1969

[Fragile Bird]

I'm watching the CNN movie about Apollo 11 and the moon landing.

I'm thinking about the anger directed at the older generations, and I want to say, they sent a man to the moon with less computer power than your damn cell phone has.

I want to say I watched this in real time, but I didn't. I was 14 and a friend of my parents found a dirt cheap trip, $400 Cdn, for one month in Poland. Sponsored by the Polish Communist Youth. Lol! He didn't want his daughter to go alone, so my parents thought it would be a great idea if I went too. But then he went to Poland as well, and showed up a week later and took his daughter away with him, to go to the Polish-Russian border so she could meet her family remaining in Poland. My dad came from the same village. They did not take me. But I wrote to my aunt, and she came down from the Baltic port of Elblag and got me, in a village outside a southern town in the mountains called Zakopane. I was on a train to visit my grandmother outside of the city of Czestochowa and listened to all the excited passengers talking about either watching or listening on the radio to the moon landing. My Polish was quite good, and they didn't know I was a Canadian. I still remember a woman saying how wonderful it was, but regretting the moon landing wasn't by "Nasze", "ours", the Russians. I got to my grandmother's house in time to hear, on the radio since they did not have a tv, Buzz Aldrin saying "I'm a kangaroo!" and the translator solemnly saying "Jestem kangaroo!" Neil Armstrong's heart rate hit 156 during the LEM landing.

There were 6 of us altogether in the group, three from France, two Canadians and an American from NYC. Her dad showed up too, to take her to meet her relatives. He stayed a couple of days and had some good words of wisdom about cherishing your heritage. And he had a copy of the Paris Herald Tribune and he pointed out to his daughter the small article about 500,000 people showing up at an upstate New York town called Woodstock for a rock concert. Gloria almost cried. She had tickets, but her dad took her to Poland instead. In fact, I think she had them in her wallet.

Btw, rocksniffer went to Woodstock. He and his buddy were to report to a naval base, I forget which one, for the draft to go to Vietnam. They got on their motorcycles and rode up from Louisiana and decided to hit this concert just before their reporting date. You can ask him all about it.  

Anyway, I started this thread to talk about about what an incredible year 1969 was. Nixon had just been elected in 68 and whenever I turned on my tv I saw the turmoil in the US. You think Trump has caused turmoil? There were riots all over the US. Cities burned. Why are there no riots over Trump?

At the same time Ted (lol, not Bobby) Kennedy took a drive and his car went off a bridge and a girl named Mary Jo Kopechne drowned. One hell of a week in America.

How many of you remember 1969? If not, what do you think about the events of that year?

Richard Nixon sworn in.

Super Bowl III.

The Santa Barbara oil spill, the first biggie.

The first 747 debuts in Paris, and makes it's first commercial flight in December. Years later, that first 747 will be destroyed in the Canary Islands in a horrific, fog shrouded accident when a KLM pilot jumps the gun while another plane is still crossing the runway, the one plane landing on top of the other since it didn't have enough room to clear the craft yet.

A mysterious death of a teenager, years later in 1984 identified as the first AIDs death in America.

300 students representing the SDS seize the Harvard admin building. Eventually 45 are injured and 185 are arrested. Later in the summer the Weatherman faction takes control of the SDS.

The Stonewall riots.

The Zodiac killer is killing.

The NYT apologizes for ridiculing Robert H. Goddard in 1920 for saying space flight was possible.

Mariner 7 flies by Mars.

Hurricane Camille kills 249 people and causes $1.5B in 1969 dollars of damage, the worst in history.

The first atm is installed in Rockville Center, NY.

The Manson gang commit their murders. Among the victims, the heir to the Folger coffee fortune.

William Calley is charged with the My Lai massacre.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid opens. (I went to see it the first week).

Huge riots in Chicago over the trial of the "Chicago Eight", organized by the Weathermen.

Hundreds of thousands protest the Vietnam war across the USA.

The "Miracle Mets" win the World Series.

Wal-Mart incorporates.

Nixon addresses the nation about the Vietnam war, appealing for the support of the 'Silent Majority'. Spiro Agnew attacks the eastern effetes, the nattering nabobs of negativism.

Sesame Street premieres.

Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai massacre story. Later in November newspapers print pictures.

Apollo 12 lands. Who remembers Pete Conrad and Alan Bean?

Two Black Panther leaders are killed in their sleep in a Chicago raid by 14 police officers.

The Altamont Free Concert.

And sometime during the year the first Gap store opened in San Francisco.

 

 

[Tears of Lys]

I sure don't remember as much as you do, Frags!  You know they say if you remember the '60s, you weren't REALLY there.

