March 9, 1964 - Decision in famous libel case Sullivan v. New York Times largely eliminated the crime of sedition (Sedition Act passed in 1918, repealed in 1921). Case determined that the press’s criticism of public officials—unless a plaintiff could prove that the statements were made maliciously or with "reckless disregard" for the truth—was protected speech under the First Amendment.

April 25, 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that Gen. William Westmoreland will replace Gen. Paul Harkins as head of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) as of June 20. The assignment would put Westmoreland in charge of all American military forces in Vietnam; March 22, 1968 - President Johnson announced that Westmoreland would depart South Vietnam to take on the post of Army Chief of Staff; Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced him as the senior U.S. commander in South Vietnam.

April 26, 1964 - The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.

May 19, 1964 - The State Department disclosed that 40 hidden microphones had been found in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

May 24, 1964 - Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), running for the Republican Party nomination in the upcoming presidential election, gives an interview in which he discusses the use of low-yield atomic bombs in North Vietnam to defoliate forests and destroy bridges, roads, and railroad lines bringing supplies from communist China. Democrats painted Goldwater as a warmonger who was overly eager to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Though he won his party's nomination, Goldwater was never able to shake his image as an extremist in Vietnam policies. This image was a key factor in his crushing defeat by opponent Lyndon B. Johnson, who took about 61 percent of the vote to Goldwater's 39 percent.

June 1964 - Arab League, an association of Arabic-speaking countries in Jerusalem, founded the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization); established to provide a more legitimate and organized channel for Palestinian nationalism than was offered by scattered Palestinian guerrilla (fedayeen) groups; dedicated to organizing Palestinian people "to recover their usurped homes" and, according to its charter, to replacing Israel with a secular Palestinian state.

June 9, 1964 - In reply to a formal question submitted by President Lyndon B. Johnson--"Would the rest of Southeast Asia necessarily fall if Laos and South Vietnam came under North Vietnamese control?"--the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) submits a memo that effectively challenges the "domino theory" backbone of the Johnson administration policies. The CIA concluded that Cambodia was probably the only nation in the area that would immediately fall. "Furthermore," the report said, "a continuation of the spread of communism in the area would not be inexorable, and any spread which did occur would take time--time in which the total situation might change in any number of ways unfavorable to the communist cause." The CIA report concluded that if South Vietnam and Laos also fell, it "would be profoundly damaging to the U.S. position in the Far East," but Pacific bases and allies such as the Philippines and Japan would still wield enough power to deter China and North Vietnam from any further aggression or expansion. President Johnson appears to have ignored the CIA analysis--he eventually committed over 500,000 American troops to the war in an effort to block the spread of communism to South Vietnam.

June 10, 1964 - The U.S. Senate voted to limit further debate on a proposed civil rights bill, shutting off a filibuster by Southern lawmakers.

June 19, 1964 - Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. Senate passed the civil rights bill by a vote of 73 - 27. Except for Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, all the Democratic votes against the bill came from Southerners. Act outlaws discrimination in places of public accommodation, publicly owned facilities, employment and union membership and Federally aided programs. It gives the Attorney General new powers to speed school desegregation and enforce the Negro's right to vote.

June 21, 1964 - Three civil rights workers (Michael Schwerner of Brooklyn; Andrew Goodman, 20, anthropology student at Queens College; James E. Cheney, 21, a Meridian plasterer and driver of the late-model Ford station wagon in which they were last seen) disappeared in Philadelphia, MS after investigating the burning of an African American church by the Ku Klux Klan; had traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi in 1964 to help organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The three had been held by Neshoba County authorities for four hours following the arrest of one on a speeding charge and the jailing of the others "for investigation." Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation began arriving here in force early tonight after the Justice Department ordered a full-scale search (code-named MIBURN, for "Mississippi Burning"). All three missing men arrived in Mississippi late Saturday afternoon from Oxford, Ohio, where they had taken part in a one-week orientation course for the statewide project. They were among the advance group of some 175 workers who are expected to be followed by another 800 participants in the campaign of political action, education and cultural activities among Negroes. August 4 - the remains of the three young men were found, buried in an earthen dam. Eventually, Delmar Dennis, a Klansman and one of the participants in the murders, was paid $30,000 and offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for information. December 4 - nineteen men, including Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, were indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for violating the civil rights of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney (charging the suspects with civil rights violations was the only way to give the federal government jurisdiction in the case). October 27, 1967 - an all-white jury found seven of the men guilty, including Price and Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi. Nine were acquitted and the jury deadlocked on three others. Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan went to prison on federal conspiracy charges; none served more than six years. June 21, 2005 - Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was found guilty of manslaughter in the deaths of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, MS, 41 years to the day earlier.

June 23, 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that Henry Cabot Lodge has resigned as ambassador to South Vietnam and that Gen. Maxwell Taylor will be his replacement. Lodge had left his ambassadorial post to pursue the Republican presidential nomination. Ultimately, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona secured the nomination and was defeated by Johnson in the general election. Lodge returned to Saigon in 1965 for another two-year stint as ambassador.

July 2, 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Civil Rights Act of 1964; most sweeping civil rights legislation passed by Congress since Reconstruction; prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education; outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. Came 10 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public educational facilities was unconstitutional.

July 15, 1964 - Sen. Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco.

July 16, 1964 - In accepting the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater said ''extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice'' and ''moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.''

July 23, 1964 - President Johnson signed War on Poverty Bill; Congress appropriated $947,000 for a melange of literacy, drug rehabilitation and employment programs.

July 26, 1964 - Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa and six others were convicted of fraud and conspiracy in the handling of a union pension fund.

August 4, 1964 - The remains of three civil rights workers whose disappearance on June 21 garnered national attention are found buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi in 1964 to help organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The third man, James Chaney, was a local African American man who had joined CORE in 1963. The disappearance of the three young men led to a massive FBI investigation that was code-named MIBURN, for "Mississippi Burning."

