Directory

1969 CE

Apollo 11 lands the first humans on the Moon as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on its surface; Woodstock draws over 400,000 people and becomes a counterculture landmark; the Stonewall riots ignite the modern LGBT rights movement; the Sino-Soviet border conflict heightens tensions between China and the Soviet Union; the 1969 Libyan revolution led by Muammar Gaddafi overthrows King Idris I; the Chappaquiddick incident involving Senator Edward Kennedy results in Mary Jo Kopechne's death; the 1969 Curaçao uprising erupts over labor and racial issues; Hurricane Camille devastates the U.S. Gulf Coast; and Sesame Street premieres, reshaping children’s television.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 20 – Richard Nixon is sworn in as the 37th president of the United States of America.source
  • February 4 – In Cairo, Yasser Arafat is elected Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.source
  • March 17 – Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel.source
  • March 25 - Ayub Khan resigns as President of Pakistan and transfers the power to Yahya Khan.source
  • April 28 – Charles de Gaulle steps down as president of France after suffering defeat in a referendum the day before.source
  • May 26 – The Andean Pact (Andean Group) is established.source
  • June 8 – U.S. President Richard Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu meet at Midway Island. Nixon announces that 25,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn by September.source
  • June 15 – Georges Pompidou is elected President of France.source
  • June 24 – The United Kingdom and Rhodesia sever diplomatic relations, after the Rhodesian constitutional referendum.source
  • July 7 – French is made equal to English throughout the Canadian national government.source
  • July 14 – The Act of Free Choice for West Irian commences in Merauke, Indonesia.source
  • August 2 – U.S. President Richard Nixon visits Romania, becoming the first incumbent U.S. president to visit a communist state since the start of the Cold War.source
  • September 28 – 1969 West German federal election: The Social Democrats, led by Vice Chancellor Willy Brandt, and the Free Democrats led by Walter Scheel, formed a coalition government with Brandt as Chancellor, after the Social Democrats severed their relationship with Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger's Christian Democratic Union.source
  • October 1 – In Sweden, Olof Palme is elected Leader of the Social Democratic Worker's Party, replacing Tage Erlander as Prime Minister on October 14.source
  • October 21 – Willy Brandt becomes Chancellor of West Germany.source
  • October 25 – 1969 Australian federal election: John Gorton's Liberal/Country Coalition government is narrowly re-elected with a sharply reduced majority, defeating a resurgent Labor Party led by Gough Whitlam. Prime Minister Gorton survived a leadership challenge by his deputy William McMahon as well as David Fairbairn in the immediate aftermath of the election.source
  • November 3 – Süleyman Demirel of AP forms the new government of Turkey (31st government).source
  • November 17 – Cold War: Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki, to begin the SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.source
  • November 21 – U.S. President Richard Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Satō agree in Washington, D.C. to the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. retains rights to military bases on the island, but they must be nuclear-free.source
  • December 27 – The Liberal Democratic Party wins 47.6% of the votes in the 1969 Japanese general election. Future prime ministers Yoshirō Mori and Tsutomu Hata and future kingmaker Ichirō Ozawa are elected for the first time.source
  • International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage, a maritime treaty, is adopted.source

