1964 History, Facts, and Trivia
Quick Facts from 1964
- World-Changing Event: President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin — the most sweeping civil rights legislation in American history since Reconstruction
- Top Song: I Want to Hold Your Hand by The Beatles, which spent seven weeks at #1 and was the opening round of the most dominant chart performance in pop music history
- Must-See Movies: Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, Goldfinger, Dr. Strangelove, and Becket
- The Most Famous Person in America: Martin Luther King Jr.
- The Most Famous People in the World: The Beatles
- Notable Books: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
- Half-gallon Holland Dutch Treat ice cream: 59 cents; Bulova Hi-Fi Record Player: $59.00
- The Funny Late Show Host: Steve Allen; The Funny Lady: Moms Mabley
- Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Dragon, associated with vitality, ambition, and a tendency to make everything larger than it needs to be — a reasonable description of 1964
- The Conversation: Did you watch the Beatles on Sullivan? And what do you think about this Civil Rights Act?
Top Ten Baby Names of 1964
Girls: Lisa, Mary, Susan, Karen, Patricia Boys: Michael, John, David, James, Robert
The Sex Symbols, Hotties, and Fashion Icons
Ursula Andress, Brigitte Bardot, Carroll Baker, Honor Blackman, Claudia Cardinale, Doris Day, Catherine Deneuve, Angie Dickinson, Shirley Eaton, Annette Funicello, Sophia Loren, Tina Louise, Babette March, Ann-Margret, Julie Newmar, Kim Novak, Elke Sommer, Elizabeth Taylor, Veruschka
Hollywood Hunks and Sex Symbols
Sean Connery, Elvis Presley, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney
The Quotes
“Skipper!” — Gilligan, Gilligan’s Island
“Does she or doesn’t she?” — Clairol hair color advertising
“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” — Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove
“Come alive! You’re in the Pepsi generation.” — Pepsi
“A martini. Shaken, not stirred.” — Sean Connery as James Bond, Goldfinger
“Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.” — Dick Wilson as Mr. Whipple, Charmin toilet paper commercials
“Let your fingers do the walking.” — Yellow Pages
“Put a tiger in your tank.” — Esso (later Exxon)
Time Magazine’s Man of the Year
Lyndon B. Johnson, for signing the Civil Rights Act and winning the presidential election with the largest popular vote margin in American history to that point — 61.1% to Barry Goldwater’s 38.5%
Miss America and Miss USA
Miss America: Donna Axum, El Dorado, AR
Miss USA: Bobbie Johnson, District of Columbia
We Lost in 1964
Sam Cooke, the Soul Stirrers gospel singer who became one of the architects of soul music and one of the most technically gifted vocalists in American pop history, was shot and killed on December 11, 1964, at a motel in Los Angeles. He was 33. The circumstances were murky, and the investigation was controversial. The official finding was justifiable homicide. Many who knew him disputed this. His song A Change Is Gonna Come, written in response to the civil rights movement, was released three days after his death and became one of the most enduring anthems of the era.
Ian Fleming, a British naval intelligence officer turned novelist, creator of James Bond, died August 12, 1964, at age 56, of a heart attack. His final Bond novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, was published posthumously in 1965. He had written fourteen novels, two short story collections, and one children’s book in twelve years. Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang was the children’s book.
Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States, who had presided over the beginning of the Great Depression and spent the subsequent decades rebuilding his reputation through humanitarian work, died on October 20, 1964, at age 90.
Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Pacific in World War II, the military governor of occupied Japan, and the commanding general of UN forces in Korea until Truman fired him- died April 5, 1964, at age 84.
Born in 1964
Nicolas Cage — January 7, 1964.
Jeff Bezos — January 12, 1964.
Courteney Cox — June 15, 1964.
Keanu Reeves — September 2, 1964.
Sandra Bullock — July 26, 1964.
Rob Lowe — March 17, 1964.
Russell Crowe — April 7, 1964.
