TIMELINE OF THE WORLD

1957 West Side Story premieres in New York

1962 John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth

1963 Martin Luther King Jr. gives his “I Have a Dream” speech President John F. Kennedy is assassinated

1964 Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison in South Africa The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time

1967 Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court justice

1968 Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated

1970 The Beatles announce that the band will be breaking up

1971 The Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution lowers the voting age to eighteen

1974 Richard Nixon becomes the first US president to resign

1977 Elvis Presley dies

1979 Margaret Thatcher is the first woman to become prime minister of the United Kingdom

1981 MTV debuts

1982 The first albums on compact discs (CDs) are released

1986 The Oprah Winfrey Show airs on national television

1989 The Berlin Wall, separating East and West Berlin, is torn down

1994 Nelson Mandela becomes president of South Africa

2001 Apple launches the iPod

2009 Barack Obama becomes the president of the United States