Conflict & Security

  • January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco.source
  • January 19 – End of the siege of the University of Tokyo, marking the beginning of the end for the 1968–69 Japanese university protests.source
  • March 2 – Soviet and Chinese forces clash at a border outpost on the Ussuri River.source
  • April 17 – Sirhan Bishara Sirhan is found guilty of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.source
  • April 20 – British troops arrive in Northern Ireland to reinforce the Royal Ulster Constabulary.source
  • May 10 – The Battle of Dong Ap Bia, also known as Hamburger Hill, begins during the Vietnam War.source
  • May 13 – May 13 Incident: Race riots occur in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.source
  • May 14 – Colonel Muammar Gaddafi visits Mecca, Saudi Arabia.source
  • May 20 – United States National Guard helicopters spray skin-stinging powder on anti-war protesters in California.source
  • June 5 – An international communist conference begins in Moscow.source
  • June 17 – After a 23-game match, Boris Spassky defeats Tigran Petrosian to become the World Chess Champion in Moscow.source
  • June 28 – The Stonewall riots, a milestone in the modern gay rights movement in the United States, began in New York City.source
  • July 14 – Football War: After Honduras loses an association football match against El Salvador, rioting breaks out in Honduras against Salvadoran migrant workers. Of the 300,000 Salvadoran workers in Honduras, tens of thousands are expelled, prompting a brief Salvadoran invasion of Honduras. The OAS works out a cease-fire on July 18, which takes effect on July 20.source
  • July 30 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon makes an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam, meeting with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and U.S. military commanders.source
  • August 4 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, U.S. representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. They eventually fail since the two sides cannot agree to any terms.source
  • August 13 – Serious border clashes occur between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.source
  • August 14 – The Troubles: British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland to restore order following three days of political and sectarian violence, marking the beginning of the 37-year Operation Banner.source
  • September 1 – 1969 Libyan coup d'état: A bloodless coup in Libya ousts King Idris and brings Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to power.source
  • October 9–12 – Days of Rage: In Chicago, the Illinois National Guard is called in to control demonstrations involving the radical Weathermen, in connection with the "Chicago Eight" Trial.source
  • October 15 – Vietnam War: Hundreds of thousands of people take part in Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam demonstrations across the United States.source
  • October 21 – General Siad Barre comes to power in Somalia in a coup, 6 days after the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke.source
  • November 19 – Vietnam War: A Cleveland, Ohio newspaper, The Plain Dealer, publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.source
  • December 1 – Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States since World War II is held. September 14 is the first of the 366 days of the year selected, meaning that anyone born on September 14 in the years from 1944 to 1951 would be the first to be summoned. On January 4, 1970, The New York Times will run a long article, "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random".source
  • December 24 – Nigerian troops capture Umuahia. The last Biafran capital before its dissolution becomes Owerri.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • March 22 – The landmark art exhibition When Attitudes become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann, opens at the Kunsthalle Bern in Bern, Switzerland.source
  • April 22 – English sailor Robin Knox-Johnston becomes the first person to sail around the world solo without stopping.source
  • June 8 – Francisco Franco orders the closing of the Gibraltar–Spain border and communications between Gibraltar and Spain in response to the 1967 Gibraltar sovereignty referendum. The border remains closed until a partial reopening on December 15, 1982.source
  • July 19 – John Fairfax lands in Hollywood Beach, Florida, United States and becomes the first person to row across an ocean solo, after 180 days spent at sea on board the 25' ocean rowboat Britannia (left Gran Canaria on January 20, 1969).source
  • November 19 – Richard Oakes returns with 90 followers to Alcatraz Island and begins a 19 month long occupation, lasting until June 1971.source
  • December 24 – The oil company Phillips Petroleum made the first oil discovery in the Norwegian sector of North Sea.source

Religion & Belief

  • January 27 – Reverend Ian Paisley, Northern Irish Unionist leader and founder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster is jailed for three months for illegal assembly.source
  • February 14 – Pope Paul VI issues Mysterii Paschalis, a motu proprio, deleting many names from the Roman calendar of saints (including Valentine, who was celebrated on this day).source
  • March 28 – Pope Paul VI increases the number of Roman Catholic cardinals by one-third, from 101 to 134.source
  • April 3 – The Mass of Paul VI is promulgated in the Catholic Church by the Pope.source
  • July 22 – Spanish dictator and head of state Francisco Franco appoints Prince Juan Carlos to be his successor as head of state following his death.source
  • July 31 – Pope Paul VI arrives in Entebbe, Uganda for the first visit by a reigning Pope to Africa.source

