A Look Backat

1966PowerPoint Show by

Andrew ♫ Turn on Speakers

A half-century ago, the war in Vietnam continued its escalation, NASA’s Project Gemini was completed after ten manned launches, and the USSR successfully landed a vehicle on the Moon.

The first Automated Teller Machine (ATM) was introduced, along with miniaturized televisions, while race riots and anti-war protests swept the United States. Charles Whitman shot and killed 14 people from his perch atop a tower at the University of Texas at Austin, and doctors at the Veterans Administration hospital in New Jersey conducted medical tests on 10 beagles, attaching them to machines designed to let them smoke cigarettes for years.

Let me take you 50 years into the past, for a look at the year 1966.

Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon, Vietnam, on January 1, 1966.

Italian fashion in 1966, from left: a cocktail dress of soft green yellow and sky blue, Ye-Ye fashions from Rome in front of the Colosseum, and a bright blue woolen coat with blue fedora hood.

The Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, right, President Osvaldo Dorticos, center, and Armed Forces Chief, Commander Raul Castro, watch as Cuban military units parade during a celebration of the 7th anniversary of the overthrow of the Batista regime, January 2, 1966, in Havana.

The Beatles pose together before their performance in a TV studio in London, England, in 1966.

Ham, the chimpanzee who took a 414-mile ride into space, in a capsule fired from Cape Canaveral on January 31, 1961, grimaces on the eve of the 5th anniversary of his space performance.

A Vietnamese fisherman keeps his line in the surf as a seemingly endless column of U.S. Marines file along the beach. Troops were part of force that landed at the beach south of Quang Ngai, Vietnam, on January 28, 1966.

The faces of typical American soldiers fighting in the war in South Vietnam, January 5, 1966.

The American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell carries placards as he picketed a building in Dallas on January 29, 1966, to test a city law against picketing by groups such as his. Rockwell was not arrested.

A Nassau police rider, takes a fall in front of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, during a demonstration by the Bahamas Police Force, in Nassau, Bahamas on February 28, 1966.

The skyline of Portland, Oregon, with Mount Hood in the background, in 1966.

Jose Augusto, Benfica, beats Manchester United goalkeeper Gregg to head in the first goal of the quarter-final first-leg match of the European Cup, in Manchester, England, on February 2, 1966.

US soldiers set off a smoke grenade in the jungle during Operation Silver City in Long Khanh Province, Vietnam, in March of 1966.

Army nurse 2nd Lieutenant Roberta Steele, 23, looks out from a medical helicopter in Qui Nhon, South Vietnam, on February 9, 1966.

A helicopter lifts a wounded American soldier on a stretcher during Operation Silver City in Vietnam, on March 13, 1966.

Marchers, estimated between 30,000 to 35,000, parade down New York’s Fifth Avenue on March 26, 1966, to demand a stop to American involvement in Vietnam.

A U.S. military policeman carries a victim from the Victoria Hotel, an officers' billet in Saigon, South Vietnam, after it was attacked on March 31, 1966.

US pilot Leslie R. Leavoy is shown in flight with other jets in the background above Vietnam in 1966.

The land is harsh, with none of America's great waterways to make it fertile. But it is magnificent and beautiful—and the Navajo Indians cling to it, and to their own unique culture.

British actor Michael Caine poses for a photo during a visit to the back lot at Universal International Studios, during time off from filming Gambit in Los Angeles, California, on January 26, 1966.

A Mississippi patrolman moves a young demonstrator who took refuge in a car when tear gas was used to disperse some 2,000 demonstrators at the entrance of Alcorn A&M College at Lorman, Mississippi, on April 6, 1966.

Main Street in Beijing, China with older-type housing estates on the right, on May 11, 1966.

A napalm strike erupts in a fireball near U.S. troops on patrol in South Vietnam in 1966.

A U.S. military policeman holds a pistol to the back of a Viet Cong suspect after an explosion in Saigon, on May 10, 1966.

Buddhist nun Thich Nu Thanh Quang burns in an act of suicide protest against the government's Catholic regime at the Dieu de Pagoda in Hue, South Vietnam, on May 29, 1966.

The Civil Rights activist James Meredith grimaces in pain as he pulls himself across Highway 51 after being shot in Hernando, Mississippi, on June 6, 1966.

A U.S. Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter comes down in flames after being hit by enemy ground fire during Operation Hastings, just south of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam, on July 15, 1966.

A Marine, top, wounded slightly when his face was grazed by an enemy bullet, pours water into the mouth of a fellow Marine suffering from heat exhaustion during Operation Hastings, along the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam on July 21, 1966.

The World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali in 1966.

A Chicago radio news reporter Jeff Kamen is punched during demonstrations in Grenada, Mississippi, on August 10, 1966.

A model looks at the Sinclair Microvision set, a pocket size television set designed by Clive Sinclair that can go anywhere and claims to be the world's smallest TV, at Earls Court, London, on September 1, 1966.

A South Vietnamese ranger forces a South Vietnamese prisoner into a mud-hole in the Mekong Delta, southwest of Saigon, on September 3, 1966.

This new “banking” machine (future ATM) was displayed for the first time at the American Bankers Association annual meeting in San Francisco, California, on October 25, 1966.

"The Korean Kittens,” a singing group, appear inVietnam, during the Bob Hope Christmas show, to entertain U.S. troops in 1966.