Historical Timeline – Vietnam Veterans Memorial of Greater Rochester (2024)

Block 1

The Beginning

300 B.C.
The people we now call the Vietnamese begin to migrate out of China.

111 B.C.
The burning of the capital of Nam Viet by Han dynasty Chinese marks the beginning of the recorded verifiable history of Vietnam. This also marks the beginning of 1000 years of Chinese rule over Vietnam, a country whose history will be filled by the struggles from domination by others.

939
With the defeat of the Chinese Armies, Vietnam becomes an independent state.

1284
A 500,000-man Chinese Army invades Vietnam but is destroyed by Tran Hung Dao’s guerrillas.

1500
The First European explorers visit Vietnam.

1527
A 200-year period of regional strife and north-south contention begins when General Mac Dang Dung usurps the throne in the north and the Nuyen family sets up a descendant of the deposed Le dynasty south of Hanoi.

1535
The Portuguese enter Danang Bay, first of the European colonial wave to reach Vietnam.

1627
French missionary Alexandre de Rhodes adapts the Vietnamese language to the Roman alphabet. By the end of the next century French influence will dominate missionary work throughout Vietnam.

Block 2

1744
Vietnam expands into the Mekong Delta. By this date, the Vietnamese rule over all of present-day Vietnam.

1802
Nguyen Anh reunifies Vietnam.

1803
Rochester (originally a trading post) is settled by Colonel Nathaniel Rochester.

1844
The French fleet destroys Vietnam’s navy.

1857
The French attack Da Nang.

1861
The French take Saigon.

1863
Henri Dunant, a philanthropist from Switzerland, is instrumental in establishing The International Red Cross.

1864
The Geneva Convention is formed.

1865
As the Great Plains opens to the wheat farmer, grain production moves west taking the milling industry with it, and effectively bringing an end to Rochester’s Flour City days. It later blooms as “The Flower City” with 2,000 acres used to grow flowers. Rochesterians also held key patents in the brewing, optics, and photographic fields.

April 9, 1865
The Confederate Army of North Virginia under General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant, at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia, ending the Civil War.

Block 3

April 14, 1865
President Abraham Lincoln is shot in the back of the head at point-blank range by John Wilkes Booth, while attending a performance at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.

1867
South Vietnam (Cochin China) becomes a French colony.

August 25, 1883
The signing of a Treaty of Protectorate formally ends Vietnam’s independence. The French capture Hanoi and divide Vietnam into northern (Tonkin) and central (Annam) protectorates, both tightly under French control.

1887
The French form the Indochinese Union.

1890
Ho Chi Minh is born.

1914
World War I, also known as the Great War, begins with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. It had its origins in the rivalries of the European powers, but the immediate cause was a clash of interests in the Balkans. As the war escalates, the number of countries involved increases, with the Allied Forces consisting of France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States of America pitted against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. In battles along the front lines in such places as Marne, Ypres, and Verdun, the use of trench warfare, with clearly defined front lines and chemical warfare, employing poisonous gases, as commonplace.

1915
The ship Lusitania is sunk.

Block 4

December 31, 1916
The combined Allied forces of Great Britain, France, and Belgium troop strength totals are 4 million men against 2.5 million Germans.

April 6, 1917
The U.S. formally declares war on Germany.

May 15, 1917
United States introduces conscription (the draft).

October 15, 1917
Dancer-courtesan Mata Hari is executed as a spy in France.

October 27, 1917
US troops first enter the war on the Western Front, commanded by General “Black Jack” Pershing.

November 7, 1917
The Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian government without a shot being fired.

1918
The Communist Party rules the Russian government and establishes the Soviet capital in Moscow.

April 22, 1918
Germany’s Richthofen (the “Red Baron”) is shot down by a single bullet in France after 80 “kills,” most of which were British aircraft.

July 16, 1918
The Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family are murdered by the local Bolshevik (communist) commander.

September 26, 1918
United States conscripts (draftees) in the military total 14 million. A major Allied offensive begins with the US attack near Verdun, while Marshal Foch prepares to mount a separate major effort to defeat the Germans.

Block 5

November 11, 1918
Germany surrenders, and at 11 a.m. German delegates sign the terms of surrender in Marshal Foch’s train carriage in the Forest of Compiegne. The “Great War” is over, bringing to an end one of the bloodiest wars in history involving 65 million men, with nearly 9 million men killed and an additional 20 million men wounded. In addition to the high price of lives lost, the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia had been destroyed. The end of World War I marks the beginning of the annual celebration of Veterans’ Day in the United States.

June 28, 1919
The peace treaty officially ending the four years of devastation of World War I is finally signed by the humiliated Germans at the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles, France. During the Versailles Peace Conference, a few Vietnamese residing in Paris, France, draw up an eight-part program for their homelands’ independence.

1919
Even though the end of the war brings some peace to Europe, the resentment of the defeated powers against the terms of the treaties imposed upon them sows the seeds for future conflicts. The United States retreats into isolationism, but faces violence at home from the turmoil caused by the prohibition era and the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. Britain has to deal with rebellion in Ireland and civil disobedience in India. Italy emerges from the war politically unstable and falls victim to fascism. In Germany, Hitler forms the National Socialist Party.

Block 6

1920
Tired of war, countries form the League of Nations. Mussolini forms the Italian Fascist Party.

1921
The Chinese Communist Party is created. Britain creates an Irish Free State.

1924
In the Soviet Union, the revolutionary idealism of Lenin and Trotsky yields to the ruthless dictatorship of Stalin. Stalin, as the new communist leader, pledges to spread communism worldwide.

October 21, 1924
The League of Nations adopts Geneva protocol.

1925
Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh) founds the Revolutionary Youth League of Vietnam, the first truly Marxist organization in Indochina. The Vietnam Nationalist Party (VNQDD) is founded at the same time.

1929
Geneva convention on the treatment of prisoners of war is established.

October 24, 1929
The Wall Street Stock Market crashes and the resulting stock prices plummeting causes worldwide panic and marks the beginning of the worldwide depression.

1930
With the triumph of the Nazis in Germany, all of Europe seems to be succumbing to totalitarian rule of one kind or another, and the specter of war overshadows everyone. Ho Chi Minh starts the Indochinese Communist Party.

Block 7

1933
Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany. Japan invades Manchuria. The boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany begins.

November 16, 1933
The United States government officially recognizes Soviet Russia.

1935
Mussolini’s forces invade Ethiopia.

1936
The civil war in Spain becomes a proving ground for the war of rival ideologies.

1937
Japan launches an all-out assault on a China already torn by strife at home.

1938
With the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, a general European war seems inevitable.

1939
The communist party is outlawed in Vietnam.

September 1, 1939
World War II begins. Germany and Soviet Union confirm the partition of Poland in an agreement known as the Munich Pact. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain makes his somber announcement that the country is at war with Germany.

September 17, 1939
Soviet forces move into eastern Poland and take over Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The early part of World War II finds The Allied forces, consisting of troops from Great Britain, France, and Soviet Union against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

1940
The Vichy government concludes an agreement permitting Japan to station troops and use facilities in Tonkin.

Block 8

September 22, 1940
Japan invades northern Indo-China.

May 10, 1941
A massive air raid on London by Germany kills 1,400 and destroys the House of Commons chamber.

May 27, 1941
The “Bismarck” is sunk.

August 7, 1941
Joseph Stalin takes over supreme command of Soviet forces.

August 11, 1941
U.S. President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill sign the Atlantic Charter.

September 1941
Ho Chi Minh forms Vietnam Independence League. Having escaped the Vichy government, General Charles De Gaulle forms the Free French government in exile.

December 1941
By this time, Vietnam has become a virtual colony of Japan, and remains so for the duration of the war.

December 2, 1941
The Russians counterattack Germans on the Moscow front.

December 7, 1941
A Japanese task force launches a massive surprise attack on the US base in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in what will be known as “A Day that will live in infamy.” Five US battleships and 14 other ships are wrecked or sunk, 200 aircraft destroyed, and 2,400 men killed. The US base is completely unprepared. America is outraged at the news, and now has no choice but to declare war on Japan, and thus on her allies, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

December 8, 1941
Britain, Australia, and the United States declare war on Japan.

Block 9

December 10, 1941
The Japanese invade Malaysia, northern Philippines, and Guam.

December 25, 1941
On Christmas Day, the British colony of Hong Kong surrenders to the Japanese. Admiral Yamamoto pointed out more than once that “starting a war was easier than finishing it.” Guerrilla warfare has an ideological appeal for Communists.

1942
The 26-member United Nations is formed. US General MacArthur, Allied Commander in the southwest Pacific, leaves the Philippines, obeying President Roosevelt’s (FDR) orders to get out of the doomed islands. He flies to Australia, saying, “I shall return!”

April, 1942
Over 100,000 Russians die of starvation in Leningrad.

April 9, 1942
The Japanese capture Bataan.

May 1942
Of the Jewish prisoners sent to Auschwitz, which was one of the many infamous Nazi death camps, 130,000 have already been killed in the gas chambers or at the hands of firing squads.

June 4, 1942
The Japanese are defeated at Midway.

August 7, 1942
United States Marines invade Guadalcanal.

Block 10

November 12, 1942
The Japanese unsuccessfully counterattack at Guadalcanal with a force of 10,000 men.

December 2, 1942
In Chicago, a controlled nuclear reaction is achieved. This marks the beginning of what will eventually be known as the nuclear age.

December 31, 1942
Nearly 3 million Polish Jews and others have been killed in German death camps. The Holocaust death count will eventually rise to 6 million.

1943
General George Patton is given command of the 7th Army which will sweep through Sicily.

January 31, 1943
The Red Army captures Stalingrad in the greatest, and the bloodiest, land battle of the war. The German army is believed to have lost 850,000 troops and the Soviets almost as many in the seven-month-long struggle.

May 1943
The three allied leaders, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, secretly meet in Tehran and approve plans for the invasion of Normandy. Operation Overlord, as it was code-named, would take another year in strategic and tactical planning and preparation.

1944
General Dwight D. Eisenhower assumes the role of Supreme Commander of all of the Allied Forces in Europe. The Allies uncover evidence of unspeakable crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis. It was discovered that Dachau, which was one of Hitler’s SS death camps, had been set up possibly as early as 1933, and that more than 200,000 men, women, and children, mainly of Jewish faith, are estimated to have been exterminated there. All told, six million were killed in all of the German death camps during the entire period of World War II.

Block 11

June 2, 1944
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in a famous speech to the House of Commons four days before D-day, said, “… we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. Never, never, never.”

June 6, 1944
At dawn, the largest military invasion in the world’s history begins. Known as D-Day, nearly one million men in 4000 ships disembark to launch amphibious assaults on 5 desolate beaches of the northern French coast which had been code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Under the supreme command of US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, their assault on Rommel’s “Atlantic Wall” will become a most critical turning point in world history. The combined Allied troops, including French, Canadians, British, and Americans, would eventually battle their way into France and liberate it. They were spearheaded by units of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions who landed near the town of Saint Mere-Eglise, while British commandos were taking key bridges and knocking out Nazi communications. The U.S. 3rd Army, led by General George Patton, sweeps across France heading toward Paris.

December 1, 1944
General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the first five-star general in U.S. history.

December 16, 1944
The Battle of the Bulge commences, with the Germans attacking the American lines of defense. After 6 weeks of fighting involving 1 million men fighting in mud and frozen conditions, General Patton’s Allied Forces defeat the Germans in one of the bloodier battles of the war.

February 11, 1945
With the victory in the war with Germany virtually assured, the three allied leaders, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin, plan Europe’s future at a secret meeting in the Black Sea resort of Yalta.

Block 12

February 23, 1945
The Stars and Stripes are raised over Iwo Jima, a small strategic island located only 750 miles (1200 km) from Tokyo. After 74 days of bombardment and four days of bitter fighting on the ground, 30,000 US Marines were in some of the bloodiest fighting of WW II so far. The photograph of the Marines raising the flag will become an indelible image in history.

February 27, 1945
US forces recapture Corregidor.

April 1, 1945
US Marines invade Okinawa.

April 12, 1945
President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at the age of 63 after suffering a stroke. Harry Truman becomes the next president.

August 6, 1945
At around 8:15 a.m., an atomic bomb, dubbed “Little Boy,” is released from the Enola Gay, a US Air Force B-29. This, the first of two nuclear devices to be used in the war, is detonated above the central Japanese city of Hiroshima.

August 9, 1945
The second atomic bomb, called “Big Boy” is exploded over Nagasaki, Japan. The devastation caused by these two blasts will provide the basis for debate on not only the moral issues, but for the eventual limiting of the nuclear arms race. Although disputed, it is often said that the detonating of the two nuclear devices was instrumental in bringing a speedier end to the war, saving untold American and Allied lives.

Block 13

August 14, 1945
The Japanese surrender on this day which is proclaimed VJ Day (Victory over Japan Day) by President Harry Truman. In America, there is dancing in the streets.

September 2, 1945
The signing of the formal surrender papers occurs aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. America’s triumph in World War II is much more than a military victory. It was a victory that encouraged democracies around the world, primed the economy at home and secured the American way of life. There are no words that can bestow enough honor upon those who served, but WW II veterans know how important their contribution has been and continues to be. We must be sure that future generations never forget their bravery, sacrifice, and service to our country. World War II veterans have earned our eternal gratitude.

The Japanese leave Vietnam. In Hanoi, with American OSS officers at his side, Ho Chi Minh creates a National Liberation Committee and proclaims the Independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Korea is divided into Soviet and US zones.

September 24, 1945
France’s military commander in Vietnam arrives in Saigon, declaring “We have come to reclaim our inheritance.”

September 26, 1945
In Saigon, Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey, head of the American OSS mission in Vietnam, is shot by Vietminh troops while driving a jeep to the airport. Col. Dewey, evidently mistaken as being French, becomes the first of almost 60,000 Americans who will eventually die in Vietnam. A ceasefire occurs after Vietnamese clash with French.

Block 14

November 13, 1945
Charles De Gaulle is elected president of France. As France attempts to regain control of Vietnam, US begins 9 years of support by providing equipment.

December 2, 1945
American General George “Blood and Guts” Patton, dies as a result of a car crash. His death from a car crash seems ironic after surviving such a dangerous and active military life.

March 1946
Ho Chi Minh is elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

March 5, 1946
Winston Churchill, on tour in the U.S., states in a speech about the Russian threat, “An iron curtain has descended across Europe.”

April 18, 1946
The League of Nations is formally dissolved.

July 4, 1946
The Philippines gain independence.

November 23, 1946
The French bombard Haiphong, Vietnam and kill 6,000, beginning a long struggle.

December 19, 1946
In Hanoi, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam launches its first attack against the French. The French counterattack, and the Vietminh retreat into the hills. This marks the beginning of the French Indochina war.

1947
US financier Bernard Baruch refers to the “cold war” between East and West.

March 12, 1947
The Truman Doctrine is established, proclaiming that the world must defend itself against communism.

Block 15

May 19, 1947
Vietminh troops attack Saigon.

June 5, 1947
United States Secretary of State Marshall proposes a plan, known as the Marshall Plan, which will provide for the United States to furnish aid to Europe.

1948
General Douglas MacArthur arrives in South Korea. The United States signs a mutual defense assistance agreement with France, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

January 30, 1948
India’s Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu fanatic. Ceylon (Sri Lanka) becomes an independent country.

February 16, 1948
North Korea proclaims itself a communist republic.

May 1948
The United States announces it has agreed to supply arms and military equipment to the French in their war against Ho Chi Minh’s Vietminh.

June 27, 1948
President Truman sends military personnel to Vietnam to aid French forces.

September 9, 1948
North Korea claims sovereignty over the South.

September 18, 1948
In the Berlin Airlift, allies fly 7,000 tons of supplies into Berlin in one day.

April 4, 1949
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) treaty is signed.

Block 16

April 18, 1949
Ireland becomes a republic.

May 1949
Federal Republic of Germany, known as West Germany is founded.

September 30, 1949
Mao Tse-Tung formally becomes chairman of the Peoples’ Republic of China.

October 12, 1949
The German Democratic Republic, known as East Germany, is founded.

1950
The Soviet Union and China formally extend recognition to North Vietnam, and China will start supplying modern weapons to the Vietminh.

January 14, 1950
Ho Chi Minh declares that the only true legal government is his Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

February 9, 1950
US Senator Joseph McCarthy begins crusade against communism.

May 8, 1950
US Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson confirms support of the French by the United States with arms assistance to the French Associated States of Indochina.

June 25, 1950
The Korean War begins when troops from Communist-ruled North Korea invade South Korea.

June 27, 1950
President Truman announces he is accelerating the program of military aid for Vietnam which he began in April. This includes the sending of military advisors. Monetary and equipment aid is funneled through Paris.

June 26, 1950
$15 million in military aid to the French for the war in Indochina is awarded by the US.

Block 17

June 28, 1950
Seoul, South Korea falls to North Koreans.

July 1, 1950
United States troops land in Korea in what will be known as a United Nations police action.

August 3, 1950
US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) consisting of 35 men arrives in Vietnam. US forces launch Korean offensive at Chinju. The Vietminh defeat the French at Kaobang.

November 26, 1950
The Chinese launch an invasion of South Korea in support of North Korea.

December 19, 1950
General Dwight D. Eisenhower is appointed NATO supreme commander. The Dalai Lama flees Tibet.

1951
Two wars, one in Korea and the other in Vietnam, are waged simultaneously in the East.

January 4, 1951
The Chinese Communists and Communist North Koreans join forces to capture Seoul in South Korea.

January 11, 1951
Vietminh forces attack French in Indo-China.

March 14, 1951
United Nations forces recapture Seoul.

Block 18

March 30, 1951
General MacArthur advocates the invasion of China.

April 11, 1951
World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur is stripped of all his command in Korea by his commander-in-Chief, an irate President Harry Truman. General MacArthur and his men were on the brink of defeating the North Koreans when China stepped in. In addition, the North Korean and Chinese pilots have been using China as a sanctuary, attacking across the border, then quickly retreating back to safety, with our pilots unable to follow.

April 25, 1952
The French launch a major attack on Vietminh base of Tay Ninh.

April 28, 1952
The occupation of Japan by US Military forces ends.

July 26, 1952
King Farouk of Egypt abdicates the throne.

August 18, 1952
United Nations Operation Stranglehold begins in North Korea, with the bombing of industrial targets.

October 12, 1952
General Giap prepares a new Vietminh offensive in Indo-China.

November 1952
The US is now carrying almost one-half of the financial burden for the Indochina War.

November 4, 1952
Dwight David Eisenhower is elected 34th President of the United States. The Indochina war ceases to be regarded as a colonial war, and the fighting in Vietnam becomes a war between Communism and the “free world.” The possibility of direct Chinese intervention becomes a matter of urgent preoccupation for many of President Eisenhower’s closest advisors, in particular Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Vice-President Richard Nixon.

Block 19

March 5, 1953
Joseph Stalin, the ruler of the Soviet Union since 1928, dies. He is succeeded by Georgi Malenkov.

April 10, 1953
King Norodom Sihanouk proclaims Cambodia’s independence. The Vietminh invade Laos.

April 20, 1953
Korean war prisoners are exchanged at Panmunjon.

May 20, 1953
General Henri Navarre assumes control of all French forces in Indochina.

July 26, 1953
After some of the longest negotiations on record, a ceasefire occurs, and a truce is finally signed at Panmunjon in Korea. With the signing, Chinese aid to the Vietminh in trucks, artillery, and anti-aircraft guns increases. President Eisenhower approves another $385,000,000 over the $400,000,000 already budgeted for military aid for Vietnam.

July 27, 1953
The Korean War, which lasted three years, ends. The “police action” resulted in 34,454 killed and 8,168 missing in action. 165 soldiers from the Rochester area were killed.

November 29, 1953
French airborne troops capture Dien Bien Phu. Vietminh forces challenge French troops in Laos.

Block 20

January 21, 1954
United States launches first nuclear-powered submarine.

March 13, 1954
The battle of Dien Bien Phu begins with 40,000 Vietminh attacking the French garrison of Dien Bien Phu and surrounding the 15,000 French troops which France’s General Navarre has placed 200 miles behind enemy lines as part of an exceptional effort to defend Laos. Although the battle continues for almost 2 months, after only 5 days, it becomes clear that the French forces are doomed. News of Dien Bien Phu’s impending fall reaches Washington, D.C. Secretary of State John Dulles is shocked. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Arthur Radford, proposes nuclear strikes against the Vietminh, but settles for one massive US air strike.

April 6, 1954
In a speech to the United States Senate, Senator John F. Kennedy says, “Pouring money, material, and men into the jungles [of Vietnam] without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile and self-destructive.”

Block 21

April 7, 1954
The “domino theory” is first expressed in a press conference on the strategic importance of Indochina. Dwight D. Eisenhower states, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is … that it will go over very quickly.”

