User:Onetwothreeip/Timeline of 1960s counterculture

1909

 * The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in the US. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination". The NAACP was active in the Civil Rights Movement during the counterculture era.

1919

 * Crystal Methamphetamine is first developed in Japan. By the 1960s, "Meth" and other amphetamines are in widespread use as recreational drugs, including within the UK "Mod" and US outlaw motorcycle club subcultures. Later, the phrase "Speed Kills" becomes popular, even within the otherwise substance-friendly larger counterculture.

1920

 * In response to the Palmer Raids, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is founded. In the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, the ACLU is instrumental in defending the rights of counterculture activists with regard to speech, assembly, and other protected activities.

1938

 * Dr. Albert Hofmann identifies, synthesizes, and tests LSD in his Sandoz laboratory in Basel, Switzerland.

1939–1945

 * World War II is underway in Europe and the Pacific.

1942

 * The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is founded in Chicago.

1944

 * Harry Gibson coins and begins popularizing the term "hipsters" for the "hip" crowd in Harlem, New York.

1945

 * The bombing of Dresden is carried out by the British Royal Air Force in conjunction with the United States Army Air Forces.
 * The first atomic bomb is successfully detonated under the direction of the United States Army near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The world enters the nuclear age; now entire cities can be razed by a single bomb, and the security previously afforded by strong armies and large oceans alone is threatened.
 * Using atomic bombs, the US destroys the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II in the Pacific ends soon after, and much of the world is divided into an Eastern Bloc and a Western Bloc, setting the stage for the Cold War and eventual massive nuclear weapons build-ups by the free US, the communist USSR, and their respective allies. Later, large protests against the nuclear arms race are among the first indications of a rising counterculture.

1946

 * Levittown: A model of post-war desire for quieter, suburban life, and a signifier of the breakdown of the close-knit, urban family (where many generations all lived in cities under one roof), the first mass-produced housing subdivision breaks ground and spreads over former potato and onion farms on Long Island, New York. Thousands of new homes are first rented (then later sold) virtually overnight, and the trend soon spreads nationwide. In the US, both the massive move from cities to the suburbs and the "baby boom" are underway. The new properties reinforce entrenched racial segregation, denying access to those not of the "caucasian" race.

1947

 * Hollywood writers, directors, and performers suspected of communist sympathies become subject to "blacklisting" by the US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
 * The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is established at Indiana University. Ground-breaking books on male and female sexuality follow in 1948 and 1953.
 * Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American player in Major League Baseball.
 * The National Security Act of 1947: US defense and intelligence organizations are reorganized. The United States Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are created, and a substantial part of US Federal government activity is permanently cloaked under secrecy.

1948

 * Jack Kerouac first uses the term "Beat Generation" in reference to the nascent intellectual culture that would ultimately give way to the so-called counterculture.
 * Shelley v. Kraemer: The enforcement by states of deed restrictions prohibiting the transfer of real estate to non-Caucasians is deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, clearing the way for home ownership by Blacks and Jews in previously segregated communities.

1949

 * Inexpensive personal transportation – the Volkswagen Beetle arrives in the US. By 1970, over 4 million sold, when annual US sales top out at 570,000. The "Bug" and VW "Bus" (introduced in 1950) later become associated with the hippie and counterculture eras.
 * George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) is published. The dystopian novel presents the super-state of Oceania, dominated by an omnipresent totalitarian government underpinned by pervasive overt and covert surveillance of citizens, proscribed language and rigid societal institutions. The book establishes the concept of "Orwellian" societies in the public imagination, framing government institutions as tools of manipulation via draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth (doublethink), and manipulation of the past, including the "unperson" — a person whose past existence is expunged from public record and memory.
 * The USSR detonates its first atomic bomb, developed thru the aid of atomic spies from the US, UK, and Canada. The Cold War commences in earnest.
 * Communist China: After a long and bloody civil war, Party Chairman Mao Zedong establishes the People's Republic of China. Mao rules China until his death in 1976. In the late 1960s, carrying Mao's Little Red Book is fashionable in the west.

1950

 * Korean War: Communist forces of North Korea invade western ally South Korea with support from the People's Republic of China and the USSR. The US, UK, and other UN nations respond and hold back the incursion. In 1953 the war ends where it began, with each side faced-off at the 38th parallel.
 * The first US military advisors arrive in South Vietnam.