America in 1964 — The Context
Lyndon Johnson had been president for barely a year, having taken office in the immediate aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination. He was operating simultaneously on multiple fronts: pushing the most significant domestic legislative agenda since the New Deal, escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin incident, declaring a War on Poverty, and running for election in his own right against Barry Goldwater. He won every one of those contests in 1964 except Vietnam, which would eventually consume his presidency.
The country was being pulled in competing directions simultaneously. The Civil Rights Act was passed and immediately tested. The Beatles arrived, and nothing sounded the same. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed, and the war expanded. The World’s Fair opened in Queens. The miniskirt debuted. The Ford Mustang launched. Dr. Strangelove opened. By any reasonable measure, 1964 was one of the fullest years of the 20th century.
The Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by President Johnson on July 2, 1964, following one of the longest Senate filibusters in American history, a 60-day effort by Southern Democrats to block the bill. The legislation prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment, public accommodations, federally assisted programs, and public education. It established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Supreme Court upheld the Act unanimously in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States on December 14, 1964.
The Act came in the context of a sustained campaign of violence against civil rights workers. In June 1964, three young volunteers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner — were murdered by Ku Klux Klan members in Mississippi and buried in an earthen dam. Their disappearance and the subsequent FBI investigation brought national attention to what Freedom Summer organizers had been experiencing throughout the South. Twenty-one men were eventually convicted of federal charges. No one was convicted of murder until 2005.
The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show
On February 9, 1964, The Beatles performed live on The Ed Sullivan Show before an in-studio audience of 728 people and an estimated 73 to 74 million television viewers — approximately 40% of the entire American population. Sullivan had received over 50,000 ticket requests for the 728 available seats. Crime rates in American cities reportedly dropped measurably during the broadcast.
The appearance was the catalyst for what became known as the British Invasion — a wave of British rock groups that dominated American music through the mid-1960s. By April 4, 1964, The Beatles held all five top positions on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously: Can’t Buy Me Love at #1, Twist and Shout at #2, She Loves You at #3, I Want to Hold Your Hand at #4, and Please Please Me at #5. It is the only time in chart history that a single act has occupied all five top positions simultaneously.
The Beatles released seven albums in 1964: Introducing… The Beatles, Meet the Beatles!, The Beatles’ Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night, Something New, Beatles for Sale, and Beatles ’65. All sold over one million copies. The best-selling Beatles merchandise of the year was the “I Love Ringo” lapel pin.
On August 28, 1964, Bob Dylan met the Beatles at their hotel in New York City and introduced them to cannabis for the first time. All four Beatles reportedly tried it. Dylan was surprised they hadn’t before, having misheard “I can’t hide” in I Want to Hold Your Hand as “I get high.”
Muhammad Ali
On February 25, 1964, 22-year-old Cassius Clay knocked out heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in the seventh round in Miami Beach, in one of the most stunning upsets in boxing history. Liston had been considered unbeatable. Clay had been a 7-1 underdog. After the fight, Clay confirmed what had been rumored: he was a member of the Nation of Islam. The day after the fight, he announced he was discarding his “slave name” and would be known as Cassius X, and was shortly after given the name Muhammad Ali by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.
Clay had publicly sparred with The Beatles at a gym in Miami days before the fight in one of the more improbable publicity events of the decade. He reportedly asked who “those little sissies” were.
The Gulf of Tonkin
On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 4, the U.S. government reported a second attack on the Maddox and the USS Turner Joy — a report that subsequent investigations have concluded was almost certainly false, based on radar anomalies interpreted under high stress. President Johnson used both incidents to request emergency authorization from Congress. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the Senate 88-2 and the House 416-0 on August 7, 1964, authorizing the President to use military force in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war. It provided the legal foundation for the full escalation of the Vietnam War. The two dissenting Senate votes were cast by Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska.
Martin Luther King and the Nobel Peace Prize
On October 14, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming, at 35, the youngest recipient in the prize’s history. He donated the entire $54,123 prize to the civil rights movement. Earlier that year, the FBI had sent him an anonymous letter — later confirmed to have been authorized by J. Edgar Hoover, suggesting that his personal life made him unfit for the prize and implying that the only solution to his situation was suicide. King received the letter while preparing to travel to Oslo. He went anyway.