April 26, 1954
A Geneva Conference of world powers divides Vietnam at the 17th parallel into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh, now 64, takes power as President of North Vietnam after 9 years of leading guerrilla forces.

May 7, 1954
Dien Bien Phu falls to the Vietminh. The American government refuses to provide air power. France has lost more than 35,000 men who were killed, and 48,000 wounded in a war that has been financially and militarily humiliating.

May 17, 1954
US Supreme Court outlaws’ racial segregation in schools in “Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education.”

June 1, 1954
Colonel Edward G. Lansdale, USAF, arrives in Saigon as chief of the Saigon Military Mission (SMM). Under the cover assignment of the Assistant Air Attaché at the United States Embassy, Colonel Lansdale is, in fact, a member of the CIA assigned to run paramilitary operations against the Communist Vietnamese. Meanwhile, from his chateau in Cannes, France, Bao Dai personally selects Ngo Dinh Diem as the new prime minister of Vietnam.

June 26, 1954
Ngo Dinh Diem flies into Saigon, where only a few hundred of his Catholic supporters greet him.

July 7, 1954
Ngo Diem formally assumes the office as Premier. Later that month, Churchill, Eden, Eisenhower, and Dulles endorse partitioning Vietnam.

July 21, 1954
A ceasefire “Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam” is signed. It states: (1) Vietnam is provisionally partitioned at the 17th parallel into North and South Vietnam, pending reunification or other permanent settlement to be achieved through nationwide elections, (2) for a period of 300 days, all persons may pass freely from one zone to the other, (3) limits are imposed on foreign military bases North and South, on personnel movements, and re-armaments, (4) nationwide elections are scheduled for July 20, 1956, (5) an International Control Commission is established to supervise the implementation of these agreements.

Block 22

August, 1954
Under the terms of the Geneva Agreement, a flow of almost one million refugees from North to South Vietnam begins. CIA Colonel Lansdale plays a role in encouraging Catholics and providing transportation. France and the United States, especially the US Navy, provide aircraft and ships. US Marine Colonel Victor J. Croziat, the first US Marine assigned to the US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Saigon, creates refugee centers. Although the majority of refugees are Catholics, led by their priests, others include various factions opposed to the Vietminh. The increase of Catholic refugees furnishes Prime Minister Diem, himself a Catholic, with a fiercely anti-Communist constituency in the South. In Washington, the National Security Council concludes that the Geneva settlement was a “disaster” and that it “completed a major forward stride of Communism which may lead to the loss of Southeast Asia.”

August 11, 1954
The US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), commanded by Lieutenant General John W. O’Daniel, US Army, based in Saigon, now has 342 men in South Vietnam.

August 24, 1954
The Communist party is formally banned in the United States.

September 8, 1954
The Manila Treaty is concluded, forming a military alliance which becomes the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Its members include the United States, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Block 23

October 10, 1954
Ho Chi Minh, the Communist leader who has hidden underground for eight years, returned to take over Hanoi. French flags were removed from buildings where they had flown for more than 70 years. Unlike Ngo Diem in the South, Ho Chi Minh and his regime face few rebellious factions or challenges to their authority. Thousands flee the north and go to South Vietnam.

October 24, 1954
President Eisenhower sends a letter to Ngo Diem which President Johnson later cites as the starting point of US commitment to South Vietnam.

December 2, 1954
Senator McCarthy is condemned in a US Senate vote, “McCarthyism” ends.

1955
The United States begins to send aid directly to the South Vietnamese government. Diem defeats rival political factions in Saigon.

April 15, 1955
The first McDonald’s hamburger store opens in San Bernardino, California.

April 18, 1955
Albert Einstein, 75, died in his sleep at Princeton Hospital.

May 16, 1955
The United States signs an agreement with Cambodia to supply it with direct military aid. China and Hanoi announce that Peking, China will extend Hanoi about $200 million in economic aid.

Block 24

July 18, 1955
Following a visit to Russia by Ho Chi Minh and his ministers, the Soviet Union announces it will grant Hanoi $100 million (US dollar equivalent) in economic aid.

October 26, 1955
Ngo Diem defeats Emperor Bao Dai and proclaims the Republic of South Vietnam with himself as its first president. The new regime is recognized immediately by France, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and South Korea.

December, 1955
All 150 French companies in North Vietnam are nationalized without compensation, and the United States consulate in Hanoi is closed.

1956
Despite promises in the Geneva agreement, President Diem refuses to hold elections in South Vietnam.

February 16, 1956
At the Soviet Party Congress, Nikita Khrushchev denounces Joseph Stalin. Prince Sihanouk renounces SEATO protection for Cambodia, and seeks neutrality for Cambodia.

April 28, 1956
The last French soldier leaves Vietnam. The US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) assumes responsibility for training South Vietnamese military forces, and the United States sends 350 additional military men.

May 11, 1956
Elvis Presley first enters the US music charts with “Heartbreak Hotel.”

June, 1956
Senator John F. Kennedy declares: “What we must offer (the Vietnamese people) is a revolution — a political, economic and social revolution far superior to anything the Communists can offer — far more peaceful, far more democratic, and far more locally controlled.”

November 5, 1956
In Hungary, Soviet tanks crush the uprising against Soviet control.

1957
Ho Chi Minh sends 6,000 guerrillas, to be known as the “Vietcong, VC, Gooks or Charlie,” into guerrilla warfare against the South Vietnamese government. The spread of world communism, known as “the domino theory” was perceived as a major threat to the United States. During President Diem’s visit to the US in May, Eisenhower calls him the “miracle man” of Asia and reaffirms support for his regime.

May 27, 1956
Buddy Holly and the Crickets release their first record.

June 24, 1957
The US Army’s 1st Special Forces Group is activated in Okinawa, training 58 men of the Vietnamese Special Forces.

September 3, 1957
US Federal Court orders desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas schools.

October, 1957
Communist insurgent activity in South Vietnam begins in earnest when a decision is reached in Hanoi to organize 37 armed companies in the Mekong Delta area of South Vietnam. Emphasis is placed upon carrying out terrorist activities.

October 4, 1957
Soviet Union launches first artificial Earth satellite called Sputnik.

Block 25

October 21, 1957
Captain Harry Cramer, Jr. dies in a munitions handling accident, becoming one of the first Americans killed in the “Second Indochina War.”

October 22, 1957
US military personnel suffer their first multiple casualties in Vietnam when 13 Americans are wounded in three terrorist bombings of MAAG and US Information Service installations in Saigon.

December, 1957
To date, communist insurgents have killed more than 400 South Vietnamese government officials.

1958
The first United States satellite to orbit the earth, Explorer I, is launched from Cape Canaveral.

March 24, 1958
Elvis Presley, the 23-year-old rock and roll king is drafted in Memphis, Tennessee. His earnings will plummet from more than $100,000 per month to just $83.20, which is the base pay of a newly inducted Army private.

March 27, 1958
Nikita Khrushchev takes over as Soviet Prime Minister.

April 11, 1958
The United States Navy announces its first test firing of a Polaris missile from a submerged sub.

May 13, 1958
US Vice President Nixon meets violent hostility on his South American tour.

July 16, 1958
US Marines land in Lebanon.

July, 1958
By the end of the month, President Eisenhower will have sent more than 5,000 Marines into Lebanon. “The real danger of war,” President Eisenhower said, “would come if one small nation after another were to be engulfed by expansionist and aggressive forces supported by the Soviet Union.” Baghdad radio announces that the Iraqi army has risen against King Faisal and he has been executed.

Block 26

December 21, 1958
Charles De Gaulle is elected president of French Fifth Republic.

January 1, 1959
Cuban dictator Batista flees after losing his struggle with the revolutionary forces of Fidel Castro.

February 16, 1959
Fidel Castro, 32, becomes Cuban Prime Minister.

April 4, 1959
Alaska becomes the 49th and largest state of the United States. Speaking at Gettysburg College, President Eisenhower links America’s own national interest to the survival of a non-Communist regime in South Vietnam. US military advisors are ordered to Vietnam to assist South Vietnamese infantry, artillery, and naval forces. In Laos, fighting breaks out between royal troops and Pathet Lao in Jarres Valley.

July 8, 1959
Insurgents attack the South Vietnamese military base at Bien Hoa, killing Major Dale Buis and Chester Ovnand; officially the first Americans to die in the Vietnam War, although others have died previously.

July 17, 1959
Billie Holiday, 44, one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, dies in New York City.

July 25, 1959
Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon hold an impromptu “kitchen debate” in Moscow over rival political economies.

Block 27

August, 1959
Ngo Diem creates a law authorizing severe repression of Communists and other dissidents. The Vietcong continue to assassinate local officials.

August 21, 1959
“The Paradise of the Pacific,” the eight Hawaiian Islands, becomes the 50th state of the Union. Laos, which had won its independence from France in 1954, continues to be locked in a power struggle with the Pathet Lao, which is backed by both the Chinese and North Vietnamese.

September 22, 1959
The first telephone cable linking Europe and United States mainland is inaugurated.

October 7, 1959
Pictures of the far side of the moon are relayed back to Earth for the first time by the Russian spacecraft Lunik III.

November 19, 1959
Charlton Heston stars in the movie Ben Hur. Ford Motor Company discontinues the manufacturing of the Edsel as a design and marketing failure.

1960
The Army issues a versatile new rifle, the M14, to all American troops. Congress broadens the Civil Rights act, which was originally passed in 1957, and which declared illegal the denial of the right to vote in any Federal election.

February 1, 1960
In Greensboro, North Carolina, lunch counter sit-in protests by Negroes seeking to be served have started. The protests will quickly spread throughout much of the South, resulting in rioting in some major cities and numerous arrests.

Block 28

February 8, 1960
The Boy Scouts of America celebrate the 50th anniversary of their founding.

February 16, 1960
The USS Triton is the first nuclear submarine to conduct an underwater voyage around the world.

April 1, 1960
The US launches its first weather satellite.

May 1, 1960
An American spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union by a Soviet surface-to-air missile, just days before US President Eisenhower and Soviet Chairman Khrushchev were scheduled to meet at a Paris summit. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, is captured and is later sentenced to 10 years detention. Initially the US denies Russian accusations that it was spying.

May 8, 1960
Leonid Brezhnev becomes Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

June 22, 1960
Russian Chairman Khrushchev denounces Chinese Communists.

June 26, 1960
The Newport Folk Festival concluded with a hootenanny. Audience members are invited to come on stage to hoot and holler. Name entertainers include Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, teenager Joan Baez, and folksinger Pete Seeger.

August 24, 1960
The FDA approved use of the Sabin polio vaccine.

September 5, 1960
In the Olympic Games, the US sweeps the 110-meter-high hurdles; Wilma Rudolph takes 200-meters; US boxers, including Cassius Clay, win three golds. Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, known as OPEC.

Block 29

September 26, 1960
Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy clash in the first nationally televised presidential debate between candidates.

September 28, 1960
Boston Red Sox star, Ted Williams, retires from baseball with a lifetime batting average of .344. In his last game, he hits a 420-foot home run, the 521st of his career.

October 12, 1960
Nikita Khrushchev disrupts a meeting of the United Nations in NYC when he picks up his shoe and does a little undiplomatic banging on his desk.

November 8, 1960
John F. Kennedy is elected 35th President of United States. At 43, he is our youngest President. Three days later, Diem thwarts a coup attempt in South Vietnam.

November 16, 1960
Actor Clark Gable, 59, famous for his lead role in the movie “Gone With the Wind” dies.

December 4, 1960
US Ambassador Durbrow, frustrated with Ngo Diem’s inability to reform Vietnam’s political and economic policies, informs Washington that the United States may soon have “the difficult task of identifying and supporting alternative leadership” for Vietnam.

December 20, 1960
Hanoi forms the National Liberation Front or NLF. The NLF is truly the Vietminh reborn. The Saigon regime dubs the NLF the “Vietcong,” a contraction of Viet Nam Cong San (Vietnamese Communists). An estimated 4500 former South Vietnamese living in the North have infiltrated South Vietnam during the year. US forces in Vietnam now number 900.

Block 30

1961
Washington breaks diplomatic ties to Cuba. Soviets say they will back all “wars of national liberation.” Outgoing President Eisenhower cautions incoming President Kennedy that Laos is “the key to the entire area of Southeast Asia” and might even require the direct intervention of US combat troops. Fearing the fall of Laos to the Communist Pathet Lao forces, President Kennedy increases US presence in the region by sending a carrier task force to the Gulf of Siam. A US Presidential press conference is televised live for the first time.

February 9, 1961
This is the 50th anniversary of the start of development of the helicopter. Etienne Oehmichen, a French engineer, built a helicopter with two huge rotors powered by a mere 25-horsepower motor. It made its successful test flight in Paris. The helicopter will become an important part of the Vietnam War. President Kennedy names Kissinger national security adviser.

February 19, 1961
The heaviest snow storm since 1947 ties up Northeast coast.

March 1, 1961
President Kennedy announces the formation of a US Peace Corps to aid developing third world nations. The president’s brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, organizes the temporary agency.

March 23, 1961
A SC-47 intelligence gathering plane en route from Vientiane, Laos to Saigon is shot down over the Plain of Jars. Its mission was to check radio frequencies used by Russian planes delivering arms to the Pathet Lao.

Block 31

March 29, 1961
The 23rd Amendment is added to US Constitution, allowing Washington, D.C. residents to vote in presidential elections.

April 10, 1961
South Vietnam’s President Ngo Diem is elected back into office.

April 11, 1961
A young folksinger, Bob Dylan, makes his first live appearance opening for John Lee Hooker at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, New York.

April 12, 1961
Russian cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin is the first man in space. Walt W. Rostow, senior White House specialist on Southeast Asia and a principle architect of the counterinsurgency doctrine, proposes in a memo to President Kennedy that the time has come for “gearing up the whole Vietnam operation.”

April 15, 1961
In New York, Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” opens in its United States premier.

April 17, 1961
A small force of about 1,300 Cuban exiles is stopped while attempting to end Fidel Castro’s Communist regime. The Bay of Pigs invasion ends when the Cuban army captures or shoots the exiles after they land at the Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs).

April 30, 1961
President Kennedy orders 100 extra advisors to the US mission in Saigon, exceeding the 685-man limit.

May, 1961
Vice President Johnson visits South Vietnam and recommends increasing aid to its government.

Block 32

May 4, 1961
The Freedom Rides to desegregate buses begin in the South.

May 5, 1961
President Kennedy signs Fair Labor Standards Act, raising the minimum wage to $1.15 in September. US Navy Commander Alan Shepard Jr., in a 15-minute suborbital flight, is the first US man in space. His solo flight from the NASA Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida took him 115 miles above earth in his tiny Mercury spacecraft called Freedom 7.

May 11, 1961
President Kennedy agrees to send 400 Special Forces troops to Vietnam, along with another 100 additional advisers. They will train South Vietnamese to conduct covert operations in North Vietnam and Laos.

May 12, 1961
Vice President Johnson calls Ngo Diem the “Churchill of Asia.” He also echoes the fears of domino theorists, that the loss of Vietnam would lead the United States to fight “on the beaches of Waikiki” and eventually on “our own shores.” The Geneva conference on Laos begins.

May 22, 1961
In Montgomery, Alabama, 400 National Guardsmen battle a white mob besieging Dr. Martin Luther King and 1,500 others in church.

May 25, 1961
In Montgomery, Alabama, the Ku Klux Klan clash with civil rights “Freedom Riders.”

Block 33

May 31, 1961
South Africa declares itself a republic independent of the British Commonwealth. Rudolf Nureyev, a Twenty-three-year-old dancer, defects from the Soviet Union at a Paris airport.

June 30, 1961
President Kennedy signs the Housing Act of 1961.

July 2, 1961
Author Ernest Hemingway is found dead after committing suicide at his Idaho home. The North Vietnamese capture at least three members of Col. Lansdale’s US-trained First Observation Group when their US C-47 aircraft is downed.

July 16, 1961
169 guerrillas are killed by South Vietnamese forces in the Plain of Jars marsh area 80 miles west of Saigon.

July 17, 1961
Ty Cobb, the first player ever elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, dies at the age of 74.

August 31, 1961
The Berlin Wall, a monument to the Cold War, is built.

September 5, 1961
The US makes airline hijacking a federal offense.

September 8, 1961
UN Chief Dag Hammarskjold dies when a DC-6 plane carrying 130 passengers crashes in the jungle of Northern Rhodesia. Sabotage is suspected.

September 25, 1961
The US Army’s 5th Special Forces Group, 1st Special Forces, is activated at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This elite unit will eventually take charge of all Special Forces operations in Vietnam. President Kennedy authorizes the Special Forces to wear the Green Beret.

October, 1961
Two presidential advisers, Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow, visit South Vietnam. They return and recommend the use of American combat troops to stop the growing insurgency. Intelligence estimates that 80-90% of the 17,000 Vietcong in South Vietnam have been locally recruited and do not depend on external supplies.

Block 34

October 1, 1961
Roger Maris hits a record 61st homer of the longer 162-game season. The Yankee outfielder beat Babe Ruth’s 34-year record. Ruth hit his 60 homers in a 154-game season in 1927. The Yankees won their 19th World Series.

October 28, 1961
“The Twist” is the rock and roll dance craze, sung by Chubby Checker. Jet Set socialites dance in New York Cafe society’s Stork Club and Peppermint Lounge, to the twist, jerk, pony, and shake till the wee hours.

October 18-24, 1961
General Taylor sees the disastrous flooding in the Mekong Delta as a useful cover for bringing in 6000-8000 US combat troops, which might be withdrawn or increased after completion of flood rehabilitation.

October 30, 1961
After revelations of Stalin’s mass purges in the 1930’s and 40’s, the body of Joseph Stalin is quietly taken away from the great mausoleum in Red Square where it had been interred beside Vladimir Lenin since 1953.

November, 1961
US Special Forces medical specialists are deployed to provide assistance to the Montagnard tribes around Pleiku. Operation “Farm Gate” begins with 200 US Air Force commandos sent to Bien Hoa. Aircraft is authorized to fly combat missions provided a Vietnamese crew member is aboard. Operating a mix of ancient B-26 and T-28 aircraft, airmen, called the “Ravens,” in civilian clothing and staying in the background, conduct up to 35 sorties per day. General Taylor introduces the concept of a US “limited partnership” in Vietnam. Over the next two years, Army training personnel in South Vietnam will be increased to 16,000.

Block 35

November 13, 1961
Cellist Pablo Casals plays at the White House.

November 16, 1961
Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House for 17 years, dies of cancer.

November 30, 1961
The Soviets veto UN seat for Kuwait, pleasing Iraq.

December, 1961
Dag Hammarskjold gets a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. The ferry-carrier USNS Core arrives in Saigon with the first US helicopter units, 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnees and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment will be airlifting South Vietnamese Army troops into combat. Grandma Moses, the renowned American primitive painter, dies at the age of 101.

December 20, 1961
The New York Times states that about 2000 uniformed US troops are “operating in battle areas with South Vietnamese forces,” and are authorized to fire back, if fired upon.

December 31, 1961
US military forces advising in South Vietnam have reached 3200. 15 Americans have been killed or wounded in combat. $65 million of US military equipment and $136 million in economic aid have been delivered to South Vietnam in 1961.

1962
The Cuban missile crisis nearly leads to nuclear war between the United States and Russia. The Soviet Union denounces the United States for “gross interference” in South Vietnam’s internal affairs.

Block 36

January 12, 1962
The USAF launches Operation Ranch Hand, a “modern technological area-denial technique,” designed to expose the roads and trails used by Vietcong forces. The use of the defoliant Agent Orange begins. Flying C123 Providers, US fliers will dump an estimated 19 million gallons of Agent Orange, named from the color of its metal containers, over 10-20% of Vietnam and parts of Laos over the next nine years. It contains dioxin, a chemical considered a carcinogen and dangerous to human beings. Long after the war ends, thousands of veterans of Vietnam will attribute many medical, genetic, and psychological problems to exposure to dioxin. Birth defects amongst children of veterans as well as many post-war deaths are attributed to Agent Orange. A class action suit against Dow Chemical will be successfully concluded in 1979.

January 23, 1962
Jackie Robinson is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

January 27, 1962
Secretary of Defense McNamara forwards a memo from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to President Kennedy which urges the deployment of United States armed forces to Vietnam.

Block 37

February, 1962
The 39th Signal Battalion, a communications unit, is the first unit of US regular ground forces to arrive in Vietnam in February.

February 3, 1962
In New York City, 42 are arrested in Times Square at a peace rally.

February, 1962
The first US helicopter is shot down in Vietnam.

February 6, 1962
The United States forms Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) in Saigon, headed by former US Army Deputy Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, General Paul D. Harkins. A major buildup of military advisers begins. Henceforth, the war is directed by MACV, which supervises MAAG.