 

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, Tears of Lys said:

I sure don't remember as much as you do, Frags!  You know they say if you remember the '60s, you weren't REALLY there.

 

Ha! You can remember 50 years ago and you can't remember yesterday....

[drawkcabi]

I was born in 1975, but I love history and 20th century history is my favorite era. I hope that doesn't sound in any way arrogant. I look at the first 25 -30 years of my life as what today's generation only learn about in books and movies and older people when they;re not too busy yelling at them to get off their lawns.

I always thought it was amazing growing up in the space age, as a kid I though for sure I'd be able to open my own pizzeria on the moon or on a space station and it didn't occur to me until I was about 15 or so that we haven't been back to the moon for a while and I might not ever get to see a human live walk on the moon or Mars. That made me sad.

1969 was an amazing year, I would have loved to be able to watch the moon landing as it happened. Super Bowl III would have been fun to watch, the music of the time was fantastic, I know me, I would not have been at Woodstock but I would have loved talking to people who went. The news and politics of the time, it may have felt a lot like right now, looking back on it now we know for better or for worse we made it through that time so it doesn't seem as scary though if I was alive and going through it then I'd most likely be as freaked out about the state of the world as I am now.

[Martell Spy]

Those were the best days of my life. Just kidding, little before my time.

[Fragile Bird]

This all started this morning, I had gone out early to do something and listened to the Sunday morning show on CBC radio. They had a really good interview with a writer about Woodstock, and the host talked about the coming anniversary of Apollo 11. Later in the afternoon HBO was running Apollo 13, a really great movie. I'm sure that style had an impact on subsequent docu-dramas, including Chernobyl, the minute-by-minute chronicle of events. It's astonishing that after the incredible excitement of Apollo 11, followed by the second landing by Apollo 12, viewership of the launch of Apollo 13 dropped off so much the networks couldn't be bothered running the broadcast the astronauts did from the spacecraft. America was bored of the moon. Shortly after that broadcast, shown only to family members of the astronauts, the explosion in the oxygen tank happened and all of a sudden the Apollo program became interesting again.

[Ormond]

I really think your memory for "riots" is faulty. The only big riots in the USA that year were the Days of Rage in Chicago in October, involving SDS. The Harvard thing got a lot of publicity at the time because it happened at Harvard, but I don't think in the long run it was as important as many other student protests.

At the time there was very little coverage of the Stonewall Riots outside of New York City and most people outside of Manhattan paid no attention to them. It's one of those historical events which only is important because of how it catalyzed the GLBTQ movement, which wasn't realized until years later. 

And of course it was Ted Kennedy, not Bobby Kennedy, who went off that Chappaquiddick bridge in 1969. Bobby Kennedy was already dead himself.

I certainly do remember the moon landing. And I graduated from high school and started my freshman year at Duke. 

I remember My Lai and the Manson Murders. I certainly did NOT remember that the second moon landing took place only four months after the first one!

 

[Prince of the North]

I was born in the winter a year after the Summer of Love.  So, of course, I didn't experience any of the things listed above that happened in 1969.  But from what I've learned since, it was quite a year!

[DireWolfSpirit]

1969

[A True Kaniggit]

Wait.

Are you claiming things happened before I was born? Sounds like nonsense.

[Fragile Bird]

9 hours ago, Ormond said:

I really think your memory for "riots" is faulty. The only big riots in the USA that year were the Days of Rage in Chicago in October, involving SDS. The Harvard thing got a lot of publicity at the time because it happened at Harvard, but I don't think in the long run it was as important as many other student protests.

At the time there was very little coverage of the Stonewall Riots outside of New York City and most people outside of Manhattan paid no attention to them. It's one of those historical events which only is important because of how it catalyzed the GLBTQ movement, which wasn't realized until years later. 

And of course it was Ted Kennedy, not Bobby Kennedy, who went off that Chappaquiddick bridge in 1969. Bobby Kennedy was already dead himself.

I certainly do remember the moon landing. And I graduated from high school and started my freshman year at Duke. 

I remember My Lai and the Manson Murders. I certainly did NOT remember that the second moon landing took place only four months after the first one!

 

Of course it was Ted, lol. As I was watching the CNN Apollo 11 movie there’s a moment where the contact in Houston is chatting to the astronauts and mentions how everyone is talking about what happened and even though they said Ted I wrote Bobby. One of the 1969 list items in Wikipedia is a hearing for Sirhan Sirhan, which I think was why I wrote Bobby.