August 7, 1964 - Congress passed (416-0 in House; 88-2 in Senate) the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson broad powers in dealing with reported North Vietnamese torpedo boat attacks on U.S. destroyers off the coast of North Vietnam. The resolution gives prior Congressional approval of "all necessary measures" that the President may take "to repel any armed attack" against United States forces and "to prevent further aggression." also gives advance sanction for "all necessary steps: taken by the President to help any nation covered by the Southeast Asia collective defense treaty that requests assistance "in defense of its freedom." President Johnson said the Congressional action was "a demonstration to all the world of the unity of all Americans." "The votes prove our determination to defend our forces, to prevent aggression and to work firmly and steadily for peace and security in the area," he said. The Johnson administration went on to use the resolution as a pretext to begin heavy bombing of North Vietnam in early 1965 and to introduce U.S. combat troops in March 1965. Thus began a nearly eight-year war in which over 58,000 U.S. troops died. In a wider sense, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution can be considered America's Cold War policy toward all of Southeast Asia at the time. The resolution was also another example of the American government's less than candid discussion of "national security" matters during the Cold War. Unspoken during the Congressional debate over the resolution was the fact that the commanders of the U.S. destroyers could not state with absolute accuracy that their ships had actually been attacked on the night of August 4, nor was any mention made of the fact that the U.S. destroyers had been assisting South Vietnamese commandos in their attacks on North Vietnamese military installations. By the late 1960s, the tangle of government deceptions and lies began to unravel as public confidence in both Johnson and the American military effort in Vietnam began to erode.

August 20, 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Economic Opportunity Act, a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.

August 26, 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated for a term of office in his own right at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, NJ.

September 3, 1964 - President Lyndon B Johnson signed Wilderness Act into law.

September 12, 1964 - Canyonlands National Park was established in southeastern Utah.

September 21, 1964 - Malta gained independence from Britain.

September 24, 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson receives a special commission’s report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which had occurred on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Seven days after the assassination, Johnson appointed the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy to investigate Kennedy’s death. The commission was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren and became known as the Warren Commission. It concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that the Secret Service had made poor preparations for JFK’s visit to Dallas and had failed to sufficiently protect him. During its almost year-long investigation, the Warren Commission reviewed reports by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service, Department of State and the attorney general of Texas. It also pored over Oswald’s personal history, political affiliations and military record. Overall, the Warren Commission listened to the testimony of 552 witnesses and even traveled to Dallas several times to visit the site where Kennedy was shot. The enormous volume of documentation from the investigation was placed in the National Archives and much of it is now available to the public.

September 27, 1964 - The Warren Commission, after a 10-month investigation, issued a report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy, that there was no conspiracy in the assassination, either domestic or international; also found that Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who murdered Oswald on live national television, had no prior contact with Oswald. According to the report, the bullets that killed President Kennedy and injured Texas Governor John Connally were fired by Oswald in three shots from a rifle pointed out of a sixth floor window in the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald's life, including his visit to the Soviet Union, was described in detail, but the report made no attempt to analyze his motives; report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event; 1978 - the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee's findings also continue to be widely disputed.

October 5, 1964 - Small Business Administration Administrator Eugene P. Foley officially launched SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) as a national volunteer group with 2,000 members, uniting independent efforts into a national force.

October 12, 1964 - The Russian Voskhod 1 was the first spacecraft to carry a multi-person crew, first flight performed without space suits (with cosmonauts Vladamir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov, and Boris Yegorov); it orbited the Earth on a two-day mission

October 14, 1964 - Nikita Khrushchev is ousted as both premier of the Soviet Union and chief of the Communist Party after 10 years in power. He was succeeded as premier by Alexei N. Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I. Brezhnev (eventually became the chief of state).

October 15, 1964 - In a demonstration staged by the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the first public burning of a draft card in the United States takes place. These demonstrations drew 100,000 people in 40 cities across the country. In New York, David Miller, a young Catholic pacifist, became the first U.S. war protestor to burn his draft card in direct violation of a recently passed law forbidding such acts. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation later arrested him; he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to two years imprisonment.

October 16, 1964 - China detonated its first atomic bomb the western region of China. An accompanying Government statement declared that the purpose of developing nuclear weapons was to protect the Chinese people "from the danger of the United States' launching a nuclear war."

October 29, 1964 - The union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar was announced and the country became Tanzania.

October 30, 1964 - Tran Van Huong appointed premier of South Vietnam.

November 2, 1964 - Faisal succeeds Saudi as king of Saudi Arabia.

November 3, 1964 - Residents of the District of Columbia cast their ballots in a presidential election for the first time. The passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 gave citizens of the nation's capital the right to vote for a commander in chief and vice president.

November 3, 1964 - President Lyndon Johnson defeated Republican Barry Goldwater with over 60 percent of the popular vote.

February 15, 1965 - In accordance with a formal proclamation by Queen Elizabeth II of England, a new Canadian national flag is raised above Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, adopted by all Canadians. 1925 - committee of the Privy Council began to investigate possible designs. Later, in 1946, a select parliamentary committee was appointed with a similar mandate and examined more than 2,600 submissions. Agreement on a new design was not reached, and it was not until the 1960s, with the centennial of Canadian self-rule approaching, that the Canadian Parliament intensified its efforts to choose a new flag. December 1964 - Parliament voted to adopt a new design. Canada's national flag was to be red and white, the official colors of Canada as decided by King George V of Britain in 1921, with a stylized 11-point red maple leaf in its center.

February 18, 1965 - State Department sends secret cables to U.S. ambassadors in nine friendly nations advising of forthcoming bombing operations over North Vietnam, and instructs them to inform their host governments "in strictest confidence" and to report reactions. President Lyndon Johnson wanted these governments to be aware of what he was planning to do in the upcoming bombing campaign; called Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign was designed to interdict North Vietnamese transportation routes in the southern part of North Vietnam and thereby slow infiltration of personnel and supplies into South Vietnam; March 2, 1965 -  first Rolling Thunder mission took place when 100 U.S. Air Force and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) planes struck an ammunition dump 100 miles southeast of Hanoi; October 31, 1968 - operation halted due to increasing domestic political pressure.

February 20, 1965 - The Ranger 8 spacecraft crashed on the moon after sending back thousands of pictures of the lunar surface.

February 21, 1965 - Former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X (39) was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims (Nation of Islam), a movement he had left 18 months earlier, as he was addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights; June 1964 - founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which advocated black identity and held that racism, not the white race, was the greatest foe of the African American.

