Timeline of 1960s counterculture

The following is a timeline of 1960s counterculture, with influencing events and milestones beginning decades ahead of the 1960s, with the core period stretching through the 1960s and several years after.

Pre-1950

1909

• February 12: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in the US. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination."

1919

• Methamphetamine is first developed in Japan. By the 1960s, "Meth" is a recreational drug, and the phrase "Speed Kills" becomes popular, even within the substance-friendly counterculture.

1920

• In response to the infamous Palmer Raids, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is founded.

1938

• Dr. Albert Hofmann identifies, synthesizes, and tests LSD in his Sandoz laboratory in Basel, Switzerland.

1942

• March: The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is founded in Chicago.

1944

• Harry Gibson coins and begins popularizing the term "hipsters" for the "hip" crowd in Harlem, New York.

1945

• July 16: The first atomic bomb is successfully detonated by civilian scientists and engineers under the direction of the United States Army near Alamagordo, New Mexico.
• August 6 & 9. The US drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II in the Pacific ends soon after, and much of the world is divided into an Eastern Bloc and a Western Bloc, setting the stage for the Cold War and eventual massive nuclear weapons build-ups by the US, the USSR, and their respective allies.

1946

• Levittown: A model of post-war desire for quieter suburban life, and a signpost of the breakdown of the close-knit, urban family (where many generations all lived in cities under one roof), the first mass-produced housing subdvision breaks ground on a former potato farm in New York. Thousands of new homes are first rented (then later sold) virtually overnight, and the trend soon spreads nationwide. In the US, both the massive move from cities to the suburbs and the baby boom are underway.

1947

• Hollywood writers, directors, and performers suspected of communist sympathies become subject to "blacklisting" by the US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
• April 8: The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is established at Indiana University. Groundbreaking books on male and female sexuality follow in 1948 and 1953.
• September 18: The National Security Act of 1947: US defense and intelligence organizations are reorganized. The United States Air Force (USAF) and the CIA are created, and a substantial part of US Federal government activity is permanently cloaked under secrecy.

1948

• Jack Kerouac first uses the term "Beat Generation" in reference to the nascent intellectual culture that would ultimately give way to the so-called counterculture.

• Shelley v. Kraemer: The enforcement by states of deed restrictions prohibiting the transfer of real estate to non-Caucasians is deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, clearing the way for home ownership by Blacks and Jews in previously segregated communities.

1949

• January: Cheap transportation for a new generation, the first Volkswagen Beetle arrives in the US. By 1970, over 4 million are on American roads, when annual US sales top out at 570,000. The "Bug" and VW "Bus", introduced in 1950, become closely associated with the hippie and counterculture eras.
• August 29: The USSR detonates its first atomic bomb with essential aid of atomic spies from the US, Great Britain, and Canada. The Cold War has commenced in earnest.
• October 1: Communist China: After a long and bloody civil war, Party Chairman Mao Zedong proclaims the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Mao rules China until his death in 1976.

1950s

1950

• June 25: Prelude to Vietnam: Communist forces of North Korea invade democratic South Korea with support from Red China and the USSR. The US, UK, and a host of free UN states respond and hold back the incursion. In 1953 the conflict ends where it began with each side faced-off at the 38th parallel, and where the US remains on armed alert to the present. The UK counts over 1,100 war dead, the US over 36,000.
• Sep 3: The first US military advisors arrive in South Vietnam.

1951

• The True Believer: "Longshoreman-philosopher" Eric Hoffer's Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is published.

1952

• August: Mad Magazine debuts as a comic book before switching to standard magazine format in 1955.
• The National Security Agency is established, bringing most civilian US communications and technical intelligence collection under one roof. Intended as a tool against foreign enemies, the later use of the agency's extensive resources by bureaucrats and politicians against domestic, anti-war counterculture radicals is revealed and debated in congress in the 1970s.
• Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison's highly acclaimed novel of Black life in 20th Century America is published.

1953

• April 13: Project MKULTRA, the CIA's mind control research program which grew to include testing LSD on both volunteer and unsuspecting subjects into the 1960s, commences.
• June 19: Julius & Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing Prison, NY, after conviction on espionage charges for their role in the communist spy ring which gave the USSR the atomic bomb and thereby initiated the nuclear arms race.
• August 15–19: The democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran is overthrown by intelligence operatives of the UK and US. The Shah of Iran is reinstalled as absolute monarch. The success of the operation begins a pattern of CIA-fomented coups and assassinations in the global fight against expansion of the political, economic, and military interests of the USSR, utlimately culminating in the fiasco of US combat involvement in Vietnam.
• December: Marilyn Monroe centerfold: the first issue of Playboy appears. Publisher Hugh Hefner becomes an early player in the coming Sexual Revolution.

1954

• April 6: On the floor of the US Senate, Senator John F. Kennedy proclaims that to "pour money, material, and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile and self-destructive."
• April 27: The Geneva Accords grant independence to French Indochina, establishing Vietnam as a unified, independent nation in name only. The US is not a signatory to the treaty. The French are officially out of Southeast Asia, leaving a people, and a raging civil war, behind.
• May 17: Brown vs. Board of Ed: The US Supreme Court rules unanimously that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The doctrine of "Separate but equal" as a legal and moral pretext for segregation is no longer enforceable by governments, and true racial integration begins in schools in the US.

1955

• February: The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) is formally activated, nominally obligating the US to intervene as part of collective action in case of military conflagration in the region. The non-binding SEATO commitment, however, is only invoked as justification for involvement in Vietnam by President Johnson after later escalation of hostilities there prove unpopular.
• July 9: Bill Haley's version of "Rock Around the Clock" begins an eight-week run at #1 on Billboard. The Rock & Roll era begins.
• August 28: Emmett Till Murder: A black teen is brutally slain in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a white woman. The incident becomes a pivotal event in the growing Civil Rights movement after Till's mother allows the boy's mutilated body to be viewed, and after two white men (who later confess to the murder) are acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury.
• October 26: Village Voice: One of the earliest and most enduring alternative newspapers is launched by Ed Fancher, Dan Wolf, John Wilcock and Norman Mailer in New York City.
• December 1: Activist Rosa Parks refuses to cede her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, AL, and is arrested. The ACLU takes on and wins her case.

1956

• April 21: "Heartbreak Hotel", Elvis Presley's first #1 hit, tops the charts for 8 weeks as Elvis creates teenage pandemonium in households across the western world.
• August: The FBI's COINTELPRO domestic counterintelligence program commences. The surveillance effort is initially directed against stateside communist activities, but grows to include illegal invasions of privacy targeting civil rights and anti-war activists.

1957

• British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coins the word "psychedelic" from the Greek words psyche ("mind") and delos ("manifest"), intended as an alternative to "hallucinogenic" in LSD parlance.
• Masters and Johnson begin scientific research into human sexual response in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis.
• January 10: The Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) is formed in Atlanta, GA.
• September 5: On The Road: Years in the works, a somewhat tamed version of Jack Kerouac's seminal novel of the Beat Generation is published.
• September 23: President Eisenhower signs an executive order sending Federal troops to maintain peace and order during the racial integration of Central High School in Little Rock, AR.
• October 4: The western world is shocked and deeply fearful when the USSR launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial space satellite.
• November 15: Albert Schweitzer, Coretta Scott King, and Benjamin Spock post an ad in The New York Times calling for an end to the nuclear arms race. SANE is later formed.

1958

• February 17: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is inaugurated in London, introducing the "Peace symbol" from the letters CnD.
• March 24: Elvis Presley, the biggest recording star in the world, is inducted into the US Army. Presley serves his 2 years honorably.
• April 2: Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle coins the term beatnik to refer to aficionados of the Beat Generation.
• April 4–7: Thousands protest in the first major Aldermaston march at Easter, organised by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and supported by the CnD.
• SANE claims 25,000 members in 130 chapters.
• The New Left SLATE student political party is formed at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower is the first US President to ask a joint session of Congress to pass the long-debated Equal Rights Amendment.
• Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith's highly influential work The Affluent Society is published.

1959

• January 1: Revolutionary forces under the leadership of Fidel Castro overthrow the corrupt Batista government in Cuba. 50 years of repressive one-man rule by the future Soviet ally ensue before Castro relinquishes control to his brother.
• February 3: The Day the Music Died: Pop Rockers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper are killed along with the pilot of a small plane in bad weather near Clear Lake, IA.
• June 16: Superman is Dead?: Front page headlines allege that actor George Reeves' shooting death is a suicide, shocking a generation of youngsters mourning the first major superhero of comic books and TV.
• September 29: Beatnik goes TV: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis debuts, featuring Bob Denver as "beat" character Maynard G. Krebs.
• The satirical comedy record How to Speak Hip, is released, laying down the lingo for a generation.

