1963

[gdl96]

I have to do a history report on the year 1963. I've done some research and I have found out a lot. But I think it would be great if I could get some stories from people who lived through the year. But please, I know JFK was assassinated that year! I asked my family about 1963 on Thanksgiving and all I got was a dozen "When JFK was shot, I was doing...." stories. Thanks

[Sween]

3 years before england won the world cup . Acording to my mum the year she had her first kiss, but i doubt that had much cultural signifience for the rest of the world just the population of scunny

[Arathorn]

That was the year before people here elected a dictator who ruled for 21 years and my grandfather resigned from being a colonel.

[Lizra]

That was a long time ago! Who can remember! Well, I seem to remember President Kennedy was murdered ( ). It was so awful and sad. Everybody watched The Ed Sullivan Show, a weekly variety show. Sing Along with Mitch was still on, a show with group singers in costumes or whatever, singing very nice wholesome songs. They would show the lyrics on the screen, with a little red ball bouncing along the correct word, so you could "sing along". Bonanza was a big show, the opening music, with the flaming map of the old west was exciting. The music was Motown and the beginning of The Beatles. The Supremes were IT! Swank young black girls in elegant evening gowns! The cold war was a fact of life, the USA and Russia were enemies. I'm not sure if that was the year Nikita Kruschef (sp) banged his shoe on the podium somewhere. Seems like Louis Armstrong singing Hello Dolly was popular, I not sure if any of this stuff was exactly 1963, it's just the era...Archie and Veronica comic books were hot, also Beetle Bailey, Tennis shoes were called sneakers, and only Americans wore them, Blah, blah blah!

[Khamûl]

Let's see, in 1963 I was -22 years old. Seems that JFK was shot that year. () I'll ask my mom if she remembers anything special about 1963.

[Feign]

Lizra, you seem to remember alot.

Alright, things I was told. Be thankful O Starter of the thread. I got off my butt and called around to get some info for you. Don't know if it's "specifically" '63, but the era would be correct.

There was an Equal Pay Act in American government.

(I'm not American, my folks are. (old))

Pope John XXII died.

And 32 African nations founded some organization?

The Apollo program (63 to perhaps 75 (?))

Kenya won its independence.

(I continue to search the web...)

France and West Germany signed a treaty of cooperation.

The '63 Rambler was the Years Best Car.

And Man of the Year was Martin Luther King Jr.

That's all folks.

[BeardofPants]

BEATLEMANIA!!

[Coney]

1963 preceded me by ten years

Seems to have been a busy year tho'....was fun reading up on it

Some stuff I found -

http://www.multied.com/dates/1963.html

[Lizra]

Hello Feign! Welcome to Entmoot! Well I remembered a little more.
If you bought something with "made in Japan" on it, it meant it was a cheesey piece of crap! The "folk" movement was winding down. Live band's most requested song was "If I had a Hammer" as performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary. It always sounded good! I remember the PX (the "store" on an Army base) had a talking Beatnik doll. You pulled her string and she said stuff like "Cool Daddy-o" and "Let's get a cup of Java" I wish I still had her in the original box!!!
Of course, all girls had to wear dresses to school, TV was black and white, with only 3 or 4 channels. There was no "kids world" then (no TV stations just for kids, or movies, except Walt Disney) Children were still pretty much very well behaved, and getting "The belt" was still a pretty common form of punishment, for serious behavior infractions. "Time out"was unheard of, maybe sitting in the corner with your nose to wall instead! Being an American was a pretty cool thing, nobody hated us yet! Blacks and women were still "second class citizens", but things were looking up quickly. Yeah, yeah yeah! The Beatles!

[Blackboar]

BEATLES!! Not that I can remember!

[Sister Golden Hair]

The British invasion
Kennedy was assisinated after being in office less than a year
John Glen orbits the earth
I believe the Veit Nam war was just beginning for the U.S.
The Cival Rights movement was underway
Color tv was unheard of and so was cable
Legos were popular
The coolest sneakers were PF Flyers
And, where I live, Akron Ohio, was a booming city and the rubber capital of the world. No more.

[Rían]

Originally posted by Sister Golden Hair (kind of...)
...
Legolas was popular
...

Wow, even then?

JFK being assassinated (my dictionary says that's how it's spelled - why does it look so weird?) was my first memory - I was 4 years old, and I can vividly remember going with my mom to pick up my older sister at school, and asking why everyone looked so sad.