February 27, 1965 - U.S. State Department releases a 14,000-word report entitled "Aggression from the North--The Record of North Vietnam's Campaign to Conquer South Vietnam"; claimed that nearly 20,000 Viet Cong military and technical personnel had entered South Vietnam through the "infiltration pipeline" from the North. The report maintained that the infiltrators remained under military command from Hanoi. The Johnson administration was making the case that the war in Vietnam was not an internal insurgency, but rather an invasion of South Vietnam by North Vietnamese forces (calculated ploy by President Lyndon Johnson, who realized that he would have a hard time convincing the American public that the United States should get involved in a civil war--acting to stop the spread of communism by invading North Vietnamese would provide a much better justification for increased U.S. involvement in the conflict).

March 2, 1965 - Operation Rolling Thunder begins with more than 100 United States Air Force jet bombers striking an ammunition depot at Xom Bang, 10 miles inside North Vietnam. Simultaneously, 60 South Vietnamese Air Force propeller planes bombed the Quang Khe naval base, 65 miles north of the 17th parallel; 1965 to 1968 - about 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam. A total of nearly 900 U.S. aircraft were lost during Operation Rolling Thunder; October 31, 1968 - President Johnson halted operation, under increasing domestic political pressure.

March 18, 1965 - Soviet's Voskhod 2 was launched into space carrying Aleksey Leonov and Pavel Belyayev; Leonov left the spacecraft on the second orbit through the air lock while still tethered to the vessel; first man to climb out of a spacecraft in space, took motion pictures, practiced moving outside of the spacecraft for 10 minutes. Voskhod 2 made 17 orbits at about 110 miles (177 km) above earth.

March 20, 1965 - President Lyndon B. Johnson sends a telegram to Governor George Wallace of Alabama in which he agrees to send federal troops to supervise a planned African-American civil-rights march in Wallace’s home state. Wallace appeared on television that evening and demanded that Johnson send in federal troops instead. Wallace’s demand was a calculated ploy--he "excused" Alabama state police from their duty and left the responsibility to keep the peace in Johnson’s lap. If Johnson’s federal troops got involved in a violent altercation between marchers and white segregationists, Johnson, not Wallace, would appear as the "bad guy." Johnson reacted to Wallace’s double-cross by calling him a "no-good son of a b----!" during a taped phone conversation at the White House.

March 21, 1965 - More than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their "Alabama Freedom March" (third attempt) from Selma to Montgomery, AL to the State Capitol to submit a petition for Negro rights to Gov. George C. Wallace, a man with little sympathy for their cause. On the first two attempts, the marchers were stopped by state troopers, the first time with tear gas and clubs. Hundreds of Army and federalized National Guard troops stood guard in Selma and lined the highway out of town to protect the marchers. The troops were sent by President Johnson after Governor Wallace said that Alabama could not afford the expense of protecting the march.

March 23, 1965 - America's first two-person space flight began as Gemini III, nicknamed the "Molly Brown," blasted off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young aboard.

March 25, 1965 - Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers in the 4-day/night Alabama Freedom March from Selma, AL to the state capitol in Montgomery, AL (54-miles) to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks; delegation was later admitted to the Capitol, but was told that the Governor had closed his office for the day. The group left without giving its petition to anyone.

March 31, 1965 - U.S. ordered the first combat troops to Vietnam.

April 1, 1965 - Henry Fowler named Secretary of the Treasury; apprenticed as the Under Secretary of the Treasury for three years; gave birth to a new international monetary reserve system, alternately known as "Special Drawing Rights." President Lyndon Johnson gave a special nod to Fowler's work on SDR, hailed the Secretary as "...the grand architect of the most significant reforms in the international monetary system since Bretton Woods." Fowler also helped establish a "two-tier" gold system, unveiled in 1968; December 20, 1968 - resigned.

April 6, 1965 - National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy drafts and signs National Security Action Memorandum 328 on behalf of President Lyndon B. Johnson; so-called "enclave strategy" called for the U.S. forces to control the densely-populated coastal areas while the South Vietnamese forces moved inland to fight the communists; represented a major mission change for the American soldiers and Marines who had recently arrived in Vietnam; had been limited to strictly defensive operations around the U.S. air bases, memorandum authorized them to go on the offensive to secure large areas of terrain, an escalation of U.S. involvement in the war.

April 28, 1965 - In an effort to forestall what he claims will be a "communist dictatorship" in the Dominican Republic, President Lyndon B. Johnson sends more than 22,000 U.S. troops, supported by forces provided by some of the member states of the Organization of American States (a United Nations-like institution for the Western Hemisphere, dominated by the United States), to restore order on the island nation. Johnson's action provoked loud protests in Latin America and skepticism among many in the United States. Over the next few weeks they brought an end to the fighting and helped install a conservative, non-military government.

May 12, 1965 - West Germany and Israel established diplomatic relations.

June 3, 1965- Major Edward H. White II opens the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in space. Attached to the craft by a 25-foot tether and controlling his movements with a hand-held oxygen jet-propulsion gun, White remained outside the capsule for just over 20 minutes. March 18, 1965 - Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov was the first man ever to walk in space.

July 1, 1965 - Undersecretary of State George Ball submits a memo to President Lyndon B. Johnson titled "A Compromise Solution for South Vietnam." It began bluntly: "The South Vietnamese are losing the war to the Viet Cong. No one can assure you that we can beat the Viet Cong, or even force them to the conference table on our terms, no matter how many hundred thousand white, foreign (U.S.) troops we deploy." Ball advised that the United States not commit any more troops, restrict the combat role of those already in place, and seek to negotiate a way out of the war. While Ball recommended a negotiated settlement, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara urged the president to "expand promptly and substantially" the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam. Johnson, not wanting to lose South Vietnam to the communists, ultimately accepted McNamara's recommendation. July 22 - he authorized a total of 44 U.S. battalions for commitment in South Vietnam, a decision that led to a massive escalation of the war. There were less than ten U.S. Army and Marine battalions in South Vietnam at this time. Eventually there would be more than 540,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam.

July 8, 1965 - Ambassador Maxwell Taylor resigns from his post in Vietnam. Former Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge replaced Taylor. As ambassador, Taylor had pressed for the return of civilian rule after a military coup had overthrown President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. Although Taylor had initially opposed the employment of U.S. combat troops, he had come to accept this strategy. However, Taylor had an argument with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General William Westmoreland, U.S. commander in South Vietnam, at a conference in Honolulu in April. He took exception with the shift in strategy from counterinsurgency to large-scale ground operations by U.S. units. According to journalist David Halberstam, this argument marked "the last time that Max Taylor was a major player, his farewell in fact." Upon his return to the United States, Taylor served as a special consultant to President Lyndon B. Johnson and was a member of the Senior Advisory Group--who became known as the "Wise Men"--that convened in March 1968 to advise the president on the course of the war.