1960s

1960

• The Student League for Industrial Democracy has changed their name to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and first meet in Ann Arbor, MI. SDS dissassociates with LID in 1965.
• A beatnik community in Cornwall, UK noted for wearing their hair past their shoulders, and including a young Wizz Jones, is interviewed by Alan Whicker for BBC TV.
• Harvard professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert begin experimenting with hallucinogens at Cambridge, MA.
• February 1: The first of the Greensboro sit-ins sparks a wave of similar protests against segregation at Woolworth and other retail store lunch counters across the American South.
• March 26: Governor Buford Ellington of Tennessee orders an investigation into a CBS news crew for filming a Nashville sit-in.
• April: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is organized by Ella Baker at Shaw University.
• May 1: U-2 Incident: a US spy plane searching for Soviet nuclear installations is shot down deep within the USSR. The CIA pilot is captured alive and paraded in the Russian press after the White House enlists NASA in a botched cover story claiming the plane went missing during a weather flight.
• May 9: The Pill: The US Food & Drug Administration approves the use of the first reliable form of birth control: a 99%-effective pill. The Sexual Revolution commences, first in the bedrooms of married couples.
• May 13: Black Friday: 400 police using firehoses force a student "mob" out of a HUAC meeting at City Hall in San Francisco. The counterculture era of student protest begins.
• May 19: SANE holds an anti-arms race rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY. 20,000 attend.
• November 8: John F. Kennedy is elected 35th President of the US, defeating sitting Vice President Richard M. Nixon in what is considered to be the closest and most intellectually-charged US presidential election since 1916. Nearly 70 million ballots are cast, but the margin of victory is just slightly more than 100,000 votes.

1961

• January: Look Magazine journalist George Leonard writes about "Youth of the Sixties: The Explosive Generation," and predicts that the "quiet generation" of the 1950s "is rumbling and is going to explode…"
• January 17: US President Eisenhower gives his farewell address to the nation, and uses much of his time to warn of the undue influence of the "Military Industrial Complex."
• January 20: In a powerful inaugural address, new US President Kennedy calls upon citizens to "ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."
• March 1: JFK signs an executive order creating the Peace Corps.
• March 28: JFK orders final cancellation of the oft-resurrected USAF B-70 Bomber program in a significant rollback of the nuclear arms race.
• March 30: The UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed in New York City, tightening controls on international trade in opiates.
• April 12: Vostok: Man in Space: The western world is again shocked when Cold War foe the USSR follows its Sputnik triumph, putting the first human in space.
• April 17: A CIA-led invasion force intent on the overthrow of Fidel Castro lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Anti-Castro Cuban expatriates and CIA mercenaries are overtaken and captured by Cuban forces. JFK, who inherited the operation planned under the previous administration, attempts to cut losses and denies US air support.
• May 4: Freedom Riders: Civil Rights activists travel on public buses and trains across the American South to personally confront and challenge segregation.
• June 4: JFK meets with Soviet Premier Khrushchev in Vienna, and reports no progress on issues concerning partitioned Germany. Another Berlin Crisis ensues.
• August 13: Berlin Wall: To stem the massive tide of emigration from the communist east into the free west, the construction of a wall dividing the city of Berlin begins under Soviet direction.
• October 25: US and Soviet tanks face off at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.
• November 1: Women Strike for Peace: 50,000 women march in 60 cities in the US to demonstrate against nuclear weapons.
• November 30: Cuban Project: aggressive covert operations against Fidel Castro's revolutionary government in Cuba are authorized by JFK.
• December 14: JFK signs an executive order establishing the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women.

1962

• January 18: Operation Ranch Hand: The US military begins the use of extremely toxic and carcinogenic defoliants in Vietnam. Use of the dioxin-containing Agent Orange begins in 1965.
• February 4: US helicopters assist the South Vietnamese army in the capture of Hung My.
• February 26: Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Valerian Zorin warns the UN that the Americans "are getting bogged down in a very disadvantageous and politically unjustified war (in Vietnam) which will entail very unpleasant consequences for them."
• March 16: US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara reveals that US troops in Vietnam have engaged in ground combat.
• March 19: Bob Dylan's first album Bob Dylan is released. It reaches #13 in the UK, but does not chart on the Billboard 200 in the US.
• March 31: Cesar Chavez begins organizing migrant farm workers in California.
• June 15: The SDS completes the Port Huron Statement.
• July–August: Dr. King's Albany Movement civil rights protest against segregation is active in Albany, GA.
• August 5: Film star Marilyn Monroe dies of a barbiturate overdose under suspicious circumstances in Los Angeles. Monroe's death is a precursor to an explosion of recreational use of highly addictive prescription drugs (and thousands of accidental pill overdose deaths) during the counterculture era, even as legitimate use of these drugs is already in decline.
• September 12: JFK speaks at Rice: "... we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ..."
• September 27: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is published. The modern environmental movement begins.
• October 1: James Meredith is the first African-American student to enter "Ole Miss".
• October 5: "Love Me Do": The Beatles' first single is released.
• October: The Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of nuclear war after the USSR attempts to station nuclear missiles in Cuba, thereby directly threatening the US.
• December: The USAF Skybolt cruise missile program is cancelled by President Kennedy.
• Inspired by Aldous Huxley's Human Potential Movement, Michael Murphy and Dick Price found the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
• Helen Gurley Brown's post-pill dating manual Sex and the Single Girl becomes a best-seller. Brown's attempt to have the book banned for marketing purposes fails.
• The Other America: Michael Harrington's compelling study of the intractable plight of the poor in the US is published. The book is credited with inspiring LBJ's "War on Poverty."
• Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is published.
• Seven Days in May, a novel depicting a foiled military coup in the US, is published. A movie follows and reaches theater screens in 1964 with an all-star cast.

1963

• Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is published. The modern feminist movement is born.
• Bob Fass begins the long-running, late night Radio Unnameable program on WBAI-FM in New York City, a listener-supported station that is later remembered as "the pulse of the movement" by Wavy Gravy.
• April: Chandler Laughlin organizes a Native American Church peyote ceremony, a precursor to The Red Dog Experience.
• April–May: Birmingham Campaign: Civil Rights activists trained by James Bevel are attacked by police in Birmingham, Alabama. Similar events occur at various locations across the deep south throughout the spring and summer.
• May: The first organized Vietnam War protests occur in England and Australia.
• May 1: Undercover Bunny: Gloria Steinem's Playboy Club exposé appears in Show Magazine.
• June 10: A Strategy of Peace: JFK delivers a powerful commencement speech at American University.
• June 11: Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolates in Saigon. AP photographer Malcolm Browne's coverage of the horrific event reportedly motivates JFK to increase US troop strength in the developing Vietnam conflict.
• June 12: NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, MS.
• June 17: The US Supreme Court rules public school-sponsored Bible reading unconstitutional.
• July 26–28: The Newport Folk Festival features Bob Dylan, fellow protest singers Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs, and Peter, Paul & Mary.
• August 28: Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his landmark "I Have a Dream" speech before 200,000 on the Mall in Washington, DC during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
• September 24: The US Senate ratifies The Partial Test Ban Treaty as signed by the US and USSR, ending testing of nuclear weapons under water, in the atmosphere, and in space by the superpowers.
• September 26: The US Senate debates a report that folk music is being infiltrated by communism. Two senators speak and conclude it is "American," dismissing the report.
• October 27: 225,000 students in Chicago schools boycott classes in protest at ongoing segregation.
• November 2: South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated in Saigon.
• November 22: US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, TX. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as 36th President of the US.
• November 24: Suspected JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is himself murdered by Jack Ruby under lax police security in Dallas, thereby creating doubt for many, and opening the door to myriad conspiracy theories concerning the Kennedy Assassination and the veracity of later government findings.

1964

• January: The Holy Modal Rounders' version of "Hesitation Blues" marks the first reference to the term psychedelic in music.
• January 8: LBJ's State of the Union address features a declaration of "War on Poverty".
• January 23: 24th Amendment ratified: US Congress and states are prohibited from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of poll or other forms of tax.
• January 27: Defense Secretary Robert McNamara states that there are now 15,000 US troops in South Vietnam, and that most will be withdrawn by the end of 1965.
• February 1: "I Want to Hold Your Hand:" The Beatles achieve their first hit #1 on Billboard with a 7 week run on top. Beatlemania has spread to the US, and the monumental British Invasion of UK music begins.
• February 7–22: The Beatles make their first US visit and appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. The February 9 telecast is seen by over 73 million, the largest TV audience to date in the US.
• February 21–24: Students at Maryland State College protesting a segregated restaurant are fought by police.
• February 25–26: Tens of thousands of school students in Boston and Chicago skip classes in protest of segregation.
• March 16: 25% of school students in New York City strike to protest segregation.
• April 4: Beatles singles occupy the top 5 slots on the Billboard Hot 100. It's an unprecedented, and never repeated, chart achievement.
• April 20: 86% of black students in Cleveland boycott classes to protest segregation.
• May: Appearance of the Faire Free Press (later the Los Angeles Free Press), earliest of many "underground" US newspapers of the counterculture era.
• May: San Francisco Sheraton Palace Hotel sit-ins result in arrests of University of California, Berkeley students protesting racially discriminatory Bay area hiring practices.
• May 7: President Johnson first refers to "the Great Society" in a speech in Athens, OH.
• May 12: The first public draft-card burning is reported in New York City.
• June 14: Ken Kesey and the drug-drenched Merry Pranksters depart California in the repurposed school bus "Further" en route to the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, NY.
• June 22: "I Know it When I See it": The US Supreme Court overturns the obscenity conviction of an Ohio theater operator. Although local obscenity battles continue to the present, the decision clears the way for the commercial exhibition of sexually-explicit film material in the US.
• July 2: The Civil Rights Act is signed by President Johnson. Racial segregation in public places and race-based employment discrimination are now banned under federal law.
• July: The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopts radio non-duplication rules: FM must broadcast original content, not simply simulcasts of AM sister stations. Soon, FM DJs are free to play the music of the generation without regard to chart status.
• August 2: War Dance: the spurious Gulf of Tonkin Incidents off the coast of Vietnam lead to the nearly unanimous passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by the US Congress on August 7, giving the president unprecedented broad authority to engage in full "conventional" military escalation in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war.
• October 1: The Free Speech Movement begins with a student sit-in at the University of California, Berkeley.
• October 14: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
• November 3: Sitting President Lyndon B. Johnson is elected President of the US in his own right, defeating Republican Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater in a landslide.
• November 4: Comedian Lenny Bruce is convicted on obscenity charges in New York City. Bruce is soon sentenced to a workhouse.
• December 2: In a now-famous speech during another Berkeley sit-in, student Mario Savio tells supporters of the Free Speech Movement to "put your bodies upon the gears."

