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1950s:
1950: World population is approximately 2.5 billion.
21.6 % of American wives work outside the home.
Prepared cake mixes introduced.
Korean War begins.
1951: US Census Bureau buys UNIVAC 1, the first commercial
computer, from the Eckert and Mauchly Computer Company
in Philadelphia.
Temple Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi, allows a
woman to function as rabbi for the first time.
I Love Lucy debuts.
1952: Christine Jorgenson (formerly George Jorgenson)
becomes the first person to publicly acknowledge having
had a sex change operation.
England’s King George the VI dies; Princess Elizabeth
becomes Queen.
TV acknowledges pregnancy for the first time on I Love
Lucy.
Puerto Rico becomes a US Commonwealth.
1953: Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Jacqueline
Cochrane becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier.
Dwight Eisenhower sworn in as president.
1954: Supreme Court rules in favor of school desegregation
in Brown v. Board of Education.
Black families earn approximately 53% of what white families
earn.
1955: Black woman Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat
to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, public bus.
James Dean killed in an automobile accident near Paso
Robles, Texas.
First televised press conference.
1956: President Eisenhower sworn in as president for the
second time.
Copywriter Shirley Polykoff creates the “Does she…
doesn’t she?” campaign for Miss Clairol haircolor.
1957: Jack Kerouac publishes On the Road, giving name
to the “beat” generation.
1958: Women admitted to the British House of Lords for
the first time.
1959: Toy-maker Mattel introduces the Barbie doll.
Vice-president Nixon and Premier Khrushchev engage in
the famed “Kitchen Debate” at a trade fair in
Moscow.
Alaska and Hawaii become states.
Castro takes control of Cuba.
Pantyhose introduced.
Metrocal introduced by the Mead Johnson Company; it is
the first of many non-prescription diet products.
Women allowed to preach in the Presbyterian Church for
the first time.
Key themes:
Peace
Prosperity
Family
Patriotism and political solidarity
Consumerism
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1960s:
1960: US Food and Drug Administration approves first contraceptive
pill.
Sirima Bandaranaike elected Prime Minister of Sri Lanka;
she is the world’s first elected female Premier.
30.6 % of American wives work outside the home.
1961: John F. Kennedy sworn in as president.
Berlin wall erected; Cold War era begins.
Alan Shepard, Jr., becomes the first American in space.
US supports the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.
Chubby Checkers introduces the Twist.
1962: Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring, a searing criticism
of American environmental policy.
Levi-Strauss executive Alfred Sanguiretti identifies this
as the “breakout” year for jeans wear.
1963: Martin Luther King, Jr., gives his “I have a
dream” speech to a crowd of 300,000 in front of the
Lincoln Memorial.
Betty Freidan instigates Second-Wave feminist movement with
the publication of The Feminine Mystique.
President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas; Lyndon
Johnson replaces him.
1964: Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, ending legal
discrimination on the basis of race or gender.
US Surgeon General LeRoy Burney declares that smoking causes
heart disease and lung cancer; from now on, cigarette packs
carry warning labels.
Beatles debut in America on the Ed Sullivan show.
President Johnson debuts his “Great Society” reform
program.
1965: President Johnson sworn in for the second time.
Vietnam War begins.
Mary Quant introduces the miniskirt.
Malcolm X assassinated in Manhattan, New York.
Over 90% of Southern black students still in all-black schools.
1966: Indira Gandhi becomes India’s third Prime Minister,
its first female Prime Minister.
1967: “Six Day War” begins between Israel and
its Arab neighbors.
1968: Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis,
Tennessee.
Supreme Court introduces concept of “affirmative action”
in its ruling on Green v. County School Board of New Kent
(Virginia).
1969: Richard Nixon sworn in as president.
American Neil Armstrong is the first man to step foot on
the moon.
Supreme Court’s ruling on Alexander v. Holmes Board
of Education reaffirms the importance of integration by
calling for immediate, rather than incremental, desegregation.
Golda Meir becomes Israel’s fourth Prime Minister,
its first female Prime Minister.
400,000 attend the Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, New
York.
Key themes:
Working to effect concrete political change
Optimism
Youth culture
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1970s:
1970: Floppy disk introduced.
Earth Day celebrated for the first time.
Congressional black caucus established.
Number of women in the American workforce doubles.
President Nixon creates, and Congress approves, the Environmental
Protection Agency.
1971: Voting age lowered from 21 to 18.
1972: Terrorists murder 19 Israeli athletes at the Munich
Olympic Games.
Members of Nixon’s staff break into Democratic party
offices in Washington DC’s Watergate building, looking
for information with which to discredit Nixon’s opponents,
and touching off the Watergate scandal.
Congress passes the Equal Rights Amendment, officially recognizing
women as a minority group (i.e. one that has long been confined
and discriminated against).
1973: President Nixon sworn in as president for the second
time.
Israel defeats Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur War, prompting
the OPEC oil embargo.
In tennis, highly publicized rivalry between self-described
feminist Billy Jean King and self-described male chauvinist
pig Bobby Riggs ends when King defeats Riggs in a match.
Supreme Court rules abortion legal in Roe v. Wade.
American Fashion Critics awards Levi-Strauss Co. with a
special award that recognizes denim jeans as an authentically
American article of clothing.
1974: President Nixon resigns as a result of Watergate scandal;
Gerald Ford replaces him.
