May You Live In Interesting Times...
Few generations have experienced a youth punctuated by such a wide range of societal, cultural, and technological change as the class of 1972. From our respective inceptions, to ejections from the Wausau School District halls of learning, we experienced much.
As a point of reflection, find below a timeline that has been unashamedly plagiarized in total from Wikipedia's Timeline of the 20th Century.
1953
- 20 January: Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 5 February: Release date of Disney's Peter Pan.
- 5 March: Death of Stalin.
- 25 April: Discovery of the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
- 2 June: Coronation of Elizabeth II.
- 16–17 June: An East German Uprising leads to the arrest and execution of Lavrentiy Beria; power struggle begins between Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev.
- 29 May: First ascent of Mount Everest.
- 27 July: End of the Korean War.
- 19 August: Mohammed Mossadeq deposed in Iran.
- 9 November: Independence of Cambodia.
- Elvis Presley's musical career is launched.
- The first color television is produced.
- "Insta-Burger King" founded in Jacksonville, Florida.
1954
- 12 April: The song Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and His Comets, brings rock and roll to the American mainstream.
- 17 May: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Brown v. Board of Education, ordering an end to racial segregation in public schools.
- 29 July: J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings.
- 1 August: First Indochina War ends.
- 3 September: First Taiwan Strait Crisis begins.
- 14 September: The Soviet Union generates first electricity by nuclear power.
- 23 October: The Western European Union is established.
- 1 November: Algerian War begins.
- 3 November: Godzilla is released in Japan.
- Two Miami-based franchisees, David Edgerton and James McLamore, purchase the company "Insta-Burger King" and rename it "Burger King".
1955
- After winning the power struggle that followed Stalin's death two years earlier, Nikita Khrushchev assumes control of the Soviet Union.
- 24 February: Formation of the Central Treaty Organization.
- 12 March: Death of Charlie Parker, American jazz saxophonist and composer.
- 6 April: Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 12 April: The Salk polio vaccine having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
- 18 April: Death of Albert Einstein.
- 18 to 24 April: Bandung Conference.
- 1 May: First Taiwan Strait Crisis ends.
- 14 May: Signing of the Warsaw Pact.
- 22 June: Release date of Disney's Lady and the Tramp.
- 18 August: First Sudanese Civil War begins.
- 30 September: Death of James Dean, American actor.
- Antimatter first produced.
1956
- 1 January: Independence of Sudan from Britain.
- 20 March: Independence of Tunisia from France.
- 23 March: Full independence of Pakistan.
- 11 November: The Hungarian Uprising crushed by Soviet troops.
- 29 October to 7 November: Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal triggers the Suez crisis.
- Construction of Brasília, the new capital of Brazil to replace Rio de Janeiro, begins.
1957
- 10 January: Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 6 March: Independence of Ghana from Britain.
- 17 March: Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others are killed in a plane crash.
- 25 March: Treaty of Rome, which would eventually lead to the European Union.
- 31 August: Independence of the Federation of Malaya.
- 4 October: Launch of Sputnik 1 and the beginning of the Space Age.
- 3 November: Laika becomes the first animal launched into Earth orbit.
- 20 December: First flight of the Boeing 707.
- First prescription of the combined oral contraceptive pill.
- Beginning of the Asian flu in China, leading to a worldwide pandemic that lasts until the following year.
1958
- 31 May: Pizza Hut founded.
- 29 July: NASA formed.
- 23 August: Federal Aviation Authority formed.
- August to September: Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
- 4 October: French Fifth Republic established.
- 28 October: John XXIII becomes Pope.
- November: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) founded. CND's symbol, the peace sign, is first used.
- Invention of the optical disc and the cassette tape.
1959
- World population reaches three billion.
- 1 January: Cuban Revolution ends.
- 29 January: Disney's Sleeping Beauty premieres.
- 3 February: Rock and roll musicians Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper die in a plane crash.
- 19 February: Independence of Cyprus.
- 10–23 March: Uprising in Tibet against China leads to the exile of the Dalai Lama.
- 4 July: Admission of Alaska, the 49th state, into the United States.
- 21 August: Admission of Hawaii, the 50th state, into the United States.
- 7 October: The U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 sends back the first ever photos of the far side of the Moon.
- 1 November: Beginning of the Vietnam War, which lasted for almost twenty years until 1975.
- 18 November: The Oscar-winning film Ben-Hur premieres.
- Great Chinese Famine begins in China.
- First documented AIDS cases.
- By this time, the gulag has been effectively disbanded, after over a million recorded deaths.
1960s
1960
- European Free Trade Association formed.
- Year of Africa: Independence of 17 African nations.
- 17 January: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba begins the Congo Crisis.
- 22 January: First manned descent to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.
- 25 January: Release date of Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
- 21 March: The Sharpeville Massacre, in which the police opened fire against a protesting crowd at a police station in the South African township of Sharpeville in Transvaal, resulting in 69 deaths and 180 injuries.
- 21 April: Construction of Brasília, Brazil's new capital, finished.
