3 January – Battle Ap Bac in Vietnam is the first major defeat for South Vietnamese and American forces against the Communist Viet Cong, leading to 200 Vietnamese army casualties and the shooting down of five US helicopters.
7 January – US first-class postage raised from four to five cents.
11 January – The Beatles release Please Please Me.
14 January – Governor of Alabama George Wallace is sworn in and pledges ‘segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation for ever.’
20 March – First exhibition of Pop Art in New York City featuring Andy Warhol
20 March – General Harkins predicts that the war in Vietnam will be over by the end of the year. He is wrong by twelve years.
21 March – The infamous Alcatraz penitentiary is closed and the island reclaimed by Native Americans.
2 April – USSR launches Luna 4, missing the Moon by 8,500 km.
9 April – British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill becomes honorary US citizen.
10 April – US tests nuclear bomb at Nevada.
16 April – ‘Bad Friday’ Coral Gardens Massacre in Jamaica in which hundreds of innocent Rastafarians lose their lives.
12 April – Birmingham, Alabama, police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators.
16 April – Martin Luther King Jr is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham. He writes his seminal ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’, arguing that we have a duty to disobey unjust laws.
11 May – Racial bomb attacks in Birmingham. The Klan call it Bombingham.
12 May – Commissioner of Public Safety ‘Bull’ Connor uses fire hoses, police dogs and violence on Black demonstrators during televized civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama.
16 May – US Army instructs its soldiers to ‘emphasize the positive aspects of your activities’ to the media and to ‘avoid gratuitous criticism’.
10 June – John F. Kennedy signs law for equal pay for equal work for men and women.
11 June – JFK says it is ‘time to act’ against segregation.
12 June – Assassination of Medgar Evers by ex-KKK member. Evers was an African-American civil rights activist and member of the Association for Advancement of Colored People.
18 June – 3,000 Black people boycott Boston public schools.
19 June – Twenty-six-year-old Valentina Tereshkova becomes first woman in space.
24 June – First demonstration of video recorder at BBC Studios in London.
26 June – President Kennedy visits West Berlin and gives famous ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (I am a Berliner) speech.
1 July – The ‘fab four’ Beatles record She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
1 July – First ZIP codes used in America.
28 August – The March on Washington. 250,000 demonstrate for equal rights, an end to racial segregation and the Jim Crow laws in the South. The time limit for speeches is four minutes, but Martin Luther King Jr clocks up 16 minutes with his seminal ‘I have a dream’ speech at Lincoln Memorial. Many pass out from heat exhaustion and 35 Red Cross stations treat 1,335 people. Just one person, New Yorker Charles Schreiber, dies from a heart attack. The number of toilets at the march is a big concern.
The following year, on 14 October, King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in combating racial inequality. He has many enemies amongst White supremacists and is murdered in 1968.
10 September – First twenty Black students enter public schools in Alabama.
15 September – Four young girls attending Sunday school are murdered by the Ku Klux Klan when dynamite explodes at the 16th Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings in Birmingham, Alabama. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more Black youths. Four Klansmen – Bobby Cherry, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Robert Chambliss – were implicated. Chambliss, known as ‘Dynamite Bob’ was actually seen planting the bomb and arrested later that day. An all-White jury found him guilty of a minor charge of possessing dynamite without a permit, for which he received a six-month jail term and a hundred-dollar fine. It was not until 1977 that Chambliss was re-arrested and convicted of murder. He died in prison in 1985.
27 September – US population reaches 190,000,000.
1 October – 16,752 US military personnel now stationed in Vietnam.
5 October – In Saigon, Vietnam, a meditating Buddhist monk sets himself alight in protest against oppression by the government of President Diem. The shocking photograph appears on the front page of nearly every newspaper in the world, increasing pressure on the Kennedy administration to do something about Diem.
19 October – Beatles record I Want to Hold Your Hand and the term ‘Beatlemania’ is coined. A few years later the KKK would burn their records in disgust.
1 November – In Vietnam, rebel forces assassinate President Diem and his brother. The Kennedy government admits that they hold some responsibility. An unstable situation now arises in which the Viet Cong increase control. The US is inexorably drawn into one of the most contentious wars in its history.
18 November – Bell Telephone introduces push button telephone.
22 November – American President John F. Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. His death is never fully explained but JFK was a strong civil rights supporter, friend to Martin Luther King and to the Native American community.
22 November – Lyndon B Johnson sworn in as the 36th US President following assassination of JFK.
23 November – Launch of Doctor Who in England is overshadowed by assassination of JFK.
23 November – JFK’s body lies in repose in White House.
24 November – First live murder on TV – Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald
24 November – Incoming President Johnson tells his advisers, ‘I am not going to lose Vietnam.’
25 November – JFK laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
26 November – Explorer 18 launched.
20 December – Berlin Wall opens for first time to West Berliners.
22 December – Official thirty-day mourning period for President John F Kennedy ends.
31 December – 122 American and 5665 South Vietnamese soldiers have been killed in Vietnam in 1963.
• First C60 cassettes produced by Philips in 1963.
• Computer mouse invented by Doug Engelbart as a pointer for a graphic display screen. A wooden box rolling on wheels, connected to a computer with a cable which resembles a mouse.
• First lava lamp. Even John Lennon has one.
• Harvey Ball designs the smiley face to cheer up bored office workers at State Mutual Life Assurance Company.
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduces Transcendental Meditation, inspiring The Beatles, the Beach Boys, Mia Farrow and Stevie Wonder to take up meditation.
• Weight Watchers created by Jean Nidetch. At 214 pounds Jean invites overweight friends to hear the story of her ‘promiscuous eating habit’ and support each other in losing weight. For the first meeting in May 1963, Jean sets up fifty chairs but over 400 people attend and membership eventually exceeds one million. Unfortunately Lilybelle is unable to attend.