Supreme Court’s ruling on Milliken v. Bradley permits
suburban districts to remain segregated at the same time
that the cities they surround are forcefully desegregated.
1975: Vietnam War ends.
Black families earn approximately 62% of what white families
earn.
Saturday Night Live debuts.
1976: America celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Declaration
of Independence.
1977: Jimmy Carter sworn in as president.
Scientists detect a hole in the ozone layer for the first
time.
The movie, Saturday Night Fever, sparks discomania.
1978: Residents of the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagra
Falls, New York, are relocated when it is learned that toxic
waste in their neighborhood has contaminated their ground
water.
Gas prices skyrocket, prompting Americans to trade big cars
for small; as a result, Japanese models rise in popularity.
Louise Brown, world’s first test tube baby, is born
in Lancashire, England.
1979: Ayatollah Khomeini seizes control of Iran after the
Shah leaves the country.
Iranian students take over the American embassy in Tehran
and hold 66 Americans hostage there for the next 444 days.
Ayatollah Khomeini cuts off oil supply to the US.
Black families earn approximately 57% of what white families
earn.
Nuclear plant in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, leaks
radioactive steam.
Key themes:
Women’s movement continues to gain ground, with increasing
numbers of women going to college and working outside the
home
Inflation rises, economy is sluggish
Environmentalism
Race relations stagnate; civil rights progress stalls
Rise of individualism results in this being termed the “me”
decade
Identity based on the self, no longer (as in previous decades)
on the family
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1980s:
1980: Seven Year War begins between Iran and Iraq.
One in three blacks live in poverty while only one in ten
whites do.
1981: Ronald Reagan sworn in as president.
Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first female judge
on the Supreme Court.
AIDS first appears.
MTV debuts.
Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer.
The Federal Communications Commission deregulates TV and
radio broadcasting.
Supreme Court rules that a woman can sue her employer if
she is paid less than a man who does the same work is.
IBM introduces the first personal computer.
1982: First national newspaper, USA Today, debuts; it trades
traditional newspaper format for one with brief stories,
color photos and simplistic graphics.
Maya Lin’s controversial Vietnam Memorial built in
Washington DC.
1983: Sally Ride becomes the first woman in space.
Vanessa Williams becomes the first black woman to be crowned
Miss America (she is stripped of the title a year later
when nude photos of her in Penthouse surface).
First American cellular phone subscription sold.
1984: American athletes sweep the gold at the Los Angeles
summer Olympics.
Mary Lou Retton becomes the first female athlete to appear
in a Wheaties “Breakfast of Champions” television
commercial.
Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale chooses
a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, as his running mate.
Jesse Jackson becomes the first black presidential candidate.
Newsweek pronounces this the “Year of the Yuppie”.
1985: President Reagan sworn in as president for the second
time.
Mikhail Gorbachev becomes president of the Soviet Union.
Nintendo introduced.
Rock Hudson becomes the first major public figure to die
of AIDS.
1986: Iran-Contra scandal breaks.
Challenger space shuttle explodes, killing the six astronauts
and one civilian on board.
Nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, explodes in one
of the worst nuclear accidents in history.
President and Nancy Reagan introduce their “Just Say
No” to drugs campaign
The Oprah Winfrey Show debuts.
1987: Stock market crashes.
World population reaches five billion.
Condom commercials appear on television for the first time.
1 million Americans now subscribe to a cellular phone service.
1988: Scientists begin the Human Genome project.
1989: George Bush sworn in as president.
Berlin Wall torn down.
Thousands of students killed in Tienamen Square protest
in Beijing, China.
One in every four births in the US is now to an unwed mother.
Oil tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground, spilling in excess
of 11 million barrels of oil in Alaska’s Prince William
Sound.
Key themes:
Escaping political issues and crises
Conspicuous consumption
Health and exercise craze
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1990s:
1990: President Bush pronounces Cold War officially over.
Soviet Union dissolved; Boris Yeltsin replaces Gorbachev
as highest Russian official.
1991: Gulf War begins; it ends six weeks later.
1992: 10 million Americans now subscribe to a cellular phone
service.
US imposes sanctions on Yugoslavia.
1993: Bill Clinton sworn in as president.
First American troops sent to the former Yugoslavia.
Janet Reno becomes the first female Attorney General.
76 Branch Dividian cult members die in face-off with FBI
in Waco, Texas.
1994: In retaliation for the Waco disaster, Timothy McVeigh
bombs the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma;
168 people die.
O.J. Simpson charged with, but not convicted for, the murders
of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
1995: 25 million Americans now subscribe to a cellular phone
service.
Dayton Peace Talks lead to peace between Bosnia, Croatia
and Serbia.
1996: British scientists clone Dolly the Sheep.
1997: President Clinton sworn in for the second time.
Madeline Albright becomes the first female American Secretary
of State.
Princess Diana killed in automobile accident.
Federal Government brings anti-trust suit against Microsoft.
First WNBA game played.
1998: Matthew Shepherd murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, for
being openly gay.
Clinton-Lewinsky affair revealed; Clinton is impeached.
1999: John F. Kennedy, Jr., Caroline Bessette Kennedy and
Lauren Bessette die in plane crash.
School massacre in Columbine, Colorado.
Key themes:
Rise of technology
Booming economy
Generations X and Y
Extreme sports supercede gym-oriented fitness
Millennium fever
[back to top]
2000:
2000: Hillary Clinton elected senator for New York State.
2001: George W. Bush sworn in as president.
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