1965 in the United States

Federal government

• President: Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas)
• Vice President:

vacant (until January 20)

Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota) (starting January 20)

• Chief Justice: Earl Warren (California)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: John William McCormack (D-Massachusetts)
• Senate Majority Leader: Mike Mansfield (D-Montana)
• Congress: 88th (until January 3), 89th (starting January 3)

January

• January 1 – The ship S.S. Catala is driven onto the beach in Ocean Shores, Washington, stranding her.
• January 4 – President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims his "Great Society" during his State of the Union Address.^[1]
• January 19 – The uncrewed Gemini 2 is launched on a suborbital test of various spacecraft systems.
• January 20 – President Lyndon B. Johnson begins his full term. Hubert Humphrey is sworn in as Vice President of the United States.

February

• February 3 – The 8.7 M_w Rat Islands earthquake hits southwest Alaska with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VI (Strong), causing a tsunami that was destructive at Amchitka.
• February 20 – Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon, after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.
• February 21 – Malcolm X is assassinated by three members of the Nation of Islam in Manhattan.
• February 22 – A new, revised, color production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella airs on CBS. Lesley Ann Warren makes her TV debut in the title role. The show becomes an annual tradition.

March

• March 2 – The Sound of Music premieres at the Rivoli Theater in New York City.
• March 7 – Bloody Sunday: Some 200 Alabama State Troopers clash with 525 civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama who were attempting to march down the highway to Montgomery. No one was killed in the clash.
• March 8 – Vietnam War: Some 3,500 United States Marines arrive in South Vietnam, becoming the first American combat troops in Vietnam.
• March 9 – The second attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., stops at the bridge that was the site of Bloody Sunday, to hold a prayer service and return to Selma, in obedience to a court restraining order. White supremacists beat up white Unitarian Universalist minister James J. Reeb later that day in Selma.
• March 11 – White Unitarian Universalist minister James J. Reeb, beaten by white supremacists in Selma, Alabama on March 9 following the second march from Selma, dies in a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.
• March 15 – President Lyndon B. Johnson makes his "We Shall Overcome" speech.
• March 16 – Police clash with 600 marchers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Montgomery, Alabama.
• March 17
  • In Montgomery, Alabama, 1,600 civil rights marchers demonstrate at the Courthouse.
  • In response to the events of March 7 and 9 in Selma, Alabama, President Johnson sends a bill to Congress that forms the basis for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It is passed by the Senate on May 26, the House on July 10, and signed into law by President Johnson on August 6.
• March 18 – A United States federal judge rules that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) has the lawful right to march to Montgomery, Alabama to petition for 'redress of grievances'.
• March 19 – The wreck of the SS Georgiana, reputed to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser ever built and owned by the real Rhett Butler, is discovered off the Isle of Palms, South Carolina. It is discovered by teenage diver E. Lee Spence exactly 102 years after she was sunk with a million-dollar cargo while attempting to run past the Union blockade into Charleston.
• March 21
  • Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9, which is the last in a series of uncrewed lunar space probes.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 civil rights activists in the third march from Selma, Alabama, to the capital in Montgomery.
• March 23 – Gemini 3: NASA launches the United States' first 2-person crew (Gus Grissom, John Young) into Earth orbit.
• March 25 – Martin Luther King Jr. and 25,000 civil rights activists successfully end the four-day march from Selma to Montgomery.
• March 30 – Funeral services are held for Detroit homemaker Viola Liuzzo, who was shot dead by three Klansmen as she drove marchers back to Selma the night of the civil rights march.
• March
  • The Negro Family: The Case For National Action government report issued.^[2]
  • The first African American Playmate of the Month, Jennifer Jackson, is featured in Playboy magazine.

April

• April 3 – The world's first space nuclear power reactor, SNAP-10A, is launched by the United States from Vandenberg AFB, California. The reactor operates for 43 days and remains in high Earth orbit.
• April 5 – At the 37th Academy Awards, George Cukor's My Fair Lady wins 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Cukor. Rex Harrison wins an Oscar for Best Actor. Robert Stevenson's Mary Poppins takes home 5 Oscars out of 13 nominations. English performer Julie Andrews wins an Academy Award for Best Actress, for her portrayal in the lead role. The Sherman Brothers receive 2 Oscars including Best Song for "Chim Chim Cher-ee". The ceremony is hosted by Bob Hope at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.
• April 9
  • In Houston, Texas, the Harris County Domed Stadium (more commonly known as the Astrodome) opens.
  • Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang appear on the cover of Time.
  • The 100th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War is observed.
• April 11 – The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965: An estimated 51 tornadoes (47 confirmed) hit six Midwestern states, killing between 256 and 271 people and injuring some 1,500 more.
• April 14 – In Cold Blood killers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, convicted of murdering four members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, are executed by hanging at the Kansas State Penitentiary for Men in Lansing, Kansas.
• April 17 – The first SDS march against the Vietnam War draws 25,000 protestors to Washington, DC.
• April 21 – The New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows reopens.
• April 25 – Sixteen-year-old sniper Michael Clark kills 3 and wounds others, shooting at cars from a hilltop along Highway 101 just south of Orcutt, California. Clark kills himself as police rush the hilltop.
• April 26 – The first complete performance of Charles Ives' Symphony No. 4, conducted by Leopold Stokowski with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City, is presented 11 years after the composer's death and around 40 years since he last worked on it.^[3]
• April 28 – U.S. troops are sent to the Dominican Republic by President Lyndon B. Johnson, "for the stated purpose of protecting U.S. citizens and preventing an alleged Communist takeover of the country", thus thwarting the possibility of "another Cuba".
• April 29 – The 6.7 M_w Puget Sound earthquake hits western Washington with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), causing seven deaths and $12.5–28 million in financial losses in the Puget Sound region.