1951

 * The True Believer: "Longshoreman-philosopher" Eric Hoffer's Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is published.

1952

 * Mad magazine debuts as a comic book before switching to standard magazine format in 1955, satirizing both American culture and later counterculture alike.
 * The National Security Agency is established, bringing most civilian US communications and technical intelligence collection under one roof. Intended as a tool against foreign enemies, the later use of the agency's extensive resources by bureaucrats and politicians against domestic, anti-war counterculture radicals is revealed and debated in congress in the 1970s.
 * Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison's highly acclaimed novel of Black life in 20th century America is published.
 * Go: John Clellon Holmes' novel is published and is later considered to be the first book depicting the Beat Generation.

1953

 * Project MKULTRA, the CIA's behavior control research program which grew to include testing LSD on both volunteer and unsuspecting subjects into the 1960s, commences.
 * The "doors of perception" open for author Aldous Huxley as he takes mescaline for the first time. Humphrey Osmond guides the trip, and later correspondence between the two produces the term psychedelic.
 * Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing Prison, New York, after conviction on espionage charges for their role in the communist spy ring which gave the USSR the atomic bomb and thereby initiated the nuclear arms race.
 * The democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran is overthrown by intelligence operatives of the UK and US. The Shah of Iran is reinstalled as absolute monarch. The success of the operation begins a pattern of CIA-fomented coups and assassinations in the global fight against expansion of the political, economic, and military interests of the USSR, ultimately culminating in the fiasco of US combat involvement in Vietnam.
 * Marilyn Monroe centerfold: the first issue of Playboy magazine appears. Publisher Hugh Hefner becomes an early player in the coming sexual revolution.

1954

 * On the floor of the US Senate, Senator John F. Kennedy opines that to "pour money, material, and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile and self-destructive". After his election to the presidency in 1960, Kennedy escalates US involvement in the conflict that becomes the Vietnam War.
 * The Geneva Accords grant independence to French Indochina, establishing Vietnam as a unified, independent nation in name only. The US is not a signatory to the treaty. The French are officially out of Southeast Asia, leaving behind a raging civil war.
 * Brown vs. Board of Education: The US Supreme Court rules unanimously that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The doctrine of "Separate but Equal" as a moral or legal pretext for segregation is no longer enforceable by governments, and true racial integration begins in schools in the southern US.

1955

 * SEATO: The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization is formally activated, nominally obligating the US to intervene as part of collective action in case of military conflagration in the region. The non-binding SEATO commitment, however, is only invoked as justification for involvement in Vietnam by future President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) after later escalation of hostilities there proves unpopular.
 * "Rock Around the Clock": Bill Haley's version of the keystone song begins an eight-week run at number 1 on the Billboard charts. With deep roots in black jazz, blues, and R&B, as well as gospel and country music, the rock & roll era begins.
 * Emmett Till murder: A black teen is brutally slain in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a white woman. The incident becomes a pivotal event in the growing civil rights movement after Till's mother allows the boy's mutilated body to be viewed, and after two white men (who later confess to the murder) are acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury. In 2017, Till's apparently coerced female accuser recanted key testimony she gave under oath.
 * UK politician Baron Mayhew experiences the psychedelic effects of mescaline "guided" by Humphry Osmond. The event is filmed for broadcast by the BBC, but never airs.
 * James Dean: The star of Rebel without a Cause and early icon of the disaffected generation dies in a sports car crash at age 24 at Cholame, California.
 * October 7: Six Gallery Reading: Beat poet Allen Ginsberg first performs his soon-to-be scandalous Howl.
 * 'The Village Voice'': One of the earliest and most enduring alternative newspapers is launched by Ed Fancher, Dan Wolf, John Wilcock and Norman Mailer in New York City. The paper ceased publication in 2018, still hoping to digitize its vast and unique archive.
 * Activist Rosa Parks refuses to cede her seat on a public bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, and is arrested. A successful bus boycott by local blacks led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ensues, while the ACLU takes on and wins Parks' legal case. After over a year of black boycott, the US Supreme Court orders the desegregation of Montgomery's bus system.

1956

 * The FBI's COINTELPRO domestic counterintelligence program begins. The surveillance effort is initially directed against stateside communist activities, but grows to include illegal invasions of privacy targeting civil rights and anti-war activists.

