1969: The Events of the Year

The book 100 Days: How Four Events in 1969 Shaped America explores four milestones that all occurred within a span of 100 days.  But the rest of 1969 was a momentous time in American history as well, with major news in politics, world affairs, the environment, sports, and the arts.

Here are some of the key events of 1969.  The milestones described in 100 Days: How Four Events in 1969 Shaped America are marked in bold face.

January

• 12 – The third annual championship game between the AFL and NFL is officially called “The Super Bowl” for the first time.  The New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, 16-7, in one of the great upsets in sports history.
• 20 – Richard Nixon is sworn in as the 37th President of the United States.
• 28 – Santa Barbara oil spill: A blowout on Union Oil’s Platform A spills more than 80,000 barrels of crude oil into the ocean and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara. The incident inspires the first Earth Day in 1970.
• 30 – The Beatles give their last public performance, recording several tracks on the roof of Apple Records, London (featured in the 1970 film, Let It Be).

February

• 4 – Yasser Arafat elected leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
• 9 – The Boeing 747 jumbo jet is flown for the first time.

March

• 2 – The first Concorde SST test flight is conducted in France.
• 3 – NASA launches Apollo 9 (James McDivitt, David Scott, Rusty Schweickart) to test the lunar module.
• 4 – Arrest warrants are issued by a Florida court for Jim Morrison charging indecent exposure during a Doors concert three days earlier.
• 10 – James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. (he later retracts his guilty plea).
• 10 – The novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo is released.  The book became one of the biggest bestsellers of the year, leading to the production of the classic film in 1972.
• 17 – Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel.
• 18 – U.S. begins Operation Breakfast – the covert bombing of Cambodia.
• 20 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono are married at Gibraltar, and proceed to Amsterdam for their honeymoon “Bed-In.
• 28 – Former United States General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower dies.

April

• 4 – Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.
• 8 – The Montreal Expos debut as Major League Baseball’s first team outside the United States.
• 9 – The Harvard University Administration Building is seized by 300 students, mostly members of the Students for a Democratic Society. Before the takeover ends, 45 will be injured and 184 arrested.
• 20 – A grassroots movement of Berkeley community members seizes an empty lot owned by the University of California, to begin the formation of “People’s Park.”

May

• 10 – The Battle of Dong Ap Bia in Vietnam, also known as Hamburger Hill, begins.
• 18 – Apollo 10 (Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan, John Young) is launched as a full rehearsal for the Moon landing, flying 15 kilometers above the lunar surface.
• 20 – United States National Guard helicopters spray skin-stinging powder on anti-war protesters in California.
• 25 – Midnight Cowboy, an X-rated, Oscar-winning film by John Schlesinger, is released.
• 26-June 2 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono conduct their second Bed-In. The follow-up to the Amsterdam event is held at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec. Lennon composes and records the song Give Peace a Chance during the Bed-In.

June

• 8 – President Richard Nixon announces that 25,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn by September.
• 22 – The Cuyahoga River fire in Ohio occurs, helping to spur the environmental movement and the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
• 22 – Judy Garland dies of a drug overdose in her London home.
• 28 – The Stonewall riots in New York City mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.

July

• 8 – The first U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam begin.
• 16 – Apollo 11 (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins) lifts off toward the first landing on the Moon.
• 18 – Senator Edward Kennedy drives off a bridge on his way home from a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. Passenger Mary Jo Kopechne dies in the submerged car.
• 20-21 – The lunar module on the Apollo 11 mission lands on the lunar surface. An estimated 500 million people worldwide watch as Neil Armstrong takes his historic first steps on the Moon, the largest television audience for a live broadcast at that time.
• 25 – President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense, thus beginning the “Vietnamization” of the war.

August

• 9 – Members of the Manson Family kill 5: actress Sharon Tate (who was 8 months pregnant), Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring; and Steven Parent, leaving from a visit to the caretaker. More than 100 stab wounds are found on the victims.
  9 – The Haunted Mansion attraction opens at Disneyland.
  10 – The Manson Family kills Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, wealthy Los Angeles businessman and his wife.
  15–18 – The Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, New York, brings together 400,000 young people for “three days of peace and music,” setting the tone for a generation.

September

• 2 – The first automatic teller machine in the United States is installed in Rockville Centre, New York.
• 5 – Lieutenant William Calley is charged with six counts of premeditated murder for the 1968 death of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, Vietnam.
• 13 – Scooby-Doo airs its first episode.
• 20 – The last theatrical Warner Bros. cartoon is released: the Merrie Melodies short, “Injun Trouble.”
• 22 – San Francisco Giant Willie Mays becomes the first major league baseball player since Babe Ruth to hit 600 career home runs.
• 24 – Trial begins for the Chicago Seven, accused of with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and countercultural protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
• 26 – The Beatles release their Abbey Road album, viewed by many as the group’s masterpiece.

October

• 5 – Monty Python’s Flying Circus first airs on BBC.
• 11-16 – The New York Mets defeat the Baltimore Orioles 4 games to 1 in one of the greatest World Series upsets in baseball history.
• 15 – Hundreds of thousands of people take part in Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam demonstrations across the United States.
• 17 – Willard S. Boyle and George Smith invent the CCD (charged-coupled device) at Bell Laboratories, the foundational element in the production of digital cameras and a broad range of imaging devices.
• 29 – The first message is sent between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute, a connection viewed as one of the key steps in the “birth” of the internet.

November

• 9 – 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.
• 10 – Sesame Street airs its first episode on public broadcasting.
• 12 – Journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai story, increasing criticism of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
• 14 – NASA launches Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean), the second manned mission to the Moon.
• 15 – In Washington, D.C., more than 250,000 protesters stage a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam war.
• 17 – Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki, to begin the SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.
• 25 – John Lennon returns his MBE medal to protest the British government’s involvement in the Nigerian Civil War.

December

• 1 – The first draft lottery in the United States since World War II is held.
• 2 – The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its first passenger flight.
• 6 – The Altamont Free Concert is held at the Altamont Speedway in northern California. Hosted by The Rolling Stones, it is an attempt at a “Woodstock West” and is best known for the uproar of violence that occurred. The event is often characterized as one of many that are called the “end of the sixties.”

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