 Starkweather homicide

Nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather, a James Dean enthusiast who tried to imitate Dean’s Rebel
Without a Cause bad-boy style, embarked on a 1958 killing spree that resulted in the deaths of 10
people, including the parents and young sister of his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate.
Starkweather was arrested after a high-speed chase; Starkweather was executed, and Fugate—then
one of the youngest Americans ever charged with first-degree murder—was sentenced to life in
prison.

 Children of thalidomide

The medical compound thalidomide, developed in the 1950s in West Germany as a sedative and tool
for preventing nausea, was discovered to cause severe fetal malformations when taken during
pregnancy. It was removed from the market in 1961–62 after affecting thousands of children.
(Thalidomide has other therapeutic uses today.)

 Buddy Holly

After hearing Elvis Presley in 1955, former rhythm-and-blues devotee Buddy Holly became a full-time
rock-and-roller. With his band the Crickets, Holly released the meticulously crafted tracks “Not Fade
Away,” “Peggy Sue,” and “That’ll be the Day.”

 Ben Hur

Considered one of Hollywood’s best biblical epics, 1959’s Ben Hur stars Charlton Heston as a young
Jewish prince who encounters Jesus Christ.

 Space monkey

In May 1959, monkeys called Able and Baker became the first primates to survive the journey home
after being launched into space by the United States.

 Mafia

In 1959 La Cosa Nostra mob boss Vito Genovese was convicted of conspiracy to violate narcotics laws
and sentenced to 15 years in prison—from which setting Genovese would continue to operate the
organized crime group via his vast network of contacts.

 Hula hoops

Variations of the hula hoop have existed since ancient times, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that the toy
was marketed in plastic (then a brand-new material). An estimated 100 million hula hoops were sold
in the United States alone between 1958 and 1960.

 Castro

Fidel Castro served as the political leader of Cuba from 1959, after he led a revolution, until 2008,
transforming his country into the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere.

 Edsel is a no-go
Ford’s Edsel automobile (1958–60) was named for Henry Ford’s son (and former Ford Motor
Company president) Edsel—at the time, a not-uncommon name among American men. After the new
car flopped commercially, “Edsel” disappeared from baby name books for good. Apparently, no one
wanted their child associated with a vehicle that Time magazine described as looking “like a midwife’s
view of labor and delivery.”

 U-2

Billy Joel wasn’t talking about the band. In 1960 an American U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot
down over the Soviet Union, with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev calling the flight an “aggressive
act” by the U.S. When the U.S. claimed that the flight hadn’t been authorized—even though its
pilot, Francis Gary Powers, admitted to working for the CIA—the incident caused the collapse of a
Parisian summit conference between the U.S., the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France.

 Syngman Rhee

Syngman Rhee was the first president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), serving from 1948 to
1960. He spent much of his life working for Korean independence and, by the late 1940s, its
reunification; his policies as president were authoritarian, and he eventually died in exile in the United
States.

 Payola

Revealed by a 1959 federal investigation, the “payola” scandal saw radio deejays taking bribes to
promote certain songs and records.

 Kennedy

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 to 1963.

 Chubby Checker

Though the creator of the dance craze “The Twist” (1959) was in reality the rhythm-and-blues singer-
songwriter Hank Ballard, American Bandstand regular Chubby Checker is credited with popularizing
the dance among white and Black audiences.

 Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful thriller Psycho, released in 1960, received four Academy Award
nominations and a spot in the classic film canon. The film’s eerie antagonist, played by Anthony
Perkins, was loosely based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein.

 Belgians in the Congo

In 1960 the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained independence from Belgium, the country which,
under Leopold II, was responsible for widespread atrocities there beginning in the 1880s.

 Hemingway
With novels such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929), Ernest
Hemingway became a major voice of the Lost Generation, a group of American writers disillusioned
with life after World War I. He committed suicide in 1961.

 Eichmann

In 1962 German Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was executed by the State of Israel for his extensive role
in the Holocaust, which included organizing the transport of Jewish residents of Nazi-occupied states
to death camps.

 Stranger in a Strange Land

Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land follows the challenges a human raised on
Mars faces while trying to relate to customs on Earth. An icon of 1960s counterculture, the book won
the Hugo Award for best novel in 1962.

 Dylan

Sometimes called the Shakespeare of his generation by his fans, Bob Dylan sold tens of millions of folk
and rock albums in the 1960s alone and became a voice for the burgeoning counterculture.

 Berlin

From 1961 to 1989 the Berlin Wall separated West Berlin, a democratic state allied with the West,
from East Berlin, a communist state aligned with the Soviet Union.

 Bay of Pigs invasion

The CIA had planned an invasion of Cuba since 1960, shortly after Fidel Castro came to power and
transformed Cuba into a communist state. They executed the plan in 1961, when three U.S. airplanes
piloted by Cubans bombed Cuban air bases and, two days later, landed at several sites. But the small
force of the Bay of Pigs invasion—named for the principal landing location on Cuba’s south-central
coast—contained nothing close to the strength of Castro’s troops. The CIA-directed agents were
captured, and the invasion failed.

 Lawrence of Arabia

Released in 1962, the historical epic Lawrence of Arabia became an almost-instant classic and made its
relatively unknown lead actor Peter O’Toole into a major star.

 British Beatlemania

The intense fandom that grew around the British rock group the Beatles was called Beatlemania: the
first collective frenzy around a band enabled by mass media.

 Ole Miss

When a court battle determined that U.S. Air Force veteran James Meredith had been repeatedly
denied entrance to the University of Mississippi only because he was Black, the school was forced to
admit him; in anticipation of racist mob violence, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy called in
federal protection in 1962 so that Meredith could safely register for classes.
  John Glenn

In 1962 John Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit Earth, completing three orbits. (The
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had completed a single orbit in 1961, making him the first person in
space.)

 Liston beats Patterson

American boxer Sonny Liston became the world heavyweight champion on September 25, 1962, when
he knocked out Floyd Patterson in the first round of their match.

 Pope Paul

Giovanni Battista Montini was elected pope on June 21, 1963, choosing the name Paul VI. He oversaw
much of the Second Vatican Council, which ran from 1962 through 1965, and his tenure affirmed
the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to birth control and its firm stance on priestly celibacy.

 Malcolm X

The revolutionary civil rights leader Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 while delivering a lecture in
Harlem, New York.

 British politician sex

In 1961 British Secretary of State for War John Profumo began an affair with 19-year-old Christine
Keeler, a dancer with Russian connections. Though Profumo lied to Parliament in 1963, saying that
there was “no impropriety whatsoever” in the couple’s relationship, evidence to the contrary was too
strong to ignore. Ten weeks later Profumo resigned. Keeler, in response to the scandal, posed for a
series of provocative publicity shots—one of which, picturing her nude astride a chair, became one of
the most iconic photographs of the 1960s. The incident spelled the downfall of
Profumo’s Conservative Party: within a year, the Labour Party defeated the Conservatives in a national
election.

 JFK blown away

U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade in
Dallas, Texas.

 Birth control

Griswold v. State of Connecticut (1965) saw the U.S. Supreme Court rule in favor of married persons’
constitutional right to use birth control, striking down laws that made it a crime to use or recommend
contraception in many U.S. states.

 Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh, who was president of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1969, waged the longest—and most
costly—battle against the colonial system of all 20th-century revolutionaries. His death in 1969
damaged chances for an early settlement of tensions between Vietnam and the United States.

 Richard Nixon back again

 Moonshot