Economy & Finance

  • February 13 – Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) terrorists bomb the Montreal Stock Exchange.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • February 9 – The Boeing 747 "jumbo jet" is flown for the first time, taking off from the Boeing airfield at Everett, Washington.source
  • April 7 – RFC series begins with Network Working Group RFC 1 on ARPANET host software.source
  • July 19 – Chappaquiddick incident: US Senator Edward M. Kennedy drives off a bridge into a tidal pond after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, killing Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy does not report the accident for nine or ten hours.source
  • July 20 – 1969 Tour de France: Belgian Eddy Merckx wins the cycle race for the first time.source
  • October 1 – The Beijing Subway begins operation.source
  • October 2 – A 1.2 megaton thermonuclear device is tested at Amchitka Island, Alaska. This test is code-named Project Milrow, the 11th test of the Operation Mandrel 1969–1970 underground nuclear test series. This test is known as a "calibration shot" to test if the island is fit for larger underground nuclear detonations.source
  • October 5 – Sazae-san first airs on Fuji Television.source
  • October 15 – DZKB-TV Channel 9, the Philippines' sixth TV station, is launched.source
  • October 29 – The first electronic message is sent between two computers connected via ARPANET between University of California, Los Angeles and SRI International in California at around 10:30pm local time, the initial forerunning technology to the Internet.source
  • November 21 – The first ARPANET link is established (the progenitor of the global Internet).source
  • Summer – Invention of Unix under the potential name "Unics" (after Multics).source

Science & Discovery

  • January 16 – First successful docking of two crewed spacecraft in orbit and the first transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another (by a space walk) between Soviet craft Soyuz 5 and Soyuz 4.source
  • January 18 – Failure of Soyuz 5's service module to separate correctly causes a near-fatal re-entry (not publicly acknowledged until 1997) but the module makes a hard landing in the Ural Mountains.source
  • February 24 – The Mariner 6 Mars probe is launched from the United States.source
  • March 3 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 9 (James McDivitt, Rusty Schweickart, David Scott) to test the lunar module.source
  • March 13 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.source
  • March 18 – An annular solar eclipse is visible in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and is the 49th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 129.source
  • May 16 – Venera program: Soviet space probe Venera 5 lands on Venus.source
  • May 17 – Venera program: Soviet space probe Venera 6 begins to descend into Venus's atmosphere, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.source
  • May 18 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 (Gene Cernan, Tom Stafford, John Young) is launched. It is to be a full rehearsal for the Moon landing, stopping 15 kilometers short of actually reaching the lunar surface.source
  • May 22 – Apollo program: Apollo 10's lunar module flies to within 15,400 m of the Moon's surface.source
  • May 26 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth, after a successful 8-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first crewed Moon landing.source
  • July 16 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 (Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins) lifts off from Cape Kennedy in Florida towards the first crewed landing on the Moon.source
  • July 20 – Apollo program Moon landing: At 3:17 pm ET (20:17 UTC) Apollo 11's Lunar Module Eagle lands on the Moon's surface. At 10:56 pm ET (02:56 UTC July 21), an estimated 650 million people worldwide, the largest television audience for a live broadcast at this time, watch in awe as Neil Armstrong takes his first historic steps on the surface.source
  • July 24 – The Soviet Union returns British lecturer Gerald Brooke to the United Kingdom freed from a Soviet prison in exchange for their spies Peter and Helen Kroger (Morris and Lona Cohen).source
  • July 24 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 returns from the first successful Moon landing and the astronauts are placed in biological isolation for several days in case they may have brought back lunar germs. The airless lunar environment is later determined to rule out microscopic life.source
  • August 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 km).source
  • September 11 – An annular solar eclipse is visible in Pacific Ocean and South America, and is the 41st solar eclipse of Solar Saros 134.source
  • September 23 – China carries out an underground nuclear bomb test.source
  • October 17 – Willard S. Boyle and George Smith invent the CCD at Bell Laboratories (30 years later, this technology is widely used in digital cameras).source
  • November 14 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean), the second crewed mission to the Moon.source
  • November 19 – Professional footballer Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.source
  • November 19 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"), becoming the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.source
  • November 24 – Apollo program: The Apollo 12 spacecraft splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second crewed mission to the Moon.source
  • December 2 – The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its first passenger flight. It carries 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, from Seattle to New York City.source