Pop Culture Facts and History
The Ford Mustang debuted at the 1964 New York World’s Fair on April 17, 1964, the day it went on sale nationally. It was priced at $2,368. Ford sold 22,000 Mustangs on its first day and 418,000 in its first year, both records for a new model at the time. The Mustang created an entirely new automotive category — the “pony car” — which, within two years, spawned the Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, Plymouth Barracuda, and AMC Javelin.
Mary Poppins premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on August 27, 1964, starring Julie Andrews in her film debut. It was the first Disney film nominated for Best Picture. Andrews had originated the role of Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway production of My Fair Lady, but was passed over for the film version because she was not yet considered a major film star. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Mary Poppins that year, defeating Audrey Hepburn, who had played Eliza Doolittle in the film instead. Hepburn’s singing had been dubbed without her knowledge, which the Academy took into account.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick, was released on January 29, 1964. Peter Sellers played three separate roles. The film’s sustained satire of nuclear deterrence and Cold War logic was so precise that the U.S. military asked for and received assurances that no actual secret procedures had been incorporated into the script.
Goldfinger was released on September 17, 1964, and became the most commercially successful Bond film to that point. The character of Bond — suave, equipped with gadgets, delivering quips while committing acts of espionage — was now fully formed, and the franchise had found its template.
The Kitty Genovese murder on March 13, 1964, was reported in the New York Times two weeks later under the headline “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police.” The story generated international discussion about bystander apathy and led to research on what became known as the “bystander effect.” Subsequent investigations by historians and journalists, including a 2007 book by Genovese’s brother, found that the original 38-witness figure was significantly exaggerated and that some neighbors did call police or attempt to intervene. The murder and its aftermath nevertheless contributed to the creation of the 911 emergency call system and to decades of social psychology research.
The Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health was released on January 11, 1964, by U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry — the first official U.S. government acknowledgment that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer, heart disease, and other serious illnesses. The report was released on a Saturday to minimize its impact on stock markets. In 1958, 44% of Americans believed smoking caused cancer. By 1968, that figure was 78%.
Jeopardy! debuted on NBC on March 30, 1964, created by Merv Griffin, with Art Fleming as the original host. Griffin reportedly came up with the answer-and-question format in response to a remark from his wife, who noted that quiz show contestants always seemed nervous about being asked questions directly. He inverted the format. The show is still on the air.
The Warren Commission submitted its report on September 24, 1964, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy and that Jack Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. The report ran to 889 pages with 26 accompanying volumes of evidence. Public acceptance of its conclusions has never been universal and has declined significantly over subsequent decades.
The Daisy advertisement, produced for President Johnson’s reelection campaign, aired on NBC on September 7, 1964, during a commercial break for David and Bathsheba. It showed a small girl counting petals on a daisy, followed by a nuclear countdown and explosion. The ad was never explicitly about Barry Goldwater — it simply ended with Johnson’s voice-over. It aired once. The ensuing controversy gave it weeks of additional free coverage on news programs. It is considered the most effective negative political advertisement in American history.
The 1964 World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, on April 22, 1964. Its centerpiece was the Unisphere — a 12-story steel globe whose three orbital rings represented Yuri Gagarin’s spaceflight, John Glenn’s American orbital flight, and Telstar, the first active communications satellite. The Fair introduced the public to color television, the Ford Mustang, the IBM computer, Belgian waffles, and Picturephone.
Mr. Potato Head was sold without a plastic body from 1952 until 1964. For its first twelve years, customers provided their own real potatoes and used the plastic pieces as accessories. The FDA eventually expressed reservations about children playing with decaying vegetable food products, and a plastic body was added.
David Bowie made his first television appearance in 1964, interviewed on the BBC program Tonight as the founder and sole apparent member of “The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men.” He was 17 years old and gave the interview in complete seriousness. The Society had no other documented activities.
