1960s

From top left, clockwise: A US Navy plane flies over a Soviet cargo ship during the Cuban Missile Crisis; Israeli tanks advancing on the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War; Biafran child starving from the mass famine caused by the Nigerian Civil War; A U.S. infantry patrol during the Vietnam War; the Birth control pill is first introduced; the Prague Spring unfolds before the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and was part of the Protests of 1968; China's Mao Zedong initiates the Great Leap Forward plan which fails and brings mass starvation in which 15 to 55 million people died by 1961, and in 1966, Mao starts the Cultural Revolution, which purged traditional Chinese practices and ideas; During the Year of Africa, in which 16 African countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers; Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his I Have a Dream speech; The Apollo 11 mission lands the first humans on the Moon; Damaged homes in Chile following the 9.4–9.6 M_w Valdivia earthquake; John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1963.

The 1960s (pronounced "nineteen-sixties", shortened to the "'60s" or the "Sixties") was a decade that began on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969.^[1]

While the achievements of humans being launched into space, orbiting Earth, and walking on the Moon extended exploration, the Sixties are known as the "countercultural decade" in the United States and other Western countries. There was a revolution in social norms, including clothing, music (such as the Altamont Free Concert), drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, civil rights, precepts of military duty, and schooling. Others denounce the decade as one of irresponsible excess, flamboyance, the decay of social order, and the fall or relaxation of social taboos. A wide range of music emerged; from popular music inspired by and including the Beatles (in the United States known as the British Invasion), the folk music revival, to the poetic lyrics of Bob Dylan. In the United States the Sixties were also called the "cultural decade" while in the United Kingdom (especially London) it was called the Swinging Sixties.

The United States had four presidents that served during the decade; Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. Eisenhower was near the end of his term and left office in January 1961, and Kennedy was assassinated^[2][3] in 1963. Kennedy had wanted Keynesian^[4] and staunch anti-communist social reforms. These were passed under Johnson including civil rights for African Americans and healthcare for the elderly and the poor. Despite his large-scale Great Society programs, Johnson was increasingly disliked by the New Left at home and abroad. For some, May 1968 meant the end of traditional collective action and the beginning of a new era to be dominated mainly by the so-called new social movements.^[5]

After the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, the United States attempted to depose the new leader by training Cuban exiles and invading the island of Cuba. This led to Cuba to ally itself to the Soviet Union, a hostile enemy to the United States, resulting in an international crisis when Cuba hosted Soviet ballistic missiles similar to Turkey hosting American missiles, which brought the possibility of causing World War III. However, after negotiations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, both agreed to withdraw their weapons averting potential nuclear warfare.

After U.S. President Kennedy's assassination, direct tensions between the superpower countries of the United States and the Soviet Union developed into a contest with proxy wars, insurgency funding, puppet governments and other overall influence mainly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This "Cold War" dominated the world's geopolitics during the decade. Construction of the Berlin Wall by East Germany began in 1961. Africa was in a period of radical political change as 32 countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers. The heavy-handed American role in the Vietnam War lead to an anti-Vietnam War movement with outraged student protestors around the globe culminating in the protests of 1968.

China saw the end of Mao's Great Leap Forward in 1962 that led to many Chinese to die from the deadliest famine in human history and the start of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Its stated goal was to preserve Chinese communism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, leading to the arrests of a many Chinese politicians, the killings of millions of civilians and ethnic minorities, and the destruction of many historical and cultural buildings, artifacts and materials all of which would last until the death of Mao Zedong.

By the end of the 1950s, post-war reconstructed Europe began an economic boom. World War II had closed up social classes with remnants of the old feudal gentry disappearing. A developing upper-working-class (a newly redefined middle-class) in Western Europe could afford a radio, television, refrigerator and motor vehicles. The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries were improving quickly after rebuilding from WWII. Real GDP growth averaged 6% a year during the second half of the decade; overall, the worldwide economy prospered in the 1960s with expansion of the middle class and the increase of new domestic technology.

In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party gained power in 1964 with Harold Wilson as Prime Minister through most of the decade.^[6] In France, the protests of 1968 led to President Charles de Gaulle temporarily fleeing the country.^[7] Italy formed its first left-of-center government in March 1962 with Aldo Moro becoming Prime Minister in 1963. Soviet leaders during the decade were Nikita Khrushchev until 1964 and Leonid Brezhnev.

During the 1960s, the world population increased from 3.0 to 3.7 billion people. There were approximately 1.15 billion births and 500 million deaths.