Is the report on 1963 around the world, or just USA?

And Arathorn, I saw Marcos once in Washington, DC - and almost got shot by one of his bodyguards! I was staying in the DC Sheraton for a business trip, and he was there too, and my window overlooked the rear entrance where he would come and go. I saw his entourage getting things ready, and then he came out, and I opened my window so I could hear better, and boy, did the guns swing around and point at me!

[Sister Golden Hair]

Wow, even then?

You are just so witty Rian.

[The Lady of Ithilien]

My hobby is constructing a timeline on the wars of Indochina. Unfortunately for this topic, it's based on days rather than years, and I couldn't go in and look up all the dates. This is not from memory, as I was ten at the time, but is what I could quickly glean of the major points from my notes.

Generally speaking, in Vietnam most of 1963 (the year begins a bit later in their lunar calendar) was the Year of the Hare, or Quy Mao (am skipping the diacritical marks here).

The American military presence in South Vietnam was sufficient to require a named campaign (the Advisory campaign, which ran from March 1962 to March 1965), but mostly there were just advisors attached to ARVN units. There were a lot of civilians, too, in Saigon and elsewhere. Some advisors brought their families with them.

There were some American casualties that year -- in late February, for instance, one U.S. soldier was killed when Viet Cong ground fire downed two of three U.S. Army helicopters that were airlifting South Vietnamese troops to a battlefield about 100 miles north of Saigon, and in mid-December another Huey was downed.

President Diem was in power, and the Buddhists were not happy about it: 1963 was the year when they started a campaign to overthrow him. A flash point was the city of Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam, where the Catholic Archibishop was President Diem's brother. A major holiday was declared for a Christian holiday there, but not for the major holiday of the Buddhist year --Buddha's birthday. There were demonstrations and on June 11 the first monk (bonze) to do so in recent times, Thich Quang Duc, set fire to himself and died at a traffic intersection in Saigon. An AP reporter, Malcolm Browne, was the only American newsman present, and his photograph of it, when finally published, shocked the world.

Then, on November 1, during the afternoon siesta break, a group of South Vietnamese generals and their troops surrounded the presidential palace in Saigon and seized police HQ. President Diem and his brother Nhu were trapped inside the palace, but refused to surrender. At 8:00 p.m., Diem and Nhu managed to slip out of the palace unnoticed, perhaps through a secret passage, and go to a hideout in the suburbs. Meanwhile, Saigon was once more in turmoil after the disturbances earlier in the year, and U.S. naval forces concentrated off South Vietnam and prepared to evacuate some 4600 American noncombatants from the city to nearby Vung Tau Peninsula. At around 3 a.m. the next morning, one of Diem's aides betrayed the location of his hideout. After a three-hour chase, Diem telephoned the generals to say that he and his brother would surrender from inside a Catholic church outside Saigon. Diem and Nhu are then taken into custody and placed inside a military vehicle. While traveling back to the city, they were both killed. President Kennedy was horrified to hear of the news; his dictated notes on that were recently made public. I'll try to dig up the URL, if you want. Saigon (and the rest of the country) were a mess for the rest of the year, but the US Navy didn't have to evacuate any Americans. And, of course, within three weeks, JFK himself would perish.

[gdl96]

Thanks all

Lady of Ithilien, Lizra, Coney, and SGH were especially helpful (great link Coney, it's full of stuff I haven't found yet)

[Coney]

YW Greg......hope the report goes well

Lady of Ithilien: That's your hobby? Wow! If you ever send that lot off to a publisher, considering that is just a snippet from you notes, then they are gonna have an excellent text-book on their hands

[The Lady of Ithilien]

Yes, Greg -- good luck on the report!

Coney, thanks: have always subscribed to the motto If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. Maybe I should change my handle to Doña Quixote. Publisher? This is the age of the Internet -- am working on a Web site; will note in the Advertising thread the day it's ready. Thanks for the encouragment.

I just wanted to pass along that link to JFK's dictation two days after President Diem had been assassinated, as it's very moving. The JFK Library online site has it: http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/tape_sample8.html

The August cable he mentions might be in the State Department's online records at http://www.state.gov/www/about_state...rusonline.html if it's been declassified, but I haven't had the time to go look for it yet.