1965

• February 8: Aerial bombing of North Vietnam by the US commences.
• February 9–15: Thousands demonstrate against the US attacks on North Vietnam at the US Embassies in Moscow, Budapest, Jakarta, and Sofia.
• February 21: Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City.
• March: The "Filthy Speech Rally" at Berkeley.
• March 6: Regular US troops engage in combat in Vietnam for the first time.
• March 7–25: The SCLC stages the watershed Selma to Montgomery marches, initiated and initially organized by James Bevel.
• March 16: Alice Herz, age 82, self-immolates in Detroit, MI in protest of Vietnam escalation. Herz dies 10 days later.
• March 24–25: The first major "Teach-in" is held by the SDS in Ann Arbor, MI. 3000 attend.
• Spring: "Never trust anyone over 30": UC, Berkeley grad student and Free Speech activist Jack Weinberg's quip is quoted in paraphrase, inadvertently creating a key catchphrase of the generation.
• April: Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison are given LSD without their knowledge by their dentist at a UK dinner party.
• April: US combat troops in Vietnam total 25,000.
• April 17: The first major anti-Vietnam War rally in the US is organized by the SDS in Washington, DC. 25,000 attend. Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Phil Ochs perform.
• May: Owsley Stanley returns to the Bay Area with the first large batch of LSD for sale as a recreational drug.
• May 17: Hunter S. Thompson's article The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders appears in The Nation. A book soon follows.
• May: Draft card burnings take place at University of California, Berkeley. A coffin is marched to the Berkeley draft board, and President Johnson is hanged in effigy. Jerry Rubin forms the Vietnam Day Committee with Abbie Hoffman and others during these events.
• June–August: Red Dog Experience comes into full flower at Virginia City, Nevada's Red Dog Saloon - full-fledged "hippie" identity takes shape.
• June 7: Griswold v. Connecticut: The US Supreme Court rules that Constitutional privacy guarantees trump a Connecticut statute banning use of contraceptives by married couples. "Comstock-era" laws are likewise now moot in other states. In 1972, the court rules that protections apply to unmarried couples as well.
• June 11: International Poetry Incarnation: Notables including Allen Ginsburg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael Horovitz and William S. Burroughs participate in a breakthrough event for the UK Underground, Royal Albert Hall, London.
• June 11: The Beatles are awarded as Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) by the Queen for their contributions to British commerce.
• July 25: Bob Dylan "goes electric" and is booed at the Newport Folk Festival.
• July 30: Medicare is signed into law in the US, giving seniors a healthcare safety net.
• August 6: The Voting Rights Act is signed into law in the US; "Literacy tests", poll taxes and other local schemes to prevent voting by blacks are newly or further banned under federal law.
• August 11: 6 days of massive race riots erupt in the Watts section of Los Angeles: 35 dead, 1000 buildings damaged or destroyed. Meanwhile, smaller riots occur in Chicago.
• August 31: The ban on the burning of draft cards is signed into law in the US.
• September 5: The word hippie is used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularise use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen earlier in a passing remark about pot cookies in journalist Dorothy Kilgallen's June 11, 1963 column.
• September 15: I-Spy: Comedian Bill Cosby becomes the first African-American to star in a dramatic American television series. (Amanda Randolph had starred in the comedy The Laytons on the short-lived DuMont Network in the late 1940s.)
• September 25: Debut of The Beatles Saturday morning cartoon series.
• September 25: Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" becomes the first protest song to hit #1 in the charts, while drawing heavy criticism and being banned by many stations.
• October: The Yardbirds featuring Jeff Beck release the single Shapes of Things with the B-side "Still I'm Sad." Psychedelic music first makes the charts.
• October 15–16: Vietnam War protests in cities across the US draw 100,000.
• October 16: "A Tribute to Dr. Strange": 1,000 original San Francisco "hippies" first party en masse at Longshoreman's Hall. Owsley's "White Lightning" acid is available to all.
• November 2: Quaker leader Norman Morrison self-immolates at the Pentagon to protest the war.
• November 5: My Generation: The Who speak to the new youth. "This is my generation!" and "I hope I die before I get old" become mantras of the rising counterculture.
• November 9: Catholic activist Roger Allen LaPorte self-immolates at the UN building in New York City.
• November 20: 8,000 anti-war protesters march from Berkeley to Oakland in CA.
• November 27: Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters hold the first "Acid Test" at Soquel, CA.
• November 27: Up to 35,000 anti-war protesters march on the White House.
• December: Clarion call "California Dreamin'" is first released by The Mamas and the Papas.
• December 3: The Beatles' Rubber Soul is released in the UK with a visually distorted image of the group on the cover. The single "Day Tripper" is also released. Paul McCartney later states that the song was about drugs, but the lyrics are about a female Sunday tourist.
• December 25: Timothy Leary is arrested for drug possession at the Mexican border.
• December: The Pretty Things release Get the Picture?. The album includes a song entitled £.S.D.
• Phil Ochs releases the satirical "Draft Dodger Rag." He later performs the song on the CBS News Special Avoiding the Draft. Pete Seeger's version appears in 1966.
• The East Village Other begins publication in New York City.
• Early commune Drop City is founded in Colorado.
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X is published posthumously. Derived from interviews of the slain civil rights activist by writer Alex Haley, it is considered to be one of the most influential works of non-fiction of the 20th century. Doubleday's cancellation of their original contract for the bestseller is later called the biggest mistake in publishing history.
• Unsafe at Any Speed: Activist attorney Ralph Nader's wake-up call concerning automotive safety is published and fuels the modern Consumer Movement. Nader's ongoing work leads to the passage of the US National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966. In 1972, annual US highway deaths peak at 54,589, approaching the total number of war dead during the 10-year US combat involvement in Vietnam.