1957

 * Masters and Johnson begin their scientific research into human sexual responses. This research at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis is the first of many widely read books.
 * The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization, is formed in Atlanta, Georgia.
 * On the Road: a somewhat tamed version of Jack Kerouac's seminal novel of the Beat Generation is published.
 * US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order sending Federal troops to maintain peace and order during the racial integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
 * The western world is shocked and fearful when the USSR launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial space satellite. The ability to launch a satellite equates to the ability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, thereby directly threatening much of the world with long-range missile attack for the first time. Confidence is further shaken in December, when Vanguard, the rushed US attempt to equal Sputnik, explodes on the launchpad.
 * Albert Schweitzer, Coretta Scott King, and Benjamin Spock post an ad in The New York Times calling for an end to the nuclear arms race. SANE is later formed.

1958

 * The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is inaugurated in London, introducing the "Peace symbol" from the letters CND.
 * Elvis Presley is inducted into the US Army. Presley serves his two years honorably.
 * Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle coins the term beatnik to refer to aficionados of the Beat Generation.
 * Over the Easter weekend, in London's Trafalgar Square, thousands protest in the first major Aldermaston march, organised by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and supported by CND. The protests are accompanied by a festival with jazz and skiffle bands.
 * SANE claims 25,000 members in 130 chapters.
 * The New Left SLATE student political party is formed at the University of California, Berkeley.
 * Eisenhower is the first US president to ask a joint session of Congress to pass the long-debated Equal Rights Amendment.
 * The Affluent Society: Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith's highly influential work is published.

1959

 * Revolutionary forces under the leadership of Fidel Castro overthrow the corrupt Batista government in Cuba. Fifty years of repressive rule by the future Soviet ally ensue before Castro relinquishes control to his brother.
 * The Day the Music Died: Early rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper are killed along with the pilot of a small plane in bad weather near Clear Lake, IA. Guitarist Tommy Allsup "loses" his seat after a coin-flip with Valens, and Holly's bass player (and future country music legend) Waylon Jennings also misses the doomed flight when he allows the ill "Bopper" to take his seat. In 1972, Don McLean's "American Pie" is released, and is later called "the accessible farewell to the Fifties and Sixties."
 * Superman is dead?: Front-page headlines allege that actor George Reeves' shooting death is a suicide, shocking a generation of youngsters mourning the first major superhero of comic books and television. Reeves' death is later considered by many to be a murder.
 * Beatnik goes TV: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis debuts, featuring Bob Denver as beat character Maynard G. Krebs.
 * TV on trial: The short-lived sanctity of the new medium of television is destroyed when the broad quiz show scandal culminates with a confession before congress of rigging and breach of trust by a Columbia University professor, Charles Van Doren, from an exceptional academic family.
 * How to Speak Hip: Improv pioneers Del Close and John Brent's satirical comedy record is released and formalizes hip parlance for a generation.