May

• May 5 – Forty men burn their draft cards at the University of California, Berkeley, and a coffin is marched to the Berkeley Draft Board.
• May 6 – A tornado outbreak near the Twin Cities in Minnesota kills 13 and injures 683.
• May 7 – The U.S. Steel freighter SS Cedarville collides with the SS Topdalsfjord and sinks near the Mackinac Bridge, killing 25 on board. Ten are rescued from the Cedarville, the third largest lake ship to sink after its sister the SS Carl D. Bradley, and the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.
• May 21 – The largest teach-in to date begins at Berkeley, California, attended by 30,000.
• May 22
  • The first skateboard championship is held.
  • Several hundred Vietnam War protesters in Berkeley, CA, march to the Draft Board again to burn 19 more cards. They hang an effigy of Lyndon Johnson at the demonstration.

• May 25 – World heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali wins the rematch against former champion Sonny Liston only 60 seconds into the first round. Ali struck Liston with what would become known as the "Phantom Punch".^[4]
• May 31 – Scottish racing driver Jim Clark wins the Indianapolis 500, and later wins the Formula One world driving championship in the same year.

June

• June 1 – Florida International University is founded in Miami.
• June 3 – Gemini 4: Astronaut Ed White makes the first U.S. space walk.
• June 16 – A planned anti-war protest at The Pentagon becomes a teach-in, with demonstrators distributing 50,000 leaflets in and around the building.
• June 25 – A U.S. Air Force Boeing C135-A bound for Okinawa crashes just after takeoff at MCAS El Toro in Orange County, California, killing all 85 on board.
• June 28 – The DeFeo family moves from Brooklyn, New York, to 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island, New York. The murder of all but one of the DeFeos nine years later, on November 13, 1974, by the oldest son, Ronald/Ronnie "Butch" DeFeo Jr., and the subsequent claims of a haunting at 112 Ocean Avenue by the Lutz family, would lead to The Amityville Horror franchise of books and movies.

July

• July 13 – The Environmental Science Services Administration is created (combining Coast & Geodetic Survey and Weather Bureau).
• July 14 – U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4 flies by Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to return images from the planet.
• July 20 – Bob Dylan's influential single "Like a Rolling Stone" is released by Columbia Records.
• July 25 – Electric Dylan controversy: Bob Dylan elicits controversy among folk purists by "going electric" at the Newport Folk Festival.
• July 28 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000, and to double the number of men drafted per month from 17,000 to 35,000.
• July 30 – War on Poverty: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

August

• August 6 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, outlawing literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices that have been responsible for widespread disfranchisement of African Americans.
• August 9 – An explosion at an Arkansas missile plant kills 53.
• August 11 – The Watts Riots begin in Los Angeles, California, leaving 34 people dead and causing $40 million in property damage over five days of rioting.
• August 13 – The rock group Jefferson Airplane debuts at the Matrix in San Francisco, California and begins to appear there regularly.
• August 15 – The Beatles perform the first stadium concert in the history of rock, playing at Shea Stadium in New York City.
• August 18 – Vietnam War – Operation Starlite: 5,500 United States Marines destroy a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in Quang Ngai Province, in the first major American ground battle of the war. The Marines were tipped off by a Viet Cong deserter who said that there was an attack planned against the U.S. base at Chu Lai.
• August 20 – Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian from Keene, New Hampshire, is murdered in Hayneville, Alabama while working with the American civil rights movement.
• August 21 – Gemini 5 (Gordon Cooper, Pete Conrad) is launched on the first one-week flight and the first test of fuel cells for electrical power.
• August 26 – President Johnson announces an end to the draft deferment for newly married men. Effective at midnight, all men will be eligible for the draft regardless of their marital status.
• August 28 – The first Subway opens in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
• August 30
  • Bob Dylan releases his influential album Highway 61 Revisited, featuring the song "Like a Rolling Stone."
  • Casey Stengel announces his retirement after 55 years in baseball.