I used the list in Wikipedia as a guide, picking out events to give a picture of the year. It’s funny, though, I clearly remember the SDS taking over the Harvard president’s office. In January of 1969, 400 students at the Sir George Williams campus of Concordia University in Montreal took over the computer labs in a protest over a professor accused of racism against black students. It was a peaceful demonstration until the riot police showed up to clear them out. A few months later the Harvard admin offices were taken over and so it got wide coverage in Canada. I always assumed Concordia influenced them, but students were taking over university offices all around the world. And the anti-Vietnam protests in the US got enormous coverage in Canada as well and they were pretty aggressive, but I agree, riot was too strong a term to use, though I only say protest in the list itself. 

And of course no one knew what an ATM was and no one had heard of Wal-Mart.

 

[Tears of Lys]

And don't forget - 1969 was the year Tears graduated from high school!  And I always thought it was kinda cool in a juvenile, puerile sort of way.

'67 was really the watershed year for me, though.  The riots/uprising/whatever happened in Detroit, and I couldn't have cared less.  I was having the time of my life at the beach.  Summer love . . . 

Had a great time, wish you were here.  

[Jen'ari]

It seems like it was a very busy year!, the main thing I know 1969 for is the moon landing, I was born almost two decades later in 1988, the main thing I’m jealous of people living then for is the music that was around, to have seen Jimi Hendrix,The Doors, Cream etc in their prime (and in the case of the first two their tragic far too early deaths) would have been quite an experience.

[lady narcissa]

I have no memory of 1969 but I came into existence that year so of course I think its an absolutely fabulous year!

Of course as I grew up I heard about many of these events but in my mind they were before I was born so they could have happened 10 or 20 years before me.  It was funny to eventually realize some were only months before me.  I think the first 1969 'event' I had any specific knowledge of was Sesame Street since that had a direct daily impact on my life from almost day one.  Followed by Woodstock - my parents had a multi record set of the music and I'd listen to that as a child a lot and it was always this mystical event that I wished I could have seen.

[Tears of Lys]

I saw Jim Morrison and the Doors in their heyday and the Who, both in fairly small venues, actually.  

Morrison scared the crap out of young Tears.  He seemed so . . . wild and off the hook.  

The Who were good as usual, but I remember thinking that their busting up a few instruments was done just because it was expected. 

[Jen'ari]

12 minutes ago, Tears of Lys said:

I saw Jim Morrison and the Doors in their heyday and the Who, both in fairly small venues, actually.  

Morrison scared the crap out of young Tears.  He seemed so . . . wild and off the hook.  

The Who were good as usual, but I remember thinking that their busting up a few instruments was done just because it was expected. 

I kind of hate you right now , they both must have been amazing experiences I’d love to hear more about them .

I’ve actually seen Cream live, they did a reunion concert in 2005 which I fortunately went to as an excited 17 year old with my dad, but I doubt it was anywhere like seeing them in their heyday.

[Tears of Lys]

Yeah, reunions are a bittersweet experience.  I avoid them like the plague.

I wish I remembered more about the actual performances.  Mostly what I remember was how straitlaced the audience was back then.  It was considered a date night and a lot of guys wore suits!!!!!    

 

Not for the Who, though.  That was a sweaty, heady experience.

[Jen'ari]

I understand your point of view regarding reunions, but from my perspective I will take what I can get I guess!.

I went to see Fleetwood Mac last week, to be fair it was a good concert but nowhere near what they were like in their prime but I feel glad to have gone.

Cant believe guys wore suits to The Doors!.

[maarsen]

I was 13 years old in '69. Old enough to remember all that happened but too young to do much. I remember Woodstock and thinking if I was just a few years older I could go.  I remember the moon landing and trying to watch it on a grainy black and white tv.  The war in Vietnam  was everywhere in the news, even in Canada. I can remember thinking if I was just 5 years older and born just a few miles south, that would be my fate, being sent there to fight.

[maarsen]

11 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

This all started this morning, I had gone out early to do something and listened to the Sunday morning show on CBC radio. They had a really good interview with a writer about Woodstock, and the host talked about the coming anniversary of Apollo 11. Later in the afternoon HBO was running Apollo 13, a really great movie. I'm sure that style had an impact on subsequent docu-dramas, including Chernobyl, the minute-by-minute chronicle of events. It's astonishing that after the incredible excitement of Apollo 11, followed by the second landing by Apollo 12, viewership of the launch of Apollo 13 dropped off so much the networks couldn't be bothered running the broadcast the astronauts did from the spacecraft. America was bored of the moon. Shortly after that broadcast, shown only to family members of the astronauts, the explosion in the oxygen tank happened and all of a sudden the Apollo program became interesting again.

I don't know if you have Prime video, but I just finished watching The Good Girls Revolt. Check it out I think you will love it.