July 27, 1965 - President Johnson signs a bill requiring cigarette makers to print health warnings on all cigarette packages about the effects of smoking.

July 28, 1965 - President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he was increasing the number of American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

July 30, 1965 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law.

August 6, 1965 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, guaranteed African Americans the right to vote. The bill made it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections that were designed to deny the vote to blacks. March 15, 1965 - In a speech to Congress Johnson outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African-American citizens the vote. Blacks attempting to vote were often told by election officials that they gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that the officials were late or absent, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or had filled out an application incorrectly. Often African Americans, whose population suffered a high rate of illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, would be forced to take literacy tests, which they inevitably failed. Johnson also told Congress that voting officials, primarily in southern states, had been known to force black voters to "recite the entire constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws"--a task most white voters would have been hard-pressed to accomplish. In some cases, even blacks with college degrees were turned away from the polls. Voting Rights Act gave African-American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969. In 1970, President Richard Nixon extended the provisions of the Voting Rights Act and lowered the eligible voting age for all voters to 18.

August 9, 1965 - Singapore proclaimed its independence from the Malaysian Federation (National Day).

August 11, 1965 - Deadly rioting and looting broke out in the predominantly black Watts section of Los Angeles. Crowds of up to 5,000 Negroes gathered in a 20-block area that had been sealed off by some 100 policemen and more than 300 deputy sheriffs. The five days of violence left 34 dead, 1,032 injured, nearly 4,000 arrested, and $40 million worth of property destroyed. The Watts riot was the worst urban riot in 20 years and foreshadowed the many rebellions to occur in ensuing years in Detroit, Newark, and other American cities.

August 12, 1965 - Henry Cabot Lodge sworn in as Ambassador to Vietnam. The appointing of Lodge and the recall of former Ambassador Frederick Nolting, Jr., signaled a change in U.S. policy in South Vietnam. Lodge was a firm believer in the domino theory and when he became convinced that the United States could not win in Vietnam with President Ngo Dinh Diem, he became very critical of Diem's regime in his dispatches back to Washington. Diem was ultimately removed from office and assassinated during a coup by opposition South Vietnamese generals that began on November 1, 1963. Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were assassinated some time after midnight on November 2.

August 31, 1965 - Department of Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 creates HUD as Cabinet-level agency.

September 30, 1965 - President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation that established the National Foundation for the Arts and the Humanities.

October 1, 1965 - A communist coup against Indonesian President Sukarno is crushed by General Mohammed Suharto, the Indonesian army chief of staff. In the aftermath, Suharto moved to replace Sukarno and launched a purge of Indonesian communists that resulted in thousands of deaths. In 1967, Suharto assumed full executive authority and in 1968 was elected president. Reelected every five years until his resignation in 1998, Suharto stabilized his nation and oversaw significant economic progress. However, he was criticized for his repressive rule and for Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, which left an estimated 100,000 Timorese dead from famine, disease, and warfare.

October 4, 1965 - Pope Paul VI became the first reigning pontiff to travel to North America when he flew to New York and addressed the U.N. General Assembly.

October 6, 1965 - Patricia Harris took a post as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, becoming the first African-American U.S. ambassador.

October 15, 1965 - In a demonstration staged by the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the first public burning of a draft card in the United States takes place. These demonstrations drew 100,000 people in 40 cities across the country. In New York, David Miller, a young Catholic pacifist, became the first U.S. war protestor to burn his draft card in direct violation of a recently passed law forbidding such acts. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation later arrested him; he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to two years imprisonment.

October 28, 1965 - Workers "top out" the final section of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, completing construction of the nation's tallest memorial after four years of work. A graceful 603-foot high ribbon of gleaming stainless steel, the Gateway Arch spans 630 feet at the ground and is meant to symbolically mark the gateway from the eastern United States to the West. Architect Eero Saarinen's dramatic design was chosen during a 1947 competition, and has since become a landmark famous around the world. Although St. Louis was by no means the only jumping-off point for emigrants moving westward, during much of the 19th century the city's advantageous location, just below the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, made it an important hub for much of the nation's western expansion. Most famously, Lewis and Clark began their exploration of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory when they departed from St. Louis in May 1804, and Zebulon Pike also started his western explorations there in 1805. Once these famous trailblazers had shown the way, thousands of other followed in their footsteps. As the tide of easterners emigrating West steadily grew, St. Louis also became a popular jumping-off point for the main overland trails to Santa Fe, California, and Oregon. The arrival of the first steamboat, the Pike, along the docks of St. Louis in 1817 began the city's role as a hub for steam-powered water transportation along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Railroads, too, ensured that St. Louis would be an important transportation center for the second half of the 19th century. However, railroads also made it possible for the upstart city of Chicago to begin challenging St. Louis's role as the gateway to the West. With its easy access to the extensive network of eastern lakes, canals, and railroads, after 1850 Chicago began to supplant St. Louis as the major railway hub and economic center of the West.

October 28, 1965 - Pope Paul VI issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

November 9, 1965 - The great Northeast blackout occurred as several states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours. The largest power failure in history blacked out nearly all of New York City, parts of nine Northeastern states and two provinces of southeastern Canada last night. Some 80,000 square miles, in which perhaps 25 million people live and work, were affected. Striking at the evening rush hour , the power failure trapped 800,000 riders on New York City's subways. Railroads halted. Traffic was jammed. Airplanes found themselves circling, unable to land. But the Defense Department reported that the Strategic Air Command and other defense installations functioned without a halt. The lights and the power went out first at 5:17 P.M. somewhere along the Niagara frontier of New York state. Nobody could tell why for hours afterward. President Johnson, in Austin, Tex., ordered the full resources of the Federal Government thrown into an investigation by the Federal Power Commission. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Defense Department and other agencies were ordered to report "at the earliest possible moment." In Austin, President Johnson was told by telephone at about 8 P.M. by his science advisor, Dr. Donald Hornig, that the best information available at that hour was that the failure had started at a switching point somewhere in the service area of the Niagara Mohawk Power Company.