1970

 * President Nixon establishes the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency is activated in December 1970.
 * January: Voting age in Britain lowered from 21 to 18.
 * January : Musician, hippie, and philanthropic margarine heir Michael J. Brody, Jr. announces he will give away his fortune, which he reports to be $25–50 million.
 * January: Set Up, Like a Bowling Pin: 19 people including members of the Grateful Dead and Owsley Stanley are busted for drugs in New Orleans. The episode makes the cover of Rolling Stone in March, and is later mentioned in the Dead song "Truckin' ".
 * February: Weather Underground bombings and arsons in US states of NY, CA, WA, MD, & MI.
 * February: Chicago 7 verdicts are handed down: two are exonerated, five are soon sentenced for "crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot", but all the convictions and sentences are later reversed.
 * February: Students riot at University of California-Santa Barbara and SUNY Buffalo, NY.
 * March: Greenwich Village townhouse explosion: Three members of the Weather Underground are killed while assembling a bomb in New York City.
 * March: The documentary film Woodstock is released.
 * Late March: Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green and bandmate Danny Kirwan get waylaid at a bizarre party at the Highfisch-Kommune cult/commune, Munich. After apparently taking LSD, both Green and Kirwan thereafter reportedly suffer from lifelong mental illness.
 * April: Jerry Rubin guest appears the Phil Donahue Show and lambastes Donahue for his conservative appearance.
 * April: California Governor Ronald Reagan says: "If it takes a blood bath, let's get it over with."
 * April: X-Rated Midnight Cowboy wins three Oscars including Best Picture in Hollywood.
 * April: Paul McCartney, when promoting his first solo album, announces that the Beatles have disbanded.
 * April: 100,000 gather on Boston Common to protest the Vietnam War; about 500 radicals attempt to seize microphone, disrupting meeting.
 * April: Earth Day: The first event recognizing the precarious environmental state of planet earth is held.
 * April: President Nixon reveals secret US military operations in Cambodia.
 * May : 13,000 people take part in peaceful demonstrations at Yale University in support of defendants in the New Haven Black Panther trials.
 * May: Radicals among the students at Kent State University protesting the spread of the war into Cambodia burn the ROTC building to the ground. Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes calls in the National Guard at the request of Kent's Mayor.
 * May: In what is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the stateside anti-war protest movement, poorly trained soldiers of the Ohio National Guard are set loose into confrontation with – and open fire on – unarmed students at Kent State University leaving four dead and nine wounded, including Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed.
 * May: Holding Together: A benefit for Timothy Leary is held at the Village Gate in NYC. Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter perform.
 * May: The International Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty takes effect.
 * May: Student Strike of 1970: Many colleges across the US shut down in protest of the war and the Kent State events.
 * May: Hard Hat Riot: Construction workers confront anti-war demonstrators, Wall St., New York City. They march again May 11. On May 20, 100,000 construction workers and longshoremen demonstrate in favor of administration war policy at New York City Hall.
 * May: Attempting to "rescue" his child from what he believes to be a hippie commune, father Arville Garland murders his daughter Sandra and three others as they sleep in Detroit. The events are eerily similar to those depicted in the hippie-bashing film Joe, which was filmed prior to – but released after – the murders.
 * May: 100,000 rally against war in Washington, DC. At 4:15am, President Nixon defies Secret Service security, and leaves the White House to meet and chat with surprised protesters camping out at the Lincoln Memorial.
 * May: Jackson State killings: Police kill two and injure 11 during violent student demonstrations at Jackson State College, MS. This is two days after six African-American men were fatally shot in the back for violating curfew in Augusta by the Georgia National Guard.
 * May: Student riot at Fresno State University.
 * May: 5,000 National Guard troops occupy Ohio State University following violence.
 * June: Daniel Berrigan is arrested by the FBI for kidnapping/bombing conspiracy.
 * June: Major League Baseball pitcher Dock Ellis takes LSD on what he mistakenly believes is an off day, and throws a no-hitter. Ellis later quits drugs, becomes a recovery counselor, and expresses regret over drug abuse during his playing career.