Health & Medicine

  • April 4 – Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.source

Crime & Justice

  • January 27 – Fourteen men, 9 of them Jews, are executed in Baghdad for spying for Israel.source
  • March 3 – In a Los Angeles court, Sirhan Sirhan admits that he killed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.source
  • April 9 – Fermín Monasterio Pérez is murdered by ETA in Biscay, Spain; the 4th victim in the name of Basque nationalism.source
  • August 4 – The Zodiac Killer adopts his persona in a letter in which he introduces himself with the phrase, "This is the Zodiac speaking."source
  • August 9 – On orders from Charles Manson, members of the Manson Family invade the Los Angeles home of film director Roman Polanski, and murder his pregnant wife, the actress Sharon Tate, and four others.source
  • August 10 – A day after murdering Sharon Tate and four others, members of the Manson Family kill Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Angeles.source
  • August 29 – A Trans World Airlines flight from Rome to Tel Aviv is hijacked and diverted to Syria.source
  • October 11 – The Zodiac Killer shoots and kills taxi driver Paul Stine in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco; this is the serial killer's last known murder.source
  • October 18th - Carravagio's Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence is stolen from the oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily.source
  • December 6 – Meredith Hunter is stabbed to death by Hells Angels at the Altamont Free Concert, an event which came to be viewed as the end of the hippie era and the de facto conclusion of late-1960s American youth culture.source
  • December 24 – Charles Manson is allowed to defend himself at the Tate-LaBianca murder trial.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • January 5 – Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to London's Gatwick Airport, killing 50 of the 62 people on board and two of the home's occupants.source
  • January 14 – An explosion aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise near Hawaii kills 28 and injures 314.source
  • January 28 – 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill: A blowout on Union Oil's Platform A spills 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil into a channel and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara County in Southern California; on February 5 the oil spill closes Santa Barbara's harbor. The incident inspires Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to organize the first Earth Day in 1970.source
  • February 8 – The Allende meteorite explodes over Mexico.source
  • March 16 – Viasa Flight 742 crashes into a neighborhood in Maracaibo, Venezuela, shortly after taking off for Miami; all 84 people on board the DC-9 jet are killed along with 71 people on the ground.source
  • March 17 – The Longhope life-boat is lost after answering a mayday call during severe storms in the Pentland Firth between Orkney and the northern tip of Scotland; the entire crew of 8 die.source
  • March 20 – One hundred of the 105 passengers and crew on a United Arab Airlines flight, most of them Muslim pilgrims returning to Aswan from Mecca, are killed when the Ilyushin-18 turboprop crashes during a sandstorm.source
  • March 31 – The Barroterán coal mine disaster kills 153 coal miners in Mexico.source
  • April 15 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a US reconnaissance aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.source
  • June 3 – While operating at sea on SEATO maneuvers, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne accidentally rams and slices into the American destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in the South China Sea, killing 74 American seamen.source
  • August 21 – Australian Denis Michael Rohan sets fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.source
  • September 9 – Allegheny Airlines Flight 853, a DC-9 airliner, collides in flight with a small Piper PA-28 airplane, and crashes near Fairland, Indiana, killing all 83 people in both aircraft.source
  • September 22–25 – An Islamic conference in Rabat, Morocco, following the al-Aqsa Mosque fire (August 21), condemns the Israeli claim of ownership of Jerusalem.source
  • November 14 – The SS United States, the last active United States Lines passenger ship, is withdrawn from service.source
  • November 15 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.source
  • December 3 – Air France Flight 212, a Boeing 707 registered as F-BHSZ, crashed shortly after takeoff from Venezuela killing all 62 occupants on board. The cause of the accident is not yet known since the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) did not publish an investigation report. It will not be released until 2029, sixty years after the accident.source
  • December 12 – The Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, Italy, kills 17 people and injures 88.source

Climate & Environment

  • February 28 – The 1969 Portugal earthquake hits Portugal, Spain and Morocco.source
  • July 26 – A 6.4 earthquake shakes the Chinese city of Yangjiang destroying thousands of homes and killing 3,000 people.source
  • August 17 – Category 5 Hurricane Camille hits the Mississippi coast of the United States, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 USD).source