- 1 May: 1960 U-2 incident sparks deterioration in relations between superpowers.
- 9 May: The birth control pill becomes commercially available.
- 16 May: Construction of the first laser.
- 22 May: An earthquake in Valdivia, Chile of magnitude 9.4 to 9.6, the highest ever recorded, causes 1,000 to 6,000 deaths.
- American boxer Muhammad Ali wins gold.
- 18–25 September: The first edition of the Summer Paralympic Games is hosted in Rome.
- 30 September: The first episode of The Flintstones airs on ABC.
- 12 October: Inejiro Asanuma, a Japanese socialist politician, is assassinated during a broadcast on TV.
- 8 November: The 1960 United States presidential election marks the first televised debates between presidential candidates.
- Khrushchev withdraws Soviet cooperation with China, initiating the Sino-Soviet split.
- Mau Mau Uprising ends.
- The Beatles form in Liverpool.
1961
- 20 January: John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 12 April: Yuri Gagarin, flying the Vostok 1 spacecraft as part of the Vostok program, becomes the first human in space.
- 25 May: In an address to Congress, John F. Kennedy declares the United States' objective of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the decade. This would be in fact achieved by the Apollo Project, despite several challenges and much doubt.
- 13 August: Construction of the Berlin Wall.
- 18 September: UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash.
- The Great Leap Forward ends in China after the deaths of roughly 20-45 million people.
1962
- 19 March: The Algerian War ends with the independence of Algeria.
- May: Marvel's The Incredible Hulk marks the first appearance of the superhero.
- 2 July: Walmart founded in Rogers, Arkansas by Sam Walton.
- August: Marvel's Amazing Fantasy#15 marks the first appearance of Spider-Man in comics.
- 4 August: Death of Marilyn Monroe.
- 26 September: A coup ends the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, establishing the Yemen Arab Republic and starting the North Yemen Civil War.
- 11 October: The Second Vatican Council is opened by Pope John XXIII.
- 16–29 October: The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly causes nuclear war.
- October to November: The Sino-Indian War, caused by a border dispute in Aksai Chin, ends with a Chinese victory.
1963
- 1 January: Premiere of the Astro Boy anime, the first to be broadcast overseas.
- 20 January: Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation begins.
- Birmingham campaign.
- 22 March: The Beatles' first record, Please Please Me, and the beginnings of the British Invasion.
- 27 May: Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
- 21 June: Paul VI becomes Pope.
- 26 July: Launch of the first geostationary satellite, Syncom 2.
- 28 August: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
- 19 October: Alec Douglas-Home becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 22 November: Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumes office as President of the United States.
- 10–12 December: Independence of Kenya and Zanzibar and creation of Malaysia.
- 25 December: Release date of Disney's The Sword in the Stone.
1964
- 12 January: Zanzibar Revolution overthrows Arab ruling class; Zanzibar merges with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.
- 7 February: The Beatles' first visit to the United States.
- 31 March to 1 April: A coup d'état establishes a military dictatorship in Brazil.
- 27 May: Colombian armed conflict begins.
- 2 July: Civil Rights Act abolishes segregation in the USA.
- 4 July: Rhodesian Bush War begins.
- 6 July: Independence of Malawi.
- 2 August: The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
- 29 August: Release date of Disney's Mary Poppins.
- 21 September: Independence of Malta.
- 14 October: Leonid Brezhnev ousts Khrushchev and assumes power in the Soviet Union.
- 16 October: Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 28 November: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.
1965
- 24 January: Death of Winston Churchill.
- 21 February: Death of Malcolm X.
- 17 March: The Voting Rights Act of 1965, inspired by the Selma to Montgomery marches.
- 26 April: Establishment of Rede Globo, now the largest TV network in Brazil and Latin America and the second-largest in the world after ABC.
- 18 May: Israeli spy Eli Cohen is hanged in Damascus.
- 9 August: Singapore gains independence.
- 30 August: Bob Dylan releases Highway 61 Revisited.
- August to September: Second Indo-Pakistani War.
- 24–25 November: Congo Crisis ends; Joseph Mobutu becomes dictator of the Congo.
- 30 September: 30 September Movement in the Indonesia.
- 8 December: Second Vatican Council is closed by Pope Paul VI.
- 30 December: Ferdinand Marcos becomes President of the Philippines.
- Beginning of the anti-Communist purge in Indonesia, which killed up to 500,000 people.
1966
- 30 April: The Church of Satan is established in San Francisco by Anton LaVey.
- 16 May:
- The Beach Boys release Pet Sounds.
- China's Cultural Revolution begins.
- 11 August: The Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation ends.
- 30 September: Independence of Botswana.
- 4 October: Independence of Lesotho.
- 21 October: The Aberfan disaster, the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip (pile of waste coal mining material) in Aberfan, Wales results in 144 deaths.
- 30 November: Independence of Barbados.
- 15 December: Death of Walt Disney.