February 10, 1962
Captured US spy-plane pilot Gary Powers is released in exchange for the highest-ranking Russian spy ever caught, KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel. Powers starts walking from the Communist side of a Berlin bridge, while Abel sets off from the American side. Powers thus escapes the 10-year prison sentence for his high-altitude spying mission.

February 11, 1962
The first Farm Gate mission casualties occur when 9 US and South Vietnamese crew members are killed in an SC-47 crash about 70 miles north of Saigon.

February 16, 1962
Lt. Col. John H. Glenn Jr. is hailed in Washington D.C. as the first American to orbit the earth in his spaceship Friendship. Hundreds of college students march for peace outside the White House. The demonstration was organized by students from Harvard. President Kennedy sent an urn of coffee to the students and invited some of them into the White House to meet with top aides. The students called for disarmament, a halt to atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and the cancellation of the civil defense program.

February 27, 1962
In Vietnam, two South Vietnamese pilots, frustrated by Diem’s failure to run the war effectively, bomb, napalm, and strafe the presidential palace using American Ad-6 fighter-bombers. Diem and family miraculously escape injury.

Block 38

February 28, 1962
Robert F. Kennedy, who is in Saigon on a month-long world tour, says that American troops are committed to staying in Vietnam until the Vietcong are beaten.

March 2, 1962
Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knickerbockers.

March 17, 1962
Moscow asks the US to pull out of South Vietnam.

March 22, 1962
Operation Sunrise, South Vietnam’s first long-range counteroffensive against the Vietcong, is launched.

March 28, 1962
The US Air Force is now researching the use of lasers to intercept missiles and satellites.

April 3, 1962
The US Air Force announces the first satellite TV broadcast.

April 8, 1962
Cuban leader Fidel Castro offers to ransom prisoners held since the invasion of the Bay of Pigs on April 19, 1961.

April 9, 1962
In Augusta, Georgia, Arnold Palmer wins the Masters golf tournament.

April 15, 1962
The first Marine air units are sent to Vietnam. 15 Sikorski-Ull-34D combat helicopters of the US 362nd Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM-362) arrive from the aircraft carrier Princeton. 450 Marines, a task unit dubbed “shoofly,” reinforce the three US Army helicopter companies already in Vietnam.

Block 39

May 6, 1962
This marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Henry David Thoreau. An American writer and naturalist, he wrote Civil Disobedience, and said, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.”

May 11, 1962
Secretary of Defense McNamara makes the first of many trips to Vietnam and meets with President Diem, concluding: “every quantitative measurement shows that we are winning the war.” 3000 US Marines begin landing at Bangkok, Thailand.

May 17, 1962
In Saigon, President Diem decrees that the holding of any meeting for any purpose without prior governmental approval is forbidden.

May 31, 1962
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel.

June 1, 1962
Approximately 12,000 US military men are now in Vietnam. The Pentagon announces first federal construction plans for fallout shelters.

June 15, 1962
A report is released which links premature births to smoking during pregnancy.

June 17, 1962
In Pennsylvania, Jack Nicklaus wins the US Open golf title.

June 25, 1962
Justice Black stated a Supreme Court opinion that “In this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite.” The court ruled that a prayer written by the New York State Board of Regents and read aloud in public schools violates the First Amendment.

Block 40

July 11, 1962
Americans see their first live television pictures from Europe when signals were transmitted via the Telstar communications satellite.

August 5, 1962
Marilyn Monroe, 36, has been found dead in her Los Angeles home.

August 6, 1962
Jamaica gains independence from Britain.

August 9, 1962
Author Herman Hesse, age 85, dies in southern Switzerland. The world’s population is now over 3,000,000,000.

September 9, 1962
Rod Laver achieves a tennis Grand Slam.

September 14, 1962
The Distillers Company agrees to pay $26 million in compensation to thalidomide victims.

September 17, 1962
The US Justice Department files first federal suit to end racial segregation in public schools.

September 20, 1962
Rioting occurs at the University of Mississippi, when James Meredith becomes the first black person to enroll in an all-white institution. President Kennedy, citing obstruction of justice, sends United States troops to the area to enforce compliance with the law. Three people die in the fighting, 200 are arrested, and 50 are injured.

Block 41

October 15, 1962
Amnesty International is created to monitor human rights.

October 23, 1962
President Kennedy places Cuba under a naval “quarantine,” by blockading 25 Soviet ships until the Soviets remove recently installed, nuclear-capable, ballistic missile sites.

October 24, 1962
Premiere Khrushchev suggests a summit to avoid nuclear war, and orders the Russian ships to avoid the blockade.

October 27, 1962
Moscow offers to remove bases in Cuba if the US removes bases in Turkey.

October 28, 1962
Premiere Khrushchev promises to dismantle Cuban missile bases, avoiding a serious threat of nuclear war.

November 7, 1962
In the California election, defeated gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon concedes, proclaiming: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”

November 10, 1962
Eleanor Roosevelt is laid to rest beside her husband, former President Roosevelt. As a delegate to the United Nations (1945-52), she helped draft the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

December 2, 1962
After a trip to Vietnam, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield becomes the first major US official to refuse to make an optimistic public comment on the progress of the war. He sees the $2 billion the US has poured into Vietnam during the past seven years as accomplishing nothing. He places blame squarely on the Diem regime.

Block 42

December 31, 1962
Approximately 12,000 US advisory and support personnel are now in Vietnam, including 29 Special Forces detachments. One hundred and nine Americans have been killed or wounded this year.

1963
At Ap Bac in the Mekong Delta, ARVN troops are defeated by Vietcong units. The defeat shows the glaring weaknesses of South Vietnam’s army.

January 2, 1963
Three US advisors are KIA and 8 wounded. 5 US helicopters are shot down.

February 1, 1963
Operation OPLAN 34-A commences. It is a complex series of covert operations against North Vietnam run by the US military.

February 20, 1963
Willie Mays signs a $100,000 contract for one year with the San Francisco Giants. Soon after in New York, Mickey Mantle signs one-year, $100,000 contract with Yankees.

March 13, 1963
China invites Premiere Khrushchev to visit Peking.

April, 1963
John L. Lewis retires as president of United Mine Workers of America.

April 4, 1963
“The Beatles,” a British pop singing group, snatch the first five places in the US singles charts with Can’t Buy Me Love, Twist & Shout, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Please Please Me.

April 30, 1963
New Hampshire legalizes the nation’s only sweepstakes.

Block 43

May 1963
The Defense Department announces “The corner has definitely been turned toward victory in Vietnam.” 20,000 Buddhists gather in the city of Hue to protest a decree against flying their flag.

May 1, 1963
Ngo Dinh Diem’s troops fire into a crowd, killing eight children and one woman.

May 5, 1963
The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) issues a resolution demanding that the United States Government withdraw its troops from Vietnam.

May 6, 1963
In Birmingham, Alabama, 1000 are arrested in a civil rights march. In Saigon, Ngo Diem agrees to spend $17 million on moving villagers into “strategic hamlets” to isolate them from Vietcong.

June 10, 1963
In Saigon, Buddhist monk Ngo Quang Duc is the first of many to die by self-immolation, protesting persecution by the Diem government.

June 12, 1963
Civil rights lawyer Medgar Evers is murdered by white segregationists in Jackson, Mississippi.

June 16, 1963
In Jerusalem, Ben Gurion resigns as Israeli premier and defense minister.

June 17, 1963
John Profumo, The British Secretary of War, resigns his office, having been charged with having sex with a 21-year-old prostitute name Christine Keeler.

June 24, 1963
On a television show, Dr. King, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X call President Kennedy’s leadership inadequate.

Block 44

June 26, 1963
In Germany, President Kennedy is welcomed as more than a million West Berliners turn out to cheer him. Kennedy does not let them down. “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner), the President declares, expressing his solidarity with the isolated people of this city, who live surrounded by the Communist bloc. President Kennedy appoints Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador to Vietnam. The Kennedy administration begins to seriously speculate on a coup against Ngo Diem.

July 1, 1963
The Postmaster inaugurates the zip code system. The British government discloses that Kim Philby, a newspaper correspondent and former diplomat, is a Soviet agent and was the “third man” in the Burgess-Maclean spy case of the 1950’s.

July 30, 1963
In South Vietnam, 60,000 Buddhists march in protest against the Diem government. British double agent Kim Philby turns up in Moscow, seven months after his disappearance in Beirut.

August 1963
The US tells the United Nations it will halt arms sales to South Africa. West Germany reports 16,456 have escaped from the East in the two years since the Berlin Wall was erected. More than $5 million in cash and jewelry is snatched in 15 minutes from a British train in the “Great Train Robbery.”

August 27, 1963
Cambodia severs ties to South Vietnam.

August 28, 1963
Before more than 200,000 peaceful demonstrators who are in Washington to demand the passage of civil rights legislation, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. says “I still have a dream. It is a dream chiefly rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Block 45

August 29, 1963
French President Charles de Gaulle proposes that North and South Vietnam be united into a neutral state and offers French aid and cooperation in helping Vietnam throw off both United States and Communist foreign influence.

August 30, 1963
A telephone “hot line” is connected between Moscow and Washington.

September 1963
“In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam.” (President Kennedy, in a press conference)

September 10, 1963
President Kennedy halts the draft for married men.

September 11, 1963
The US tells Ngo Diem to oust his brother Nhu or face cut in aid.

September 12, 1963
This is the tenth anniversary of the wedding in Newport Rhode Island between then Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Washington Times-Herald photo-journalist Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. Joseph M. Valachi admits to being a member of a New York crime syndicate led by Vito Genovese, whom he called “the boss of bosses.” He describes organized crime as an association of families with people who had different ranks, from “bosses” to “lieutenants” to “soldiers.” He tells, in grim detail, of episodes of murder, extortion, and assault common in organized crime, called “The Mafia” or the “Cosa Nostra” as it is called by its members.

Block 46

October 1963
The United States predicts victory in Vietnam by 1965.

October 21, 1963
Swedish industrialist and chemist Alfred Nobel was born on this day 130 years ago. Nobel invented dynamite and founded the Nobel Prize to award the world’s leading scientists, artists, and peacemakers.

October 23, 1963
In New York, Guggenheim announces a gift of 34 Picasso’s paintings.

October 29, 1963
Captain James “Nick” Rowe becomes an American prisoner of war.

November 1963
Duong Van Minh leads a successful coup against Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Ngo Diem agrees to surrender, and a US-built M113 armored personnel carrier is sent to pick up him and Nhu from St. Francis Xavier Church in Cholon. They are murdered on their way to staff headquarters, at Minh’s orders. President Kennedy is shocked. The US recognizes the new provisional government of South Vietnam. Former Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho, a Buddhist, becomes premier, but the real power in South Vietnam is held by the Revolutionary Military Committee headed by General Duong Van Minh.

November 19, 1963
Today is the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the South. At the cemetery at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, he gave his two-minute-long Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.”

Block 47

November 22, 1963
President John F. Kennedy is shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. The 46-year-old President and Mrs. Kennedy were in Texas, on the last leg of a tour of the southern states to gather support for the Democratic Party. The President dies in his wife’s arms during the dash to the nearest hospital. A high-powered rifle is found in an upstairs room of the Texas School Book Depository, and Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested and charged with the murder. Just 99 minutes after the Kennedy death, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as the 36th President of the United States in the presidential jet flying back to the nation’s capital. By the time of his assassination, there were some 16,300 US advisers and support troops, mostly helicopter transport units, in Vietnam directed by the Military Assistance Command Vietnam, or MACV, which had been set up in 1962. President Johnson confirms the US intention to continue military and economic support to South Vietnam. In the days that followed, the nation mourns the loss of President Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused killer of President Kennedy, fell dead in a Dallas jail, shot by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. Millions of Americans watch the event live on television as the alleged assassin of President Kennedy is escorted by police from one jail to another.

November 25, 1963
Three-year-old John-John Kennedy salutes as the body of his father, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, passes before him. America’s youngest and possibly most loved President is laid to rest.

November 29, 1963
President Johnson appoints Chief Justice Earl Warren as head of a special commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

Block 48

December 19, 1963
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara arrives in Saigon to evaluate the new government’s war effort. Publicly optimistic, he privately tells Johnson that the situation is “very disturbing.” In his formal report to President Johnson, McNamara calls for Operation Hardnose. Air Force Commander General Curtis LeMay has already suggested bombing North Vietnam.

December 24, 1963
President Johnson tells the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war.”

December 31, 1963
A total of 489 Americans have been killed or wounded in Vietnam this year. There are 16,500 US military people in South Vietnam.

1964
Defense Secretary McNamara outlines an elaborate series of clandestine operations against North Vietnam “to result in substantial destruction, economic loss, and harassment.” Known as Oplan 34A, it involves bombing raids by T-28s in Laos against North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces there. Although bearing Laotian Air Force markings, the 25-40 US supplied planes are mostly manned by Thai pilots and others from Air America, the “private” airline run by the United States’ CIA. A North Vietnamese patrol boat attacks an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. Congress gives President Lyndon B. Johnson special powers to act in Southeast Asia. The first American pilot is shot down and taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese.

Block 49

January, 1964
President Johnson pledges a “war against poverty” in his State of Union message. This effectively is the beginning of his “Great Society.”

January 14, 1964
Lieutenant General William Westmoreland is appointed to become deputy to General Paul Harkins, chief of the US MACV.

January 15, 1964
“Whiskey-a-Go-Go,” the nation’s first disco, opens on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

January 18, 1964
Severe limits on cigarette advertising are being considered by the Federal Trade Commission in response to a Surgeon General’s report linking cigarettes to lung cancer and other diseases.

January 30, 1964
The junta government in South Vietnam, headed by Major General Duong Van Minh, is overthrown in a bloodless coup led by Major General Nguyen Khanh.

February 7, 1964
25,000 hysterical teenagers greet the Beatles, a British pop group, who arrive at The John Fitzgerald Kennedy airport in New York for their first musical tour. Later, the US crime rate will plunge dramatically as 73 million Americans cancel everything to watch the “fab four” from Liverpool in their moptop haircuts appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. Their single, I Wanna Hold Your Hand hit the top of the US hit parade.

February 11, 1964
“I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. . . if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die,” said Nelson Mandela at his trial in South Africa.

Block 50

February 16, 1964
A bomb explodes in the US community’s movie theater in Saigon, killing three Americans and wounding 50.

February 26, 1964
Even though they were encircled by some 3000 ARVN troops, 600 men of the Vietcong’s 514th Battalion fight their way out during an eight-hour battle near Long Dinh. 40 Vietcong and 16 ARVN troops are killed. The ARVN forces, outnumbered 5 to 1, called in air and artillery strikes rather than engage the enemy directly.

March 1, 1964
Presidential adviser, William Bundy, recommends that a congressional resolution be passed to allow the administration more leeway in forming its war policies.

March 15, 1964
Richard Burton marries Elizabeth Taylor. In Phnom Penh, Cambodia receives military aid from Communist China.

March 26, 1964
Barbra Streisand triumphs on Broadway with a new musical comedy, Funny Girl.

April 1964
The North Vietnamese develop a network of trails, known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, running from North Vietnam through Laos and into South Vietnam. These hidden trails provide the routes for personnel and equipment to infiltrate South Vietnam. In the US, Ford’s latest car, the Mustang, is introduced.

April 5, 1964
General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur, who led the Allied victory over Japan in World War II, dies at the age of 84. In a farewell speech to Congress in 1951, he said: “Old soldiers never die — they just fade away.”

Block 51

April 13, 1964
Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to receive the award, wins an Oscar for his performance in Ralph Nelson’s, The Lilies of the Field.

April 17, 1964
In New York, Shea Stadium opens. The Rolling Stones release their first LP, entitled simply: The Rolling Stones.

May 22, 1964
Thailand mobilizes its border forces against invasion by the Pathet Lao and agrees to the use of bases by 75 aircraft of the US Air Force for US reconnaissance, search and rescue, and attacks against the Pathet Lao. Senator Barry Goldwater proposes the use of low-yield atomic bombs in Vietnam.

May 27, 1964
Jawaharlal Nehru, beloved leader of India, dies of a heart attack at age 74. He has led India since it won its independence from Britain.

June 1964
During meetings in Honolulu, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge, General Westmoreland, General Taylor, William Bundy, John McCone, and others discuss projected air war against North Vietnam, including a list of 94 targets.

June 2, 1964
The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) is formed in Jerusalem.

June 3, 1964
The Rolling Stones begin their first US tour.

June 9, 1964
The CIA submits a memo that effectively challenges the “domino theory” that lies behind the Johnson administration’s policies.

Block 52

June 20, 1964
General Paul Harkins is succeeded as head of the US MACV by his deputy, Lieutenant General William Westmoreland. Westmoreland says of war: “War is fear cloaked in courage.”

June 21, 1964
The French Embassy in Saigon is ransacked on this the tenth anniversary of Geneva accord.

June 23, 1964
Henry Cabot Lodge resigns as ambassador to South Vietnam. President Johnson picks General Maxwell Taylor as his replacement.

June 27, 1964
ARVN Rangers in Lonc Hoi trap a Vietcong battalion and inflict heavy casualties.

June 29, 1964
Two outposts are overwhelmed by the Vietcong in the Saigon area. 24 New Zealand Army engineers arrive in Saigon as support for South Vietnam.

July 1964
The Ho Chi Minh Trail is a route to carry the tons of weapons, food, ammunition, and other needs for the Vietcong and to move the increasing numbers of North Vietnamese regular troops infiltrating into South Vietnam. In violation of the Geneva Accords, both sides are now conducting a barely-secret war. Using modern Soviet and Chinese machinery, the Vietcong are building roads and bridges capable of handling heavy trucks and a whole network of support facilities. Meanwhile, clandestine activities called for by Oplan 34A have begun. The Royal Laotian Air Force and US planes from Yankee Team are now conducting regular missions in Laos. The DeSoto Mission is operating off North Vietnam’s coast. The Seventh Fleet is ordered to deploy the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga at the entrance of the Tonkin Gulf.

Block 53

July 2, 1964
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Bill, which prohibits racial discrimination.

July 6, 1964
At Nam Dong in the northern highlands, an estimated 500-man Vietcong force attacks the United States Special Forces training camp, but are forced to withdraw after a vicious five-hour battle. This battle results in the deaths of 57 South Vietnamese, who were defending the camp, 2 Americans, 1 Australian military advisor and an estimated 40 Vietcong.

July 9, 1964
China declares that it will step in if the United States attacks North Vietnam. Vietnamese Air Force commander, General Nguyen Cao Ky, claims he has 30 Vietnamese pilots trained to fly jet fighter-bombers against North Vietnam.

July 15, 1964
Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona is nominated for president at the 28th Republican National Convention, held at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. His victory at the convention signals the rise of a new conservative sentiment among Republicans.

July 18, 1964
Black riots take place in Harlem and Rochester, New York.

August 2, 1964
The USNS Maddox, an American destroyer, is attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Three North Vietnamese boats each fire one torpedo at the Maddox, but two miss and the third hits, but fails to explode. Maddox gunners sink one of the boats, and the two others are crippled. President Johnson, in his first use of the “hot line” to Russia, tells Khrushchev that he has no need to extend the conflict, and he warns that “grave consequences would inevitably result from any further unprovoked offensive military action” against US ships “on the high seas.”

Block 54

August 3, 1964
The US Senate votes in favor of the Gulf Tonkin Resolution allowing President Johnson to bypass Congress and take all necessary measures to protect US forces in Southeast Asia.

August 4, 1964
President Johnson appears on national television and announces that the reprisal strikes are underway because of the unprovoked attack on US ships. The President tells the world that, “We still seek no wider war.”

August 5, 1964
F-8 Crusaders, A-1 Skyraiders, and A-4 Skyhawks, flying from the carriers USS Ticonderoga and Constellation, fly 64 sorties over a 100-mile area of North Vietnam along the Gulf of Tonkin. They destroy or damage an estimated 25 North Vietnamese PT boats, attacking bases at Hongay, Loc Ghao, Phuc Loi, and Quang Khe, and practically destroy an oil storage depot at Phuc Loi, which held an estimated 10% of North Vietnam’s stored oil. President Johnson has his aides present the Bundy resolution, giving the President authority to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression… including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty.” Various rallies and peace vigils are held to protest the US bombing raids.

August 7, 1964
The Senate, by a vote of 82-2, and the House, voting 416-0, overwhelmingly approve Public Law 88-408, known as “The Tonkin Gulf Resolution.”

Block 55

August 10, 1964
President Johnson signs the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which reads: “Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and of International Law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels… and Whereas these attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression… and Whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of Southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military, or political ambitions in that area… Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” Hanoi reports that Lt. Everett Alvarez, the US Navy pilot shot down in the raid on 5 August, has been paraded through the streets of Hongay.

