Top News Stories from 1965
World Events
World Statistics
Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade Nobel Peace Prize: UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund)
More World Statistics... - The first US combat troops arrive in Vietnam. By the end of the year, 190,000 American soldiers are in Vietnam. Background: Vietnam War
- France withdraws its Atlantic fleet from NATO.
- Rhodesia unilaterally declares its independence from Britain (Nov. 11).
- US Marines land in the Dominican Republic as fighting persists between rebels and Dominican army (April 28).
U.S. Events
U.S. Statistics
President: Lyndon B. Johnson
Vice President: Hubert H. Humphrey
Population: 194,302,963
Life expectancy: 70.2 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 24.5
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000) 22.5
Homicide Rate (per 100,000): 5.5
More U.S. Statistics... - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and more than 2,600 others arrested in Selma, Ala., during demonstrations against voter-registration rules (Feb. 1). Background: Civil Rights
- Malcolm X, black-nationalist leader, shot to death at Harlem rally (Feb. 21).
- Blacks riot for six days in Watts section of Los Angeles: 34 dead, over 1,000 injured, nearly 4,000 arrested (Aug. 11-16).
Economics
US GDP (1998 dollars): $719.1 billion
Federal spending: $118.23 billion
Federal debt $322.3 billion
Consumer Price Index: $31.5
Unemployment: 5.2%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.05
Sports
World Series
LA Dodgers d. MinnesotaNBA Championship
Boston d. LA LakersStanley Cup
Montreal d. ChicagoWimbledon
Women: Margaret Smith d. M. Bueno (6-4 7-5)Men: Roy Emerson d. F. Stolle (6-2 6-4 6-4)
Kentucky Derby Champion
Lucky DebonairNCAA Basketball Championship
UCLA d. MichiganNCAA Football Champions
Alabama (AP, FW-tie) (9-1-1) & Michigan St. (UPI, NFF, FW-tie) (10-1-0)Entertainment
Entertainment Awards
Pulitzer Prizes Fiction:
The Keepers of the House, Shirley Ann Grau
Drama: The Subject Was Roses, Frank D. Gilroy
Academy Award, Best Picture: My Fair Lady, Jack L. Warner, producer (Warner Bros.)
Nobel Prize for Literature: Mikhail Sholokhov (USSR)
Record of the Year: "The Girl From Ipanema," Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto
Album of the Year: Getz/Gilberto, Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto (Verve)
Song of the Year: "Hello, Dolly!," Jerry Herman, songwriter
Miss America: Vonda Kay Van Dyke (AZ)
More Entertainment Awards... Events
- The Sound of Music premieres. An instant hit, the film was one of the top-grossing films of 1965 and remains one of film's most popular musicals.
- ABC pays an unprecedented $32 million for a four-year contract with the NCAA to broadcast football games on Saturday afternoons.
- Bill Cosby, starring in I Spy, becomes the first African American to headline a television show.
Movies
- Dr. Zhivago, The Sound of Music, A Thousand Clowns, Darling
Books
- James Baldwin, Going to Meet the Man
- Amiri Baraka, The Dead Lecturer
- Heinrich Böll, The Clown
- Peter Matthiessen, At Play in the Fields of the Lord
- Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed
- Sylvia Plath, Ariel, The Uncollected Poems
- Eudora Welty, Thirteen Stories
- Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Science
Nobel Prizes in Science
Chemistry: Robert B. Woodward (US), for work in synthesizing complicated organic compounds
Physics: Richard P. Feynman, Julian S. Schwinger (both US), and Shinichiro Tomonaga (Japan), for research in quantum electrodynamics
Physiology or Medicine: François Jacob, André Lwolff, and Jacques Monod (all France), for study of regulatory activities in body cells
More Nobel Prizes in 1998... - Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson's (US) discovery of cosmic background radiation confirms the "Big Bang" theory. Background: Astronomy
- Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite, is launched.
- Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford aboard Gemini VI perform the first rendezvous with another spacecraft, Gemini VII, with Frank Borman and James Lovell. Background: US Staffed Space Flights
- Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov performs the first spacewalk (Mar. 18). Edward White II becomes the first American to walk in space (June 3). Background: Space Exploration