November 11, 1965 - Rhodesia proclaimed its independence from Britain.

November 12, 1965 - Ferdinand Marcos elected president of Philippines.

November 26, 1965 - France successfully launched the Diamant-A rocket into space, becoming the world's third space power after the Soviet Union and the United States.

December 3, 1965 - In a confidential memorandum to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton outlines the terms that should precede any permanent bombing halt. He said that North Vietnam must not only cease infiltration efforts, but also take steps to withdraw troops currently operating in South Vietnam. In addition, the Viet Cong should agree to terminate terror and sabotage activities and allow Saigon to exercise "governmental functions over substantially all of South Vietnam." McNaughton did not believe that these conditions would soon be obtained, however, as they amounted to "capitulation by a communist force that is far from beaten."

December 30,1965 - Former Philippines Senate president Ferdinand Marcos is inaugurated president of the Southeast Asian archipelago nation. Marcos' regime would span 20 years and become increasingly authoritarian and corrupt. In 1949, he was elected to the Philippines House of Representatives, thanks in large part to his fabricated wartime record. In 1959 - he moved up to the Senate and from 1963 to 1965 served as Senate president. In 1965, he broke with the Liberal Party after failing to win his party's presidential nomination and ran as the candidate of the Nationalist Party. After a bitter and decisive campaign, he was elected president. In 1969, he was reelected. In 1981, Marcos was dubiously reelected president. In rural areas, insurgency by communists and Muslim separatists grew. In 1983, Marcos' old political opponent Benigno Aquino, Jr., returned from exile and was assassinated by military agents of Marcos as soon as he stepped off the plane. The political murder touched off widespread anti-Marcos protests, and in 1986 he agreed to hold a new presidential election.

January 12, 1966 - Lyndon Johnson, in his State of the Union address, commits the United States to staying in Vietnam "as long as aggression commands us to battle." Johnson justified his position on the basis of national security and the principles of democracy and national sovereignty. Citing communist China’s intention to dominate all of Asia, Johnson pledged renewed commitment to helping the South Vietnamese defeat North Vietnam in a war that had become increasingly controversial among Americans.

February 6, 1966 - Accompanied by his leading political and military advisers, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky in Honolulu. The talks concluded with issuance of a joint declaration in which the United States promised to help South Vietnam "prevent aggression," develop its economy, and establish "the principles of self-determination of peoples and government by the consent of the governed." Johnson declared: "We are determined to win not only military victory but victory over hunger, disease, and despair." He announced renewed emphasis on "The Other War"--the effort to provide the South Vietnamese rural population with local security, and economic and social programs to win over their active support. In his final statement on the discussions, Johnson warned the South Vietnamese that he would be monitoring their efforts to build democracy, improve education and health care, resettle refugees, and reconstruct South Vietnam's economy.

February 26, 1966 - The first Saturn 1B rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an unmanned suborbital test flight in the Apollo moon program; successfully tested the separation of the first and second stages of the rocket and tested the operations of Saturn's propulsion, guidance and control, and electrical subsystems; several malfunctions, but flew for about 37-minutes, traveled 5264 miles, reached a sub-orbital altitude of 303 miles.

March 16, 1966 - the first US manned docking of two spacecraft was accomplished by the Gemini VIII commanded by Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong and Astronaut David R. Scott; primary objective of the scheduled three-day mission was to rendezvous and dock with the Gemini Agena target vehicle and to conduct extravehicular activities. Though this was accomplished, some problems developed that required the mission and its other planed objectives and experiments to be terminated early.

May 16, 1966 - The Cultural Revolution was begun by Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong.

June 6, 1966 - James H. Meredith, former serviceman in the U.S. Air Force, who in 1962 became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi (admission was revoked when the registrar learned of his race), is shot by a sniper shortly after beginning a lone civil rights march through the South. Known as the "March Against Fear," Meredith had been walking from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, in an attempt to encourage voter registration by African Americans in the South. Meredith later recovered and rejoined the march he had originated, and on June 26 the marchers successfully reached Jackson, Mississippi.

June 13, 1966 - Supreme Court issued landmark Miranda vs. Arizona decision, ruled that criminal suspects must be informed of their constitutional rights prior to questioning by police; sweeping limitations on the power of the police to question suspects in their custody. The justices split 5 to 4. In stinging dissents the minority denounced the decision as helping criminals go free to repeat their crimes. Chief Justice Earl Warren, broke new constitutional ground by declaring that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination comes into play as soon as a person is within police custody. Under the rulings, the prosecution cannot use in a trial any admissions or confessions made by the suspect while in custody unless it first proves that the police complied with a detailed list of safeguards to protect the right against self-incrimination. The suspect, the Court said, must have been clearly warned that he may remain silent, that anything he says may he held against him and that he has a right to have a lawyer present during interrogation. March 2, 1963 - 18-year-old Phoenix woman told police that she had been abducted, driven to the desert, and raped. Detectives questioning her story gave her a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive. However, tracking the license plate number of a car that resembled that of her attacker's brought police to Ernesto Miranda, who had a prior record as a peeping tom. Although the victim did not identify Miranda in a line-up, he was brought into police custody and interrogated. What happened next is disputed, but officers left the interrogation with a confession that Miranda later recanted, unaware that he didn't have to say anything at all. Miranda's appointed defense attorney (who was paid a grand total of $100) didn't call any witnesses, and Miranda was convicted after a short trial. While Miranda was in Arizona state prison, the American Civil Liberties Union took up his appeal, claiming that the confession was false and coerced. Supreme Court overturned his conviction, but Miranda was retried and convicted in October 1966 anyway, despite the relative lack of evidence against him. Remaining in prison until 1972, Ernesto Miranda was later stabbed to death in the men's room of a seedy bar after a poker game in January 1976.

July 1, 1966 - Medicare federal insurance program went into effect.

September 1, 1966 - In a speech before 100,000 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, President Charles de Gaulle of France denounces U.S. policy in Vietnam and urges the U.S. government to pull its troops out of Southeast Asia. De Gaulle said that negotiations toward a settlement of the war could begin as soon as the United States committed to withdrawing its troops by a certain date. He and Prince Norodom Sihanouk signed a declaration calling for noninterference in the Indochinese peninsula by foreign nations. Three days later, Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy on NBC-TV's Meet The Press rejected de Gaulle's proposal and said that the United States intended to withdraw its forces when "the North Vietnamese get out." During the same speech, he also revealed that the United States now had 25,000 military people in Thailand, principally for air force operations.