August 17, 1964
The Democratic Party nominates President Lyndon Baines Johnson for the Democratic candidacy for president of the US. President Johnson names Senator Hubert H. Humphrey as his selection for vice president. Saigon is in virtual anarchy.

August 29, 1964
President Johnson assures his “fellow Americans” that he has “tried very carefully to restrain ourselves and not to enlarge the war,” but that “it is better to lose 200 (US servicemen) than to lose 200,000.” It is disclosed that 274 US personnel have died in Vietnam since December, 1961.

September 1964
The US Special Forces, working with the Montagnards to train them to fight against the Vietcong, will never really be able to gain the full support of these independent people who essentially want to be left alone. Republican presidential candidate Goldwater charges that President Johnson lied to the American people, and that he is committing the US to war “recklessly.” Having previously called it “McNamara’s War,” Goldwater calls it “Johnson’s War.”

Block 56

September 2, 1964
Alvin C. York, the heroic infantry sergeant of World War I and winner of a Congressional Medal of Honor, dies at the age of 76 in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.

September 30, 1964
The first major anti-war demonstration by students and faculty opposed to the US role in the war in Vietnam takes place at the University of California at Berkeley.

October 1964
Under-Secretary of State George Ball dictates a private 67-page memo that he sees as “a challenge to the assumptions of our current Vietnam policy.” In particular, it argues that an intensified US air war against North Vietnam would lead to a still greater escalation on both sides, “leading to the direct intervention of China and nuclear war.”

October 14, 1964
US aircraft are permitted to fly with Laotian planes on operations against communist movements on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

October 15, 1964
The American composer and lyricist Cole Porter, 71, dies. After ten years in power, Nikita Khrushchev is ousted as both premier and chief of the Communist Party. Khrushchev has been replaced by Leonid Brezhnev. Aleksei Kosygin will take over as Soviet Premier. Harold Wilson wins the British elections for the Labour Party to become the youngest British prime minister of the 20th century.

Block 57

October 16, 1964
The first Chinese-made atom bomb is tested in an explosion at Lop Nor.

October 24, 1964
Eugene Richardson, a 21-year-old flight mechanic from Rochester, is the first person from this area killed in action while flying ammunition to a Special Forces camp. It is still six months before America will commit combat troops to Vietnam.

October 30, 1964
Tran Van Huong, former mayor of Saigon, is named premier.

November 1, 1964
Vietcong raiders infiltrate the US air base at Bienhoa, 12 miles north of Saigon, killing 5 US servicemen and two Vietnamese, wounding about 76, destroying 6 B-57s, and damaging some 20 other aircraft. Senator Goldwater challenges President Johnson to admit to the American people that the US is involved in an undeclared war in Vietnam.

November 2, 1964
King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed.

November 3, 1964
Incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson is elected president by a landslide over Senator Barry Goldwater. Robert Kennedy is elected Senator from New York.

November 10, 1964
US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, speaking at a news conference, says the United States has no plans to send combat units into Vietnam.

Block 58

November 21, 1964
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, crossing New York harbor is opened. It is the longest single-span bridge in the world.

December 1964
The first Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to a US serviceman for action in Vietnam is presented to Captain Roger Donlon for his heroic actions on 6 July 1964.

December 10, 1964
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepts the Nobel Peace Prize. A peaceful warrior for civil rights, at age 35, the minister is the youngest Nobel recipient and the 14th American to win the award.

December 14, 1964
Operation Barrel Roll begins with United States planes attacking “targets of opportunity” in northern Laos.

December 16, 1964
20 years ago, 12/16/44, American bandleader Glenn Miller was presumed dead after his flight was missing over the English Channel. Miller was flying to join his band in France for a series of concerts for the troops.

December 17, 1964
Bob Hope continues to entertain troops in Vietnam, as he has done for Americans in previous wars. ARVN forces blow up a network of Vietcong tunnels some 15 miles northeast of Saigon.

December 24, 1964
Two Vietcong agents leave a car bomb at the Saigon Brinks Hotel, nicknamed “the Pit” used to house US officers. Two Americans are killed and 65 Americans and Vietnamese are injured. General Westmoreland tries to persuade President Johnson to respond with retaliatory raids, but he refuses. He does, for the first time, indicate he might commit US combat troops.

Block 59

December 31, 1964
Nearly 23,000 United States military personnel are now serving in Vietnam.

1965
American air raids take place over North Vietnam. The first American combat troops arrive in South Vietnam. Two companies of ARVN Rangers are ambushed within 40 miles of Saigon resulting in the deaths of 200 South Vietnamese troops and five US advisors. In Miami, “Jersey Joe” Namath signs his first pro contract with the NY Jets. It was a three-year contract for $427,000.

January 4, 1965
President Johnson outlines goals for the “Great Society” in State of Union address.

January 11-27, 1965
The major cities, especially Saigon and Hue, are disrupted by demonstrations and strikes led by the Buddhists. South Vietnam is empowered to draft Vietnamese youth into the armed forces for up to one year. About 30% of the Vietnamese draftees’ desert within the first six weeks in service.

January 26, 1965
Seoul, South Korea approves government plans to send about 2,000 noncombat troops to South Vietnam. American soldiers sent to South Vietnam as military advisers are finding great satisfaction in setting up a kind of peace corps in the villages.

January 30, 1965
Sir Winston Churchill, 90, who rallied his nation and the world to the cause of freedom in World War II, dies. In 1940, during the darkest hours of World War II , he told the British House of Commons, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

Block 60

February 6, 1965
Cuba admits that they are helping to train Vietcong. 7 US GI’s are killed in a Vietcong raid on the base at Pleiku and another 126 are wounded. Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin arrives in Hanoi. He pledges support for forces working towards the unification of Vietnam and condemns American policy. The Vietcong attack a US helicopter base at Camp Halloway and simultaneously blow up the barracks of the US military advisors near Pleiku. 49 US Navy jets, A-4 Skyhawks and F-8 Crusaders, from the 7th Fleet carriers, Coral Sea and Hanco*ck, drop bombs and rockets on the barracks and staging areas at Dong Hoi, North Vietnam. This is a guerrilla training camp 40 miles north of the 17th parallel.

February 10, 1965
Vietcong guerrillas blow up the US personnel barracks at Qui Nhon, 75 miles east of Pleiku, South Vietnam. 23 US personnel are killed. Communist Chinese threaten to send “volunteers” to aid the Vietcong.

February 13, 1965
President Johnson decides to undertake the sustained bombing of North Vietnam using B-57s and F-100s. Called Operation Rolling Thunder, and using aircraft stationed as far away as Guam, it will continue until President Johnson halts it almost three and a half years later.

February 15, 1965
At age 45, Nat King Cole, a top singer for a quarter of a century, dies from lung cancer.

February 20, 1964
The Ranger 8 spacecraft hits the moon, radioing back 7000 photos to the US. In a dramatic shooting before an audience of 400, in New York City, black leader Malcolm X is killed by assassins. Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was the principal spokesman of the Black Muslim organization led by Elijah Muhammed. General Westmoreland cables Washington to ask for two battalions of US Marines to protect the US base at Da Nang.

Block 61

March, 1965
J. Blair Seaborn, a Canadian member of the ICC, makes a third secret visit to Hanoi this month to find that the North Vietnamese have lost interest in negotiating.

March 3, 1965
3500 Marines land at Da Nang, signaling the beginning of America’s ground war in Vietnam. In New York City, a group called Women Strike for Peace, demonstrate outside the United Nations to urge an end to the war. Reports are surfacing of complaints by US servicemen in Vietnam about shortages of ammunition and equipment, while some of these same items are being sold on the black market in Saigon.

March 8, 1965
The USS Henrico, USS Union, and the USS Vancouver, carrying the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, take up station north of Da Nang.

March 10, 1965
The Marines, including the first US Armor, a M48A3 tank of the 3rd Marine Tank Battalion, continue to land in South Vietnam. Marines make their first contact with communist forces. Many ground combat soldiers, also called “Grunts” are armed with the new lightweight M16 rifle, while some still have the older M14.

March 14, 1965
President Lyndon Johnson authorizes US planes to use napalm to bomb targets in North Vietnam. US and South Vietnamese aircraft officially use napalm on North Vietnam targets for the first time.

March 23, 1965
Leonid Brezhnev hints that the Soviet Union may join North Vietnam in the war.

Block 62

March 24, 1965
The first so-called teach-in is conducted at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Some 200 faculty members participate by holding special seminars, while canceling regularly scheduled classes.

March 26, 1965
There is a similar teach-in at Columbia University.

March 28, 1965
25,000 civil rights demonstrators embark on a 50-mile walk for freedom from Selma, Alabama to the state Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.

March 30, 1965
A bomb explodes in a car parked in front of the US Embassy in Saigon, destroying the building. 19 Vietnamese, 2 Americans, and a Filipino are killed and 183 others are injured. Congress will quickly appropriate $1 million to rebuild the embassy. Although some US military leaders will advocate special retaliatory raids on North Vietnam, President Johnson refuses permission.

April, 1965
North Vietnamese prepare the first launching pad for Russian surface-to-air (SAM) missiles.

April 4, 1965
A fierce three-day battle begins in the Mekong Delta. 6 Americans will lose their lives and reportedly 276 Vietcong will be killed. President Johnson proposes a massive development plan to the North Vietnamese in exchange for peace. North Vietnam rejects the offer.

April 8, 1965
North Vietnam Premier Pham Van Dong sets forth the four points that the North Vietnamese demand as conditions for negotiations and peace: independence for all Vietnamese, non-intervention by foreign powers, political settlement of all issues, and reunification of the country. These four points will remain fixed as the Communists’ non-negotiable conditions. The 5000 US Marines stationed in the area of Da Nang are reinforced with the arrival of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines.

Block 63

April 10, 1965
The 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, takes over at Phu Bai to secure an Army radio intelligence station and auxiliary airfield.

April 11, 1965
President Johnson signs a bill for $1.3 billion in aid to education.

April 17, 1965
15,000 students stage an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. U.S. Secretary of Defense McNamara, General Wheeler, General Westmoreland and General Taylor agree to double US military forces from the present approved level of 40,200 to 82,000.

April 23, 1965
Edward R. Murrow, famed broadcaster, dies of lung cancer, four days short of his 57th birthday. Vietnam is formally designated a “combat area” and “hostile fire” pay for service there is authorized.

April 26, 1965
20,000 Cambodian students attack the US embassy in Phnom Penh and tear up the US flag. The war is now costing the US about $1.5 billion per year. 57% of Americans support President Johnson’s handling of the war.

April 28, 1965
President Johnson sends Marines to the Dominican Republic. Hanoi Hattie and Hanoi Hannah are broadcasting to US troops in South Vietnam. In the tradition of Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose and Seoul City Sue, the Hanoi radio has been beaming programs daily to American servicemen to lower their morale.

Block 64

April 29, 1965
17 high-speed cutters and 200 men of the United States Coast Guard are ordered to South Vietnam.

May 1965
The US Marines in Vietnam, now officially designated the III Marine Amphibious Force (MAF), are quickly settling into Da Nang, Phu Bai, and most recently, Chu Lai. One large dispute revolves around the Marines’ concept of enclave-defense and pacification as the best long-term strategy, as opposed to the offensive “search-and-destroy” strategy that General Westmoreland prefers. The Marines pursue their pacification strategy in the three provinces of I Corps, expending considerable energy in civic action and village welfare work. One such initiative is the MEDCAP Patrol, which provided immediate medical assistance to villagers. In the end, this pacification strategy failed, partly because the ARVN and other representatives of the South Vietnamese government failed to provide consistent support.

May 2, 1965
The first satellite television program links nine countries and more than 300 million viewers. Television footage of the war in Vietnam has a strong effect on the Americans view of the war.

May 3, 1965
The first US Army combat unit assigned to Vietnam is the 173rd Airborne Brigade, consisting of about 3500 men stationed in Okinawa. Some are sent to the Bien Hoa air base, others to the base at Vung Tau. Congress approves $700 million more for the war. The US Ambassador in Moscow tries, without success, to get the North Vietnamese Embassy to consider peace talks. This is known as Operation Mayflower.

May 15, 1965
A National anti-war teach-in is held in Washington, D.C.

Block 65

May 16, 1965
40 aircraft are destroyed and 27 Americans are killed in an accidental series of explosions at Bien Hoa Air Base.

May 25, 1965
Heavyweight boxer, Cassius Clay, knocks out Sonny Liston in the first round of their fight in Lewiston, Maine. Australian troops set out for Vietnam. The Vietcong offensive begins when hard-core guerrilla units ambush the First Battalion of the Vietnamese 51st Regiment west of the provincial capital of Quang Ngai.

June 1965
In Albany, New York, Governor Rockefeller signs a bill ending the death penalty in New York.

June 8, 1965
In New York City, 17,000 attend an anti-war rally at Madison Square Garden.

June 17, 1965
Operation Arc Light commences. B-52s from Guam begin bombing raids into South Vietnam. This operation is later expanded to cover much of Indochina. These raids, covering several years, are later revealed to have cost $20 million.

June 19, 1965
Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky assumes the premiership of South Vietnam. He is the ninth premier within the last 20 months. Nguyen Van Thieu is established as Chief of State.

June 26, 1965
General Westmoreland is given formal authority to commit United States military forces to battle.

June 29, 1965
The first formal United States military ground action begins in Vietnam.

Block 66

July 1965
Under Secretary of State George Ball submits a memo to President Johnson stating “The South Vietnamese are losing the war. . . seek to negotiate a way out of the war.”

July 2, 1965
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the civil-rights movement by black Americans, calls for a negotiated end of the war and says he may join the peace rallies and teach-ins.

July 8, 1965
President Johnson decrees that a Vietnam Service Medal will be awarded to Americans serving in the conflict, even though there has been no official declaration of war.

July 12, 1965
Marine Lieutenant Frank Reasoner dies helping his injured radio officer during a Vietcong ambush. He will be the first Marine in Vietnam to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. During the Vietnam War, 239 men received this award.

July 15, 1965
The spacecraft, Mariner 4, sends the first close-up photos of Mars back to the US.

July 18, 1965
This is the tenth anniversary of the opening of Disneyland near Anaheim, California. The creation of film producer Walt Disney, this new entertainment experience aims to involve adults and children in a non-stop fantasy world. The complex spans 160 acres.

July 20, 1965
Ho Chi Minh claims that his people are willing to fight for 20 years or more until they win.

July 24, 1965
The Pentagon reports that since 1961, US personnel wounded in Vietnam outnumber those killed by 5 to 1. This is the highest such ratio in any American conflict.

Block 67

July 28, 1965
President Johnson announces an increase in US military forces in Vietnam from the present 75,000 to 125,000. The monthly draft calls are raised from 17,000 to 35,000. This is a major turning point because it gives US military leaders a blank check to pursue the war. One of the most controversial aspects of the war is President Johnson’s refusal to call up the reserves.

July 29, 1965
The first 4000 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division, known as “The Screaming Eagles,” arrive at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.

July 30, 1965
In a tribute to former President Truman, President Johnson flies to the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, to sign the Medicare Social Security bill. Former President Truman was the first president to propose a federal program of health insurance under Social Security.

August 1965
The South Vietnamese Special Forces camp at Duc Co has now been under siege by the Vietcong for some two months.

August 2, 1965
A 300-man Vietcong force makes a full-scale assault at Duc Co. It is not until troops of the US First Infantry Division and 173rd Airborne Brigade are flown in that the Vietcong withdraw. TV news shows US soldiers setting fire to village huts with Zippo lighters. Vietcong sappers again penetrate US defenses and blow-up oil storage tanks near Da Nang. Two million gallons of fuel are destroyed.

Block 68

August 11, 1965
Violent race riots begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles. With the landing of advance units of the 7th Marines at Chu Lai, the US Marines now have four regiments and four air groups in Vietnam. The airbase is a priority because it gives the Marines their own independent air force to support their operations in southern I Corps and northern II Corps areas. South Korea approves sending troops to fight in Vietnam. In return for this 15,000 man Korean force, the United States has agreed to furnish equipment for five South Korean divisions.

August 17, 1965
In the first major ground action fought exclusively by US troops called Operation Starlite, about 5500 US Marines destroy a Vietcong stronghold near Van Tuong. GI’s are paid in military scrip in an attempt to curb black market operations.

August 31, 1965
President Johnson signs into law a bill making it a Federal crime to destroy or mutilate a draft card. The new law carries penalties of up to five years in prison and a $1,000 fine for these offenses.

September 1965
In China, Mao Tse-tung is planning to begin his “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” and needs his army and resources for his own purposes.

September 4, 1965
Albert Schweitzer, a French medical missionary and Nobel Prize winner, dies in Africa.

September 7, 1965
The United States Marines follow up Operation Starlite with Operation Piranha and claim over 200 enemy dead.

Block 69

September 9, 1965
President Johnson signs a bill creating the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

September 11, 1965
The 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) begins to arrive in South Vietnam.

September 18-21, 1965
US troops, including those of the 1st Airborne Division, take on the Vietcong at An Khe.

September 24, 1965
President Johnson says that a new pact will give Panama a share in the canal.

October 15, 1965
At a pacifist rally, David Miller, a relief program volunteer, becomes the first US war protester to burn his draft card. Miller is arrested by FBI agents.

October 16, 1965
In New York City, 10,000 march in an anti-Vietnam protest. Demonstrators protesting the US policy also march in London, Brussels, Copenhagen, Rome, and Stockholm, coinciding with similar demonstrations in about 40 US cities, organized by the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

October 19, 1965
The Vietcong launch a heavy assault against the US Special Forces camp at Plei Me in the Central Highlands. 1st Air Cavalry units move into Pleiku Province. Americans for Democratic Action denounce a Justice Department probe of Communist influence in the war protest and anti-draft movements as an effort to stifle criticism of the government’s policy.

October 30, 1965
In a New York City demonstration, 25,000 people, led by five recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, march in support of US policy in Vietnam. US Marines repel a “human wave” assault 10 miles from Da Nang, killing 56 Vietcong attackers. A search of the dead uncovers a sketch of Marine positions on the body of a 13-year-old boy who had sold soft drinks to Marines the previous day. Two US planes accidentally bomb a friendly Vietnamese village, killing 48 civilians and wounding 55 others. A map-reading error by South Vietnamese officers is responsible.

Block 70

November 2, 1965
John Lindsay is elected mayor of New York City. Norman Morrison, a 32-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, burns himself to death in front of the Pentagon in anti-war protest. Later, Roger LaPorte, 22, will immolate himself at the United Nations Building in New York City to protest the Vietnam War.

November 9, 1965
At 5:17 p.m., a switch at an electrical station near Niagara Falls inexplicably fails. Nine Northeastern states and parts of Canada are plunged into sudden darkness during the worst power failure in history affecting 24 million people. Two US Navy nuclear-powered vessels, the aircraft carrier Enterprise and guided missile frigate Bainbridge, join the 7th Fleet and take up positions off Saigon.

November 14, 1965
The Battle of Ia Drang Valley, located about 200 miles north of Saigon, is the first major airmobile battle since Operation Starlite near Van Tuong. The 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry led by Col. Hal Moore, using Slicks and Huey helicopter gunships, defeat 3 battalions of over 2000 regular soldiers from the North Vietnamese Army. During the first part of the battle near Landing Zone Xray, Rochester native Jack Gell, communications sergeant, lost his life when he went with his captain to rescue one dead and one wounded comrade. This reflects the American military commitment to never leave dead or wounded brothers behind on the battlefield.

Block 71

November 17, 1965
At Landing Zone Alpha in the Ia Drang Valley, another United States Army battalion is chopped to pieces. Both battles leave 234 American soldiers dead with an additional 71 killed in desperate skirmishes before and after the main battles. Grunts, ground soldiers, learn to put the selector switch of their weapons on full automatic and “rock’n’roll” as fear, survival, and the love of their friends drive them into action.

November 27, 1965
The Pentagon informs President Johnson that troop strengths must be increased from the present 120,000 men to 400,000 men if General Westmoreland is to conduct the major sweep operations he deems necessary to destroy the enemy forces. In Washington, D.C., a demonstration of an estimated 15,000 to 35,000 war protesters circle the White House for two hours before moving on to the Washington Monument, where they are addressed by Dr. Benjamin Spock, Mrs. Martin Luther King, Norman Thomas, and other speakers.

December 1965
The United States begins emergency construction of additional military installations in Thailand. When asked about racial tensions in Vietnam, Captain Henry B. Tucker of the 173rd Airborne Brigade replies: “I see only one color, and that’s olive drab.”

December 20, 1965
In another war, the “drug war,” 209 lbs. of heroin is seized in Georgia in the largest US drug bust to date.

December 21, 1965
In New York City, 4 pacifists are indicted for burning draft cards.

