In many ways, the "culture wars" of the twenty-first century began in the sixties. Those 1960s were symbolic of change, creativity, experimentation and the perseverance of human spirit. The final year of the sixties decade was a vastly influential year covering politics, sports, civil rights, music, technology and much more.
Personally, while living in the Metro Seattle Area in 1969, I looked up into the sky and thought I saw a Boeing 707 plane flying very low. After awhile, I realized what I saw was the maiden flight of the Boeing 747 high in the sky. In January 1969, my wife and I had purchased our first house overlooking Lake Sammamish and the Cascade Mountains and on August 18th, 1969 our son John Robert Agno was born in a small hospital in Bellevue, WA.
Here are some of the events that happened in 1969 that you may remember:
Jan 12 - Joe Namath and the New York Jets won Super Bowl III
Jan 20 - Richard Nixon is inaugurated president of the United States
Jan 30 - The Beatles give their final live performance in London
Feb 9 - The Boeing 747 takes its maiden flight
Mar 1 - Mickey Mantle retires from baseball
Mar 3 - The launch of Apollo 9
Mar 30 - Detroit police engage in a gun battle with members of the group New Republic of Africa
Apr 9 - Harvard Student Strike
May 18 - Apollo 10 launches
May 25 - Midnight Cowboy premieres in New York City
June 22 - Cuyahoga River catches on fire
June 11 - True Grit with John Wayne premieres
July 18 - Mary Jo Kopechne perishes in Chappaquiddick incident
July 20 - Man walks on the moon
August 8 - "Helter Skelter": Manson Family murders at the home of Sharon Tate & Roman Polanski
August 15 - Woodstock Music and Art Fair in White Lake, NY
August 20 - Arlo Guthrie Alice's Restaurant premieres
Sept 6 - Lieutenant William Calley formally charged for his role in the My Lai massacre
Sept 8 - Police raid the Black Panther breakfast in Watts, CA
Sept 23 - Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid hits screens in limited release
Sept 26 - The Brady Bunch debuts on ABC
Oct 11 - The Zodiac Killer murders San Francisco taxi driver Paul Stine
Oct 16 - Mets defeat the Orioles to win the World Series
Oct 29 -Computer networks, in any real sense, didn't exist until the ARPANET was built starting in 1969. However, the first email message via the ARPANET network (the forerunner of the Internet) was sent by Ray Tomlinson, an old high school friend of mine, in late 1971.
Nov 10 - Sesame Street debuts on National Educational Television Network
Nov 19 - Apollo 12 lands on the moon's Ocean of Storms
Dec 4 - Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton & Mark Clark are killed during raid by Chicago Police
Dec 24 - Curt Flood declares his intentions to challenge baseball's reserve clause and file as a free agent---(that free agent act kicked off the move toward high salaries for talented professional sports players and corporate executives that we recognize today)
Source: Rob Kirkpatrick: 1969: The Year Everything Changed