September 6, 1966 - South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was stabbed to death by a parliamentary page during a session in Cape Town. Verwoerd was an architect of South Africa's racist apartheid policies.

September 9, 1966 - National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was signed into law; established federal safety standards with strict penalties for violations. established federal safety standards with strict penalties for violations. At the signing of the bill, President Johnson assured Ralph Nader and a crowd of several hundred that safety was "no luxury item, no optional extra."

September 14, 1966 - The Senate adopted legislation to raise the nation's minimum wage. The amendment paved the way for a new rate of $1.40 an hour and expanded the wage to reach State and local government workers at public schools and nursing homes, as well as the construction industry.

September 30, 1966 - The Republic of Botswana declared its independence from Britain.

October 15, 1966 - President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill creating the Department of Transportation.

October 24, 1966 - In Manila, President Johnson meets with other Allied leaders and they pledge to withdraw troops from Vietnam within six months if North Vietnam "withdraws its forces to the North and ceases infiltration of South Vietnam." A communique signed by the seven participants (Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States) included a four-point "Declaration of Peace" that stressed the need for a "peaceful settlement of the war in Vietnam and for future peace and progress" in the rest of Asia and the Pacific. After the conference, Johnson flew to South Vietnam for a surprise two-and-a-half-hour visit with U.S. troops at Cam Ranh Bay.

October 29, 1966 - The National Organization for Women was founded.

November 3, 1966 - President Johnson gave green light to the Truth in Packaging bill. As enacted, the bill called for supermarket goods to carry labels that detailed their contents, as well as manufacturing information. The bill also forced manufacturers and overenthusiastic copywriters to stop using hyperbolic slogans such as "jumbo ounces" on packaging labels. Legislation backed away from mandating standards for weights and measures; called on manufacturers to "voluntarily" devise their own standards.

November 8, 1966 - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.

December 29, 1966 - Student-body presidents from 100 U.S. colleges and universities sign an open letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson expressing anxiety and doubt over U.S. involvement in Vietnam. They warned in the letter that many youths might prefer prison to participation in the war. Johnson did not respond to the letter.

January 10, 1967 - President Johnson, in his annual State of the Union message to Congress, asks for enactment of a 6 percent surcharge on personal and corporate income taxes to help support the Vietnam War for two years, or "for as long as the unusual expenditures associated with our efforts continue." Congress delayed for almost a year, but eventually passed the surcharge. The U.S. expenditure in Vietnam for fiscal year 1967 would be $21 billion.

January 16, 1967 - Alan S. Boyd was sworn in as the first secretary of transportation.

January 27, 1967 - A launch pad fire during Apollo program tests at Cape Canaveral, Florida, kills astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chafee. An investigation indicated that a faulty electrical wire inside the Apollo 1 command module was the probable cause of the fire. The astronauts, the first Americans to die in a spacecraft, had been participating in a simulation of the Apollo 1 launch scheduled for the next month.

January 27, 1967 - More than 60 nations signed a treaty banning the orbiting of nuclear weapons.

February 10, 1967 - The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, went into effect.

February 22, 1967 - Indonesian President Sukarno surrenders all executive authority to military dictator General Suharto, remains president in title only; Suharto reelected every five years until his resignation in 1998; stabilized nation and oversaw significant economic progress. However, he was criticized for his repressive rule and for Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, which left an estimated 100,000 Timorese dead from famine, disease, and warfare.

March 1, 1967 - Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, D-N.Y., cited for contempt of court for refusing to pay damages in a lawsuit, was denied his seat in Congress.

April 15, 1967 - Massive parades to protest Vietnam policy are held in New York and San Francisco. In New York, police estimated that 100,000 to 125,000 people listened to speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., Floyd McKissick, Stokely Carmichael and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Prior to the march, nearly 200 draft cards were burned by youths in Central Park. In San Francisco, black nationalists led a march, but most of the 20,000 marchers were white.

May 1, 1967 - Anastasio Somoza Debayle became president of Nicaragua.

May 17, 1967 - Governor of Tennessee signed into law the repeal of the 1925 state law, the Butler Act, prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The law had made it "unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The law had been tested in what became known as the "Scopes monkey trial." Scopes was found guilty, but the law had been undermined. Upon appeal, Scopes was acquitted on a technicality. The law itself remained a Tennessee state statute for 42 years.

May 19, 1967 - The Soviet Union ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain banning nuclear weapons from outer space. 1959 - dozens of nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, had agreed to ban nuclear weapons from Antarctica. July 1963 - Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed, banned open-air and underwater nuclear tests. 

May 30, 1967 - Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu and other non-Igbo representatives established the Republic of Biafra, comprising several states of Nigeria. July 1967 - war between Nigeria and Biafra broke out after diplomatic efforts by Nigeria failed to reunite the country. Nigeria's superior military might gradually reduced Biafran territory. The state lost its oil fields--its main source of revenue--and without the funds to import food, an estimated one million of its civilians died as a result of severe malnutrition.

June 5, 1967 - (Six day) War erupted in the Middle East as Israel raided Egyptian military targets. Syria, Jordan and Iraq entered the conflict. In six days of fighting, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the West Bank and Arab sector of East Jerusalem, both previously under Jordanian rule; June 11 -  United Nations cease-fire took effect, Israel had more than doubled its size. The true fruits of victory came in claiming the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan. Many wept while bent in prayer at the Western Wall of the Second Temple. The U.N. Security Council called for a withdrawal from all the occupied regions, but Israel declined, permanently annexing East Jerusalem and setting up military administrations in the occupied territories. Israel let it be known that Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai would be returned in exchange for Arab recognition of the right of Israel to exist and guarantees against future attack. Arab leaders decided upon a policy of no peace, no negotiations, and no recognition of Israel, and made plans to defend zealously the rights of Palestinian Arabs in the occupied territories.

June 5, 1967 - President Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the Suez Canal, alleging that U.S. and British forces were aiding Israel.

June 10, 1967 - The Six-Day War ended as Israel and Syria agreed to observe a United Nations-mediated cease-fire; after less than 30 hours of fierce fighting Israel's armed forces had won a major victory over Syria.