Block 72

December 25, 1965
President Johnson suspends bombing of North Vietnam, hoping to bring the communists to the negotiation table.

December 30, 1965
Ferdinand E. Marcos is sworn in as the Philippine Republic’s sixth President. 180,000 US military personnel are now in Vietnam. A total of 171 US aircraft have been lost, and direct operational costs for 1965 come to $460 million. It is estimated that some 36,000 North Vietnamese have now infiltrated South Vietnam.

1966
“Whether history will judge this war to be different or not, we cannot say. But this we can say with certainty: a government and a society that silences those who dissent is one that has lost its way. This we can say: that what is essential in a free society is that there should be an atmosphere where those who wish to dissent and even to demonstrate can do so without fear of recrimination or vilification.” (Henry Steel Commager, Freedom and Order)

January 1966
Operation Marauder begins. Strom Thurmond, US Republican senator, states his view that nuclear weapons should be used in Vietnam.

January 6, 1966
120-mm mortars are used for the first time by the Vietcong in an attack on the Special Forces camp at Khe Sanh in Quang Tri Province.

January 10, 1966
American and Australian units come upon Vietcong tunnel entrances in the Cu Chi region. GI specialists, known as Tunnel Rats, volunteer to fight inside the 200-mile subterranean network.

Block 73

January 16, 1966
Protest singer Joan Baez is put in jail for 10 days. She was among 124 anti-war demonstrators arrested for blocking the entrance to a US Army induction center at Oakland, California.

January 19, 1966
Indira Gandhi becomes India’s first woman leader, following her father, Nehru, who was India’s first prime minister. In the largest search-and-destroy operation to date, Operation Masher/White Wing/Thang Phong II, conducted by US 1st Air Cavalry Division, ARVN, and Korean forces sweep through Binh Dinh Province.

January 31, 1966
The US bombing of North Vietnam is renewed.

February 8, 1966
President Johnson and South Vietnamese leaders call for peace following a meeting in Hawaii.

February 10, 1966
China accuses USSR of conspiring with the US to force North Vietnam to the negotiating table.

February 16, 1966
The World Council of Churches proposes an immediate cease-fire in Vietnam.

February 17, 1966
In Kentucky, Boxer Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay) is reclassified 1-A by the draft board. The allied mission in Saigon discloses that 90,000 South Vietnamese soldiers deserted in 1965. This is 14% of ARVN troop strength.

February 27, 1966
The 2nd Battalion, 1st US Marines, rescue an ARVN regiment in a battle northeast of Phu Bai. In Switzerland, Peggy Fleming wins a gold medal in the world championship figure skating competition. In Florida, Richard Petty wins the Daytona 500.

Block 74

March 1966
United States Air Force jets pound various Red River Valley transport facilities, just 40 miles from the Chinese border. In Operation Utah, US Marines fight their first major battle with the North Vietnam Army near Quang Ngai City. There are 98 Americans killed in action.

March 9, 1966
The heaviest air raids of the war see 200 missions flown by US Navy and Air Force aircraft. Enemy troops wipe out the US Special Forces camp at Ashau.

March 10, 1966
Buddhists demonstrate against the South Vietnamese government. Premier Ky responds by using troops to quell demonstrations.

March 24, 1966
The Selective Service, the Draft Board, announces college deferments based on academic performance.

April 1966
Operation Game Warden begins with the US Navy’s River Patrol Force (TF116) beginning interdiction of enemy forces in inland waterways. The US admits that political instability in South Vietnam limits the efficiency of the ARVN. The USAF announces that Air Force pilots are restricted to either 100 combat missions over North Vietnam or a 12-month tour of Vietnam. The US Navy and the US Marines impose no such limits on their pilots. B-52 bombers are used for the first time in bombing raids against North Vietnam.

April 14, 1966
In Switzerland, Sandoz Corporation announces the suspension of the distribution of LSD. Former Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary, an LSD proponent, is arrested on charges of narcotics possession.

Block 75

April 26, 1966
It is announced that American combat deaths exceeded those of South Vietnam last week for the first time in the Vietnamese War.

May 15, 1966
Anti-war demonstrators surround the White House in Washington, D.C. On American campuses, students’ picket, march, chant, and sometimes riot. They denounce the production and use of napalm. Everywhere, it seems, the anti-war movement, in all its various forms of expression, grows in intensity as record numbers of Americans die in Vietnam.

June 1966
1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division is sent into Kontum Province under Operation Hawthorne/Dan Tang 61.

June 4, 1966
The Ad Hoc Universities Committee for the Statement on Vietnam puts a three-page anti-war advertisem*nt in The New York Times signed by 6400 academics.

June 8, 1966
130 students and faculty walk out of the New York University graduation ceremonies in protest, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara receives an honorary degree.

June 13, 1966
Despite harsh dissent, the Supreme Court rules 5-4 in the case of convicted rapist Ernesto Miranda. Known as the Miranda Ruling, the court determined that confessions are invalid if they are obtained before a suspect has been informed of his rights.

June 20, 1966
101st Airborne and 1st Cavalry Division carry out Operation Nathan Hale around the US Special Forces camp at Dong Tri.

Block 76

June 29, 1966
An estimated 50% of North Vietnam’s fuel is destroyed in air raids near Hanoi and Haiphong. The Kurds accept a settlement with the Iraqi government.

July 1966
Captured US pilots are paraded through Hanoi with angry mobs wanting to punish the “American air pirates.” Statements are broadcast from Hanoi, with captured pilots allegedly confessing their “crimes” against North Vietnam. A force of more than 8500 US Marines and 2500 South Vietnamese troops launches a massive drive called Operation Hastings in Quang Tri Province. After losing 824 men, North Vietnamese troops pull out of the area.

July 19, 1966
The sole survivor of the mass slaying of eight student nurses in Chicago identifies Richard F. Speck as the murderer. Entertainer Frank Sinatra had his “Ol’ Blue Eyes” on Mia Farrow as the two wed in a brief ceremony in Las Vegas.

August 1966
The 1st Cavalry Division and ARVN forces carry out Operation Paul Revere II in Pleiku Province. The House Un-American Activities Committee investigates Americans who have reportedly aided the Vietcong war effort.

August 3, 1966
In Operation Prairie, the 3rd US Marine Division begins a sweep just south of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) against three battalions of North Vietnam’s 324-B Division. The operation will last until mid-September.

September 1966
Charles de Gaulle tells 100,000 Cambodians that he condemns the US policy in Southeast Asia.

Block 77

September 4, 1966
Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy reveals for the first time that the US now has 25,000 military people, principally Air Force units, in Thailand.

September 7, 1966
Three army privates are court-martialed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, for disobeying orders by refusing to go to Vietnam.

September 14, 1966
Operation Attleboro commences. This is one of the war’s biggest operations, involving 22,000 United States troops.

September 16, 1966
In New York City, the new Metropolitan Opera House opens.

September 19, 1966
Pope Paul VI, in the encyclical Christi Matri, appeals to world leaders to end the war in Vietnam.

September 23, 1966
President Johnson signs the bill increasing the minimum wage to $1.60/hour.

September 30, 1966
Former President Eisenhower tells newsmen in Chicago that he favors using “as much force as we need to win the war in Vietnam.”

October 1966
The US reports that the Vietnam War is now costing $2 billion per month. The US Navy launches a month-long campaign against communist shipping in the Dong Hoi area, sinking 230 craft.

October 2, 1966
The 1st Cavalry Division begins a 22-day campaign, attempting to sweep the 610th NVA Division out of the Phu Cat Mountain area of the Binh Dinh Province.

Block 78

October 17, 1966
President Johnson begins a 17-day trip to 7 Asian and Pacific nations. In remarks recorded in Manila, Philippines for broadcasting to the American people, he states “…the free nations of the world must say again to the militant disciples of Asian communism: This far and no further. The time is now, and the place is Vietnam.”

October 25, 1966
Operation Thayer II begins in Binh Dinh Province. When it ends, February 13, 1967, reportedly there will be 1744 fatal Communist casualties.

October 26, 1966
President Johnson unexpectedly flies into Cam Ranh Bay to salute his troops. Fire hits the hangar deck of the US aircraft carrier Oriskany, killing 43 men and injuring another 16.

November 3, 1966
The US 1st and 25th Infantry Divisions, 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and at least two South Vietnamese battalions fight the biggest battle of Operation Attleboro.

November 8, 1966
Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke wins his election, becoming the first African-American senator in United States history.

November 14, 1966
In a secret report to President Johnson, Defense Secretary McNamara states that the results of the heavier presence of US troops have not been good enough to warrant further large-scale reinforcement. Chinese Red Guards continue to lead China’s Cultural Revolution.

Block 79

December 1966
The US 9th Infantry Division arrives in Vietnam from Fort Lewis, Washington, to join the III Corps. Twiggy popularizes the miniskirt. Comedian Dick Gregory travels to Hanoi, North Vietnam. Governor-elect Ronald Reagan (R-CA) declares that he favors “an all-out total effort” in Vietnam.

December 15, 1966
Walt Disney dies at the age of 65. North Korean pilots are in North Vietnam training North Vietnamese pilots. The MIG force in North Vietnam is 200.

December 31, 1966
The US troop force in Vietnam is now 280,000, with an additional 60,000 American servicemen aboard ships operating off Vietnam and 35,000 US servicemen in Thailand. South Vietnamese forces now number about 750,000. South Korean forces total 46,000. Operation Rolling Thunder is now in overdrive. The total number of individual flights in 1966 was 148,000, with a total bomb tonnage of 128,000 tons. The number of aircraft lost for the year was 318. The direct operational costs for the war effort are $1,200,000,000. The US Department of Defense reports a total of 6664 Americans killed and 37,738 wounded since January 1, 1961.

1967
Peace talks, which will last for the next 6 years, begin in Paris.

January 1967
North Vietnam says that the US must stop its air raids before peace talks can begin. Operation Sam Houston gets under way with the 4th Infantry Division continuing its border surveillance in Kontum and Pleiku Provinces.

January 2, 1967
US Air Force F-4 Phantom jets down seven Communist MIG-21s.

Block 80

January 8, 1967
In Operation Cedar Falls, 30,000 US and Vietnamese troops start an attack on the Iron Triangle.

January 10, 1967
UN Secretary General Thant urges an immediate cessation of bombing. President Johnson asks for a 6% surcharge on personal income taxes to finance the war.

January 15, 1967
In Los Angeles, Bart Starr and the Green Bay Packers methodically tear apart Kansas City in the first Super Bowl. The final score is Packers 35, Chiefs 10.

January 25, 1967
The Joint Chiefs of Staff issue an order barring American pilots from bombing within a five-mile radius of the center of Hanoi.

January 27, 1967
US astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chafee die on the ground from asphyxiation when fire breaks out in their Apollo 1 Command Module during a flight simulation on the launch pad in Cape Canaveral.

February 5, 1967
The Rolling Stones appear on the Ed Sullivan Show.

February 10, 1967
The 25th Amendment is added to the US Constitution. It enables the Vice President to act as the President in the event that the chief executive becomes physically or mentally unable to carry out the duties of his office.

February 15, 1967
13 United States helicopters are downed in Vietnam on one day.

February 18, 1967
American physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the Atomic bomb, dies.

Block 81

February 22, 1967
Students at the University of Wisconsin demonstrate against the presence of Dow Chemical Company, the manufacturer of napalm, on campus. Operation Junction City begins in War Zone C. It involves the first use of parachute troops and land-based artillery.

February 27, 1967
The Vietcong shell the airbase at Da Nang, killing 12 Americans.

March 2, 1967
A three-point plan for bringing about an end to the war proposed by Senator Robert Kennedy is turned down by Secretary of State Rusk. US and South Vietnamese leaders meet in Guam. Premier Ky asks President Johnson, “How long can Hanoi enjoy the advantage of restricted bombing of military targets?” Ho Chi Minh turns down a proposal, delivered to him in a secret diplomatic communication from President Johnson, to end the war. US citizens are surprised by the exchange of notes.

March 25, 1967
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., leading a march of 5000 anti-war demonstrators in Chicago, declares that the Vietnam war is “a blasphemy against all that America stands for.”

April 1967
“We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it. . . I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness. . .” (George McGovern) Huge anti-war demonstrations to protest US policy are held in New York and San Francisco. In New York, about 100,000 people hear speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Benjamin Spock, Stokely Carmichael, and Floyd McKissick. Nearly 200 draft cards are burned. Returning veterans are ridiculed and spat on at airports. Protesters call them “baby killers,” blaming them for the Vietnam War.

Block 82

April 18, 1967
General Westmoreland states that he needs 671,616 men for an “optimum force.”

April 20, 1967
For the first time, US planes bomb Haiphong. The raids were carried out by 86 planes from the aircraft carriers Kitty Hawk and Ticonderoga.

April 24, 1967
General Westmoreland, referring to widespread American protests, says the enemy has “gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily.” He adds, the GI in Vietnam is “dismayed, and so am I, by recent unpatriotic acts at home.”

April 24, 1967
A fierce 12-day battle, Battle of the Hills, begins on the 3 hills near the airstrip at Khe Sanh. Two battalions of the 3rd Marine Regiment defeat North Vietnamese troops, losing 160 men. The 906 killed and wounded represent half the combat strength of the two Marine battalions.

April 25, 1967
In Colorado, Governor Arthur signs the nation’s first law legalizing abortion. Expo ‘67 opens in Montreal.

May 1967
A debate behind closed doors pits the CIA against US military leaders on the issue of how to measure the strength of Communist forces in Vietnam. Ellsworth Bunker takes over as US Ambassador to Saigon from Henry Cabot Lodge. Elvis Presley marries Priscilla in Las Vegas, and honeymoons at Graceland, Presley’s Memphis mansion.

May 2, 1967
In Stockholm, an “International Tribunal on War Crimes” is created by opponents of US policy in Vietnam.

Block 83

May 4, 1967
The US Special Forces base at Lang Vei near Khe Sanh is attacked causing over 100 casualties. Senator William Fulbright (D-AR) says “he no longer believes” statements on Vietnam by President Johnson, Secretary Rusk, or Secretary McNamara.

May 5, 1967
Scott Mackenzie’s flower power anthem, San Francisco, hits the US singles charts.

May 6, 1967
Three US pilots shot down during a raid over Hanoi are paraded through the streets of Hanoi.

May 8, 1967
The base camp at Con Thien comes under a three-hour attack by the ARVN. The assault is repulsed after 179 North Vietnamese soldiers and 44 US Marines are killed. United Nations Secretary General U Thant expresses fear that the world is witnessing the initial phase of World War III, stating that “Direct confrontation between Washington and Peking is inevitable.”

May 13, 1967
70,000 march in New York City to support the Vietnam War.

May 14, 1967
Mickey Mantle hits his 500th home run.

May 18, 1967
The 26th Marine Regiment begins a 17-day offensive, called Operation Prairie IV, east of Khe Sanh and southwest of Con Thien. During the operation, 164 Marines are killed and an additional 999 are wounded.

June 1967
The Vietcong are usually armed with either Soviet or Chinese weapons, as well as captured arms. Operation Union II begins.

Block 84

June 5, 1967
The Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Syria, Egypt and Jordan begins.

June 8, 1967
The USS Liberty is attacked for over 2 hours in international waters by the air and naval forces of Israel, using rockets, torpedoes, and napalm. 34 crew members die and 171 are wounded. Details of the attack are hushed up by both the United States and Israel.

June 9, 1967
Israel seizes the Golan Heights.

June 10, 1967
Israel wins a decisive victory in the Six-Day War.

June 18, 1967
California’s hippie subculture creates a sea of long hair, flowers, and rock music, as 50,000 attend the Monterey International Pop Festival, starring Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Otis Redding, The Mamas and the Papas, and the Grateful Dead.

June 22, 1967
A 130-man company of the 173rd US Airborne Brigade is virtually wiped out by a North Vietnamese ambush near Dak To in Kontum Province. 80 out of a company of 130 US airborne soldiers are killed. A common enemy weapon, the Punji trap is one of the simplest and most effective weapons, accounting for a large number of US and allied casualties.

June 26, 1967
This is the 50th anniversary of General Pershing’s WWI forces landing in France. These were the first units of US troops to land there.

July 1967
The North Vietnamese meet to plan a “Great Uprising” for 1968, to be known as the Tet offensive. Operation Buffalo begins.

Block 85

July 16, 1967
Operation Kingfisher, a three-month action involving the 3rd Marine Division in northern South Vietnam, begins.

July 22, 1967
Author Carl Sandburg, 89, dies in North Carolina.

July 27, 1967
President Johnson names a special commission to investigate the wave of race riots sweeping across the US. 4700 paratroopers are sent into Detroit, which has been nearly paralyzed by race riots that have killed 38.

July 29, 1967
Fire hits the aircraft carrier Forrestal off the coast of North Vietnam, killing 134 crewmen and injuring 62. In addition, 20 planes are destroyed and 42 damaged. The Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Rochester, New York, appeals to President Johnson to “Withdraw our forces immediately from South Vietnam for the sake of reconciliation.”

July 30, 1967
A Gallup Poll reports that 52% of the American people disapprove of the Vietnam War and 41% are of the opinion that troops should never have been sent.

August 1967
Governor Ronald Reagan of California calls for the United States to pull out of Vietnam.

August 30, 1967
At Phu Bai in South Vietnam, a US Marine helicopter base is attacked. 10 Marines are killed and 30 are wounded.

September 3, 1967
General Nguyen Van Thieu is elected as president of the Republic of Vietnam, with Air Vice Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky elected as vice-president.

Block 86

September 4, 1967
In the Que Son Valley near Da Nang, a fierce four-day battle results in the death of 114 men of the US 5th Marine Regiment.

September 10, 1967
John Newcombe and Billie Jean King win the US national tennis titles.

September 11, 1967
The Siege of Con Thien begins and continues until the end of October. During the siege, the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines are often involved in fierce hand-to-hand combat.

September 15, 1967
The Vietcong attack the United States Navy’s River Assault Task Force on the Rachba River in the Mekong Delta.

September 21, 1967
The first official combat troops from Thailand arrive in Saigon, numbering 1200.

September 24, 1967
The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) adopts a resolution against the President Johnson administration’s policies and positions of the Vietnam War.

September 29, 1967
President Johnson claims that the United States will stop bombing targets in North Vietnam only when Hanoi agrees to enter into “productive discussions.”

October 2, 1967
Thurgood Marshall is seated on the US Supreme Court.

October 3, 1967
Woody Guthrie, 55, the pioneering folksinger and songwriter of This Land is Your Land, dies after a 13-year bout with Huntington’s chorea.

Block 87

October 9, 1967
“Che” Guevara, 39, the Argentine revolutionary who helped Fidel Castro win power in Cuba, is killed by Bolivian troops.

October 12, 1967
During Operation Medina in Quang Tri, combat photographer Marine Corporal William T. Perkins, Jr., who grew up in Rochester, New York, deliberately threw himself upon an incoming grenade, killing himself to save the lives of 3 other Marines. For his bravery, above and beyond the call of duty, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

October 17, 1967
686 people are arrested when 150,000 take part in an anti-war march on the Pentagon in Washington.

October 21, 1967
Major Don Holleder dies in a Vietcong crossfire trying to rescue wounded. He leaves behind a wife and 4 daughters. An Aquinas High School in Rochester, NY and West Point graduate (1956), the All-American football star and coach epitomized “Duty, Honor, Country” when he volunteered for Vietnam in 1967.

October 27, 1967
Fr. Philip Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest, and two other men splatter blood over Selective Service files in Baltimore, Md.

October 29, 1967
The Vietcong’s 273rd Regiment attacks a United States Special Forces camp at Loc Ninh. The 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division reinforces the South Vietnamese defending units, resulting in the Vietcong being repelled 10 days later.

October 31, 1967
Operation Kingfisher ends with the loss of 340 Marines and another 3086 wounded.

Block 88

November 1967
US Marines occupy Khe Sanh hilltops near the border of Laos surrounded by over 20,000 NVA soldiers. President Johnson holds a secret meeting with “the Wise Men”, Dean Acheson, Omar Bradley, Averell Harriman, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., asking “How do we unite the country?” They decide that the American people must be given more optimistic reports.

November 3, 1967
Heavy casualties by both sides occur in bloody battles around Dak To in the Central Highlands on Hill 875. 1400 NVA and 300 US troops die.

November 11, 1967
3 US prisoners are released by the Vietcong in ceremonies held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The three men are turned over to Thomas Hayden, a “New Left” activist. The Vietcong say the men are released in support of the opposition to the war in the United States and to help the black struggle within the United States.

November 25, 1967
Robert S. McNamara announces he will resign as Secretary of Defense to become the president of the World Bank.

December 1967
The first microwave oven is made available to Americans. The present hit movies are The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Cool Hand Luke.

