istoryworld
All Events
US author Joyce Carol Oates publishes her first novel, With Shuddering Fall
US author Saul Bellow publishes Herzog, a novel featuring a professor of history who is a compulsive sender of messages
Martin Luther King wins the Nobel Peace Prize for leading non-violent resistance to racial discrimination in the USA
Nikita Khrushchev is forced from office as Soviet leader by a conservative faction that includes Leonid Brezhnev
The USSR enters a brief period of coalition leadership by Alexei Kosygin as prime minister and Leonid Brezhnev as Party First Secretary
Harold Wilson becomes prime minister after Labour narrowly wins the UK general election
Kenneth Kaunda becomes president of the independent republic of Zambia, previously Northern Rhodesia
Ayatollah Khomeini, exiled by the shah from Iran, moves first to Turkey and then makes his base in Iraq
Lyndon B. Johnson is elected US president in his own right, winning decisively against Republican Barry Goldwater
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Staten Island, is the world's longest suspension bridge with a main span of 4260 feet (1298m)
A military junta seizes power in Bolivia, ending the 12-year left-wing regime of Paz Estenssoro
Canadian author Marshall McLuhan declares, in Understanding Media, that 'the medium is the message'
The immediate introduction of comprehensive schools in Britain, in place of grammar schools, is Labour party policy
Surgeons Michael Bakey in the USA and Vasilii Kolesov in the USSR pioneer coronary bypass surgery, using the patient's mammary artery
A royal proclamation formally establishes the new national flag of Canada
US President Lyndon Johnson launches a regular bombing campaign against North Vietnam
Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev dance together in the premiere of Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet
Winston Churchill dies, and lies in state in London's ancient Westminster Hall
David Lean directs Omar Sharif and Julie Christie in a film of Pasternak's Dr Zhivago
The General Assembly of the UN asks Argentina and Britain to enter negotiations on their long-running dispute over the Falklands
The Gambia becomes an independent member of the Commonwealth, with Dawda Jawara as prime minister
Black activist and convert to Islam Malcolm X is assassinated when giving a speech in the Audubon Ballroom in New York
George Grant publishes an influential political tract, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism
The Vietnam War enters a new dimension with the deployment of US ground troops in the country
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov is the first to walk in space, moving round outside the Voshkod 2 spacecraft for more than ten minutes