- Joseph Weizenbaum, a German computer scientist at MIT, completes ELIZA, the first ever chatbot.
1967
- First high-speed rail introduced in Tokyo.
- Mid-year: Summer of Love, in which as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury.
- 5–10 June: The Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and Arab states that resulted in Israel occupying the Gaza Strip, the Sinal Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
- 6 July: Attempted secession of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria triggers the Nigerian Civil War.
- 17 July: Death of John Coltrane, American jazz saxophonist, clarinettist and composer.
- 8 August: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) founded.
- 18 October: Release date of Disney's The Jungle Book.
- 26 May: The Beatles release their landmark album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
- 17 December: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Victoria.
1968
- January to March: Protests erupt in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
- January to August: Prague Spring crushed by the Eastern Bloc military intervention.
- January to September: The Tet Offensive occurs in South Vietnam.
- 8 February: 20th Century Fox releases Planet of the Apes.
- 19 February: The US national debut of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on National Education Television (NET).
- 16 March: My Lai massacre, a mass murder and rape of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in the Vietnam War.
- 21 March: Battle of Karameh in Jordan (part of the War of Attrition between Israel and Arab states).
- 4 April: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. during the Poor People's Campaign.
- 5 June: Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the Poor People's Campaign.
- Another new strain of a flu in Hong Kong spreads again.
- The Troubles begin in Northern Ireland.
1969
- 13 January: Samsung Electronics founded in Suwon, South Korea.
- 20 January: Richard Nixon is inaugurated as President of the United States.
- 2 March: Concorde 001 flies from the first time, from Toulouse, piloted by André Turcat.
- March to September: Sino-Soviet border conflict.
- June 28 to July 3: The Stonewall riots in New York City instigate the gay rights movement.
- 20 July: The first manned mission to the Moon.
- 8–9 August: The Manson Family Murders - Under Charles Manson's orders, his followers, the "Manson Family" cult, enter the home of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and murder her and four others.
- August: The Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, attracts an audience of more than 400,000.
- 1 September: Muammar Gaddafi overthrows King Idris of Libya in a Coup d'état and establishes the Libyan Arab Republic.
- 29 October: Creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the earliest incarnation of the Internet.
- 10 November: Sesame Street premieres its debut episode.
1970s
1970
- 15 January: The Nigerian Civil War ends with the reintegration of the Republic of Biafra with Nigeria after ~3 million deaths.
- 22 January: Maiden flight of the Boeing 747.
- January to March: First Quarter Storm.
- 5 March: Ratification of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
- April: Break-up of the Beatles.
- 4 May: The Kent State massacre in Ohio leaves four students dead and nine injured.
- 19 June: Edward Heath becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 6 September: Black September in Jordan begins, lasting until mid-1971.
- 18 September: Death of Jimi Hendrix.
- 28 September: Death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
- October to December: FLQ seizes hostages, causing Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau of Canada to issue the War Measures Act.
- 4 October: Death of Janis Joplin, American rock, soul and blues singer-songwriter.
- 15 October: Anwar Sadat becomes President of Egypt.
- 3–13 November: The Bhola Cyclone kills 500,000 people in East Pakistan.
- 1 December: North Yemen Civil War ends.
- 14–19 December: 1970 Polish protests.
- 18 December: Establishment of Airbus.
- 24 December: Release date of Disney's The Aristocats.
- Containerisation adopted globally, massively boosting global trade.
1971
- 25 January: Idi Amin seizes power in Uganda.
- 26 March: Bangladesh Liberation War occurred, independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan and precipitates Third Indo-Pakistani War.
- 3 July: Death of Jim Morrison, American lead vocalist of the rock band the Doors.
- 6 July: Death of Louis Armstrong, American musician among the most influential figures in jazz.
- 17 July: Black September in Jordan ends.
- 9–10 August: Internment begins in Northern Ireland.
- 27 October: Joseph Mobutu renames The Republic of the Congo Zaire.
- 15 November: Intel releases the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004.
- December: Third Indo-Pakistani War.
- Nixon shock removes gold back-up for the US Dollar triggering export of inflation from rich to poor nations.
- COINTELPRO officially ends.
- Greenpeace founded.
1972
- January: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to Bangladesh from imprisonment in Pakistan.
- 30 January: Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday.
- 24 March: The Godfather premieres.
- 27 March: The First Sudanese Civil War ends.
- 30 May: Lod Airport massacre.
- 8 May: The airplane serving Sabena Flight 571 from Brussels to Lod, Tel Aviv is hijacked by four members of the Black September Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group, resulting in 3 deaths and 3 injuries.
- 5–6 September: The Munich massacre, perpetrated by the Black September terrorist organization and aimed at the Israeli Olympic team, results in 17 total deaths.
- September:
- Martial law declared in the Philippines by President Ferdinand Marcos.
- Release date of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first commercial home video game console.
- 29 November: The arcade game Pong, the first commercially successful video game, is released.
- Release of A Computer Animated Hand, one of the first ever computer animations.