December 4, 1967
“Stop the Draft Week” protests take place in the United States.

December 6, 1967
The battle of Tam Quan begins. President Johnson visits Vietnam, Thailand, and the Vatican.

Block 89

December 27, 1967
The battle of Thontham Khe begins.

December 30, 1967
Ho Chi Minh extends New Year’s greetings to Americans opposed to US policies in Vietnam. In New York City, over 500 people are arrested during two days of protest.

December 31, 1967
US troop strength has grown to over 500,000. Since 1965, more than 1,500,000 tons of bombs have fallen on North and South Vietnam. For the fiscal year ending June 1967, the war has cost the United States $21 billion. The elite United States Marine Corps has to take 19,000 draftees during the year. The United States has lost 9353 personnel this year, with a total of 15,997 since 1961. Another 99,742 US servicemen were wounded this year.

1968
Sesame Street airs on television for the first time. Vince Lombardi, a football legend, has indicated that he will step down as Coach of the Green Bay Packers.

January 20, 1968
The 77-day Siege of Khe Sanh commences. 6683 men of the 26th Marines, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, and two batteries of the 13th Marines, come under siege by an estimated 20,000 regulars from elements of four North Vietnamese Army divisions. Air Operation Niagara is launched to support the heavily attacked base at Khe Sanh. Before the siege is over, US casualties will total 205 killed in action and another 852 wounded. NVA left dead on the battlefield will number 1602. A sign in Bravo company’s orderly room reads “For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected never know.” Another sign reads “You never know when it’s got your name on it, you won’t know what hit you anyway.”

Block 90

January 21, 1968
Operation Lancaster II, which lasts 10 months, is begun by the 3rd Marine Division.

January 23, 1968
North Korea seizes the US Navy intelligence ship Pueblo in the Sea of Japan. The North Koreans hold 83-man crew as spies, killing several of them.

January 29, 1968
President Johnson asks for $26.3 billion to continue the war and announces an increase in taxes.

January 30, 1968
The Tet Offensive begins. At dawn on the first day of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year truce, Vietcong and NVA troops start their largest and best-coordinated offensive of the war, attacking central South Vietnam’s 7 largest cities and 30 provincial and district capitals from the Delta to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). A Vietcong suicide squad seizes the US Embassy in Saigon for 6 hours. The flight line at Tan Son Nhut Airport also falls to the Vietcong attack. Most regional attacks are turned back quickly, except in Hue where triumphant Vietcong soldiers raise the North Vietnamese flag high above the Imperial Citadel. Hue is recaptured 25 days later in fierce house-to-house fighting, marking the end of the Tet Offensive. An estimated 3,000 residents were executed during the occupation of Hue. 5,000 North Vietnamese troops died in the recapture of Hue. The Tet Offensive created 350,000 new refugees, bringing the total over one million. The total casualties for the Tet Offensive are 50,000 communists, 11,000 ARVN, 2000 US and 7500 civilians killed. Militarily, Tet is decidedly a US victory; but psychologically and politically, it is a disaster for the United States. Its immediate effect on the country is to increase the opposition to the war.

Block 91

January 31, 1968
Battle of Hue continues in fierce house-to-house combat until March.

February 1, 1968
TV cameras record the execution of a Vietcong captive by South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. President Thieu declares martial law.

February 3, 1968
Kontum falls to the North Vietnamese. The US Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, approves sending 10,500 more troops, a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division and a Marine regimental landing team. The Joint Chiefs of Staff send US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara a memo asking for 46,300 reservists and former servicemen to be activated. Instead, the United States continues to rely on the draft in this undeclared war.

February 16, 1968
President Johnson ends draft deferments for graduate students.

February 23, 1968
General Westmoreland requests a total of 731,756 additional troops. Mendal Rivers (D-SC), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says the US should either use tactical nuclear weapons at Khe Sanh or withdraw from the base. New York Senators, Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits, are now opposed to the Vietnam War.

February 24, 1968
30 years ago, British writer Hugh Schonfield said, “Wars come because not enough people are sufficiently afraid”.

March 2, 1968
In one of the costliest ambushes of the war, 48 US troops are killed and 28 wounded four miles north of Tan Son Nhut Air Base.

Block 92

March 11, 1968
Operation Resolve to Win begins in the area of Saigon along with its 5 surrounding provinces attempting to eliminate the enemy threat to the capital. The operation continues for a total of 26 days. The US Civil Rights Act becomes law, forbidding racial discrimination in housing.

March 12, 1968
Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN), a strong critic of policy in Vietnam, receives 40% of the vote in New Hampshire’s Democratic Presidential Primary.

March 16, 1968
Senator Robert Kennedy announces his candidacy for the presidency. Soldiers of a platoon Charlie Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, led by commanding officer, Lieutenant William Calley, kill between 200 and 500 villagers at My Lai 4. News of this massacre will be suppressed for 20 months.

March 17, 1968
Demonstrations against American involvement in the Vietnam War take place outside the US embassy in London. General Westmoreland will become Army Chief of Staff and be replaced in Vietnam by General Creighton W. Abrams. The “Wise Men” anger President Johnson by advising against more troop increases and recommending that the administration seek a negotiated peace.

March 31, 1968
Robert S. McNamara resigns as Secretary of Defense after seven years and one month of service. President Johnson orders a partial halt to air and naval bombardments of North Vietnam. He then shocks the nation by saying, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” A Gallup Poll shows that only 26% of those questioned favor President Johnson’s handling of the war in Vietnam.

Block 93

April 4, 1968
Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, who with his eloquence, vision, and compassion, inspired black and white Americans is assassinated by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King is famous for his “I Have a Dream” speech and won the Nobel Peace Prize. He said, “If a man hasn’t discovered something he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.” Riots occur in major cities including Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, and Cincinnati.

April 6, 1968
Units of the 1st Cav. Div. in Operation Pegasus break the 77-day Vietcong siege of the base at Khe Sanh.

April 8, 1968
Operation Complete Victory begins involving 42 American and 37 Vietnamese battalions. The two-month operation is one of the largest of the war with over 7000 enemy casualties, mostly due to small-scale fighting.

April 10, 1968
The 3-day Battle for Lang Vei begins.

April 19, 1968
Operation Delaware, with units from 1st Cavalry Division, 101st Airborne Division and 196th Light Infantry Brigade, begins in the Ashua Valley.

April 20, 1968
Pierre Trudeau becomes Canada’s 15th Prime Minister, succeeding Lester Pearson.

April 27, 1968
Vice President Hubert Humphrey announces his candidacy for the Democratic Presidential Nomination.

May 2, 1968
In Loc Ninh, Vietnam, Sgt. Roy Benavidez, a Special Forces Green Beret, suffers five bullet wounds and receives 57 scars in defending his brothers against an NVA Battalion. Sgt. Benavidez will be awarded the last Congressional Medal of Honor from the Vietnam War era “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty” on Feb. 24, 1981, by President Reagan.

May 3, 1968
The highest US weekly hostile casualty toll of the war is announced as 562 KIA.

May 5, 1968
The second large-scale Communist offensive of the year, called the Mini-Tet, begins with the shelling of 119 cities, towns, and military barracks. The main target is Saigon. It will last for the next 8 days.

Block 94

May 11, 1968
The United States and North Vietnam agree to begin formal negotiations in Paris.

June 1968
In Easton, CT, Helen Keller, the blind and deaf author and teacher whose courage brought hope and inspiration to thousands, dies.

June 5, 1968
Senator Robert Kennedy, 42, is assassinated in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan after making a statement announcing his victory in California’s Democratic Presidential Primary.

June 10, 1968
General Creighton W. Abrams assumes command of all United States forces stationed in Vietnam from General Westmoreland. The South Vietnamese demand a place at the Paris Peace talks.

June 27, 1968
United States forces begin to evacuate the military base at Khe Sanh after several months of bitter fighting.

Block 95

July 13, 1968
US planes resume bombing north of the DMZ. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York reveals a four-stage peace plan.

July 29, 1968
The pope condemns all birth control.

August 1968
As the Republican candidate for the US Presidential election, Richard M. Nixon promises to “bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.” Governor Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland will be his vice-presidential running mate.

August 10, 1968
A USAF F-100 Super Sabre jet accidentally strafes a unit of the 101st Airborne Division in the Ashau Valley. This incident of “friendly fire” kills 8 soldiers and wounds 5 soldiers.

August 23, 1968
Vietcong forces use heavy rockets and mortars to attack the US airfield at Da Nang, the US Special Forces camp at Duc Lap, and the cities of Hue and Quang Tri.

August 26, 1968
The Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago, endorsing the administration’s platform, not the anti-war platform calling for an unconditional halt of bombing as proposed by Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. Police and National Guardsmen are pitted against youthful anti-war demonstrators, who are beaten and maced while starting riots at the convention center. Hubert Humphrey is nominated for president.

September 1968
Brigadier General Truong Quang An, commander of the ARVN 23rd Infantry Division, is killed when NVA gunners down his helicopter near Duc Lap, becoming the first South Vietnamese general to die in combat.

Block 96

September 8, 1968
Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panther Party, is convicted on charges of voluntary manslaughter in the death of John Frey, an Oakland policeman.

September 14, 1968
Denny McLain, Detroit Tigers pitcher, wins his 30th game of the year. The first to do so since Dizzy Dean in 1934.

September 19, 1968
Chester Carlson, American inventor of the Xerox photocopying system, dies.

September 28, 1968
NVA forces attack the US Special Forces camp at Thuong Duc.

October 11, 1968
In the first anti-war demonstration organized and led by soldiers, more than 7000 protesters, including 200 soldiers, 700 veterans, and 100 reservists, march through downtown San Francisco.

October 20, 1968
Jacqueline Kennedy marries Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate.

October 24, 1968
Henderson Hill, a 42-day search and clear operation, conducted by the 5th Marines, begins in north central Quang Nam province.

October 27, 1968
In London, 50,000 people protest the war.

October 31, 1968
President Johnson orders an end to Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing of North Vietnam. In Nam, American soldiers hear the unmistakable hollow thump of enemy shells leaving a mortar tube in the thick jungle and yell, “INCOMING” — then race for protection.

Block 97

November 1968
Two pacification efforts, the Le Loi program, an intensified civic action campaign, and the Phoenix program, a hamlet security initiative, begin. Critics say they involve South Vietnamese “hit teams.” As the bombing ends over North Vietnam, the air strikes along the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos triples.

November 6, 1968
Richard Milhous Nixon is elected 37th President of the United States. For the first time in American history, a black female, Democrat Shirley Chisholm Brooklyn, NY, will serve in the House of Representatives. Henry Kissinger is later named Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. The Cunard’s lines flagship, the Queen Elizabeth, docks in Southampton, England at the end of her last transatlantic voyage.

December 1968
The Paris Peace talks are at a standstill.

December 16, 1968
The Supreme Court refuses to review the federal government’s constitutional right to send reservists to Vietnam in the absence of an official declaration of war. Americans are now ready to let South Vietnam take over the fighting.

December 18, 1968
Dr. Henry Kissinger proposes that the peace talks proceed on two tracks, with the United States and North Vietnam arranging a mutual withdrawal of forces, while South Vietnam and the NLF forge a political settlement in separate discussions.

December 24, 1968
The crew from the Navy ship Pueblo are released from 11 months of captivity by the North Koreans.

December 27, 1968
The Apollo 8 astronauts return safely to earth after becoming the first men to orbit the moon.

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December 31, 1968
This ends a year filled with strife both in America and in Vietnam. The turmoil leads to President Johnson not seeking another term as President. Extended physical and mental torment for the troops is producing extreme combat fatigue and disorientation known as the “thousand-yard stare.” A total of 540,000 Americans are now serving in Vietnam. Since 1965, 117,000 missions have been flown over Vietnam dropping 2.5 million tons of bombs. Since January 1961, 31,000 US servicemen have died in Vietnam, and another 200,000 have been wounded. Vietcong and North Vietnamese military deaths are almost 36,000 for 1968, while a total of 439,000 Communists are claimed to have been killed since January 1961. Even if these numbers reflect inflated “body counts,” hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people have been killed in the war.”

1969
Suppose They Gave A War And Nobody Came (title of an American Movie in 1969)

January 1, 1969
An 8-month-long military operation, code-named Operation Rice Farmer, is conducted by part of the 9th Infantry and 5th ARVN in the Mekong Delta.

January 4, 1969
Violence erupts again in Northern Ireland as Protestant militants stone and harass university students marching in support of voting rights for Catholics.

January 5, 1969
President Nixon names Henry Cabot Lodge to succeed W. Averell Harriman as chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks.

January 6, 1969
The US Presidential salary is raised from $100,000 to $200,000 annually.

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January 10, 1969
Sweden announces it will establish full diplomatic relations with North Vietnam.

January 12, 1969
Joe Namath leads the New York Jets to the first AFL Super Bowl win, 16-7, over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts.

January 13, 1969
The war’s largest amphibious assault, code-named Operation Bold Mariner, begins with 2500 Marines of the 7th Fleet Amphibious Force landing on the Batangan Peninsula. The final budget to Congress calls for expenditures of $25,733,000,000 for the fiscal year 1970, including a $3,500,000,000 reduction in spending for the war in Vietnam, the first reduction since the US entered the war.

January 30, 1969
Allen W. Dulles, 75, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, dies.

February 1969
The United States Navy turns over 25 heavily-armed river boats to the South Vietnamese Navy.

February 3, 1969
Yasir Arafat is named leader of the PLO.

February 13, 1969
National Guardsmen are activated to quell disturbances at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

February 22, 1969
Sweden grants asylum to more than 200 draft evaders and military deserters from the United States. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam’s 1st Ranger Group begins Operation Quang Nam.

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March 1, 1969
Mickey Charles Mantle retires and his number (No. 7) is also retired. He played major league baseball since 1951 and hit a grand total of 536 home runs. In 1956, Mantle won Rochester’s Hickok Belt as Professional Athlete of the Year.

March 2, 1969
The French-British Concorde takes its first flight. Operation Wayne Grey, is carried out by the 4th Infantry Division in Kontum province. Operation Oklahoma Hills, a 57-day operation, is carried out by the US 7th and 26th Marine regiments southwest of Da Nang in Quangnam province.

March 6, 1969
The casualty figures for week one of the post-Tet offensive stand at 453 US personnel, 521 South Vietnamese and 6752 enemy killed. 2593 US personnel are reported wounded. Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler, arrive in South Vietnam for a five-day visit.

March 12, 1969
Beatle, Paul McCartney, marries Linda Eastman, a descendant of George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera and founder of Eastman Kodak Company. The song Mrs. Robinson is voted Record of the Year and wins a Grammy for US duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

March 17, 1969
Golda Meir, who once taught public school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is sworn in as Israel’s fourth Premier.

March 18, 1969
President Nixon orders secret bombings of Cambodian Communist base camps and supply areas for the first time in the war. Operation Breakfast, known as the “Menu” bombings, provides for B-52 strikes. A total of 3630 flights over Cambodia will drop 110,000 tons of bombs in April. The bombings of Cambodia are kept secret from the American public and the United States Congress until May 9, 1970, when The New York Times accurately describes the first of the secret B-52 bombing raids in Cambodia. National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger contacts J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, asking him to find the government leaks about the bombings. The National Security Council staff members’ and reporters’ telephones are wiretapped by the FBI.

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March 20, 1969
A federal grand jury, under anti-riot provisions in the 1968 Civil Rights Act, indicts 8 people, the Chicago Eight, on charges of conspiracy to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Eight Chicago policemen are also indicted, of whom seven are charged with assaulting demonstrators.

March 28, 1969
US and ARVN troops discover mass graves of civilians killed by Vietcong and NVA during the Tet takeover of Hue. Dwight David Eisenhower, who led the Allies to victory in World War II, and was elected 34th President of the United States, dies from heart problems at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C. The five-star General is 78 years old.

April 3, 1969
A total of 33,641 United States personnel are reported to have died in combat during the war, exceeding the figure for the entire Korean War. Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, contends that the United States is moving to “Vietnamize” the war as rapidly as possible.

April 4, 1969
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour is canceled due to the show’s anti-establishment humor.

April 5, 1969
Thousands of anti-war protestors march in demonstrations and parades in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and other cities.

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April 15, 1969
The 173rd Airborne Brigade begins a pacification operation known as Washington Green. Conducted in the An Lao Valley in Binh Dinh Province, this operation will continue for approximately a year and 8 months.

April 16, 1969
The United States supplies the first 20 of 60 jet fighter-bombers to the South Vietnamese Air Force.

April 22, 1969
In Houston, doctors perform the first transplant of a human eye. 100 B-52 bombers, based in Thailand and Guam, drop nearly 3000 tons of bombs on a border area 70 miles northwest of Saigon.

April 28, 1969
French President de Gaulle, 79, resigns. US troop strength in Vietnam peaks at 543,482.

May 6, 1969
In one of the worst accidents of the war, a US helicopter crashes, killing 34 personnel and bringing the total number of helicopters lost to 2595.

May 10, 1969
Lasting a total of 20 days, the Battle of Hamburger Hill begins. After 11 assaults with heavy casualties, 1000 troops of the 101st Airborne Division, 3rd Brigade eventually capture Ap Bia Mountain (Hill 937), in the Ashau Valley. This Battle for Hamburger Hill cost the lives of 70, with an additional 372 wounded. At the Paris peace talks, the National Liberation Front presents a 10-point program for an “overall solution” to the war.

May 14, 1969
President Nixon’s first speech on Vietnam calls for the withdrawal of all non-South Vietnamese forces.

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May 18, 1969
1500 Communist troops attack United States and South Vietnamese camps near Xuan Loc.

May 21, 1969
President Nixon nominates the appointment of Warren Earl Burger to succeed Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

May 26, 1969
Beatle, John Lennon, and his wife, Yoko Ono, begin a “bed-in” for world peace and invite the media to film them in their Montreal hotel room.

June 8, 1969
President Richard Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet at Midway Island in the Pacific and restate that United States forces will be replaced by South Vietnamese forces. This is known as Vietnamization. President Nixon announces that 25,000 United States troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam before the end of August. Bulgaria, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Mongolia, North Korea, North Vietnam, Poland, Rumania, Syria, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia recognize the Provisional Revolutionary Government of North Vietnam.

June 16, 1969
Troops of Thailand’s Black Panther Division repel 500 Vietcong soldiers 20 miles east of Saigon.

June 23, 1969
Benhet, a United States Special Forces camp located 288 miles northeast of Saigon is besieged and cut off by 2000 North Vietnamese troops.

July 7, 1969
A battalion of the 9th Infantry Division begins leaving Saigon in the initial withdrawal of United States troops.

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July 9, 1969
The US Department of Agriculture suspends the use of DDT pending results of study.

July 11, 1969
The US First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston reverses the 1968 conviction of Dr. Benjamin Spock on charges of conspiracy to counsel evasion of the draft.

July 19, 1969
Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy drives off Chappaquiddick bridge. Mary Jo Kopechne drowns.

July 20, 1969
Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin pilot their Apollo lunar module, named Eagle, to a landing on the Sea of Tranquility at 4:17 pm. The first words from the moon, spoken by Neil Armstrong moments after the module sets down, are “Houston, Tranquility Base here.” President Nixon, in a radio message to the astronauts on the moon, says “For years politicians have promised the moon, I’m the first one to be able to deliver it.”

July 21, 1969
Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin complete the most breathtaking and hazardous part of the historic Apollo II space mission. Michael Collins remains in the spacecraft, Columbia, while the two pilot the lunar module, Eagle, onto the surface of the Moon. Armstrong steps out onto the surface of the moon saying: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” In Vietnam, 6 Americans die.

July 25, 1969
President Nixon presents the “Nixon Doctrine”. The United States will have the primary responsibility for the defense of allies against nuclear attack, but the non-communist Asian nations must defend against conventional attack and are responsible for their own internal security.

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July 28, 1969
1000 United States troops surround a suspected Vietcong stronghold known as “the Citadel,” which is located 25 miles north of Saigon.

August 1969
The first pictures of the planet Mars are beamed back to earth by the unmanned spacecraft, US Mariner 6. Israel plans to keep Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and most of the Sinai Peninsula.

August 3, 1969
Belfast is torn by 3 days of rioting until armed British troops intervene to establish order.

August 4, 1969
Hanoi Radio announces the release of three US prisoners-of-war who will be returned in the custody of a pacifist group led by Rennie Davis.

August 7, 1969
A Vietcong raid on the US hospital at Cam Ranh Bay leaves two US personnel dead and 99 injured. 53 of the injured are patients.

August 9, 1969
Actress Sharon Tate, wife of director Roman Polanski, is found murdered in her Beverly Hills home. Charles Manson and “hippie” commune members are convicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1970.

August 12, 1969
Communist forces attack more than 150 cities, towns, and bases, including Da Nang and Hue.