 * June: President Nixon appoints the President's Commission on Campus Unrest. The report issued in September finds a direct correlation between the unrest and the level of US military involvement in Indochina.
 * June: The US Supreme Court confirms conscientious objector protection on moral grounds.
 * June: The US voting age is lowered to 18. This is soon challenged and overturned in the Supreme Court, leading to the swift adoption of the 26th Amendment on June 1, 1971 guaranteeing suffrage at 18.
 * June : Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, Shepton Mallet, Somerset, UK, featuring Hot Tuna, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and many more.
 * July: Huston Plan: A broad, cross-agency scheme for illegal domestic surveillance of anti-war figures is concocted by a White House staffer, and accepted but then quickly quashed by President Nixon. Elements of the plan were, however, allegedly implemented in any event.
 * August: Riot police evacuate Disneyland in Anaheim, CA after a few hundred Yippies stage a protest.
 * August: Communist activist Angela Davis appears on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list after a firearm purchased in her name is linked to a murder plot involving a judge.
 * August: The Sterling Hall Bombing at the University of Wisconsin in Madison by anti-war activists kills physics researcher Robert Fassnacht. Four others are severely injured, and millions of dollars in damages occur.
 * August: Women's Strike for Equality: 50 years after US women's suffrage, 20,000 celebrate and march in New York City, demanding true equality for women in American life.
 * August: 600,000+ attend Third Isle of Wight Festival. Over fifty acts including The Who, Hendrix, Miles Davis, The Doors, Ten Years After, ELP, Joni Mitchell, and Jethro Tull.
 * August: Rioting and violence erupts at Chicano Moratorium anti-war rally in Los Angeles; reporter Rubén Salazar is killed by a tear gas shell.
 * September: Jesus Christ Superstar, the Christian Rock Opera, debuts as an album. It later becomes a smash on Broadway and on film.
 * September: Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson, acclaimed musician and co-founder of Canned Heat, dies of a prescription barbiturate overdose at Topanga Canyon, CA, at age 27.
 * September: Timothy Leary escapes prison with help from the Weather Underground, and joins Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers.
 * September: London: Apolitical hard rock act Led Zeppelin end the Beatles' 8-year run as Melody Maker's world #1 group of the year.
 * September: Influential musician Jimi Hendrix dies from complications of a probable drug overdose at age 27 in London.
 * September: Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival, the first ever Glastonbury Festival, features T-Rex and is attended by 1,500 people.
 * October: The Female Eunuch: Germaine Greer's pro-feminist bestseller is published.
 * October: Keith Stroup founds NORML, a group working to end marijuana prohibition, in Washington, DC.
 * October: Janis Joplin, rock's first solo female superstar, dies as the result of an apparent accidental heroin overdose at age 27 in Los Angeles.
 * October: Political activist Angela Davis is arrested on kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy charges.
 * October: Doonesbury debuts as a syndicated comic strip, acknowledges the counterculture, and continues to chronicle events into the 21st century.
 * October: President Nixon is pelted with eggs by an unfriendly crowd of 2000 after giving a speech in San Jose, CA.
 * November: Jerry Rubin appears live on The David Frost Show and tries to pass a joint to the talkshow host, the signal for Yippies in the audience to rush the stage and protest.
 * December: The Maysles Brothers release their film documentary of Altamont: Gimme Shelter.
 * December: Elvis Presley arrives unannounced at the White House. The King meets and is photographed with President Nixon. They discuss patriotism, hippies, and the war on drugs.
 * December: Laguna Beach Christmas Happening: Thousands gather for an extended hippie festival, featuring an airdrop of hundreds of Christmas cards, each containing a dose of "Orange Sunshine" LSD courtesy of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, or the "Hippie Mafia," an acid-manufacturing and hash-smuggling organization bent on "psychedelic revolution."
 * December: Paul McCartney sues to dissolve the Beatles.
 * The violent Black Liberation Army is formed in the US. A series of bombings, murders, robberies, prison breaks, and an airline hijacking ensue before the group fades from view in the early 1980s.