1966

• Resurgence magazine is first published in the UK. Notable contributors have included E.F. Schumacher, Ivan Illich, R. D. Laing and The Dalai Lama.
• January 8: 2,400 attend when the "Acid Test" arrives at the Fillmore West.
• January 21–23: Chet Helm's Family Dog "Trips Festival" is attended by 10,000 in San Francisco.
• March 11: Timothy Leary is sentenced to 30 years on his 1965 border drug offense.
• March 14: Eight Miles High: The Byrd's psychedelic 12-string-electric guitar anthem is released and briefly banned on radio due to perceived drug-culture subject matter.
• March 16: 12 Australians burn their draft cards at a Sydney rally against Australia's participation in Vietnam.
• March 25–27: Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations take place in many cities across the US and around the world.
• April 5: US Food and Drug Administration warns about the danger of LSD in a letter to 2,000 universities.
• April 7: Sandoz, the sole legitimate manufacturer of pharmaceutical-grade LSD, stops supplying the drug to researchers.
• April 17: Timothy Leary is arrested for possession of marijuana.
• May 7: Psychedelic bellwether "Paint it Black" is released by the Rolling Stones.
• May 12: Students take over administration building at the University of Chicago to protest the draft.
• May 15: 10,000 anti-war protesters picket the White House.
• May 18: 10,000 students rally against draft at University of Wisconsin.
• May 29: The phrase "Black Power" re-emerges in 1960s Civil Rights context."
• May 30: Featuring backward snippets, John Lennon's psychedelic "Rain" is released as the B-side of Paul McCartney's hit "Paperback Writer."
• June 4: The New York Times publishes a petition to end the Vietnam War, with 6,400 signatures including many prominent scholars and clergy.
• June 13: Miranda v. Arizona: The US Supreme Court rules that the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution provides protection against self-incrimination, requiring law enforcement officials to advise a suspect interrogated in custody of their right to remain silent and their right to obtain an attorney.
• June 25: Lenny Bruce performs for the last time. The show at the Fillmore in San Francisco also showcases Frank Zappa.
• June 27: Psychedelic concept album Freak Out! is released by Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention.
• June 30: The National Organization of Women (NOW) is founded in Washington, DC.
• July: Beatle backlash: US Bible Belt DJs incite thousands to burn Beatle records after the viral spread of John Lennon's "we're more popular than Jesus" comment.
• July: Donovan's "Sunshine Superman" contains the first open reference to "tripping" in a chart-topping song.
• July–September: Riots break out throughout the summer in several US cities, with deaths in Chicago and Cleveland (July), Waukegan IL and Benton Harbour MI (August), and damage in many other cities.
• August 3: Lenny Bruce, called "the most radically relevant of all contemporary social satirists..." is found dead at age 40 from a morphine overdose in Los Angeles.
• August 5: Revolver is released by the Beatles, and includes John Lennon's groundbreaking psychedelic track "Tomorrow Never Knows."
• August 29: The Beatles perform their last concert with ticket sales at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
• September 12: US TV's response to the Beatles, The Monkees, debuts on NBC.
• September 19: Timothy Leary begins his "Turn on, tune in, drop out" crusade in New York City, founding the LSD religion "League for Spiritual Discovery".
• September 20: Anti-Establishment publisher Allen Cohen's underground newspaper The San Francisco Oracle begins publication in Haight-Ashbury.
• October 6: LSD is banned in the US.
• October 6: The Love Pageant Rally protest against the LSD ban is held in San Francisco.
• October 10: The Beach Boys release Brian Wilson's psychedelic tour de force "Good Vibrations."
• October 15: The Black Panther Party is established by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, CA.
• November 9: Beatle John Lennon first meets avant-garde Japanese artist and future wife Yoko Ono at London's Indica Gallery.
• November 12: For What It's Worth: The Sunset Strip teen curfew riots inspire Stephen Stills to pen the Buffalo Springfield protest song, West Hollywood, CA.
• December 8: MGM releases the British film Blow-Up without approval of the movie ratings group MPAA, signalling the beginning of the end of enforcement of the Hays Code. In late 1968, the MPAA institutes the first voluntary system of movie ratings, intended as a guide for viewers as to a film's content and age-appropriateness.

1967

• January: The "Human Be-In," "the joyful, face-to-face beginning of the new epoch" is held in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. 20,000 attend.
• January 12: US TV on LSD: Acid is the subject of the debut "Blue Boy" episode of the topical, but square and sermon-laden police drama Dragnet '67.
• January 29: Ultimate High: Mantra-Rock Dance at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. Hare Krishna is promoted, and the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Moby Grape perform. Ginsberg, Leary and Owsley attend.
• February: Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane is released. Grace Slick becomes the first female rock star. Psilocybin mushrooms are visible on the album cover. Tracks include "D.C.B.A.-25," referring to the song's chords and LSD-25.
• February: Quagmire: Noam Chomsky's anti-Vietnam essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals is published in The New York Review of Books.
• February 5: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour debuts on CBS and soon pushes the boundaries of acceptable TV content to the limit.
• February 11: Human Fly-In: New York DJ Bob Fass uses the airwaves to inspire an impromtu gathering of thousands at Kennedy Airport, in what was later called a "prehistoric flash mob".
• February 12: Stones Bust: Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are arrested for drugs at Richards' UK mansion. In June they are tried and convicted, but soon freed on appeal.
• February 13: The Beatles issue Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever" as B-side to Paul's hit "Penny Lane." "Cranberry sauce" is heard after the song fades-out. Or is it "I buried Paul"?
• February 17: The cover of Life Magazine features Ed Sanders of The Fugs below "HAPPENINGS - The worldwide underground of the arts creates - THE OTHER CULTURE."
• February 22: MacBird! opens at the Village Gate in New York City and runs for 386 performances. The controversial play compares Lyndon Johnson to Shakespeare's Macbeth, who caused the death of his predecessor.
• March 26: 10,000 attend the New York City "Be-In" in Central Park.
• March 31: In an early and detailed report on the Haight in Life Magazine, Loudon Wainwright predicts that "the hour of the hippie...is coming."
• April 4: Beyond Vietnam: Dr. King delivers a monumental anti-war speech.
• April 7: The cover of TIME features the birth control pill.
• April 8–10: Race riots break out in Nashville, TN. Activist Stokely Carmichael and Allen Ginsburg are present.
• April 15: National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam: an estimated 400,000 protest the escalating Vietnam War in New York City, marching from Central Park to UN Headquarters. Dr. King and Stokely Carmichael speak. 75,000 assemble in San Francisco.
• April 28: Boxing Champ Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the US Army in Houston, TX, on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam.
• April 29: The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream: Pink Floyd headlines for 7,000 attending a groundbreaking televised psychedelic rave to promote love and peace at Alexandra Palace, London.
• May 2: Armed Black Panthers led by Bobby Seale enter the California State Assembly, protesting a bill to outlaw open carry of loaded firearms. Seale and five others are arrested.
• May 5: Mr. Natural, Robert Crumb's soon to be ubiquitous underground comix counterculture icon, makes his first appearance in the premiere issue of Yarrowstalks.
• May 10: Rolling Stone Brian Jones is arrested for drug possession. He is arrested again in 1968. Jones' arrest record leaves him unable to tour outside of the UK.
• May 14: Police fire on student protesters at Jackson State College, MS, killing two, including James Earl Green.
• May 15–17: Student protesters confront police at Texas Southern University, resulting in the death of a police officer, and over 400 arrests.
• May 20–21: The Spring Mobilization Conference is held in Washington, D.C. 700 anti-war activists gather to discuss the April 15 protests, and to plan future demonstrations.
• June: Vietnam Veterans Against the War is formed in New York City.
• June–July: Race riots create upheaval in cities across the US.
• June–September: The "Summer of Love" in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco and recognition of the Hippie movement. Runaways inundate, TV crews visit, Gray Line sells bus tours.
• June 1: The Beatles' Sgt Pepper is released and widely recognised as the high-water mark of the brief psychedelic music era. It is also later rated as the greatest rock album of all time.
• June 10–11: Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival: The Summer of Love kicks off at Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California. Over 30,000 see the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe & the Fish, and many other acts perform in the first rock festival gathering of its kind.
• June 16–18: The Monterey Pop Festival in California draws 200,000 and is the first large extended festival of the rock era. Jimi Hendrix returns from the UK and makes his US "debut." David Crosby uses microphone time to brashly condemn the Warren Report.
• June 20: Muhammad Ali is found guilty of draft evasion. The US Supreme Court eventually hears Ali's legal appeal.
• June 25: All You Need Is Love: The BBC's live satellite broadcast of the Beatles' summer UK hit breaks records, reaching an estimated 200-400 million worldwide.
• June 30: US military forces in Vietnam total 448,000.
• July 7: The cover of Time features hippies.
• July 16: Hyde Park Rally: 5,000 gather in London to protest "immoral in principle and unworkable in practice" UK marijuana laws. A petition signed by many notables is published.
• July 23–27: The worst riots of the century to date erupt in Detroit, MI: 43 deaths, 467 injuries, over 7,200 arrests, and the burning of over 2,000 buildings to the ground.
• August 22: Look Magazine runs a cover story on "The Hippies".
• August 27: Beatles manager Brian Epstein dies of a prescription drug overdose in London at age 32.
• September 30: Pirates No More: Hip Radio 1 commences broadcast over the legitimate airwaves of the BBC following the UK ban on offshore "pirate" radio transmissions.
• October 6: "Guerrilla theater" group The Diggers stage a mock funeral for the "Death of Hippie" in San Francisco. The demonstration is intended to discourage more youngsters from descending upon the overcrowded, under-equipped Haight.
• October 8: Groovy Murders: James "Groovy" Hutchinson and Linda Fitzpatrick are murdered in New York City in a drug deal gone bad. Two drifters plead guilty.
• October 9: Death of Che Guevara: The Cuban ex-patriot, international revolutionary, and icon of revolt, is executed in Bolivia.
• October 17: Stop the Draft Week: Demonstrators mob the US Army Induction Center in Oakland, CA. Joan Baez is among those arrested. Some are charged with sedition.
• October 17: The rock musical Hair, featuring controversial full frontal nudity, premieres off-Broadway in New York City. The play becomes a Broadway smash in 1968.
• October 19: Thousands of students clash with police at Brooklyn College in New York after two military recruiters appear on campus. Students strike the following day.
• October 20–21: The "Mobe" Redux: 100,000 protest the war in Washington, DC. Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and others lead attempts at "exorcism" and levitation of the Pentagon.
• October 27: "Baltimore Four": Catholic priest Philip Berrigan and three others are jailed after pouring blood on draft files in the SSS office, protesting bloodshed in Vietnam. Berrigan is later convicted.
• October 28: Black Panther leader Huey Newton is stopped by Oakland police. A shootout resulting in the death of an officer leads to Newton's conviction, which is later overturned.
• November: The activity at the Diggers' Free Store is the impetus for an anti-hippie turf war with local thugs in New York City.
• November 9: The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine features a photo of John Lennon from the film How I Won The War.
• November 20: Police using teargas charge a large student demonstration against recruiters for Dow Chemical (napalm manufacturer) at San Jose State College.
• November 24: The Beatles release John Lennon's psychedelic coda "I Am the Walrus" The album Magical Mystery Tour arrives November 27.
• December 4–8: Anti-war groups all across the US attempt to shut down draft board centers; Dr. Benjamin Spock and poet Allen Ginsburg are among the 585 arrested.
• December 10: Monterey Pop Fest standout and soon-to-be soul legend Otis Redding dies in a plane crash at age 26.
• December 22: Owsley Stanley is found in possession of 350,000 doses of LSD and 1,500 doses of STP, arrested, and sentenced to 3 years.
• December 31: The term "Yippie" is coined by Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Dick Gregory, Paul Krassner and others. The Youth International Party is formed the following month.
• December: The Moody Blues' masterpiece Days of Future Passed, featuring psychedelic themes and the London Festival Orchestra, is released.
• December: US troops in Vietnam total 486,000. US war dead total 15,000.
• Chemist Alexander Shulgin first ingests the MDMA (Ecstasy) he's been synthesizing in his Dow Chemical lab, and discovers mind-altering properties unknown since patent of the compound by Merck in 1912.

