Portal:1960s

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The September 1964 South Vietnamese coup attempt took place before dawn on September 13, 1964, when the ruling military junta of South Vietnam, led by General Nguyễn Khánh, was threatened by a coup attempt headed by Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức, who sent dissident units into the capital Saigon. They captured various key points and announced over national radio the overthrow of the incumbent regime. With the help of the Americans, Khánh was able to rally support and the coup collapsed the next morning without any casualties.

In the immediate month leading up the coup, Khánh's leadership had become increasingly troubled. He had tried to augment his powers by declaring a state of emergency, but this only provoked large-scale protests and riots calling for an end to military rule, with Buddhist activists at the forefront. Fearful of losing power, Khánh began making concessions to the protesters and promised democracy in the near future. He also removed several military officials closely linked to the discriminatory Catholic rule of the slain former President Ngô Đình Diệm; this response to Buddhist pressure dismayed several Catholic officers, who made a few abortive moves to remove him from power. (Full article...)

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Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65 is an abstract bronze sculpture by Henry Moore. It is one of Moore's earliest sculptures in two pieces, a mode that he started to adopt in 1959. Its form was inspired by the shape of a bone fragment. Moore created the sculpture from an edition of 10 working models in 1962; these working models are now in public collections. Moore created four full-size casts between 1962 and 1965, with one retained by him. The three casts are on public display on College Green in Westminster, London; Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver; and the garden at Kykuit, the house of the Rockefeller family in Tarrytown, New York. Moore's own cast is on display at his former studio and estate, 'Hoglands' in Perry Green, Hertfordshire in southern England. A similar work, Mirror Knife Edge 1977 (or Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece), is displayed at the entrance to I. M. Pei's east wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The Westminster cast was donated by Moore through the Contemporary Art Society to what he believed was the City of London, but its actual ownership was undetermined for many years. The Westminster cast subsequently fell into disrepair, and was restored in 2013 after it became part of the British Parliamentary Art Collection; it was granted a Grade II* listing in January 2016. (Full article...)

Credit: Cecil Stoughton, White House Press Office

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• ... that The Beatles (pictured) had 17 number-one singles during the 1960s in the United Kingdom?
• ... that The Rolling Stones and The Who were among the many leading rock bands who emerged from the British rhythm and blues scene of the early 1960s?
• ... that long-haired males were persecuted by the Czechoslovak communist regime in the 1960s and '70s?

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Sir Richard Starkey MBE (born 7 July 1940), known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. Starr occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, usually for one song on each album, including "Yellow Submarine" and "With a Little Help from My Friends". He also wrote and sang the Beatles songs "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden", and is credited as a co-writer of four others.

Starr was afflicted by life-threatening illnesses during childhood, with periods of prolonged hospitalisation. He briefly held a position with British Rail before securing an apprenticeship as a machinist at a Liverpool school equipment manufacturer. Soon afterwards, Starr became interested in the UK skiffle craze and developed a fervent admiration for the genre. In 1957, he co-founded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which earned several prestigious local bookings before the fad succumbed to American rock and roll around early 1958. When the Beatles formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. After achieving moderate success in the UK and Hamburg, he quit the Hurricanes when he was asked to join the Beatles in August 1962, replacing Pete Best. (Full article...)

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Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (19 December 1906 – 10 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982, and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (head of state) from 1960 to 1964 and again from 1977 to 1982. His 18-year term as General Secretary was second only to Joseph Stalin's in duration. To this day, the quality of Brezhnev's tenure as General Secretary remains debated by historians. While his rule was characterized by political stability and significant foreign policy successes, it was also marked by corruption, inefficiency, economic stagnation, and rapidly growing technological gaps with the West.

Brezhnev was born to a working-class family in Kamenskoye (now Kamianske, Ukraine) within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire. After the results of the October Revolution were finalized with the creation of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev joined the Communist party's youth league in 1923 before becoming an official party member in 1929. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he joined the Red Army as a commissar and rose rapidly through the ranks to become a major general during World War II. Following the war's end, Brezhnev was promoted to the party's Central Committee in 1952 and rose to become a full member of the Politburo by 1957. In 1964, he garnered enough power to replace Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the CPSU, the most powerful position in the country. (Full article...)

The Tet Offensive was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched a sneak attack on January 30, 1968, against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the United States Armed Forces and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name is the truncated version of the Lunar New Year festival name in Vietnamese, Tết Nguyên Đán, with the offense chosen during a holiday period as most ARVN personnel were on leave. The purpose of the wide-scale offensive by the Hanoi Politburo was to trigger political instability, in a belief that mass armed assault on urban centers would trigger defections and rebellions.

The offensive was launched prematurely in the early morning hours of 30 January in large parts of the I and II Corps Tactical Zones of South Vietnam. This early attack allowed allied forces some time to prepare defensive measures. When the main operation began during the early morning hours of 31 January, the offensive was countrywide; eventually more than 80,000 PAVN/VC troops struck more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital. The offensive was the largest military operation conducted by either side up to that point in the war. (Full article...)

• ... that Mily Treviño-Sauceda, the co-founder of the first national grassroots women's farmworker organization in the United States, the National Alliance of Farmworker Women, was a child farmworker in the 1960s?
• ... that during the 1960s and 1970s, American artist Robert Bauer painted figures that were a mixture of 20th-century avant-garde funk and 17th-century Dutch realism?
• ... that Finnish politician Maija Perho encouraged future president Sauli Niinistö to join the National Coalition Party in the 1960s?
• ... that in the 1960s Kléber Dupuy campaigned to rehabilitate the reputation of Philippe Pétain, against whose Vichy regime he had fought as a member of the French Resistance?
• ... that the City and Guilds of London Institute developed the City & Guilds Computer virtual machine as part of their 1960s teaching materials?
• ... that in the 1960s one could have tea and toast served to your changing room at the Carlisle Turkish baths in England?