1971

 * January: The ban on cigarette advertising on US TV and radio takes effect.
 * January: Styled after the UK TV hit Till Death Us Do Part, the long-running US smash All in the Family debuts with Rob Reiner as Michael Stivic, the counterculture's college-educated answer to the working-class Archie Bunker.
 * January: Police fire on a peace march in Los Angeles, killing one.
 * February: A military induction center in Oakland, CA is bombed.
 * February: Rioting in Wilmington, NC leaves 2 dead.
 * February: An induction center in Atlanta, GA is bombed.
 * February: The UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed in Vienna, with the intention of controlling psychoactive drugs such as amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics at the international level.
 * March: The US Capitol building is bombed by war protesters; no injuries, but extensive damage results.
 * March: The FCC says that it can penalize radio stations for playing music that seems to glorify or promote illegal drug usage.
 * March: The Fight of the Century: Conscientious Objector and counterculture hero Muhammad Ali loses to default symbol of the pro-war right Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, NYC, in what is widely considered to be the greatest heavyweight fight in boxing history.
 * March: Rioting at University of Puerto Rico leaves 3 dead.
 * April: Vietnam veterans protest against the war at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, throw their medals on the steps, and testify to US war crimes.
 * April: 500,000 protesters rally at US Capitol to petition for an end to the war; 200,000 rally against the war in San Francisco.
 * May Over 12,000 anti-war protesters are arrested on the third day of the 1971 May Day Protests in Washington, DC.
 * May: Attorney General John N. Mitchell compares the anti-war protesters to Nazis, and on May 13, calls them Communists.
 * May: The wedding of Mick Jagger and Nicaraguan beauty Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias is celebrated by hippies and jet-setters alike, but is marred by a media circus with fisticuffs at Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera. The couple splits in 1977.
 * May: The play Godspell opens in New York, depicting Jesus and his disciples in a contemporary, countercultural milieu.
 * May 21: Marvin Gaye releases the socially conscious album What's Going On.
 * May: US military personnel in London petition at US Embassy against the Vietnam War.
 * June: Pentagon Papers: The New York Times publishes the first excerpt of illegally leaked secret US military documents detailing US intervention in Indochina since 1945. A Federal Court injunction on June 15 temporarily stops the releases.
 * June: The Washington Post publishes excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, halted by court order the following day.
 * June : 'Glastonbury Fayre', the second Glastonbury Festival, features David Bowie, Traffic, Fairport Convention, and the first incarnation of the "Pyramid Stage".
 * June: The Boston Globe publishes Pentagon Papers excerpts; this is halted by injunction on the 23rd and the newspapers are impounded.
 * June: Muhammad Ali's conviction for draft resistance is overturned by the US Supreme Court.
 * June: President Nixon releases all 47 volumes of Pentagon Papers to Congress.
 * June: Supreme Court rules 6–3 that newspapers have a right to publish the Pentagon Papers. The Times and Post resume publication the following day.
 * July: Jim Morrison, founding member of The Doors, dies of a probable heroin overdose at age 27 in Paris.
 * July: Two-Lane Blacktop: The cult classic starring Dennis Wilson and James Taylor premieres.
 * August: Concert for Bangladesh: George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, and friends including Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Billy Preston and Bob Dylan, stage a landmark charity event in New York City. Popular albums and a film follow, and the shows become a model for huge rock benefits such as Live Aid.
 * August: Attorney General Mitchell announces there will be no Federal investigation of the 1970 Kent State shootings.
 * August: Cheech & Chong's eponymous first album is released.
 * September: Burglars operating under the direction of White House officials break into the office of Daniel Ellsburg's psychiatrist in a botched attempt to find files to discredit the Pentagon Papers leaker.
 * September 9: Attica: Prisoners take control, hold hostages, and riot over rights and living conditions at Attica State Prison, NY. 39 die (including 10 corrections officers) before most prisoner demands are met and order is restored.
 * September: Greenpeace is founded in Vancouver, BC and soon becomes the most prominent, and most controversial, international activist environmental organization.
 * October: est, the controversial self-improvement training program holds its first conference in San Francisco.
 * October: Three FBI informants reveal on PBS that they were paid to infiltrate anti-war groups and instigate them to commit violent acts which could be prosecuted.
 * October: Rioting in Memphis leaves one dead.
 * October: Guitar phenomenon Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band is killed in a motorcycle accident in Macon, GA at age 24. Allman bassist Berry Oakley also dies in a bike crash only blocks away the following year.
 * November: Berkeley, CA City Council votes to provide sanctuary to all military deserters.
 * November: Ringo Starr and Keith Moon co-star with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in Zappa's "surrealistic documentary" 200 Motels.
 * November: Socialite, early supermodel, and Andy Warhol "Superstar" Edie Sedgwick dies at 28 after an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates, Santa Barbara, CA.
 * November: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson's drug-drenched indictment of 1960s counterculture, is published in Rolling Stone in 2 parts.
 * December: Smoke on the Water: Rockers Deep Purple are disrupted in the process of recording Machine Head when the hall they intend to use for recording is burned down by a fan during a Frank Zappa concert, Montreux, Switzerland.
 * December: John Sinclair Freedom Rally: John Lennon and other notables including Stevie Wonder and Bob Seger perform, and Bobby Seale, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Rennie Davis, Ed Sanders and others speak at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor to protest the treatment of Sinclair, who gave two pot joints to an undercover cop and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
 * December 26–28: 15 Vietnam veterans occupy the Statue of Liberty to protest the war.
 * December 28: Anti-war veterans attempt takeover of Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. 80 are arrested.
 * December 29: Boys in the Sand, a milestone American gay pornographic film, presented at the beginnings of the Golden Age of Porn, premiers at the 55th Street Playhouse, NYC. Boys in the Sand was the first such film to be reviewed by Variety Magazine, and one of the earliest porn films, after 1969's Blue Movie   by Andy Warhol, to gain mainstream validity.
 * December: Feminism comes of age: Gloria Steinem's Ms. Magazine is first published as an insert in New York Magazine. The first standalone issue arrives the following month.
 * Stephen Gaskin establishes "The Farm" hippie commune in Tennessee.
 * Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is published.
 * Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book is published.
 * The Anarchist Cookbook is published.
 * Our Bodies, Ourselves is published.
 * Rainbow Bridge, Chuck Wein's film depicting the counterculture on Maui, and featuring the second-to-last live performance by Jimi Hendrix, is released.

