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| 1964 |
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| The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and electrified American teenagers. | 1 |
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| Jan. 10 |
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| Export licenses increased wheat sales to the USSR, an initiative first approved by Pres. Kennedy on Oct. 9, 1963. | 2 |
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| Feb. 13 |
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| At the end of a two-day conference, Pres. Johnson and British prime minister Alec Douglas-Home issued a joint communiqué endorsing each other's policies in Malaysia and South Vietnam. | 3 |
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| Feb. 25 |
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| To end a 90-day longshoremen's ban on loading Russian-bound wheat, Pres. Johnson ordered that the government honor its commitment to ship 50 percent of the wheat in U.S. vessels. | 4 |
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| April 28 |
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| Pres. Johnson asked Congress for $228 million to fund a program, for fiscal year 1965, aimed at wiping out poverty in the ten Appalachian states. | 5 |
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| May 28 |
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| A consular agreement was completed with the USSR to protect tourists and other travelers. | 6 |
| Freedom Summer. Leaders of CORE and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) got hundreds of students from northern states to volunteer to help in a black voter registration drive in Mississippi. In mid-June, three of the civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were reported missing. After a major search, federal officials found the bodies of the three men, two of whom were white. | 7 |
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| June 15 |
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| The Supreme Court ruled that both bodies of a bicameral legislature must be apportioned on the basis of population. | 8 |
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| June 19 |
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| Civil Rights Act. The Senate passed the Civil Rights Bill (73–27), which greatly increased federal powers to combat racial discrimination. The law guaranteed equal access to public accommodations and schools, and banned discrimination by both employers and labor unions. Previously (June 10), the Senate had voted cloture to end the filibuster carried on since March 30. | 9 |
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| July 18–21 |
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| Racial violence. This marked the first of several “long hot summers” during which blacks expressed growing dissatisfaction with life in the urban North. The first major eruption occurred in Harlem after police shot a black criminal suspect. In August, violence spread to several cities in New Jersey as well as to Chicago and Philadelphia. | 10 |
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| July 26 |
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| James R. Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was convicted of fraudulent use of union funds and efforts to bribe a jury. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison (Aug. 17). | 11 |
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| July 28–31 |
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| The U.S. spacecraft Ranger VII relayed numerous close-up pictures of the moon's surface before plunging into it. | 12 |
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| Aug. 7 |
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| Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (See Aug. 5). Congress passed a resolution authorizing Pres. Johnson to take any measure necessary to repel or prevent aggression against U.S. forces. The resolution prepared the way for escalation of the Vietnam War. | 13 |
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