1968

• Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is published.
• January: Owsley-inspired pioneer Heavy Metal band Blue Cheer release Vincebus Eruptum.
• January 22: Laugh-In: The sketch comedy "phenomenon that both reflected and mocked the era's counterculture," and brought it into "mainstream living rooms" debuts on US TV.
• January 31: The Tet Offensive is launched by the NVA and Vietcong. Western forces are victorious on the battlefield, but not in the press.
• February 1: Following the free-form programming experimentations at KFRC-FM in San Francisco, WABX-FM in Detroit and other stations nationwide begin officially changing format. FM playlists and other content are now chosen by local DJs, not corporate executives or record companies. The Progressive Rock format takes hold.
• February 8: Police fire on and kill 3 protesting segregation at a South Carolina bowling alley, in what is known as the Orangeburg Massacre.
• February 15: The Beatles in India: All four Beatles, along with a coterie including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Cilla Black and Mia Farrow travel by rail to join musicians Mike Love, Donovan and many others at Rishikesh for Transcendental Meditation training with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, amid widespread publicity.
• February 27: CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, the "most trusted man in America", publicly expresses personal doubts regarding the possibility of ultimate victory in Vietnam.
• February 29: Kerner Report: The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders is released after seven months of investigation into US urban rioting, and states that "our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal."
• March 16: My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. Apparent wanton rape and murder of innocents by US GIs creates enormous new anti-war outcry when news leaks in 1969.
• March 17: London police stop 10,000 anti-war marchers from storming the US Embassy. 200 are arrested.
• March 18: Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a long-time supporter of US policy in Vietnam, speaks out against the war for the first time, and announces his candidacy for President.
• March 22: 3,000 Yippies take over Grand Central Station in New York City, staging a "Yip-In" that ultimately results in an "extraordinary display of unprovoked police brutality" and 61 arrests.
• March 31: President Johnson addresses the US public about Vietnam on TV, and shocks the nation with his closing remark that he will not seek a second term as President.
• Spring: Reggae: "Nanny Goat" by Larry Marshall, and Do the Reggay by Toots and the Maytals mark the arrival of a new musical genre. Johnny Nash ("Hold Me Tight"), and Paul McCartney ("Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da") are inspired by the Jamaican sound.
• March–May: Columbia University protests, New York, NY. Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers becomes a protest slogan at this time, as well as the name of a radical activist group.
• April: The US Department of Defense begins calling-up reservists for duty in Vietnam. The US Supreme Court turns down a challenge to the mobilization in October.
• April: The US Bureau of Narcotics (from Treasury) and Bureau of Drug Abuse Control (from the Food and Drug Administration) merge, substantially ramping-up anti-drug efforts.
• April 4: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN. Drifter James Earl Ray is soon arrested for the murder. The King family later expresses complete doubt as to Ray's guilt. Violence erupts in cities across the US, with thousands of Federal guardsman dispatched. Memphis, TN, Chicago, IL, Baltimore, MD, Kansas City, MO, and Washington, DC are hotspots.
• April 6: Oakland Shootout: Black Panther Bobby Hutton is killed and Eldridge Cleaver is wounded in a gun battle with police. Cleaver later claims that Hutton was murdered while in police custody.
• April 5: A Yippie plot to disrupt the upcoming August Democratic Convention in Chicago is published in Time.
• April 14: The Easter Sunday "Love-In" is held in Malibu Canyon, CA.
• April 27: Anti-war protesters march in several US cities, including 87,000 in Central Park, NYC.
• May: The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers first appear in The Rag, an Austin TX underground paper.
• May 2: Student protests erupt in France, which spread, escalate and lead to a general strike and widespread unrest during May and June, bringing the country to a virtual standstill.
• May 10: The Paris Peace Talks commence in France. The war in Southeast Asia is the subject of the negotiations.
• May 12: Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign establishes "Resurrection City", a shanty town on the National Mall in Washington D.C., with around 5,000 protesters.
• May 17: Catonsville Nine: Catholic priests opposed to the war destroy draft records in a Maryland draft office.
• May 24–27: Louisville Riots: After a claim of police brutality, police and thousands of National Guard confront rioting protesters and looters. Two black teens die before order is restored.
• June 3: Artist Andy Warhol shot and wounded by a "radical feminist" writer.
• June 5: Senator Robert Francis Kennedy, winner of the California primary, and presumed presidential front-runner, is assassinated in Los Angeles. RFK dies June 6.
• June 19: "Solidarity Day" protest at Resurrection City draws 55,000 participants.
• June 24: Remnants of "Resurrection City", with only about 300 protesters still remaining, razed by riot police.
• July 17: The Beatles' post-psychedelic, pop-art animated film Yellow Submarine is released in the UK (November 13 in the US).
• July 28–30: University of California, Berkeley campus shut down by protests.
• August 21: Communist tanks roll in Czechoslovakia and crush the popular "Prague Spring" uprising.
• August 25–29: Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The proceedings are overshadowed by massive protests staged by thousands of demonstrators of every stripe. Mayor Daley's desire to enforce order in the city results in egregious police brutality, televised on national airwaves. On the third night, police indiscriminately attack protesters and bystanders, including journalists such as Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and Hugh Hefner. The spectacle is a turning point for both supporters and critics of the larger movement.
• August 26: Revolution?: Lennon's B-side to McCartney's smash Hey Jude is released. Its eschewing of violent protest is seen as a betrayal by some on the left. A version recorded earlier was released in November and suggests indecision as to Lennon's stance on violence.
• August 31: First Isle of Wight Festival featuring Jefferson Airplane, Arthur Brown, The Move, Tyrannosaurus Rex and The Pretty Things.
• September 7: At the Miss America protest, feminists demonstrate against what they call "The Degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol", filling a "freedom trash can" with items including mops, pots and pans, Cosmopolitan and Playboy magazines, false eyelashes, high-heeled shoes, curlers, hairspray, makeup, girdles, corsets, and bras.
• September 28: 10,000 in Chicago protest on one-month anniversary of the convention violence.
• Fall: Stewart Brand begins publication of The Whole Earth Catalog.
• October 2: Tlatelolco massacre: Students and police violently clash in Mexico City.
• October 16: Mexico '68: Medal-winning American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their gloved hands on the Olympic award podium to protest global human rights shortcomings. Their demonstration is met with both international praise and death threats alike.
• October 18: John Lennon and Yoko Ono are arrested for drug possession in London. Lennon is only fined for his first offence, and more serious obstruction charges against the pair are dropped, but the arrest will later serve as the pretext for the politically-motivated attempted deportation of Lennon from the US in the 1970s.
• October 25: Emile de Antonio's highly controversial and Oscar nominated anti-war documentary In the Year of the Pig (per the Chinese "Year of the Pig") is released. de Antonio later earns a spot on President Nixon's Enemies List.
• October 27: 25,000 march in London against the Vietnam war.
• October 31: President Johnson orders a halt to the aerial bombing of North Vietnam.
• November 5: Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon defeats sitting VP Hubert Humphrey, and the Wallace/Lemay ticket in a close race. Nixon in January becomes the 37th President of the US, ending 8 years of democrat control of the White House.
• November 6: Students demanding minority studies courses begin a strike at San Francisco State College, where demonstrations and clashes occur into March 1969, making it the longest student strike in US history.
• November 11: Two Virgins: John Lennon & Yoko Ono's experimental album is released. Beatles' labels EMI and Capitol (US) refuse distribution, as the cover features the couple in shocking full frontal nudity. Lennon later describes the cover as a depiction of two slightly overweight ex-junkies.
• November 22: The Beatles' White Album is released. The band's hair is very long, and the musical content is not psychedelic.
• December 24: Earthrise, a photograph of the Earth, is taken from Moon orbit. "The most influential environmental photograph ever taken."

