January — All in the Family premiere brought serious social commentary to TV sitcoms
February — NASDAQ founded
February — total lunar eclipse
February — Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers (written in 1967/68) to the New York Times, which started publishing excerpts in June
February — United Nations proclaimed the vernal equinox as Earth Day
March — The Ed Sullivan TV show aired final episode
March — Lt. William Calley found guilty of My Lai Massacre murders
April — massive anti-Vietnam War protests in DC and San Francisco
May — 12,000 arrested in May Day anti-war protests in Washington, DC

Notable deaths included: Igor Stravinski, Ogden Nash, Audie Murphy