major events of the 60's

 London transformed from the grey postwar years to the centre of pop and fashion; the city where anything ,and everything was possible.  Youth fashion became colourful, Radio Caroline, a radio station on a boat, was launched playing non-stop pop music.  It had to be at sea because it was breaking the law on radio transmissions.

The first supermarkets opened in town centres which allowed families to buy all their food shopping in one place.  Weekly shopping was boosted by the increase in car ownership.  The choice available was much more limited than in today's supermarkets.  

Women started to become liberated from the home.  Advances in white goods and fabrics meant women no longer had to spend hours washing, drying and ironing clothes.  The pill was introduced in 1961, initially available to married women only, it would enable women to control the number of babies they had.

A fortified and heavily guarded wall built in 1961 by the communist authorities on the boundary between East and West Berlin, chiefly to curb the flow of East Germans to the West..  It was a symbol of the split of ideologies between capitalism in the West and communism of the East.

1961 - Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union was the first man in space.  Christine and Rachael went to see him when he visited the Queen.  

1966 - the Soviet Union launched Luna 10 the first space probe to orbit the Moon.

1968 - the  US was launched Apollo 8 carrying the first astronauts to leave Earth's gravity and orbit another world. 

1969 - Neil Armstrong from the US was the first man to walk on the Moon.

John Kennedy, the charismatic US president was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.   His brother Bobby, the US Attorney General was shot in 1968.  Also in 1968, Martin Luther King, who preached peaceful struggle for racial equality and an end to racial segregation in the Southern States was shot by white supremacists.

In October 1966 a pile of waste from the Aberfan coal mine suddenly slid downhill angulfing a Junior School, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

Young people gained their voices and started to protest against a number of issues through demonstrations (largely peaceful) and popular songs  Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were leading members of popular protest culture:

Anti Vietnam War In 1965 active US combat units were sent to Vietnam.  The war was highly unpopular in the US and the UK/Europe.

Ban the Bomb against the proliferation of nuclear weapons

Civil Rights campaigning for equal rights for all races