1969

• January 8–18: Students at Brandeis University take over Ford and Sydeman Halls, demanding creation of an Afro-American Dept., which is approved by the University on April 24.
• January 29: Sir George Williams Computer Riot: the largest student campus occupation in Canadian history results in millions in damage in Montreal.
• January 30 – February 15: Administration building of University of Chicago taken over by around 400 student protesters in a "sit-in".
• February 13: National Guard with teargas and riot sticks crush a pro-black demonstration at University of Wisconsin
• February 16: After 3 days of clashes between police and Duke University students, the school agrees to establish a Black Studies program.
• February 24: Tinker v. Des Moines: The US Supreme court affirms public school students' First Amendment rights to protest the war.
• March 1: Arrest warrants are issued for Doors frontman Jim Morrison after he allegedly simulates masturbation and threatens to expose himself at a concert in Miami, FL.
• March 22: President Nixon condemns trend of campus takeovers and violence.
• March 25–31: Following their wedding at Gibraltar, John Lennon & Yoko Ono hold a "Bed-In" peace event in Amsterdam.
• April: US troop strength in Vietnam peaks at over 543,000.
• April 3–4: National Guard called into Chicago, and Memphis placed on curfew on anniversary of Dr. King's assassination.
• April 4: Smothered: CBS Chairman William S. Paley personally cancels the highly controversial Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
• April 9: 300 students "sit-in" at offices of Harvard protesting the ROTC. 400 police restore order April 10. The college makes ROTC extracurricular April 19.
• April 19: Armed black students take over Willard Straight Hall at Cornell. The University accedes to their demands the following day, promising an Afro-American studies program.
• April 25–28: Activist students takeover Merrill House at Colgate University demanding Afro-American studies programs.
• May 7: Students at Howard University occupy 8 buildings. They are cleared by US Marshals May 9.
• May 8: City College of New York closes following a 14-day-long student takeover demanding minority studies; riots among students break out when CCNY tries to reopen.
• May 9–11: 3000 college students flock to the "Zip to Zap" event in rural North Dakota, degenerating into a riot dispersed by the National Guard.
• May 15: Bloody Thursday: Alameda County Sheriffs sent in by governor Ronald Reagan to eject flower children from People's Park in Berkeley, CA open fire with buckshot-loaded shotguns, mortally wounding student James Rector, permanently blinding carpenter Alan Blanchard, and inflicting lesser wounds on hundreds of other Berkeley residents.
• May 21–25: 1969 Greensboro uprising: student protesters battle police for five days on campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University; one student killed May 22. National Guard assault the campus using teargas, even dropping it by helicopter.
• May 23: Tommy: The Who's Rock Opera is a smash.
• May 26 – June 2: Celebrities gather as John & Yoko conduct their second Bed-In in Montreal, where the anti-war anthem "Give Peace a Chance" is recorded live.
• June 18: SDS convenes in Chicago; they oust the Progressive Labour faction June 28, which sets up its own rival convention.
• June 28: The Stonewall Riots in New York City are the first major gay-rights uprisings in the US.
• July 3: Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones, dies "by misadventure" in his swimming pool in East Sussex, UK, under mysterious circumstances at age 27.
• July 5: The Stones in the Park: Shocked by the overdose death of former bandmate Brian Jones, the grieving Rolling Stones continue with their much-anticipated free concert before a massive crowd at Hyde Park, London.
• July 14: The low-budget film Easy Rider is released and becomes a de facto cultural landmark. The film's success helps open doors for independent film makers of the 1970s.
• July 15: Cover story on LOOK: "How Hippies Raise their Children."
• July 18: The cover of LIFE Magazine features "hippie communes."
• July 20: Apollo 11 lands. Humans walk on the moon. A tablet with the inscription "We Came in Peace for All Mankind" is left on the lunar surface.
• July 25: Vietnamization: RMN's Nixon Doctrine calls on Asian regional allies formerly guaranteed protection under treaty to fend for themselves in non-nuclear conflicts.
• August 9–10: Helter Skelter: Actress Sharon Tate, Tate's unborn baby, and five others are viciously murdered at knifepoint by cult members acting under the direction of psychopath Charles Manson during a 2-day killing spree in California. The events shock the nation. For many, the crimes and Manson's "family" are seen as products of the counterculture.
• August 15–17: Woodstock: An estimated total of 300,000-500,000 people gather in upstate New York for "3 Days of Peace & Music" at the watershed event in counterculture history.
• August 19: Immediately following Woodstock, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Joni Mitchell and Jefferson Airplane appear on the Dick Cavett Show. The Airplane's lyric "Up against the wall, motherfuckers!" in the performance of "We Can Be Together" slips past the censors and airs on national television.
• August 30–31: Second Isle of Wight Festival attracts 150,000 people to see acts including Bob Dylan and The Band, The Who, Free, Joe Cocker and The Moody Blues
• September: First US issue of Penthouse Magazine is published by Robert Guccione.
• September 1–2: Race rioting in Hartford, CT and Camden, NJ.
• September 2: Ho Chi Minh, President of communist North Vietnam, dies.
• September 6: First broadcast of H.R. Pufnstuf.
• September 24: The Chicago Eight trial commences. Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, et al., face charges including conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 DNC Convention. They become the Chicago Seven November 5 after defendant Bobby Seale is bound, gagged, and severed from the proceedings.
• October 4: TV star Art Linkletter's daughter Diane, 20, jumps to her death from her 6th story apartment. Linkletter claims Timothy Leary and LSD are responsible.
• October 8–11: Days of Rage: Elements of the SDS and the Weather Underground faction continue radical efforts to "bring the war home" in Chicago, and exchange brutalities with Chicago Police.
• October 15: Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam: massive anti-war demonstrations across the US and world.
• October 21: Jack Kerouac dies from complications of alcoholism at age 47.
• October 29: "login": The first message on the ARPANET - precursor to the internet and WWW - is sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline.
• November 13: Vice President Agnew publicly criticizes the three mainstream television networks for their lack of favorable coverage.
• November 15: Moratorium redux: over 500,000 march in Washington, DC. It is the largest anti-war demonstration in US history.
• November 20: Native American protesters begin the Occupation of Alcatraz; occupation continues 19 months until June 11, 1971.
• December: Total US casualties (dead & seriously wounded) in Vietnam total 100,000.
• December 1: The first draft lottery in the US since World War II is held in New York City. Later statistical analysis indicates the lottery method was flawed.
• December 4: Black Panther Fred Hampton is killed by combined elements of Federal, Illinois State, and Chicago law enforcement under circumstances which to some suggest political assassination.
• December 6: Altamont: the Rolling Stones help organize and headline at a free concert attended by 300,000. The event devolves into chaos and violent death at a speedway between Tracy and Livermore, CA.
• December 27–31: Flint War Council, Michigan. SDS is abolished, the Weathermen break off, and one of the most significant seditious revolts since the US Civil War emerges.
• Wavy Gravy's Hog Farm Hippie commune is established near Llano, NM.
• Friends of the Earth is founded in the US. It becomes an international network in 1971.
• Making of a Counter Culture: Theodore Roszak's Reflections on the Technocratic Society is published. Roszak is later credited with coining the term "counterculture" in print.