1972

 * February: The Needle and the Damage Done: Neil Young releases a moving musical testimonial of friends lost to deadly narcotics during the era. Growth of heroin use flattens out in the 1970s, but the drug is considered "hip" and use explodes again within unindoctrinated generations in the 1990s and beyond.
 * March: The Nixon administration begins deportation proceedings against John Lennon, on the pretext of his 1968 hashish charge in London.
 * March: The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, appointed by President Nixon, finds "little danger" in cannabis, recommending abolition of all criminal penalties for possession.
 * April: The first Hash Bash is held on the campus of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
 * April: Facing heavy ground losses, US forces resume the bombing of Northern Vietnam.
 * April: Students at University of Maryland protesting the bombing battle with police and National Guard are sent in.
 * April: Large anti-war marches in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
 * May: US FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dies at 77 after nearly 50 years of virtually unchallenged control over the principal federal law enforcement agency.
 * May: Wallace Shot: Disavowed segregationist and Alabama Governor George Wallace is shot and paralyzed at a presidential primary campaign event in Laurel, MD.
 * May: Weather Underground bomb at the Pentagon causes damage but no injuries.
 * May: 15,000 demonstrate in Washington against the war.
 * Jun: Angela Davis is acquitted on all counts in her weapons trial.
 * June: John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band releases the politically charged double album Some Time in New York City.
 * June: The Watergate burglars are arrested in Washington, DC.
 * June: U.S. public schools can no longer require girls to wear dresses and must allow them to wear pants, with the Education Amendments of 1972.
 * July: Actress Jane Fonda visits North Vietnam. Fonda's return incites outrage when a photograph of her seated on an enemy anti-aircraft gun is published, and she insists that POWs held captive have not been tortured or brainwashed by the communists. Fonda continues to apologize for aspects the episode.
 * July: The first Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes is held over 4 days in Colorado, US.
 * October: October Surprise?: US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger tells a White House press conference that "we believe that peace is at hand."
 * November: About 500 protesters from the American Indian Movement take over the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington.
 * November7: Republican Richard Nixon is re-elected in a landslide over progressive Democratic Senator George McGovern.
 * November: Police kill 2 students during campus rioting at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
 * November 21: A Federal Appeals Court overturns the conviction of the "Chicago 7" members.
 * December 18–29: US Operation Linebacker II becomes most intensive bombing campaign of the war.
 * The Joy of Sex: Unthinkable a decade earlier, the widely read sex manual for the liberated 1970s is published and openly displayed in mainstream bookstores.
 * Michael X, a self-styled black revolutionary and civil rights activist in 1960s London, is convicted of murder. He is executed by hanging in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in 1975.

1973

 * January: Bangladeshis burn down the US Information Service in Dacca in protest of the bombing of North Vietnam.
 * January: Aerial bombing of North Vietnam resumes after a 36-hour New Year's truce.
 * January: Forty neutral member nations of the UN formally protest the US bombing campaign.
 * January: Canada's Parliament votes unanimously to condemn US bombing actions and calls for them to cease.
 * January: Anti-war demonstrators attack US consulate in Lyons, France, and burn down the library of America House in Frankfurt, West Germany.
 * January: Anti-war protesters occupy US consulate in Amsterdam.
 * January: President Nixon suspends the bombing, citing progress in the Peace talks with Hanoi. West German Chancellor Willy Brandt warns Nixon that US relations with Western Europe are at risk.
 * January: Former US President Lyndon B. Johnson dies at 64 after a heart attack at his Texas ranch.
 * January 22: The US Supreme Court rules on Roe v. Wade, effectively legalizing abortion.
 * January: US combat military involvement in Vietnam ends with a ceasefire, and commencement of withdrawal as called for under the Paris Peace Accords.
 * February–May: Wounded Knee incident: Native American activists occupy the town of Wounded Knee, SD; 2 protesters and 1 US Marshal are killed during a lengthy standoff.
 * March: The first military draftees who are not subsequently called to service are selected, unceremoniously ending the Vietnam era of conscription in the US.
 * March: Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, a founding member of the Grateful Dead, dies of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at age 27 in Corte Madera, CA.
 * March: War Ends: President Nixon announces that the last US combat troops have left Vietnam as US POWs have been released.
 * May: The Senate Watergate Committee begins televised hearings on the ever-growing Watergate scandal implicating the President for gross abuses of power.
 * July: The Drug Enforcement Administration supplants the BNDD.
 * July: John Paul Getty III, 16, grandson of miserly oil billionaire and world's richest man Jean Paul Getty, is kidnapped for ransom in Rome. The negotiated payment of about $3 million is only made after the junior Getty's ear is excised and mailed back to a newspaper. The youth survives, but becomes a drug addict and stroke victim, and dies in 2011 at 54.
 * July: Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, NY draws 600,000 to see the Grateful Dead, the Band, and the Allman Brothers – the largest such gathering in the US since Woodstock.
 * August: All US military involvement in Indochina conflict officially ends under the Case–Church Amendment.
 * September: In one of the most bizarre series of events of the era, celebrated journeyman country rock musician Gram Parsons dies of a morphine overdose after visiting Joshua Tree National Monument; his body is "stolen" by well-meaning friends attempting to fulfill Parson's funerary wishes and set afire at Joshua Tree. A film account of the misadventures is released in 2003.
 * September: Folk singer-songwriters Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen are killed along with 5 others after their chartered tour plane crashes on takeoff in Louisiana.
 * September: The Battle of the Sexes: In a heavily hyped match promoted as a sports battle between male and female, tennis champs Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs compete at the Astrodome. King defeats Riggs in three straight sets.
 * October: Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns. President Nixon names Congressman Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to replace Agnew on October 12.
 * October: Congress begins to consider articles of impeachment against Nixon.
 * November: Greece: Students at Athens Polytechnic strike against the military junta. Tanks roll the 17th and at least 24 die.
 * November: At a session with 400 AP editors, President Nixon states, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