September

• September 1 – WTWO begins broadcasting in Terre Haute, Indiana.
• September 7 – Vietnam War: In a follow-up to August's Operation Starlite, United States Marines and South Vietnamese forces initiate Operation Piranha on the Batangan Peninsula, 23 miles south of the Chu Lai Marine base.
• September 9
  • Sandy Koufax pitches a perfect game in a baseball match against the Chicago Cubs. The opposing pitcher, Bob Hendley, allows only one run, which is unearned.
  • Hurricane Betsy roars ashore near New Orleans, Louisiana with winds of 145 MPH, causing 76 deaths and $1.42 billion in damage. The storm is the first hurricane to cause $1 billion in unadjusted damages, giving it the nickname "Billion Dollar Betsy". It is the last major hurricane to strike New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina 40 years later.
  • The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) begins operation.
• September 14 – The infamous "bad sitcom" My Mother The Car premieres on NBC.
• September 18 – The first ever Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition is held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City and is won by Larry Scott.
• September 25 – The Tom & Jerry cartoon series makes its world broadcast premiere on CBS.
• September 28 – Fidel Castro announces that anyone who wants to can emigrate to the United States.

October

• October 3 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs an immigration bill which abolishes quotas based on national origin.
• October 4
  • Pope Paul VI makes the first papal visit to the United States. He appears for a Mass in Yankee Stadium and makes a speech at the United Nations.
  • The University of California, Irvine opens its doors.
• October 9 – Yale University presents the Vinland map.
• October 10 – The first group of Cuban refugees travels to the U.S.
• October 14 – The Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Minnesota Twins, 4 games to 3, to win their 4th World Series Title.
• October 15 – Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War: The Catholic Worker Movement stages an anti-war protest in Manhattan. One protestor who carries out a draft-card burning, David J. Miller, is arrested, the first under the new amendment to the Military Selective Service Act.
• October 16 – Anti-war protests draw 100,000 in 80 U.S. cities and around the world.
• October 17 – The New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadows, New York, closes. Due to financial losses, some of the projected site park improvements fail to materialize.
• October 26 – Police discover the body of Sylvia Likens in Indianapolis, Indiana.
• October 28 – In St. Louis, Missouri, the 630-foot-tall parabolic steel Gateway Arch is completed.
• October 29 – An 80-kiloton nuclear device is detonated at Amchitka Island, Alaska as part of the Vela Uniform program, code-named Project Long Shot.
• October 30
  • Vietnam War: Near Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. Among the dead, a sketch of Marine positions is found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.
  • In Washington, D.C., a pro-Vietnam War march draws 25,000.

November

• November 2
  • Quaker Norman Morrison sets himself on fire outside the Pentagon to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War.^[5]
  • Liberal Republican John Lindsay is elected mayor of New York City.
• November 6 – Freedom Flights begin: Cuba and the United States formally agree to start an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States (by 1971, 250,000 Cubans take advantage of this program).
• November 7 – The Pillsbury Company's mascot, the Pillsbury Doughboy, is created.
• November 8
  • Vietnam War: During Operation Hump, medic Lawrence Joel becomes the first African American since the Spanish–American War to receive the United States Medal of Honor.
  • American Airlines Flight 383 crashes on approach to Cincinnati, killing 58 of 62 people on board.
  • The soap opera Days of Our Lives debuts on NBC.
• November 9
  • Northeast Blackout of 1965: Several U.S. states (Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and portions of New Jersey) and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13½ hours.
  • Vietnam War: In New York City, 22-year-old Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in protest of the war.
• November 14 – Vietnam War: Battle of the Ia Drang – In the Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands in Vietnam, the first major engagement of the war between regular United States and North Vietnamese forces begins.
• November 15 – U.S. racer Craig Breedlove sets a new land speed record of 600.601 mph on Bonneville Salt Flats.
• November 22 – Man of La Mancha opens in a Greenwich Village theatre in New York City and eventually becomes one of the greatest musical hits of all time, winning a Tony Award for its star, Richard Kiley.
• November 27
  • Tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters picket the White House, then march on the Washington Monument.
  • Vietnam War: The Pentagon tells U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that if planned major sweep operations to neutralize Viet Cong forces during the next year are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam will have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.
• November 28 – Vietnam War: In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's call for "more flags" in Vietnam, Philippines President-elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam.
• November 30 – Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile is published.

December

• December 9 – A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first Peanuts television special, debuts on CBS. It becomes a Christmas tradition.
• December 15 – Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 perform the first controlled rendezvous in Earth orbit.
• December 17 – The British government begins an oil embargo against Rhodesia; the United States joins the effort.
• December 21 – A new, 1-hour German-American production of The Nutcracker, with an international cast that includes Edward Villella in the title role, makes its U.S. TV debut. It is repeated annually by CBS over the next 3 years, but after that, it is virtually forgotten.

Undated

• Jenny and Sylvia Likens are left in the care of Indianapolis housewife Gertrude Baniszewski. Sylvia is found dead and mutilated 3 months later.
• Tokyo officially becomes the largest city in the world, taking the lead from New York City.^[6]

Ongoing

• Cold War (1947–1991)
• Space Race (1957–1975)
• Vietnam War, U.S. involvement (1964–1973)