1970s

1970

• President Nixon establishes the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency is activated in December 1970.
• January 1: Voting age in Britain lowered from 21 to 18.
• February: Weather Underground bombings and arsons in US states of NY, CA, WA, MD, & MI.
• February 18: Chicago 7 verdicts are handed down: 2 are exonerated, 5 are soon sentenced for "crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot".
• February 23–26: Students riot at University of California-Santa Barbara.
• February 25–28: Students riot, occupy campus buildings, etc. at SUNY Buffalo, NY.
• March 6: Greenwich Village townhouse explosion: 3 members of the Weather Underground are killed while assembling a bomb in New York City.
• March 26: The documentary film Woodstock is released.
• April 1: Jerry Rubin guest appears the Phil Donahue Show and lambastes Donahue for his conservative appearance.
• April 7: California Governor Ronald Reagan is quoted on college campus student unrest: "If it takes a blood bath, let's get it over with."
• April 7: X-Rated Midnight Cowboy wins 3 Oscars including Best Picture in Hollywood.
• April 10: Paul McCartney, when promoting his first solo album, announces that the Beatles have disbanded.
• April 15: 100,000 gather on Boston Common to protest Vietnam War; about 500 radicals attempt to seize microphone, disrupting meeting.
• April 22: The first Earth Day is held.
• April 30: President Nixon reveals secret US military operations in Cambodia.
• May 1–3: 13,000 people take part in peaceful demonstrations at Yale University in support of defendants in the New Haven Black Panther trials.
• May 2: Students at Kent State University protesting the spread of the war into Cambodia burn the ROTC building to the ground. Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes calls in the National Guard at the request of Kent's Mayor.
• May 4: In what is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the stateside anti-war protest movement, poorly-trained soldiers of the Ohio National Guard are set loose into confrontation with - and open fire on - unarmed students at Kent State University leaving 4 dead and nine wounded, including Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed.
• May 5: The International Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty takes effect.
• May 6: Student Strike of 1970: Many colleges across the US shut down in protest of the war and Kent State events.
• May 8: Hard Hat Riot: Construction workers confront anti-war demonstrators, Wall St., New York City. They march again May 11. On May 20, 100,000 construction workers and longshoremen demonstrate in favor of administration war policy at New York City Hall.
• May 9: 100,000 rally against war in Washington, DC. At 4:15am, President Nixon defies Secret Service security, and leaves the White House to meet and chat with astonished protesters camping out at the Lincoln Memorial.
• May 14: Jackson State killings: Police kill two and injure 11 during violent student demonstrations at Jackson State College, MS. This is two days after six African-American men were fatally shot in the back for violating curfew in Augusta by the Georgia National Guard.
• May 19: Student riot at Fresno State University.
• May 21: 5,000 National Guard troops occupy Ohio State University following violence.
• June 11: Daniel Berrigan is arrested by the FBI for kidnapping/bombing conspiracy.
• June 12: Major League Baseball pitching star Dock Ellis takes LSD and throws a no-hitter. Ellis later quits drugs, becomes a recovery counselor, and expresses deep regret over drug abuse during his entire playing career.
• June 13: President Nixon appoints the President's Commission on Campus Unrest. The report issued in September finds a direct correlation between the unrest and the level of US military involvement in Indochina.
• June 15: The US Supreme Court confirms conscientious objector protection on moral grounds.
• June 22: The US voting age is lowered to 18. This is soon challenged and overturned in the Supreme Court, leading to the swift adoption of the 26th Amendment on June 1, 1971 guaranteeing suffrage at 18.
• June 27–28: Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, Shepton Mallet, Somerset, UK, featuring Hot Tuna, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and many more.
• July: Huston Plan: A broad, cross-agency scheme for illegal domestic surveillance of anti-war figures is concocted by a White House staffer, and accepted but then quickly quashed by President Nixon. Elements of the plan were, however, allegedly implemented in any event.
• August 6: Riot police evacuate Disneyland in Anaheim, CA after a few hundred Yippies stage a protest.
• August 17: Communist activist Angela Davis appears on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list after a firearm purchased in her name is linked to a murder plot involving a judge.
• August 24: The Sterling Hall Bombing at the University of Wisconsin in Madison by anti-war activists kills physics researcher Robert Fassnacht. Four others are severely injured, and millions of dollars in damages occur.
• August 26: Women's Strike for Equality: 50 years after US women's suffrage, 20,000 celebrate and march in New York City, demanding true equality for women in American life.
• August 26–31: 600,000+ attend Third Isle of Wight Festival. Over fifty acts including The Who, Hendrix, Miles Davis, The Doors, Ten Years After, ELP, Joni Mitchell, and Jethro Tull.
• August 29–30: Rioting and violence erupts at Chicano Moratorium anti-war rally in Los Angeles; reporter Rubén Salazar is killed by a teargas shell.
• September: Jesus Christ Superstar: The Christian Rock Opera debuts as an album. It later becomes a smash on Broadway and on film.
• September 12: Timothy Leary escapes prison with help from the Weather Underground, and joins Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers.
• September 16: London: Apolitical hard rock act Led Zeppelin end the Beatles' 8-year run as Melody Maker's world #1 group of the year.
• September 18: Exceptionally influential musician Jimi Hendrix dies from complications of a probable drug overdose at age 27 in London.
• September 19: Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival, the first ever Glastonbury Festival, features T-Rex and is attended by 1,500 people.
• October: The Female Eunuch: Germaine Greer's pro-feminist bestseller is published.
• October: Keith Stroup founds NORML, a group working to end marijuana prohibition, in Washington, DC.
• October 4: Janis Joplin, rock's first female superstar, dies as the result of an apparent accidental heroin overdose at age 27 in Los Angeles.
• October 13: Political activist Angela Davis is arrested on kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy charges.
• October 26: Doonesbury debuts as a syndicated comic strip, acknowledges the counterculture, and continues to chronicle events into the 21st century.
• October 29: President Nixon is pelted with eggs by an unfriendly crowd of 2000 after giving a speech in San Jose, CA.
• November 7: Jerry Rubin appears live on The David Frost Show and tries to pass a joint to the talkshow host, the signal for Yippies in the audience to rush the stage and protest.
• December 6: The Maysles Brothers release their film documentary of Altamont: Gimme Shelter.
• December 21: Elvis Presley arrives unannounced at the White House. The King meets and is photographed with President Nixon. They discuss patriotism, hippies, and the war on drugs.
• December: Paul McCartney sues to dissolve the Beatles.

1971

• January 2: The ban on cigarette advertising on US TV and radio takes effect.
• January 12: Styled after the UK TV hit Till Death Us Do Part, the long-running US smash All in the Family debuts with Rob Reiner as Michael Stivic, the counterculture's college-educated answer to the working-class Archie Bunker.
• January 31: Police fire on a peace march in Los Angeles, killing one.
• February 4: A military induction center in Oakland, CA is bombed.
• February 4–8: Rioting in Wilmington, NC leaves 2 dead.
• February 13: An induction center in Atlanta, GA is bombed.
• February 21: The UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed in Vienna, with the intention of controlling psychoactive drugs such as amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics at the international level.
• March 1: The US Capitol building is bombed by war protesters; no injuries, but extensive damage results.
• March 5: The FCC says that it can penalize radio stations for playing music that seems to glorify or promote illegal drug usage.
• March 8: The Fight of the Century: Conscientious Objector and counterculture hero Muhammad Ali loses to default symbol of the pro-war right Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, NYC, in what is widely considered to be the greatest heavyweight fight in boxing history.
• March 11: Rioting at University of Puerto Rico leaves 3 dead.
• April 23: Vietnam veterans protest against the war at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, throw their medals on the steps, and testify to US war crimes.
• April 24: 500,000 protesters rally at US Capitol to petition for an end to the war; 200,000 rally against the war in San Francisco.
• May 3: Over 12,000 anti-war protesters are arrested on the third day of the 1971 May Day Protests in Washington, DC.
• May 10: Attorney General John N. Mitchell compares the anti-war protesters to Nazis, and on May 13, calls them Communists.
• May 17: The play Godspell opens in New York, depicting Jesus and his disciples in a contemporary, countercultural milieu.
• May 31: US military personnel in London petition at US Embassy against the Vietnam War.
• June 13: Pentagon Papers: The New York Times publishes the first excerpt of illegally leaked secret US military documents detailing US intervention in Indochina since 1945. A Federal Court injunction on June 15 temporarily stops the releases.
• June 18: The Washington Post publishes excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, halted by court order the following day.
• June 20–24 : 'Glastonbury Fayre', the second Glastonbury Festival, features David Bowie, Traffic, Fairport Convention, and the first incarnation of the "Pyramid Stage".
• June 22: The Boston Globe publishes Pentagon Papers excerpts; this is halted by injunction on the 23rd and the newspapers are impounded.
• June 28: Muhammad Ali's conviction for draft resistance is unanimously overturned by the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC.
• June 28: President Nixon releases all 47 volumes of Pentagon Papers to Congress.
• June 30: Supreme Court rules 6-3 that newspapers have a right to publish the Pentagon Papers. The Times and Post resume publication the following day.
• July 3: Jim Morrison, founding member of The Doors, dies of a probable heroin overdose at age 27 in Paris.
• August 1: Concert for Bangladesh: George Harrison and friends including Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Billy Preston and Bob Dylan stage a landmark charity event in New York. Popular albums and a film follow, and the shows become a model for huge rock benefits such as Live Aid.
• August 18: Attorney General Mitchell announces there will be no Federal investigation of the 1970 Kent State shootings.
• August: Cheech & Chong's eponymous first album is released.
• September 3: Burglars operating under the direction of White House officials break in to the office of Daniel Ellsburg's psychiatrist in a botched attempt to find files to discredit the Pentagon Papers leaker.
• September 9: Attica: Prisoners take control, hold hostages, and riot at Attica State Prison, NY. 39 die before prisoner demands are met and order is restored.
• September 15: Greenpeace is founded in Vancouver, BC.
• October: est, the controversial self-improvement training program holds its first conference in San Francisco.
• October 8: Three FBI informants reveal on PBS that they were paid to infiltrate anti-war groups and instigate them to commit violent acts which could be prosecuted.
• October 19–23: Rioting in Memphis leaves one dead.
• October 29: Guitar phenomenon Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band is killed in a motorcycle accident in Macon, GA at age 24.
• November 10: Berkeley, CA City Council votes to provide sanctuary to all military deserters.
• November: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson's drug-drenched indictment of 1960s counterculture, is published in Rolling Stone in 2 parts.
• December 10: John Lennon and others perform at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• December 26–28: 15 Vietnam veterans occupy the Statue of Liberty to protest the war.
• December 28: Anti-war veterans attempt takeover of Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. 80 are arrested.
• December: Feminism comes of age: Gloria Steinem's Ms. Magazine is first published as an insert in New York Magazine. The first standalone issue arrives the following month.
• Stephen Gaskin establishes "The Farm" hippie commune in Tennessee.
• Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is published.
• Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book is published.
• The Anarchist Cookbook is published.
• Our Bodies, Ourselves is published.