June 12, 1967 - The Supreme Court struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.

June 23, 1967 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, for a three-day summit; first time a Soviet premier had met with an American president in the United States since Nikita Khrushchev visited with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959. Summit was not considered a success. The Soviets proved inflexible on the major issues. They branded the Israelis as the aggressors in the Middle East and demanded that Israel evacuate the lands seized during the Six-Day War. Concerning Vietnam, the Soviet stance was plain: peace would come when the United States left Vietnam. The Johnson administration publicly declared that the meeting was "very good and very useful." The talks were supposed to continue during a Johnson visit to the Soviet Union in 1968, but a brutal Russian intervention that crushed a revolution in Czechoslovakia led to the cancellation of the trip.

June 28, 1967 - Israel declared Jerusalem reunified under its sovereignty following its capture of the Arab sector in the Six-Day War; June 29, 1967 - Israel united east and west Jerusalem.

June 30, 1967 - South Vietnamese Armed Forces Council resolves rival claims to the presidency in favor of Nguyen Van Thieu, Chief of State. Former Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, who had announced on May 11 that he would run for president, was forced to accept second place on the presidential ticket. Thieu had been an Army officer in command of the 5th Infantry Division near Saigon when he and other senior South Vietnamese officers led a coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem. June 1965 - another coup against the civilian government; 10-man Military National Leadership Committee, which elected Ky as premier and Thieu as Chairman and Chief of State. April 25, 1975 - President Thieu resigned, left South Vietnam, flying to Taiwan and then to Great Britain.

July 23, 1967 - One of the worst riots in U.S. history breaks out on 12th Street in the heart of Detroit's predominantly African-American inner city. By the time it was quelled four days later by 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, and nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned. The so-called 12th Street Riot was the worst U.S. riot in 100 years, occurring during a period of numerous riots in America. A report by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, appointed by President Johnson, identified more than 150 riots or major disorders between 1965 and 1968. In 1967 alone, 83 people were killed and 1,800 were injured--the majority of them African Americans--and property valued at more than $100 million was damaged, looted, or destroyed.

July 27, 1967 - In the wake of urban rioting, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of the violence. The same day, black militant H. Rap Brown said violence was ''as American as cherry pie.''

August 30, 1967 - The Senate confirmed the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first black justice on the Supreme Court; September 1, 1967 - sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

September 3, 1967 - In South Vietnam's national election, General Nguyen Van Thieu wins a four-year term as president with former Premier Nguyen Cao Ky as vice-president. They received only 34.8 percent of the votes cast, but the rest were divided among 10 other candidates. There were many allegations of corruption during the election, including charges of ballot rigging, but a favorable impression of the election process was reported by 22 prominent Americans who visited Vietnam as election observers. The Johnson administration cited the elections, held in the midst of war, as evidence that South Vietnam was maturing as a democratic nation.

September 4, 1967 - Michigan Gov. George Romney said during a TV interview that he had undergone a ''brainwashing'' by U.S. officials during a 1965 visit to Vietnam.

September 9, 1967 - Uganda declares independence from Great Britain.

September 26, 1967 - Hanoi rejected a U.S. peace proposal for the Vietnam War.

October 2, 1967 - Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American, was sworn in as an associate justice to the United States Supreme Court. As chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s and '50s, Marshall was the architect and executor of the legal strategy that ended the era of official racial segregation.

October 8, 1967 - Bolivian guerrilla force led by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is defeated in a skirmish with a special detachment of the Bolivian army. Guevara was wounded, captured, and executed the next day. Born in Argentina, Guevara believed that a man of action could revolutionize a people. He played a pivotal role in the Cuban Revolution of 1956-59 and encouraged Fidel Castro to pursue his communist, anti-American agenda. After holding several positions in Castro's government, he disappeared from Cuba in 1965. He secretly traveled to the Congo, where he trained rebels, and in 1966 resurfaced in Bolivia as leader of another guerrilla group. Since his death, Guevara has been idolized as a hero of leftist Third World revolution. October 9, 1967 - The Bolivian army high command officially confirmed that Ernesto Rafael ("Che") Guevara de la Serna (39), the Latin revolutionary leader, former Minister of Industries in Havana, Cuba, was executed. His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. 1997 -  Guevara's remains were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and thousands of Cubans.

October 21, 1967 - Nearly 100,000 people gather to protest the American war effort in Vietnam = questioning of America's conduct in Vietnam and of the nation's Cold War foreign policy; most dramatic sign of waning U.S. support for President Lyndon Johnson's war in Vietnam; summer of 1967 - American support for the war had fallen below 50 percent; Johnson administration announced that it would ask for a 10 percent increase in taxes to fund the war; skepticism increased, peace movement pushed harder for an end to the war; Tet Offensive of early 1968 destroyed much of the Johnson Administration's credibility concerning the Vietnam War.

October 26, 1967 - The Shah of Iran crowned himself and his queen after 26 years on the Peacock Throne.

November 2, 1967 - President Johnson holds a secret meeting with some of the nation's most prestigious leaders, collectively called "the Wise Men." This group included former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, General of the Army Omar Bradley, Ambassador-at-Large Averell Harriman, and former Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge. Johnson asked them for advice on how to unite the U.S. in the Vietnam War effort. They reached the conclusion that the administration needed to offer "ways of guiding the press to show the light at the end of the tunnel." In effect, they decided that the American people should be given more optimistic reports. When Johnson agreed, the administration, which included senior U.S. military commander in Saigon Gen. William Westmoreland, began to paint a more positive picture of the situation in South Vietnam. In early 1968, this decision came back to haunt Johnson and Westmoreland when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese launched a major surprise attack on January 30, the start of the Tet New Year holiday. Stunned by the scope of the Communist attack after the administration had painted such an upbeat picture of Allied progress in the war, many Americans began to question the credibility of the president and antiwar sentiment increased significantly.

November 7, 1967 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

November 17, 1967 - President Johnson asserts on TV that, while much remained to be done, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking...We are making progress" (based on optimistic reports on Vietnam by Gen. William Westmoreland, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, and Robert W. Komer, the head of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program); January 1968 - communists launched a massive offensive during the Tet New Year holiday.

November 20, 1967 - President Lyndon Johnson announced the formation of the National Commission on Product Safety. The newly formed agency was charged with safeguarding the public against "hazardous products," as well as exploring the efficacy of Federal consumer protection legislation.