Culture & Society

  • January 12 – The New York Jets defeat the Baltimore Colts 16–7 in Super Bowl III.source
  • February 8 – After 147 years, the last weekly issue of The Saturday Evening Post is published in the United States. (The magazine is later briefly resurrected as a monthly magazine.)source
  • March 20 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono are married at Gibraltar, and proceed to their honeymoon "Bed-in" for peace in Amsterdam.source
  • March 22 – UCLA wins its third consecutive NCAA basketball championship by defeating Purdue University, 92 to 72.source
  • March 29 – The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 is held in Madrid, and results in four co-winners, with 18 votes each, from Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France.source
  • April 8 – The Montreal Expos become Major League Baseball's first team outside the United States.source
  • May 26–June 2 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono conduct their second bed-in. The follow-up to the Amsterdam event is held at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec. Lennon composes and records the song "Give Peace a Chance" during the event.source
  • May 29 – Cordobazo: A general strike and civil unrest break out in Córdoba, Argentina.source
  • May 30 – Riots in Curaçao mark the start of an Afro-Caribbean civil rights movement on the island.source
  • June 27 – Gay intercourse is officially legalized in Canada.source
  • August 15–18 – The Woodstock Festival is held near White Lake, New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.source
  • September 1 – For Brazil, the Jornal Nacional was created on Monday, 1 September 1969.source
  • September 13 – Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! premieres on CBS, starting the Scooby-Doo franchise.source
  • September 25 – The Organisation of the Islamic Conference is founded.source
  • September 26 – The Beatles release their eleventh studio album, Abbey Road in the United Kingdomsource
  • October 11–16 – The New York Mets upset the Baltimore Orioles four games to one in the World Series.source
  • October 20 – Experimental research showing that protons were composed of smaller particles, the first evidence of quarks, is published.source
  • November 10 – The television series Sesame Street premiered on National Educational Television, becoming the most famous preschool television series of all time.source
  • Common African, Malagasy and Mauritian Organization (OCAMM) (Organisation Commune Africaine Malgache et Mauricienne) is established.source

Births

  • January 3 – Michael Schumacher, German seven-time Formula One world championsource
  • January 13 – Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, Mexican writer, wife of Andrés Manuel López Obradorsource
  • February 11 – Jennifer Aniston, American actress, director, producer and businesswomansource
  • March 22 – Tony Fadell, American engineer, inventor, designer and entrepreneur (Nest Labs, Apple Inc)source
  • April 25 – Renée Zellweger, American Academy Award-winning actress and producersource
  • April 27 – Cory Booker, US Senator from New Jerseysource
  • July 23 – Raphael Warnock, American pastor and junior senator from Georgiasource
  • July 28 – Dana White, American businessman and president of Ultimate Fighting Championshipsource
  • August 15 – John Fetterman, American politician, Senator of Pennsylvaniasource
  • October 3 – Gwen Stefani, American singer, actress and television hostsource
  • November 29 – Mariano Rivera, Panamanian-American professional baseball playersource
  • November 29 – Kasey Keller, American Major League Soccer playersource
  • December 5 – Sajid Javid, British Pakistani politician, Chancellor of the Exchequersource
  • December 24 – Ed Miliband, English academic and politician, Foreign Secretarysource

Deaths

  • February 3 – Eduardo Mondlane, leader of the Mozambique nationalist organization FRELIMO (b. 1920)source
  • April 9 – FS Hussain, Pakistani aerobatic pilot who fought in World War II (b. 1924)source
  • April 20 – Vjekoslav Luburić, Croatian Ustaše official and concentration camp administrator (b. 1914)source
  • May 2 – Franz von Papen, 22nd Chancellor of Germany and 26th Prime Minister of Prussia (b. 1879)source
  • May 3 – Zakir Husain, Indian politician, 3rd President of India (b. 1897)source
  • May 21 – Rosariazo: Civil unrest breaks out in Rosario, Argentina, following the death of a 15-year-old student.source
  • June 16 – Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, British field marshal and 17th Governor General of Canada (b. 1891)source
  • August 6 – Theodor W. Adorno, German sociologist and philosopher (b. 1903)source
  • August 9 – C. F. Powell, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1903)source
  • September 2 – Ho Chi Minh, the president of Democratic Republic of Vietnam, died at the age of 79.source
  • September 5 – Lieutenant William Calley is charged with six counts of premeditated murder for the 1968 My Lai Massacre deaths of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, Vietnam.source
  • November 12 – Liu Shaoqi, President of China (b. 1898)source
  • November 13 – Iskander Mirza, Pakistani politician, 1st President of Pakistan (b. 1899)source
  • December 22 – Enrique Peñaranda, Bolivian general, 38th President of Bolivia, leader during World War II (b. 1892)source