The Sixties (1960s)

Technological, political and general: short 60’s world chronology

1960
Almost all of African gains independence in the 1960's
Famine caused by the failure of Mao's "collectivization" program kills 20 million Chinese
Sharpeville massacre in South Africa
Gregory Pincus invents the birth control pill
The bathyscaphe Trieste descends to the deepest spot in the oceans
First laser (Theodore Maiman)

1961
Soviet troops build a wall to isolate West Berlin
Yuri Gagarin becomes the first astronaut
First stereo radio broadcasting

1962
American intervention in Vietnam to counter Soviet help to the Vietcong
First telecommunication satellite, the Telstar

1963
Assassination of John Kennedy
US-backed South Vietnam persecutes buddhist monks
Greatest train robbery of all times on the Glasgow-London train
Valium is introduced
The Organization of African Unity (OAU) is created

1964
Cable TV is deployed in US cities
Student protests in Berkeley spread around the States, free-speech movement
Breznev head of the Soviet Union
Smoking is proved to be dangerous
First commercial mainframe computer by IBM
The CIA fabricates the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a pretext for direct US intervention in Vietnam

1965
War between India and Pakistan
Gordon Moore's law: processing power of computers will double every 18 months
Ferdinand Marcos becomes dictator of the Philippines

1966
Cultural Revolution in China: directed by Mao, millions of students enroll as "Red Guards" attack party authorities and teachers, and their fanaticism brings anarchy and destruction

1967
First heart transplant (in South Africa, by Dr Christian Barnard)
Cassius Clay imprisoned for refusing to serve in Vietnam
Summer of Love in San Francisco

1968
Martin Luther King assassinated
Tommie Smith protests the American anthem at the Olympic games
Breznev states his doctrine of limited sovereignty
Czeck revolution: spring of Prague (Dubcek)
American soldiers (led by William Calley) massacre more than 500 civilians at My Lai
Student riots in Western Europe (led by Cohen Bendit in France, Dutschke in Germany, Toni Negri in Italy)
520,000 US troops in Vietnam - The US uses chemical weapons - Between 1965 and 1968 the US dropped 7 million tons of bombs, twice World War II - 130,000 civilian casualties a month
Vietnam is the first televised war although what the world sees is only the US propaganda

1969
The IRA starts a campaign of terrorism in Northern Ireland that will kill more than 2.000 people
Qaddafi dictator of Lybia
First commercial VCR (Sony)
The Unix operating system is born
The computer network ArpaNET is born in the U.S. (it will be renamed Internet in 1985)
Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the Moon
US president Richard Nixon approves carpet bombing and land

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