The Sharpie marker was introduced in 1964 as the first pen-style permanent marker. The Extra Fine Point was added in 1979, and the Ultra Fine Point in 1989.
The BASIC programming language (Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was created at Dartmouth College on May 1, 1964, by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. Its goal was to make computing accessible to students who were not mathematicians. It was the first programming language most home computer users of the late 1970s and 1980s learned.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the stop-motion animated television special narrated by Burl Ives, debuted on NBC on December 6, 1964. It became an immediate Christmas tradition. It has aired every year since, making it the longest-running Christmas television special in American history.
The Heimlich Maneuver was formally described on June 1, 1974 — that milestone belongs to the 1974 page.
In 1964, Kellogg’s introduced Pop-Tarts, a breakfast product that has never been conclusively established as either food or a heating system for jam.
The miniskirt was introduced in 1964, credited independently to both British designer Mary Quant in London and French designer André Courrèges in Paris. Both released designs simultaneously. Each claimed priority. The debate has never been settled. The skirt’s arrival scandalized a significant portion of society and delighted most everyone else.
Robert Moog demonstrated the first prototype of his electronic music synthesizer in 1964. The Moog synthesizer would go on to fundamentally transform popular music production over the following decade.
Buffalo Wings were invented in 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, by Teressa Bellissimo, who deep-fried leftover chicken wings and tossed them in hot sauce at the request of her son and his friends late one night. The recipe has since been replicated approximately one billion times.
The Nth Country Experiment began in 1964, when the U.S. government hired three young physicists with no weapons development background and gave them access only to publicly available scientific literature. Their task: design a workable nuclear bomb. They completed a viable design in less than three years. The full report remains classified.
The updated Hippocratic Oath was rewritten in 1964 by Louis Lasagna of Tufts University, replacing the ancient Greek original with language more appropriate to modern medicine. It is now the version most widely used in American medical school graduation ceremonies.
The Scandals
The FBI’s anonymous letter to Martin Luther King Jr., sent in November 1964 by the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program at the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, enclosed recordings of King at a Washington hotel and implied that he should consider suicide rather than accept the Nobel Prize. The letter was not publicly revealed until 1975 and not released in full until 2017. Its existence was confirmed in 1975 by the Senate’s Church Committee investigation into intelligence agency abuses.
Audrey Hepburn’s singing voice in My Fair Lady was dubbed by Marni Nixon without Hepburn’s public disclosure. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, aware of the substitution, did not nominate Hepburn for Best Actress. Julie Andrews won for Mary Poppins instead. The situation is sometimes described as one of the more satisfying outcomes of an industry injustice.
Nobel Prize Winners
Physics — Charles Hard Townes, Nicolay Basov, and Aleksandr Prokhorov for fundamental work in quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle
Chemistry — Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances, including penicillin and vitamin B12; the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Medicine — Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism
Literature — Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher and novelist, for his work, which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age; he declined the prize, saying, “A writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.”
Peace — Martin Luther King Jr., for his nonviolent struggle against racial inequality; he donated the entire $54,123 prize to the civil rights movement
Economics — not yet awarded; the prize in economics was first given in 1969
Broadway in 1964
Hello, Dolly! opened January 16, 1964, at the St. James Theatre, starring Carol Channing. It ran for 2,844 performances — the longest-running Broadway musical in history at the time. Louis Armstrong’s recording of the title song displaced The Beatles from the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 1964, a feat that Armstrong described with characteristic delight.
Funny Girl opened on March 26, 1964, at the Winter Garden Theatre, making Barbra Streisand a star. It ran until July 1967. The score included People and Don’t Rain on My Parade.
Fiddler on the Roof opened September 22, 1964, at the Imperial Theatre, starring Zero Mostel. It ran for 3,242 performances, surpassing Hello, Dolly! as the longest-running musical in Broadway history — a record it held until Grease in 1980. Three legendary Broadway musicals opened within nine months of each other in 1964.