1972

• March: The Nixon administration begins deportation proceedings against John Lennon, on the pretext of his 1968 marijuana charge in London.
• March 22: The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, appointed by President Nixon, finds "little danger" in cannabis, recommending abolition of all criminal penalties for possession.
• April 16: Facing heavy ground losses, US forces resume the bombing of Northern Vietnam.
• April 17–18: Students at University of Maryland protesting the bombing battle with police and National Guard are sent in.
• April 22: Large anti-war marches in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
• May 2: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dies at 77, after nearly 50 years as the top US law enforcement official.
• May 19: Weather Underground bomb at the Pentagon causes damage but no injuries.
• May 21–22: 15,000 demonstrate in Washington against the war.
• June 4: Angela Davis is acquitted on all counts in her weapons trial.
• June 12: John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band releases the politically charged double album Some Time in New York City.
• June 17: The Watergate burglars are arrested in Washington, DC.
• July 28: Actress Jane Fonda visits North Vietnam. Fonda's return incites outrage when a photograph of her seated on an enemy anti-aircraft gun is published, and she insists that POWs held captive have not been tortured or brainwashed by the communists.
• July: The first Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes is held over 4 days in Colorado, US.
• October 26: October Surprise?: US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger tells a White House press conference that "we believe that peace is at hand."
• November 2–8: About 500 protesters from the American Indian Movement take over the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington.
• November 7: Republican Richard Nixon is re-elected in a landslide over progressive democrat Senator George McGovern.
• November 16: Police kill 2 students during campus rioting at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
• November 21: A Federal Appeals Court overturns the conviction of the "Chicago 7" members.
• December 18–29: US Operation Linebacker II becomes most intensive bombing campaign of the war.
• The Joy of Sex: Unthinkable a decade earlier, the widely read sex manual for the liberated 1970s is published and openly displayed in mainstream bookstores.
• Michael X, a self-styled black revolutionary and civil rights activist in 1960s London, is convicted of murder. He was executed by hanging in Spain in 1975.

1973

• January 1: Bangladeshis burn down the US Information Service in Dacca in protest of the bombing of North Vietnam.
• January 2: Aerial bombing of North Vietnam resumes after a 36-hour New Year's truce.
• January 4: Forty neutral member nations of the UN formally protest the US bombing campaign.
• January 5: Canada's Parliament votes unanimously to condemn US bombing actions and calls for them to cease.
• January 10: Anti-war demonstrators attack US consulate in Lyons, France, and burn down the library of America House in Frankfurt, West Germany.
• January 15: Anti-war protesters occupy US consulate in Amsterdam.
• January 15: President Nixon suspends the bombing, citing progress in the Peace talks with Hanoi. West German Chancellor Willy Brandt warns Nixon that US relations with Western Europe are at risk.
• January 22: Former US President Lyndon B. Johnson dies of cancer at his Texas ranch.
• January 22: The US Supreme Court rules on Roe v. Wade, effectively legalizing abortion.
• January 28: US combat military involvement in Vietnam ends with a ceasefire, and commencement of withdrawal as called for under the Paris Peace Accords.
• February 27 – May 8: Wounded Knee incident: Native American activists occupy the town of Wounded Knee, SD; 2 protesters and 1 US Marshal are killed during a lengthy standoff.
• March: The first military draftees who are not subsequently called to service are selected, unceremoniously ending the Vietnam era of conscription in the US.
• March 8: Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, a founding member of the Grateful Dead, dies of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at age 27 in Corte Madera, CA.
• March 29: Last US combat troops leave Vietnam as US POWs have been released.
• May 17: The Senate Watergate Committee begins televised hearings on the ever-growing Watergate scandal implicating the President for gross abuses of power.
• July 1: The Drug Enforcement Administration supplants the BNDD.
• July 28: Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, NY draws 600,000 to see the Grateful Dead, the Band, and the Allman Brothers - the largest such gathering in the US since Woodstock.
• August 15: All US military involvement in Indochina conflict officially ends under the Case–Church Amendment.
• October 10: Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns. President Nixon names Congressman Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to replace Agnew on October 12.
• October 23: Congress begins to consider articles of impeachment against Nixon.
• November 14: Greece: Students at Athens Polytechnic strike against the military junta. Tanks roll the 17th and at least 24 die.
• November 17: At a session with 400 AP editors, President Nixon states, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

1974

• January 3: A Federal judge dismisses charges against 12 members of the Weathermen involved in the October 1969 "Days of Rage".
• February 5: Patty Hearst is kidnapped by extremist group Symbionese Liberation Army and joins them, possibly after becoming a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
• March–April: Short-lived fad of "streaking" is at its height in the US.
• April 20: Disco music, following the success of "Love Train" a year earlier, again hits number one on the Billboard charts with "TSOP", a clear sign that the post-"sixties counterculture" era is now at hand. The punk rock subculture also traces its genesis to around this time, with groups like Ramones and Television playing the CBGB club in NYC.
• May 17: Six SLA members are killed fighting police in Los Angeles.
• Summer: First issue of High Times is published.
• July 29: Singing star "Mama" Cass Elliot, age 32, dies from heart failure in Mayfair, London.
• August 8: Facing imminent impeachment, Richard Nixon announces he will resign as President of the United States. Vice President Gerald Ford is sworn in as president on August 9 and declares "our long national nightmare is over."
• September–December: Police repeatedly quell unrest as desegregation comes to Boston high schools.
• September 8: President Ford fully pardons former president Nixon.
• September 16: President Ford offers conditional amnesty to military deserters and evaders of the Vietnam era draft, creating a path for re-entry into the US.
• December 13: President Ford invites George Harrison to luncheon at the White House.
• December 21: The New York Times reports that the CIA illegally spied on 10,000 anti-war dissidents under Nixon's presidency.

1975

• January 1: John Mitchell and three other Watergate conspirators are found guilty and sentenced to prison Feb. 21.
• January 27: Church Committee: The US Senate votes to begin unprecedented investigation into US intelligence activities, including illegal spying on domestic radicals.
• January 29: Weather Underground bomb at the US State Department, none injured.
• April 30: Operation Frequent Wind: The last remaining US military and intelligence personnel escape Saigon as South Vietnam is invaded by communist forces, in direct violation of the Peace Accords.
• September 5 & 22: President Ford survives assassination attempts by two women in one month.
• September 18: Patty Hearst is arrested by the FBI.
• October 7: A New York State Supreme Court judge reverses the deportation order against John Lennon, allowing Lennon to legally remain in the US.
• October 11: Saturday Night Live: The counterculture comes of age as George Carlin hosts the first episode of the mainstream TV revue. The long-running series soon features many notable American TV firsts, including open depiction of marijuana use in comedy sketches.

1977

• January 21: Newly inaugurated US President Jimmy Carter unconditionally pardons thousands of Vietnam draft evaders, allowing them to re-enter the US, mostly from Canada.
• August 16: Elvis Presley, the most significant progenitor of the rock era and an early critic of the counterculture, dies at age 42 from complications of prescription drug abuse in Memphis, TN.

1978

• November 27: Gay rights acitvist and member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from District 5 Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone are assassinated by Dan White.

1980

• December 8: John Lennon, founding member of the Beatles, is murdered by a deranged fan in New York, triggering an outpouring of grief around the world.

See also

• Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War: Timeline
• Timeline of the African-American Civil Rights Movement

Sources

• Jackson, Rebecca. "The 1960s: A Bibliography". Iowa State University Library.
• Lemke-Santangelo, Gretchen (2009). Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counterculture. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1633-6.
• Reich, Charles A. (1995) [1970]. The Greening of America (25th anniversary ed.). Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-0-517-88636-6.
• Roche, Nancy McGuire, "The Spectacle of Gender: Representations of Women in British and American Cinema of the Nineteen-Sixties" (PhD dissertation. Middle Tennessee State University, 2011). DA3464539.
• Roszak, Theodore (1968). The Making of a Counter Culture. University of California.
• Street, Joe, "Dirty Harry's San Francisco," The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, 5 (June 2012), 1–21.
• "American Experience: Primary Resources: Truth about Indochina, 1954". PBS.
• Shribman, David (November 9, 2013). "If JFK had lived". Pittsburg Post-Gazette.
• Roberts, Sam (September 21, 2008). "A Spy Confesses, and Still Some Weep for the Rosenbergs". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• Weber, Bruce (March 24, 2011). "Leonard I. Weinglass, Lawyer, Dies at 77; Defended Renegades and the Notorious". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• Perrone, James E. (2004). Music of the Counterculture Era. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-32689-4.
• Miller, Richard J. (2013). "Timothy Leary's liberation, and the CIA's experiments! LSD's amazing, psychedelic history (Excerpt)". Salon.com. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• Weekes, Julia Ann (October 31, 2008). "Warhol's Pop Politics". Smithsonian Magazine.
• Rasmussen, Cecilia (August 5, 2007). "Closing of club ignited the 'Sunset Strip riots'". Los Angeles Times.
• Kitchell, Mark, Berkeley in the Sixties (1990 Film Documentary), Libra Films

External links

• John Hoyland, Power to the People, The Guardian, 15 March 2008
• 1960s archive with photographs of be-ins and protests
• The 1960s: Years that Shaped a Generation
• Online archive of underground publications from the 1960s counterculture