August 18, 1969
A massive gathering of close to 400,000 young people, survive traffic jams, food and water shortages, and torrential downpours to claim the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair a great success. They come to Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in the small town of Bethel, New York, near Woodstock. It is a weekend of music, love, and peace. The outdoor rock concert includes many top artists, such as: Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Ravi Shankar, Janis Joplin, The Who, and Jefferson Airplane. Hippies chant with Country Joe and the Fish:

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And it’s one, two, three
What’re we fightin’ for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.

And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates.
There ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! We’re all gonna die.

(Joe McDonald, rock composer)

August 17, 1969
United States troops report killing at least 650 North Vietnamese in a fierce battle in the Que Son valley, 30 miles south of Da Nang. US troops find 1000 North Vietnamese in a complex of tunnels and bunkers. Throughout the war, soldiers called “tunnel rats” enter the dangerous tunnels to find and kill enemy Vietcong.

August 20, 1969
Federal agents in Berkeley, California, arrest Bobby Seales, National Chairman of the Black Panther Party, for the murder of former Panther Alex Rackley.

September 1969
In a bloodless coup, Colonel Muammar Khadafy overthrows 79-year-old King Idir of Libya.

September 3, 1969
Ho Chi Minh dies in Hanoi at age 79. His successor Vice President Ton Duc Thang assembles Le Duan, Truong Chin, General Vo Nguyen Giap, and Premier Pham Van Dong as the new leaders.

September 5, 1969
American blues singer and guitarist Josh White dies. Lt. William Calley is formally charged in connection with the massacre of 109 villagers at My Lai.

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September 16, 1969
President Nixon announces a second round of US troop withdrawals of approximately 35,000 men.

September 30, 1969
The United States and Thailand announce that 6000 US troops will be withdrawn from Thailand by July 10, 1970.

October 1969
A new 13-episode comedy show is launched by the BBC called Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

October 8, 1969
Members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) clash with Chicago police as the trial of the “Chicago Eight” continues. The National Guard is called out.

October 11, 1969
A Gallup Poll shows 57% of Americans would like Congress to pass legislation which calls for the withdrawal of all US troops by the end of 1970.

October 15, 1969
Governor Francis W. Sargent of Massachusetts, a World War II combat veteran, said simply of the Vietnam War, “This is costing America its soul.” The biggest anti-war demonstration in America’s history is staged. Millions of Americans take part in organized rallies and marches to protest continuing involvement in the Vietnam War. They want an end to the war that has cost the lives of more than 40,000 US servicemen.

October 16, 1969
The New York Mets win their first World Series.

October 29, 1969
Defendant Bobby Seals is gagged and chained to his chair at his trial for conspiracy to incite a riot. He will be tried separately, and the remaining defendants will become known as the “Chicago Seven.”

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November 1969
President Nixon appeals to the “silent majority” to support his policy of peace with honor, saying in an address to the nation, “I want to end the war to save the lives of those brave young men in Vietnam. But I want to end it in a way which will increase the chance that their younger brothers and their sons will not have to fight in some future Vietnam someplace in the world.” Sweden announces $45 million in economic aid to North Vietnam.

November 10, 1969
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 51-year-old author of anti-Stalinist novels, is expelled from Russia. 250,000 protesters with peace symbols go to Washington, D.C. to participate in the largest anti-war demonstration in the nation’s history. Radicals split off from the main rally to march on the Justice Department in a demonstration led by members of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”) and supporters of the “Chicago Eight” defendants. This crowd, numbering about 6000, throws rocks and bottles and burns US flags but are disbursed with tear gas. In Paris 2651 protesters are arrested. Henry Cabot Lodge resigns as the chief US delegate to the Paris peace talks.

November 20, 1969
Philip C. Habib becomes the acting head of the delegation to the Paris Peace talks.

December 1, 1969
The Selective Service initiates the first draft lottery since 1942. Young American men around the country wait to see if they get a high or low number. The lower the number, the more likely they will be drafted into the Armed forces.

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December 30, 1969
As the US Chief Delegate to the Paris Peace Talks, Philip Habib presents to the North Vietnamese Communist Delegate a list of 1406 names. This list contains the names of United States servicemen classified as missing in action as of December 24, 1969.

December 31, 1969
Musical hits, topping the charts this year, include 1776, Hair, and Hello Dolly. Popular films include Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They. The initial withdrawal of US troops began on July 9, 1969. US troops which had peaked at 543,000 in June are now down to 479,000. Although President Nixon continues the withdrawing of US troops, he is far from ending the war. The overall increase of the South Vietnamese military involvement in the war is now known as “Vietnamization.” 40,024 US servicemen have lost their lives in the fighting in Vietnam, while an additional 260,000 have been wounded and 1406 are listed as either missing in action or prisoners of war. The growing casualty list, coupled with the knowledge of US troop withdrawal, is beginning to demoralize some of the US fighting forces. Results of this demoralization include an increase in the use of drugs, “fragging” incidents, which is the deliberate killing or wounding of US servicemen by other US servicemen, and in 1969 alone, there have been 117 convictions in the US Army for “mutiny and other acts involving willful refusal” to follow orders. Opposition in Congress is more openly expressed than it ever has been. Anti-war forces throughout the world, and especially in the United States, have been able to mobilize large numbers of Americans to actively protest against the US involvement in the Vietnam war.

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THE SIXTIES

A decade of dissent and the most turbulent in the recent history of the US, the sixties was an unforgettable and exciting era. The civil rights and anti-war movements drew millions of people into the streets, where public protests raged. Bloody riots erupted with cities and flags were burned. Long hair, mod dress, drugs, sexual freedom, and anti-establishment ideas abounded. Affluent kids embraced a counterculture fueled by rock music and a sincere yearning for brotherhood and peace. Despite its problems, the nation endures. It was, like other periods of upheaval, simply “the best of times and the worst of times.”

January 26, 1970
US Navy Lieutenant Everett Alvarez, Jr. spends his 2000th day in captivity in Southeast Asia. He is the longest-held POW in US history. 65% of Americans support Nixon’s handling of the Vietnam War.

February 3, 1970
Bertrand Russell, 97, renowned philosopher, mathematician, and political activist, dies in Wales.

February 20, 1970
US National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam meet secretly in Paris. The North Vietnamese reject Kissinger’s proposals for a mutual withdrawal of military forces, the neutralization of Cambodia, and a mixed electoral commission to supervise elections in South Vietnam.

March 1970
The US Supreme Court rules that draft evaders can’t be penalized after a five-year period.

March 9, 1970
The US Army takes over from the US Marines in the I Corps area of operations.

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March 12, 1970
Cambodian demonstrators, attacking Vietnamese shops and homes, continue to rampage in the streets of Phnom Penh.

March 18, 1970
Mail service in New York City is paralyzed by the first postal strike. Army personnel are sent to sort and deliver mail. In a bloodless coup, Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia is removed from power and replaced by Premier and Defense Minister Lon Nol. With United States air support, South Vietnamese troops attack communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.

April 1, 1970
Green Beret Medic, Sgt. Gary B. Beikirch, distinguished himself during the defense of Camp Dak Seang “The River of Blood,” in Kontum Province, where he, disregarding his own personal safety, provided medical aid to his fallen comrades. In the process he received several wounds but continued his duty as a medic and saved many lives. For his actions, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

April 13, 1970
An oxygen leak forces Apollo 13 astronauts to abandon their mission and return to earth in the lunar module. President Nixon pledges to withdraw 150,000 more US troops over the next year and authorizes US combat troops to fight against Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. 3 national Security Council Staff members and key aides resign in protest over the planned invasion of Cambodia. President Nixon bans occupational draft deferments and deferments for fathers. The Beatles disband.

April 15, 1970
The United States Defense Department suspends the use of the controversial herbicide called Agent Orange, so named because of the orange canisters used to contain it.

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April 30, 1970
Nixon warns, “if, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

May 1, 1970
30,000 troops invade 30 miles into Cambodia in a campaign designed to clear the NVA sanctuaries in the Fish Hook and Parrot’s Beak regions.

May 2, 1970
Senators McGovern, Hatfield, and Goodell announce they will try to cut off funds for all US military activity in Southeast Asia.

May 4, 1970
Seymour Hersh, the freelance reporter who broke the story of the My Lai massacre, has been named for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. Demonstrations erupt across the US after President Nixon sends troops into Cambodia. 100 Ohio National Guardsmen fire their rifles into a group of protesting students at Kent State University killing 4, 2 men and 2 women, and wounding 11. At least 100 colleges and universities pledge to strike. The presidents of 37 universities and colleges sign a letter urging President Nixon to demonstrate his determination to end the war. Two more students are shot and killed at Jackson State University, Mississippi. The killings follow 3 days of student rioting. The National Guard use bayonets, tear gas, and finally bullets. Thousands of students come out in defiance of a state ban on all public meetings. President Nixon’s response: “When dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.”

May 6, 1970
Governor Ronald Reagan closes down all California universities and colleges for 5 days, affecting 280,000 students on 28 campuses. Pennsylvania State University, with 18 campuses, is also closed indefinitely.

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May 8, 1970
New York City construction workers break up a student anti-war demonstration on Wall Street. Attacking the demonstrators, they leave more than 70 persons injured.

May 9, 1970
100,000 young people, mostly from college campuses, demonstrate peaceably in Washington, D.C. In Vietnam, gunboats cruise the Mekong River in an attempt to neutralize enemy sanctuaries.

May 15, 1970
President Nixon nominates the first two women for General, Elizabeth Hoisington and Anna May Hays.

May 20, 1970
100,000 construction workers, dock workers, and office workers lead a parade in New York City supporting President Nixon’s policies.

May 23, 1970
Led by the Khmer, which are ethnic Cambodian mercenaries assigned to the Cambodian army, 10,000 South Vietnamese troops set fire to Cambodia’s largest rubber plantation in Chup. This rubber plant accounts for 50% of Cambodia’s rubber production.

June 1970
After partly overrunning and inflicting heavy losses at a South Vietnamese Fire Base located 21 miles south of the DMZ, North Vietnamese sappers are beaten back.

June 7, 1970
New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, the temple of classical music, is playing a very different tune today as British rock band, “The Who”, perform their rock opera, Tommy.

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June 16, 1970
The Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, is cut off by communist operations.

June 22, 1970
The US halts use of all forms of defoliants in Southeast Asia.

June 24, 1970
Senator Robert Dole sponsors an amendment on which the Senate votes, 81-10, to repeal the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. President Nixon responds by saying he uses his constitutional authority of the President as Commander-In-Chief to protect the lives of US military forces in Vietnam. US ground forces are withdrawn from Cambodia back into South Vietnam. The Cambodian operations cost the lives of 354 US ground troops. The Senate votes 58-37 to adopt the Cooper-Church amendment to limit Presidential power in Cambodia. The House defeats the bill.

June 27, 1970
Thousands of young hom*osexuals’ march from New York’s Greenwich Village to Central Park asserting the new strength and pride of the gay people.

July 1, 1970
President Nixon silences the cry, “We are old enough to die for our country, but we cannot vote!” by signing into law the historic 26th Amendment to the US Constitution which reduces the voting age from 21 to 18. The NVA’s Siege of Fire Base Ripcord, an artillery base north of the Ashau Valley, begins.

July 7, 1970
40 people are shot while rioting in Asbury Park, NJ.

July 21, 1970
The Buffalo Bills football offensive guard, James Robert “Bob” Kalsu, voted the team’s Rookie of the Year in 1968, is killed by mortar fire while defending Fire Base Ripcord. Born in Oklahoma City, Kalsu was drafted in 1968 by the Bills and by Uncle Sam a year later. He had served 8 months in Vietnam. He is the only player from the AFL or NFL to be killed in action.

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July 23, 1970
The Siege of Fire Base Ripcord ends when US troops abandon the base. Its defense costs the lives of 64 US troops.

August 2, 1970
Fidel Castro personally welcomes a 747-jet landing in Havana, Cuba. The plane was hijacked shortly after it started its New York-to-San Juan flight.

August 6, 1970
David Bruce attends his first session of the Paris Peace talks as the US chief negotiator.

August 10, 1970
McSorley’s Ale House, a 116-year-old bar in New York, admits its first female quaffer. Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, Bella Abzug, and Gloria Steinem speak out for day care centers, non-sexist advertising and revision of some Social Security laws. Members of the National Organization for Women visit businesses to urge promotions and equal pay for women workers. The national women’s strike causes chaos in New York.

August 26, 1970
A throng of 10,000 women parade up New York’s Fifth Avenue, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which gave women the right to vote. In addition, they are demanding passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and other pro-feminist changes. The passage of the 19th Amendment was largely due to the efforts of the 2-million-strong National American Woman Suffrage Association, which was led by two local leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

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August 27, 1970
US Vice President Agnew meets with South Vietnamese leaders President Thieu and Vice President Ky in Saigon.

September 1970
The Senate rejects the McGovern-Hatfield amendment, which sets a deadline of December 31, 1971 for complete withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam.

September 5, 1970
Combat Operation Jefferson Glen is initiated by the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) in coordination with the ARVN 1st Infantry Division.

September 25, 1970
Erich Maria Remarque, German author of All Quiet on the Western Front, dies. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, 52, succumbs to a heart attack. He is succeeded by Anwar Sadat. In Ohio, students burn draft cards at a memorial at Kent State University.

October 4, 1970
Janis Joplin, 27, dies in Hollywood of a heroin overdose, less than a month after rock star Jimi Hendrix succumbed to drugs. Miss Joplin, nicknamed the “Pearl,” was raised in Texas, but gained fame in San Francisco in 1967 as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company.

October 13, 1970
Angela Davis, 26, a former acting assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA, who has been hunted for nearly two months on murder and kidnap charges, is arrested at a midtown Manhattan motel by FBI agents. Sir Robert Thompson, a renowned counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare expert, meets with President Nixon to report that United States efforts have failed to destroy the Communist subversives in South Vietnam.

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October 18, 1970
Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau has invoked emergency war powers to quell a band of French separatists, insurrectionists, and hundreds of suspects are rounded up almost immediately in Montreal, Quebec, and other cities.

October 19, 1970
The World Trade Center, under construction in New York City, becomes the world’s tallest building.

October 24, 1970
Salvador Allende Gossens is elected president of Chile. He is the first Marxist to be elected by a democratic majority to the head of a government in the western hemisphere, in spite of the CIA’s attempts to block his election. He promises to nationalize much of Chile’s economy.

November 9, 1970
Charles de Gaulle, 79, dies at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, just 18 months after resigning as the president of France. The Supreme Court refuses to hear a challenge by the state of Massachusetts regarding the constitutionality of the Vietnam war. Scientists in Buffalo report the first artificial synthesis of a living cell.

November 21, 1970
An Air Force and Army team of 50 Americans, led by Colonel “Bull” Simon, using 10 large helicopters land at the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to free 70-100 American POWs suspected of being held there. The prisoners had already been moved out of the camp which is located 23 miles west of Hanoi. Finding no US prisoners, the Special Forces team returns safely, and reports having killed 25 guards in 40 minutes at the camp.

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December 1970
Cesar Chavez, the Mexican-American labor leader, receives a ten-day jail term for organizing an illegal nationwide boycott of lettuce. The US Navy bows out of the riverine war by handing over 125 naval craft to the South Vietnamese Navy, who have now received a total of 650 patrol craft. The war in Vietnam is winding down, at least for US military forces, as President Nixon withdraws troops to a level of 280,000. Booby traps, snipers, and mortar attacks are now the main cause of US casualties. Invading Cambodia created great turmoil in the United States, and also showed that the hostilities are not just in Vietnam, but in fact are really throughout all of Indochina. 44,200 US servicemen have been killed in action since 1961.

1971
Mrs. Michael Hoff, a MIA wife and member of the National League of Families, recognizes the need of a symbol of our POW/MIAs and along with Norman Rivkees, designs a flag to represent our missing men. In the years to come, this flag will be displayed in such honored places as the White House.

January 1971
South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are the sites of intensive bombing raids by a large force of US B-52 bombers. A grand jury charges the Reverend Philip F. Berrigan, who is serving a 6 year jail term for destroying draft records, and 5 others with conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and plotting to blow up the tunnels of federal buildings in Washington.

January 12, 1971
The “Harrisburg Six,” deny the charges, denouncing them as a government effort to destroy the peace movement.

January 18, 1971
Senator McGovern, campaigning for President, states he will withdraw all United States forces from Vietnam if he is elected.

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January 30, 1971
Operation Dewey Canyon II begins.

February 1971
Operation Lam Son 719 on the Ho Chi Minh Trail tries to stop flow of supplies from Hanoi. A federal survey of marijuana use on college campuses has revealed that 31% of students have tried the drug and 14% are regular smokers.

February 10, 1971
News reporters Larry Burrows of Life magazine, Kent Potter of UPI, Henri Huett of AP, and Keisaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek die as a Vietnamese helicopter crash in Laos. A major earthquake occurs in Los Angeles.

February 11, 1971
The United States and Russia sign a treaty banning nuclear weapons testing in the oceans.

February 12, 1971
J.C. Penney, the department store chain founder, dies. The stores operate on the Golden Rule, a policy of humanity to employees and customers.

February 17, 1971
President Nixon refuses to limit the use of US airpower, and says Americans will remain in South Vietnam as long as US prisoners of war are in the hands of the North Vietnamese.

February 22, 1971
Senator Eugene McCarthy introduces an anti-war teach-in at Harvard University. Students are urged to employ political tactics instead of violence.

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March 1, 1971
A bomb explodes in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., resulting in $300,000 in damage. No one is hurt. The Weather Underground claims credit for the bombing, to protest the US invasion of Laos.

March 2, 1971
Vietcong shelling of Kompong Som’s oil refinery destroys 80% of the nation’s main fuel storage facility.

March 22, 1971
Premier Chou En-lai visits Hanoi and vows all-out Chinese support for the North Vietnamese struggle. The Assault on Fire Base Mary Ann begins.

March 29, 1971
Lt. William Calley is found guilty of murder for the killing of villagers at My Lai.

March 31, 1971
A battle rages around Fire Base 6, the South Vietnamese stronghold in the Central Highlands.

April 1971
President Nixon orders Lt. Calley freed while his conviction is reviewed.

April 6, 1971
Composer Igor Stravinsky, 88, dies. Mayor Lindsay’s $2 bet opens off track betting in New York City.

April 12, 1971
The US begins dropping 7.5 tons of bombs on NVA troops.

April 13, 1971
In East Pakistan, rebels form a state called Bangladesh.

April 19-26, 1971
Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C. US statistics show that “fragging”, US soldiers firing on or blowing up their officers, has increased to 209 incidents in 1970. It resulted in 34 deaths.

April 20, 1971
The US Supreme Court in a 9-0 vote backs the use of busing to end segregation in public schools.

Block 121

May 1971
The US Supreme Court rules 6-3 that juries can impose the death penalty.

May 3-5, 1971
In Washington, D.C., police arrest a record 12,614 militant anti-war protesters, holding them for 24 hours.

May 23, 1971
At Cam Ranh Bay, the North Vietnamese destroy 6 tanks containing 1.5 million gallons of fuel. Al Unser wins his second Indianapolis 500 race in a row.

May 31, 1971
In secret negotiations, the United States proposes a deadline for the withdrawal of all American troops in exchange for the return of American POWs and a cease-fire.

June 1971
The Army charges Brigadier General John Donaldson, 42, with killing 6 Vietnamese. The West Point graduate is the highest-ranking officer accused of killing civilians in the war, and the first general to be charged with any war crime since the Philippine insurrection 70 years earlier.

June 5, 1971
A fierce battle around South Vietnamese Fire Base Charlie, 12 miles southeast of Khe Sanh, occurs.

June 9, 1971
A lieutenant flying to Vietnam goes absent without leave (AWOL), and is the first US officer of the 500 war resistors and deserters to request asylum in Sweden.

June 13, 1971
The New York Times starts a 3-day publication of leaked portions of the 47-volume Pentagon Papers which are an analysis of how the United States’ commitment in Indochina grew over the last 30 years. The Pentagon Papers disclose closely guarded information gathered during the administrations of President Kennedy and President Johnson. Attorney General John Mitchell asks the NY Times to stop publishing the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times refuses. This begins a 6-month-long key legal battle between the government and the press over “the people’s right to know.”

Block 122

June 22-28, 1971
1500 North Vietnamese attack the 500-man South Vietnamese garrison at Fire Base Fuller.

June 26, 1971
The Justice Department issues a warrant for the arrest of Daniel Ellsberg, who is accused of giving away the Pentagon Papers. The Supreme Court has overruled the government’s attempt to stop The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing articles from the Pentagon Papers.

June 27, 1971
Mob boss Joseph Colombo is critically wounded at an Italian-American civil rights rally in New York City.

June 28, 1971
Daniel Ellsberg turns himself in to Federal Authorities.