Best Film Oscar Winner
Tom Jones, directed by Tony Richardson and starring Albert Finney, won Best Picture at the 36th Academy Awards in March 1964, presented for the 1963 film year. Sidney Poitier won Best Actor for Lilies of the Field, becoming the first Black actor to win the award in a leading role.
Top Movies of 1964
- Mary Poppins
- Goldfinger
- The Carpetbaggers
- My Fair Lady
- The Unsinkable Molly Brown
- Father Goose
- Dr. Strangelove
- Becket
- Zulu
- The Pink Panther
Most Popular TV Shows of 1964
- Bonanza (NBC)
- Bewitched (ABC)
- Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. (CBS)
- The Andy Griffith Show (CBS)
- The Fugitive (ABC)
- The Red Skelton Show (CBS)
- The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS)
- The Lucy Show (CBS)
- Peyton Place II (ABC)
- Combat (ABC)
Gilligan’s Island premiered on September 26, 1964, and ran for three seasons. It has been in continuous syndication ever since, airing to an estimated 200 million viewers each week at its peak. The Munsters and The Addams Family also both premiered in 1964, two comedy series with essentially identical premises that arrived in the same week and spent three years competing directly against each other.
1964 Billboard Number One Songs
December 7, 1963 – January 3, 1964: Dominique — The Singing Nun
January 4 – January 31: There! I’ve Said It Again — Bobby Vinton
February 1 – March 20: I Want to Hold Your Hand — The Beatles
March 21 – April 3: She Loves You — The Beatles
April 4 – May 8: Can’t Buy Me Love — The Beatles
May 9 – May 15: Hello, Dolly! — Louis Armstrong
May 16 – May 29: My Guy — Mary Wells
May 30 – June 5: Love Me Do — The Beatles
June 6 – June 26: Chapel of Love — The Dixie Cups
June 27 – July 3: A World Without Love — Peter and Gordon
July 4 – July 17: I Get Around — The Beach Boys
July 18 – July 31: Rag Doll — The Four Seasons
August 1 – August 14: A Hard Day’s Night — The Beatles
August 15 – August 21: Everybody Loves Somebody — Dean Martin
August 22 – September 4: Where Did Our Love Go — The Supremes
September 5 – September 25: The House of the Rising Sun — The Animals
September 26 – October 16: Oh, Pretty Woman — Roy Orbison
October 17 – October 30: Do Wah Diddy Diddy — Manfred Mann
October 31 – November 27: Baby Love — The Supremes
November 28 – December 4: Leader of the Pack — The Shangri-Las
December 5 – December 11: Ringo — Lorne Greene
December 12 – December 18: Mr. Lonely — Bobby Vinton
December 19 – December 25: Come See About Me — The Supremes
December 26, 1964 – January 15, 1965: I Feel Fine — The Beatles
The Beatles held the #1 position for approximately 15 weeks in 1964, across six separate songs. The Supremes had three separate #1 singles. Louis Armstrong’s Hello, Dolly! — by a 62-year-old jazz musician — was the only record to displace The Beatles from the top position during their peak American run, which Armstrong found profoundly amusing.
Biggest Pop Artists of 1964
The Beatles, The Supremes, The Beach Boys, The Four Seasons, Roy Orbison, The Animals, Manfred Mann, The Dixie Cups, Mary Wells, Louis Armstrong, Dean Martin, Bobby Vinton, Dionne Warwick, The Shangri-Las, Peter and Gordon, The Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark.
Popular and Best-Selling Books of 1964
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Armageddon by Leon Uris
Richard Scarry’s Best Mother Goose Ever by Richard Scarry
Candy by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang by Ian Fleming
Convention by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II
Come Back, Dr. Caligari by Donald Barthelme
The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein
The Group – Mary McCarthy
Herzog by Saul Bellow
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
It’s Like This, Cat by Emily Cheney Neville
Last Exit To Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.