November 20, 1967 - San Jose State College students demonstrate against the Dow Chemical Company, the maker of napalm. Police were sent in, but the students refused to disperse and several protest leaders were arrested. The next day the students defied California governor Ronald Reagan's warning against further demonstrations and again staged an anti-Dow demonstration. Napalm was an acronym derived from naphthetic and palmic acids, whose salts were used to manufacture the jellied gasoline--napalm--that was used in flame-throwers and bombs. Napalm first came into widespread use during World War II, especially in flame throwers used to destroy entrenched Japanese positions in the Pacific war. It was also used extensively in aerial bombs during the Korean War against Chinese and North Korean entrenchments. The use of napalm in the Vietnam War concerned many Americans who considered it an especially cruel and barbaric weapon.

November 21, 1967 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the air quality act, which allotted money to fight air pollution.

November 22, 1967 - The U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw from territories it captured in 1967, and implicitly called on adversaries to recognize Israel's right to exist.

November 29, 1967 - Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced he was leaving the Johnson administration to become president of the World Bank (succeeded by Clark Clifford); had served as Secretary of Defense from 1961 until 1968; initially supported U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and encouraged President Johnson to escalate in 1964, but later began privately to question U.S. policy, eventually advocated a negotiated settlement to the war; 1967 - he helped draft the San Antonio formula, a peace proposal offering to end the U.S. bombing of the north and asking North Vietnam to join in productive discussions (North Vietnamese rejected proposal); November 1967 - submitted memorandum to Johnson, recommended that 1) United States freeze its troop levels, 2) cease the bombing of the north, 3) turn over responsibility for fighting the ground war to the South Vietnamese. (Johnson rejected recommendations outright).

November 30, 1967 - Liberal Democratic Senator Eugene J. McCarthy from Minnesota, an advocate of a negotiated end to the war in Vietnam, declares that he intends to enter several Democratic Presidential primaries in 1968; conducted his campaign outside normal Democratic Party channels, relied on volunteers who conducted a grassroots campaign that emphasized the moral indefensibility of U.S. action in Vietnam and the need for a negotiated settlement of the war; shocked the political establishment when he almost defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary.

January 3, 1968 - Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Minnesota) announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination; March 1968 - much to the astonishment of most political pundits, McCarthy came within a few hundred votes of beating Johnson in the New Hampshire primary.

January 5, 1968 - Antonin Novotny, the Stalinist ruler of Czechoslovakia, is succeeded as first secretary by Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak who supports liberal reforms. In the first few months of his rule, Dubcek introduced a series of far-reaching political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and the rehabilitation of political dissidents. Dubcek's effort to establish "communism with a human face" was celebrated across the country, and the brief period of freedom became known as the "Prague Spring."

January 9, 1968 - The Surveyor 7 space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface; conclusion to a seven year program that led to mechanized reconnaissance for a manned landing; 10- foot high vehicle weighing some 638 pounds, had been hurtling toward the moon at 6,000 miles an hour. It was braked by retarding rockets in the last three minutes of its 225,000 mile voyage; 45 minutes after touchdown, the Surveyor's television cameras began transmitting pictures - showed segments of the moon's horizon in the background; appeared to be scatterings of large boulders and extensive, lake-like indentations, curved as if by erosion.

January 23, 1968 - North Korea seized the U.S. Navy ship Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation's territorial waters on a spying mission. The crew was held for 11 months; blow to the Johnson administration's credibility, as the president seemed powerless to free the captured crew and ship. Combined with the public's perception--in the wake of the Tet Offensive--that the Vietnam War was being lost, the Pueblo incident resulted in a serious faltering of Johnson's popularity with the American people. The crewmen's reports about their horrific treatment at the hands of the North Koreans during their 11 months in captivity further incensed American citizens, many of whom believed that Johnson should have taken more aggressive action to free the captive Americans.

January 29, 1968 - In his annual budget message, President Lyndon B. Johnson asks for $26.3 billion to continue the war in Vietnam, and announces an increase in taxes; day after Johnson's budget speech, the communists launched a massive attack across the length and breadth of South Vietnam. This action, the Tet Offensive, proved to be a critical turning point for the United States in Vietnam; resulted in a crushing military defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.

January 30, 1968 - The Tet offensive, largest offensive of the Vietnam War, began as an estimated 80,000 troops of the North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front launched surprise attacks against cities and military establishments throughout South Vietnam; not a military success for the communists, but its size and intensity shook the confidence of many Americans who were led to believe, by the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the war would shortly be coming to a successful close; February 10, 1968 - the offensive was largely crushed, but with heavy casualties on both sides; decidedly an Allied victory, but psychologically and politically, it was a disaster.

February 1, 1968 - Richard M. Nixon announces his candidacy for the presidency; won the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.

February 20, 1968 - U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins hearings to investigate American policy in Vietnam. This was a direct result of the Tet Offensive, in which Viet Cong forces, supported by large numbers of North Vietnamese troops, launched the largest and best-coordinated offensive of the war. During the attack, the Viet Cong drove into the center of South Vietnam's seven largest cities and attacked 30 provincial capitals ranging from the Delta to the DMZ.

February 28, 1968 - Gen. Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, returns from his recent round of talks with Gen. William Westmoreland in Saigon and immediately delivers a written report to President Lyndon B. Johnson; add-on requested totals 206,756 spaces for a new proposed ceiling of 731,756; March 10, 1968 - Wheeler-Westmoreland proposal for additional troops appeared in the New York Times; March 22, 1968 - President Johnson scaled down Westmoreland's request and authorized 13,500 reinforcements. Shortly after, Johnson announced that Westmoreland would be brought home to be Army Chief of Staff. He was to be replaced by Gen. Creighton Abrams.

March 1, 1968 - Clark Clifford replaces Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense; After the communists launched the Tet Offensive in January 1968, an increasingly demoralized McNamara left Washington after eight years as Defense Secretary to become the president of the World Bank.

March 4, 1968 - Ad Hoc Task Force on Vietnam (senior policy advisors including Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford; Central Intelligence Agency Director Richard Helms; General Maxwell Taylor; Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs William Bundy; and Paul Warnke, head of the Pentagon's politico-military policy office) advises that the administration send 22,000 more troops to Vietnam, but make deployment of the