July 3, 1971
Jim Morrison, the lead singer with The Doors, dies of a probable drug-induced heart attack in Paris.

July 6, 1971
Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, 71, dies.

July 8, 1971
US helicopters airlift some 1500 South Vietnamese into the Parrot’s Beak to fight 400 North Vietnamese.

July 9, 1971
The United States completes the turnover of the Demilitarized Zone to the South Vietnamese.

Block 123

July 13, 1971
The US disclaims CIA involvement as Laotian tribesmen occupy the Plain of Jars. President Nixon surprises America saying he will visit Peking, China before May of 1972.

July 25, 1971
Dr. Christian Barnard transplants a man’s heart and lungs in Cape Town, South Africa. David Bruce resigns as the Paris peace talk negotiator.

July 31, 1971
Apollo 15 astronauts Scott and Irwin take mankind’s first ride on the moon. William J. Porter becomes the new negotiator to the Paris Peace talks.

August 1971
The CIA admits it has a 30,000-man army in Laos.

August 6, 1971
The last troops of the first US Army unit to enter Vietnam combat in 1965, the 4th Battalion, 503rd Infantry of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, pull out of Vietnam to return home.

August 21, 1971
In Buffalo, NY and Camden, NJ, draft offices are raided to destroy draft records by anti-war protesters.

August 25, 1971
President Nixon tries to curb inflation and strengthen the dollar by demanding a 90-day freeze on wages and prices. George Meany, President of the AFL-CIO, says that he has “absolutely no faith in the ability of President Nixon to successfully manage the economy of this nation.”

September 8, 1971
The $70 million John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opens in Washington, D.C. South Korea announces it will pull out its 48,000-man force from South Vietnam by June of 1972.

Block 124

September 11, 1971
Former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who was the Premier of Russia from 1957 to 1964, dies in obscurity.

September 13, 1971
At the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, NY, a total of 10 prison guards and 39 convicts are killed and more than 80 injured as 1000 New York State Police storm the maximum-security prison to quell the 4-day-long riot.

September 21, 1971
The Senate defeats a liberal-led filibuster against the draft bill in a 61 to 30 vote. The House passed the compromise version of the two-year draft extension bill in August, with assistance from local Congressman Frank Horton. The bill allows the president to resume military inductions, which had been stopped since the expiration of the previous draft law at the end of June. This gives President Nixon two years to work toward an all-volunteer army. The bill also contains a record $2.4 billion military pay raise and authorization for the president to drop undergraduate student deferments.

September 30, 1971
A $21 billion military procurement authorization bill passed by the Senate calls for withdrawal of US troops from Southeast Asia within six months.

October 1971
President Thieu wins a second 4-year term as president of South Vietnam in an election in which he is the only candidate. He celebrates by releasing 2938 Vietcong POWs.

October 8, 1971
The final major US operation in Vietnam, called Operation Jefferson Glenn, is concluded by 8 battalions of the 101st Airborne Division. This combat operation, which began on September 5, 1970, has lasted a total of 399 days.

Block 125

October 21, 1971
President Nixon names Lewis Powell and William Rhenquist to be judges on the US Supreme Court.

October 25, 1971
The United Nations ousts Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalists from the world body after 26 years of membership, and seats Mao Tse-Tung’s Chinese Communists.

October 28, 1971
The British end a 14-year debate and approve membership in the European Common Market.

November 1971
President Nixon announces that he will withdraw 45,000 more US troops by February 1st, bringing the troop-level down to 139,000.

November 13, 1971
Mariner 9, a 300-pound US spacecraft, is successfully placed in orbit around Mars. The US National Conference of Catholic Bishops endorses their most forceful resolution opposing the Vietnam war.

November 19, 1971
The Cambodian government asks for South Vietnamese military assistance against the communist Khmer Rouge forces invading Phnom Penh.

December 1971
India invades Pakistan.

December 14, 1971
Speaking before the Knapp Commission on police corruption, New York Police Detective Frank Serpico tells how New York City officials ignored his stories of police corruption.

Block 126

December 18, 1971
Bobby Jones, American golf champion, dies.

December 20, 1971
15,000 North Vietnamese defeat 6000-7000 Laotian defenders assisted by Thai irregulars, and capture the strategic Plain of Jars.

December 21, 1971
Kurt Waldheim is named to replace U Thant as United Nations Secretary General.

December 23, 1971
In Vientiane, Laos, American entertainer Bob Hope tries to negotiate with North Vietnamese authorities to release US POWs.

December 26, 1971
A band of Vietnam veterans seize the Statue of Liberty in a dramatic anti-war statement. US fighter-bombers begin a 5-day attack on North Vietnamese airfields, missile sites, anti-aircraft emplacements, and supply facilities.

December 31, 1971
Australia and New Zealand have withdrawn from Vietnam. Since 1965, the war has cost Australia 473 dead and 2202 wounded as well as $182 million for military expenses, and $16 million in civilian assistance to South Vietnam. Since 1961, the US has lost 45,627 Americans. The Communists are making significant gains in Laos and Cambodia. Cultural events include Segal’s Love Story, the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Warhol’s Trash, and The French Connection.

1972
“Johnson condemned his officials who worked on Vietnam to the excruciating mental task of holding reality and the official version of reality together as they moved farther and farther apart.” (Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake)

Block 127

January 1972
President Nixon continues troop withdrawals from Vietnam, but says that 25,000-35,000 US troops will remain until the North Vietnamese release all US POWs.

January 3, 1972
Meo tribal forces loyal to the Laotian government evacuate Longtieng base.

January 25, 1972
President Nixon tells of an 8-point peace plan for Vietnam, again asking for the release of all POWs in exchange for withdrawal of troops.

February 1972
A force of 824 soldiers, the last of Thailand’s 12,000 troops who served in South Vietnam, depart.

February 5, 1972
The US agrees to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

February 17, 1972
The German Volkswagen Beetle outsells the US Ford in the United States, with over 15 million cars sold.

February 18, 1972
A government report calls alcohol abuse the nation’s biggest drug problem.

February 21, 1972
President Richard M. Nixon makes a historic first trip to Communist China. Of this visit, he states that this is “the week that changed the world.” He is the first US President to land in Peking since China had become Communist. He and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger are met by Chou En-lai and visit Chairman Mao Tse-Tung in the Forbidden City.

March 1972
NVA troops initiate a major offensive against South Vietnam.

Block 128

April 1972
Only several hundred Marines, embassy guards, air and naval gunfire spotters, and advisors to South Vietnamese Marines remain in Vietnam. General John Lavelle, the commander of 7th Air Force and top air force officer in Vietnam, is removed from command for authorizing air strikes on oil dumps and truck parks in North Vietnam, thus violating President Johnson’s unconditional bombing halt order. 12,000-15,000 soldiers of the NVA 304th Division supported by artillery and anti-aircraft units sweep across the DMZ and rout the South Vietnamese 3rd Division, driving them toward their rear bases.

April 2, 1972
Authorization is received for Operation Freedom Train. Operation Linebacker is also planned.

April 8, 1972
The siege of An Loc begins when South Vietnam commanders decided to hold An Loc at all costs to stop an invasion of Saigon. B52 tactical air strikes, and helicopter gunships enabled the South Vietnamese to prevail during the siege which will last for 5 weeks. United States Navy operations in Vietnam are at their highest since 1968.

April 13, 1972
In Chicago, the first large-scale strike in the history of major league baseball is settled after only two weeks.

April 15, 1972
North Vietnamese forces overrun Fire Base Charlie, 20 miles northwest of Kontum.

April 16, 1972
The United States announces that B-52s and other planes have hit military targets near Haiphong and other areas of North Vietnam.

Block 129

April 19, 1972
The 8 Ivy League college presidents and the president of MIT issue a joint statement condemning the renewed bombing of North Vietnam and supporting orderly anti-war demonstrations. The US 7th Fleet warships bombarding the North Vietnamese coast are attacked by MIGs. The United States destroyer Higbee is badly damaged.

April 23, 1972
Protests over the bombing of North Vietnam erupt across the US. The town of Kompong Trach falls to communist forces. During the next 3 weeks, 11 other Cambodian positions fall to the Communists.

May 1972
The New York Times receives the Pulitzer Prize for publishing the Pentagon Papers.

May 1, 1972
North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops tightened the noose around the besieged provincial capital of Quang Tri, which they capture. As the city collapses, Hue and Da Nang are next.

May 2, 1972
J. Edgar Hoover, 77, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48 years, dies.

May 8, 1972
President Nixon declares that North Vietnamese ports are to be mined in order to cut the communist forces off from their supplies. Haiphong harbor is mined first.

May 10, 1972
The USS Constellation, crewed by Lieutenant Randy Cunningham and Lieutenant Willie Driscoll, knocks down three MiGs in one combat mission. Added to two previous victories, this makes them the first American aces of the Vietnam War.

Block 130

May 11, 1972
President Thieu declares martial law in South Vietnam. This is the first time it has been necessary since the 1968 Tet Offensive.

May 15, 1972
George Wallace fights for his life after an assassination attempt by Arthur Bremer, 21, in Laurel, Maryland. He survives, but is permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

May 19, 1972
A bomb explodes in the Air Force section of the Pentagon.

May 20, 1972
In the first Soviet visit ever by a US president, President Nixon meets with Premiere Brezhnev for summit talks in Moscow. President Nixon’s policy of détente with the communist world is beginning to work. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), which he started with the Soviets in 1969, result in agreements that the two leaders sign during his week-long visit in Moscow.

May 30, 1972
Three Japanese Red Army terrorists fire on unsuspecting passengers at Lod International Airport in Tel Aviv, killing 26 people and wounding 72.

June 1972
Secretary of Defense Laird says the increase in US military activity in Vietnam could double the annual cost of the war and could add between $3 and $5 billion to the 1973 fiscal budget.

June 9, 1972
Senior US advisor John Paul Vann, who wrote The Bright Shining Lie, is killed in a helicopter crash. The number of United States Air Force fighter bombers in Southeast Asia has tripled. United States Navy planes are flying two-thirds of the attack sorties against North Vietnam.

Block 131

June 12, 1972
USAF four-star General John D. Lavelle tells the House Armed Services Committee that he was relieved of his post in March and was later demoted after repeatedly ordering the unauthorized bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. General Lavelle becomes the first four-star general in modern US history to be demoted on retirement.

June 15, 1972
In Texas, 75,000 attend Billy Graham’s rally billed as “Religious Woodstock.”

June 17, 1972
Five men are arrested and charged with breaking into the executive quarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C.

June 23, 1972
US helicopters are required to fly almost all the dangerous missions around An Loc because South Vietnamese crews have panicked under fire.

June 28, 1972
President Nixon announces that no more draftees will be sent to Vietnam unless they volunteer to go.

June 30, 1972
General Frederick C. Weyand takes over for General Abrams in Vietnam.

July 1, 1972
John N. Mitchell resigns as President Nixon’s campaign manager. The Watergate break-in and the subsequent scandal is a factor. US military and civilian sources disclose that weather modification techniques such as seeding clouds to suppress anti-aircraft fire and hinder troop movements, known as meteorological warfare, have been used in both Vietnam and Laos since 1963.

Block 132

July 14, 1972
Six national leaders of the 20,000 member Vietnam Veterans Against the War are indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to set off an “armed rebellion” at the Republican National Convention. ​

July 17, 1972
The Census Bureau reports the median US income at $10,285.

July 18, 1972
Jane Fonda delivers an anti-war speech on Hanoi Radio, an event many view as an act of treason.

July 26, 1972
NASA gives multi-billion-dollar space shuttle contract to North American Rockwell.

July 29, 1972
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark visits North Vietnam. Clark reports over Hanoi radio that he has seen damage to hospitals, dikes, schools, and other civilian areas.

August 11, 1972
The last US ground combat unit in Vietnam, the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry, is deactivated. The 1043 men had been guarding the US air base at Da Nang. Fewer than 44,600 US servicemen now remain on the ground in Vietnam. This number does not include the 7th Fleet sailors and airmen, or Air Force personnel in Thailand and Guam.

August 22, 1972
Delegates going to the Republican National Convention are harassed by 3000 anti-war demonstrators.

August 28, 1972
USAF Captain Richard Ritchie shoots down a MIG over Hanoi, his fifth of the war, and becomes the first USAF ace of the Vietnam war.

Block 133

September 1972
The unpredictable Bobby Fischer wins the world championship of chess by defeating the Russian master, Boris Spassky.

September 4, 1972
Mark Spitz, a 22-year-old Californian, wins a record 7 gold medals at the Munich Olympics.

September 5, 1972
11 Israeli athletes are killed by 8 hooded Black September Palestinian terrorists who break into the Olympic Village and attacked the sleeping Israelis in their dormitories. The Games were temporarily stopped, and 12,000 police surrounded the village. US helicopters evacuated Meo tribesmen who had been suffering heavy losses around the Plain of Jars.

September 15, 1972
2 former White House aides, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, are among 7 men indicted on charges of conspiring to break into the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex on June 17th. ​

September 17, 1972
North Vietnam ceremoniously releases three US pilots, the first POWs released since 1969.

September 19, 1972
A sixth MIG victim makes Captain Charles D. DeBellevue the war’s top ace.

September 23, 1972
For the first time since March of 1965, the weekly United States casualty figures show no fatalities.

October 1972
A shell exploding in the barrel of a gun on the heavy cruiser, Newport News, results in the deaths of 20 seamen and injury to 37.

Block 134

October 3, 1972
Bloomingdale’s of New York City celebrates its 100th anniversary.

October 8, 1972
The Pentagon begins to furnish President Thieu with $2 billion of materiel in a plan called Operation Enhance Plus. US military bases will be transferred to the South Vietnamese and soon they will have the 4th largest air force in the world.

October 21, 1972
Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho reach a cease-fire agreement.

October 24, 1972
The White House temporarily stops all bombing north of the 20th Parallel as a sign of United States approval of recent North Vietnamese concessions at the secret peace talks in Paris. President Thieu broadcasts a denunciation of the cease-fire treaty.

October 26, 1972
Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s National Security Advisor, breaks the administration’s silence on the Paris peace talks and declares that “peace is at hand” in Vietnam.

October 30, 1972
President Nixon signs a bill expanding social security expenditures to $5 billion annually.

November 1, 1972
American poet Ezra Pound, 87, dies in Venice.

November 7, 1972
President Nixon is re-elected president, carrying every state but Massachusetts. ​​

November 11, 1972
The US Army turns over its Longbinh headquarters base to South Vietnam. The transfer of Longbinh, once the largest US military installation outside the continental United States, symbolizes the end of US involvement in South Vietnam. About 29,000 US soldiers still remain in South Vietnam.

Block 135

November 13, 1972
In London, the BBC celebrates its 50th anniversary. In Chicago, a judge voids five convictions in the 1968 “Chicago Seven” trial.

November 21, 1972
SALT II talks begin in Geneva.

November 22, 1972
The US loses its first B-52 of the conflict, brought down by a surface-to-air missile (SAM).

December 1972
The Federal Trade Commission charges Xerox with a monopoly on office copiers.

December 13, 1972
The Paris peace talks break down completely.

December 18, 1972
President Nixon resumes the bombing and mining of North Vietnam. White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler says that the bombing will end only when all United States prisoners of war are released.

December 24, 1972
On Christmas Eve, Comedian Bob Hope gives what he says is his last of nine consecutive Christmas shows to US servicemen in Saigon.

Block 136

December 25, 1972
It is revealed that the equivalent of 20 Hiroshima-sized A-bombs were expended against North Vietnam between December 18 and 24.

December 26, 1972
Harry S. Truman, 88, the 33rd President of the United States, dies in Kansas City.

December 27, 1972
Lester Pearson dies. He was the Canadian Prime Minister from 1963 to 1968 and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his role in settling the Suez Crisis in 1956. President Thieu, on the day before the expiration of his special powers, signs a decree which will eliminate virtually all of South Vietnam’s political parties except for his own Democracy party, which was formed in November. Roberto Clemente, one of baseball’s outstanding players with the Pittsburgh Pirates, dies in the crash of a plane leaving San Juan, Puerto Rico while on a mercy mission for earthquake victims of Nicaragua. For whatever the critics of President Nixon’s strategy and tactics may say, the bombing operation that has just ended, Linebacker II, does seem to have caused the North Vietnamese to agree to return to the conference table. By committing the United States to an all-volunteer army in 1971, President Nixon effectively undermined the anti-war movement. Draft calls came to an end at the exact same time as the Christmas bombings of 1972. “Going back a few years, by 1969, the all-but-unanimous anti-war sentiment among students and faculty at our elite universities had become so strong that it took far greater courage to defend our role in the war than it did to follow 10,000 others to a protest demonstration. A tiny minority of movement activists paid a practical price for their beliefs by going to jail rather than registering for the draft or finding new homes in Canada or Sweden.” (Michael Medved; Los Angeles, PBS)

Bomb Tonnage Summary
The total bomb tonnage expended by US planes since February 1965 is put at 7,555,800. This is over 3 times what was used by the Allied forces in WW II.

Block 137

1973
In 1973, the National League of Cities funded 18 outreach centers. Today, only one remains. The Veterans Outreach Center (VOC) of Rochester, NY is a private, non-profit counseling agency that has expanded to help veterans of all wars.

January 5, 1973
At all 531 airports inside the United States, boarding passengers are subject to thorough inspection. Each piece of luggage is examined. A few airlines use X-ray machines to speed the process.

January 15, 1973
President Nixon halts all bombing of Vietnam by American warplanes.

January 22, 1973
Former President Lyndon B. Johnson, 64, dies of a heart attack.

January 23, 1973
President Nixon announces that Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho have initiated the Paris Peace Accord “to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.” The cease-fire is to go into effect at 0800 hours 28 January, 1973 Saigon time. “An agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam” is signed in Paris by the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Vietcong. The settlement includes a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, withdrawal of all US troops and advisors (totaling about 23,700) within 60 days, the dismantling of all US bases within 60 days, release of all US and other POWs within 60 days, continuance in place of North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam, withdrawal of all foreign troops from Laos and Cambodia and prohibition of bases and troop movements through these countries; agreement that the DMZ at the 17th Parallel will remain a provisional dividing line with eventual reunification of the country “through peaceful means,” and establishment of an international control commission.

Block 138

January 27, 1973
The draft officially ends. At the time of the armistice, Saigon controls about 75% of South Vietnam’s territory and 85% of its population. The ARVN is well-equipped. 1.1 million men are under arms. Lieutenant Colonel William B. Holde is the last US combat death. He is killed by an artillery shell in An Loc, 11 hours before the cease-fire deadline.

February 1973
After Watergate conspirators Gordon Liddy and James McCord are convicted of spying on Democratic Headquarters, Judge Sirica revives the Watergate inquiry.

February 9, 1973
Units of the 7th Air Force based in Thailand and the 43rd Strategic Wing on Guam fly missions over Cambodia.

February 12-27, 1973
Called Operation Homecoming, the return of US POWs begins with North Vietnam’s release of 142 of the 587 US prisoners at Hanoi’s Bialam airport.

February 14, 1973
The first 20 POWs arrive in California at Travis Air Force Base.

February 21, 1973
Trying to end 20 years of war, the Communist-led Pathet Lao and Phouma’s Laotian government agree to a cease-fire.

February 28, 1973
250 American Indian Movement activists seize the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation at Wounded Knee. In Vietnam, many American Indians served their country with distinction. Over 42,000 Native American servicemen were stationed in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. A 1992 report states that Native American veterans were frequently involved in heavy combat, and 5% served with the infantry, ranger, airborne, special forces, tank, and artillery units, or as door gunners in helicopters or aboard gunboats. African Americans served their country well during the Vietnam War. Black Americans in Vietnam referred to themselves as “Bloods” and left their unique mark in the culture of Vietnam Veterans. Many served their country well, while at home in America the civil rights movement unfolded.

Block 139

March 1973
Hanoi launches a huge logistical program to prepare for a major offensive.

March 17, 1973
US POWs are cleared out of the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner of war camp for the first time in 8 years. The longest-serving POW from the United States, Major Floyd Thompson, who was captured in March of 1964, is released.

March 6, 1973
President Nixon reimposes price controls on oil and gas.

March 29, 1973
The MACV closes down and the last US troops leave South Vietnam.

TOTAL US CASUALTIES
58,184 troops have died in Vietnam. 47,374 of these deaths were due to hostile action, while another 10,800 were due to non-combat-related incidents. In addition, 153,303 troops were wounded in action. The only remaining Americans in Vietnam are 8,500 civilians, plus some embassy guards and a small number of soldiers in a defense office. North Vietnam releases the last 67 of its acknowledged 587 POWs. The only Americans left behind are 8,500 civilians, plus embassy guards and a small number of soldiers in a defense office.