1963 (idea)

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!"

John F. Kennedy, speech to the citizens of West Berlin, June 26, 1963.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.

In the year 1963...

• US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated while parading through the streets of Dallas, Texas. All Americans alive at the time will forever after remember where they were that day.
• The "Space Race" continues as Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space aboard the Vostok 6 spacecraft. Meanwhile, the United States successfully launches Syncom, the world's first geosynchronous satellite.
• Charles De Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer sign the Elysée Treaty of Franco-German cooperation, creating the "Franco-German Locomotive" that will lead the drive toward the European Union, but Britain is excluded when De Gaulle vetos the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community.
• Kenya becomes an independent nation with Jomo Kenyatta as its first prime minister.
• Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc publicly immolates himself on a street in Saigon to protest the anti-Buddhist policies of President Ngo Dinh Diem.
• African American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. gives his greatest speech, "I Have a Dream," to an audience over 200,000 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
• The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham, Alabama kills four African-American girls and wounds 22 other people, but instead of achieving its goal of striking fear in civil rights activists, causes a groundswell of public outrage and spurs even greater support for national civil rights legislation.
• In two landmark cases, the United States Supreme Court rules 8 to 1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and The Lord's Prayer in public schools and unanamously decides in Gideon v. Wainwright that defendants unable to afford a lawyer must be provided one free of charge.
• In what is commonly regarded as the beginning of the modern Feminist Movement, Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique, in which she argues that women are victims of a pyschologically destructive belief system that forces them to find fulfillment in their lives exclusively through their relationships with their husbands and children.
• The United States bans American nationals from all trade with or travel to Cuba.
• The Profumo Sex Scandal shocks Britain when married war minister John Dennis Profumo admits to sleeping with a call girl Christine Keeler, who happens to also have been intimate with known Soviet spy Eugene Ivanov. The scandal leads to the resignation of both Profumo and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
• The Beatles arrive in America, realeasing their first US single, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." The less memorable "This Boy" is the B-side.
• The US nuclear submarine USS Thresher sinks 220 miles east of Cape Cod with all 129 hands lost.
• The federal penetentiary at Alcatraz closes down for good.
• The first-ever episode of the British television series Doctor Who is broadcast on the BBC.
• The comic book team of mutant superheroes the X-Men, created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, debut in X-Men #1
• The US Postal service introduces zip codes.
• The Bell System begins offering the first push-button telephones to customers in Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
• New Hampshire establishes the first state lottery in the United States.
• The first use of instant reply during a televised sporting event occurs during CBS's broadcast of the Army-Navy college football game on December 7.
• Pop psychologist W.H. Missildine coins the term "inner child."
• The American Standards Association publishes the first ASCII standard. Horrible text-based "artwork" is now possible.

These people were born in 1963:

• American basketball superstar Michael Jordan.
• Armenian chess legend Garry Kasparov.
• American film director Quentin Tarantino.
• Chinese martial arts champion and film star Jet Li.
• Canadian commedian Mike Myers.
• American commedian Conan O'Brien.
• American actors Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp.
• American baseball players Randy Johnson and Mark McGwire.
• American figure-skating legend Brian Boitano.
• Nigerian basketball great Hakeem Olajuwon.
• American basketball greats Charles Barkley and Karl Malone.
• Fijian golfer Vijay Singh.
• German basketball player Detlef Schrempf.
• American rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot.

These people died in 1963:

• American president John F. Kennedy, mysteriously assassinated.
• Alledged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, himself assassinated by Jack Ruby.
• Pope John XXIII, succeeded by Paul VI.
• President of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem, executed following an army coup.
• Irish writer C.S. Lewis.
• English writer Aldous Huxley.
• American poet Robert Frost.
• American poet Sylvia Plath, of suicide.
• American poet William Carlos Williams.
• American poet Theodore Roethke.
• American baseball legend Rogers Hornsby.
• American country singer Patsy Cline.

These films appeared in 1963:

• Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds
• Charade
• Cleopatra, at $40 million, the most expensive film ever made up to this time.
• From Russia With Love
• The Great Escape
• Disney's The Sword in the Stone

1962 - 1963 - 1964

20th century