The Man by Irving Wallace
The Martyred by Richard E. Kim
The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss
This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
Sports Champions of 1964
World Series: St. Louis Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees 4-3; Bob Gibson was dominant; it was the Yankees’ last World Series appearance until 1976
NFL Champions: Cleveland Browns defeated the Baltimore Colts 27-0 in the championship game; Jim Brown ran for 114 yards
AFL Champions: Buffalo Bills
NBA Champions: Boston Celtics, their sixth consecutive title; Bill Russell and John Havlicek anchored one of the great dynasties in professional sports
Stanley Cup: Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Detroit Red Wings 4-3; their third consecutive championship and fourth in six years
U.S. Open Golf: Ken Venturi, who played the final 36 holes in brutal heat that left him near collapse, one of the most courageous performances in major championship history
U.S. Open Tennis: Men/Women: Roy Emerson / Maria Bueno
Wimbledon: Men/Women: Roy Emerson / Maria Bueno
NCAA Football Champions: Alabama, Arkansas, and Notre Dame (co-champions)
NCAA Basketball Champions: UCLA, the first of John Wooden’s ten national championships in twelve years
Kentucky Derby: Northern Dancer — the Canadian-bred horse who went on to become the most influential thoroughbred sire of the 20th century; his bloodlines appear in virtually every major stakes winner in subsequent decades
Sports Highlight: The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were the first held in Asia and were broadcast live in color to the United States via the Syncom 3 satellite — the first live color satellite transmission from overseas. Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina competed in her final Olympics in Tokyo, ending her career with 18 Olympic medals — a record that stood until Michael Phelps broke it in 2012. Cassius Clay won the heavyweight championship on February 25, 1964, in one of the greatest upsets in boxing history, and immediately began his transformation into Muhammad Ali.
FAQ — 1964 Trivia, Fun Facts, and Pop Culture History
Q: What was the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
A: Signed by President Johnson on July 2, 1964, it was the most comprehensive civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment and public accommodations. It established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and was later upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court.
Q: How many people watched The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show?
A: An estimated 73 to 74 million viewers — approximately 40% of the U.S. population — watched The Beatles’ first live American television appearance on February 9, 1964. Crime rates in several American cities reportedly dropped during the broadcast.
Q: What did The Beatles do on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 4, 1964?
A: They held all five top positions simultaneously — the only time in chart history a single act has occupied positions #1 through #5 at the same time.
Q: What was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?
A: Passed August 7, 1964, it authorized President Johnson to use military force in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war. It was based partly on a reported second naval attack on August 4 that subsequent investigations concluded almost certainly did not occur as described.
Q: Who was Muhammad Ali before he was Muhammad Ali?
A: Cassius Clay, who won the heavyweight championship by knocking out Sonny Liston on February 25, 1964, was a 7-1 underdog, defeating the most feared heavyweight in boxing. He announced his conversion to Islam and his name change the following day.
Q: What happened to three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964?
A: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner disappeared on June 21, 1964, and were found buried in an earthen dam in August. They had been murdered by Ku Klux Klan members, including a county deputy sheriff. Twenty-one men were eventually convicted of federal civil rights violations. No one was convicted of murder until Edgar Ray Killen in 2005.
Q: What three Broadway musicals opened in 1964?
A: Hello, Dolly! (January), Funny Girl (March), and Fiddler on the Roof (September) — three of the most celebrated musicals in Broadway history, all within nine months of each other.
Q: What automotive milestone happened in 1964?
A: Ford introduced the Mustang at the New York World’s Fair on April 17, 1964, creating the “pony car” category. It sold 22,000 units on its first day and 418,000 in its first year — both records for a new model at the time.
More 1964 Facts & History Resources:
BabyBoomers.com (1964)
Most Popular Baby Names (BabyCenter.com)
Popular and Notable Books (popculture.us)
Broadway Shows that Opened in 1964X
1964 Calendar, courtesy of Time and Date.com
Civil Rights Act
Fact Monster
1960s, Infoplease.com World History
1964 in Movies (according to IMDB)
Retrowaste Vintage Culture
1964 Television
1960s Slang
Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin
Voting Rights Act 1965
Wikipedia 1964