1974

 * Saddled by a decade of drug-related legal problems, Timothy Leary reportedly becomes an informant for the FBI.
 * January: A Federal judge dismisses charges against 12 members of the Weathermen involved in the October 1969 "Days of Rage".
 * February: Patty Hearst is kidnapped by extremist group the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and joins them, possibly after becoming a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
 * March–April: Short-lived fad of "streaking" is at its height in the US.
 * April: Disco music, following the success of "Love Train" a year earlier, again hits number one on the Billboard charts with "TSOP", a clear sign that the post-"sixties counterculture" era is now at hand. The punk rock subculture also traces its genesis to around this time, with groups like Ramones and Television playing the CBGB club in NYC.
 * May: Five SLA members including their leader are killed fighting police during a standoff in Los Angeles.
 * Summer: First issue of High Times is published.
 * July: Singing star "Mama" Cass Elliot, 32, dies after a heart attack in the London flat of Harry Nilsson. Who drummer Keith Moon, also 32, dies of an overdose of an anti-alcoholism drug in the same home in 1978.
 * August: Facing imminent impeachment, Richard Nixon resigns as President of the United States. Vice President Gerald Ford is sworn in as president on August 9 and declares "our long national nightmare is over."
 * September–December: Police repeatedly quell unrest as desegregation comes to Boston high schools.
 * September: President Ford pardons former president Nixon.
 * September: President Ford offers conditional amnesty to military deserters and evaders of the Vietnam era draft, creating a path for re-entry into the US.
 * December: President Ford invites George Harrison to luncheon at the White House. Peter Frampton visits in 1976.
 * December: The New York Times reports the CIA illegally spied on 10,000 anti-war dissidents under Nixon's presidency.

1975

 * January: Church Committee: The US Senate votes to begin unprecedented investigation into US intelligence activities, including illegal spying on domestic radicals.
 * April: Operation Frequent Wind: The last remaining US military and intelligence personnel escape Saigon as South Vietnam is invaded and annexed by communist forces, in direct violation of the so-called "Peace" Accords.
 * September: US President Ford survives assassination attempts by two women, including a failed attempt by Manson "family" member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, in one month.
 * October: A New York State Supreme Court judge reverses the deportation order against John Lennon, allowing Lennon to remain in the US.
 * October: Saturday Night Live: The counterculture comes of age as George Carlin hosts the first episode of the mainstream TV revue. The long-running series soon features many notable American TV firsts, including open depiction of marijuana use in comedy sketches.

1977

 * President Jimmy Carter unconditionally pardons thousands of Vietnam draft evaders, allowing them to re-enter the US
 * Elvis Presley, a progenitor of the rock era, critic of the counterculture, and biggest selling individual recording artist of all time dies at age 42 in Memphis, Tennessee.