Arts and Culture

• The Beatles arrive in New York to 10,000 screaming fans (Feb 7).  When they first appeared on Ed Sullivan show, 74 million people watched -- then the largest audience in the history of television (Feb 9) The Beatles first US tour included 25 North American cities (Aug). The Beatles albums sell more than 2 million copies a month.

•  Neal Cassady drives Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters from California to New York in the Further bus. They visit with Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and others at the Millbrook Estate for early LSD sessions (Aug).  LSD was still legal at the time - having been originally developed for the CIA to use is it's espionage work.

•  Hippies begin moving into Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.  This lower class neighborhood near Golden Gate park would become the epicenter of the hippy counterculture.  Bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and others began playing together.

•  Lenny Bruce is found guilty of using obscenity in his act at the Café Go-Go in Greenwich Village and sentenced to four months in jail. Two years later the conviction is reversed when the judge finds that while Bruce used "coarse, vulgar and profane language which went beyond the bounds of usual candor, it was error to hold that the performances were without social importance."

•  Carol Doda dances in a Rudi Gernreich topless bathing suit in The Condor nightclub, North Beach (June 19)

•  Young women started taking birth control pills which had just been introduced in 1963.  This was one of the key factors that led to the sexual revolution which was supported by the hippy counterculture.

• Bob Dylan releases "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (Jan)

•  Eric Burden of Animals turns Beatles on to marijuana (May)

•  Beatles' movie "Hard Day's Night" released in US

•  Oldest baby boomers entered college in the fall.

•  Rolling Stones appeared on Ed Sullivan (Oct 26)

Social Change and Activism

•  During the summer, many young college students worked in the racially segregated south to register blacks to vote.  Many of the young people who would go on to lead the anti-war movement received training and inspiration during "Freedom Summer."  Three missing civil rights workers were found dead in Mississippi (Aug 4) killed by the white racists.

•  The Free speech movement begins the campus revolution of the Sixties with demonstrations for civil rights and against the arms race. In Berkeley CA , Mario Savio, a philosophy major at the University of California, becomes the leader of a student revolt against administrative interference in civil rights advocacy.  Students burn their draft cards to protest the escalating war in Vietnam.

•  UC Berkeley math grad student Jack Weinberg is arrested for setting up CORE information table in Sproul Plaza.  A police car is surrounded by demonstrating students for 32 hours; free speech movement (FSM) is formed.  Weinberg said: "Don't trust anyone over 30" (Oct 1)

•  The Free Speech Movement stages an overnight sit-in in Sproul Hall UC-Berkelyadministration building to protest discipline of four who took part in the October police car sit-in.  This time 800 young people were arrested and 900 students boycott classes.   Joan Baez sings on Sproul Hall steps (Dec 2)

•  Racial tensions rise throughout urban America with riots in Harlem (July 18), Philadelphia (Aug 28), and elsewhere.  Sit-ins took place throughout the south in restaurants, swimming pools, and other places.  Marches and demonstrations also become more common.  Martin Luther King Jr. wins Nobel Peace Prize (Oct 14)

•  The Wilderness Act becomes law and represents the start of a decade-long increase in environmental protection (Sept)

Economic and Politics

•  President Johnson (LBJ) declares "War on Poverty" in his State of the Union address (Jan 8). LBJ signs anti-poverty program (Aug 20) and a food stamp bill (Aug 31)

•  New military junta takes over in South Vietnam (Jan 30)  The U.S. destroyer Maddox (30 miles offshore in the Gulf of Tonkin) allegedly comes under attack by North Vietnamese ships. The US retaliates with five days of bombing raids in North Vietnam. Congress supports the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (Aug 7), allowing President Johnson to widen the war in Southeast Asia. He warns the Soviets that the US commitment to Laos and South Vietnam is unlimited. Moscow assures Hanoi of its support.

• By the end of 1954, there are 23,700 American soldiers in Vietnam, with 164 combat deaths and about 1,000 wounded. Johnson orders a program to reduce the number of 19 year olds registering for the draft who are rejected for health and mental defects.

•  LBJ signs US Civil Rights Act which had the intent of opening public facilities to all.

•  U.S. Surgeon General declares that cigarettes cause lung cancer (Jan 11).  Until then, most Americans thought cigarettes were safe.