Though the Rome games were held at the height of the Mediterranean summer (against medical advice) they were a spectacular success. Making the most of…
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The first-ever Olympic Games to be held in Asia took place in Tokyo in 1964, 24 years after the Japanese wartime government had forced their…
In 1966 England hosted the World Cup, in a climate of football fever generated in-part by the much-loved mascot World Cup Willie. The cartoon lion appeared…
The 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico were the first to have widespread television coverage and, for those lucky enough to own the right TV, in…
The International Olympic Committee’s medical team got more exercise than most of the competitors during the 24th Games in Seoul. Rigorous drugs testing of all…
In December 1979, the Soviet Union expanded its Communist Empire by installing a pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan. The USSR had already infiltrated Afghanistan, supplying the…
The disease that would eventually become known as AIDS began to surface in 1981, killing mostly gay men in large urban areas. For the time…
On Saturday 6 December 1969, some 300,000 people turned up for a free Rolling Stones concert at a speedway track near San Francisco called Altamont. While Woodstock, four…
America’s third moon mission, Apollo 13, was launched on 11 April 1970. The crew of astronauts James Lovell, John Swigert and Fred Haise had ignored…
Series of wars and territorial conflicts between Israel and various Arab states in the Middle East since the founding of the state of Israel in…
President Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963 – shot in the head as he was driven through Dallas, Texas, in an open car on his way…
27 September 1986 Balloonfest ’86 was intended to be a harmless fundraising publicity stunt that would help elevate Cleveland in the eyes of the American…
Fidel Castro overthrew the US-backed Batista dictatorship in January 1959 to take control of Cuba, and in 1960 he took over US oil refineries in the…
In Adelaide, Australia, on 28 January 1966, three children from the Beaumont family, Jane (9), Arnna (7) and Grant (4) vanished from Glenelg beach after…
In 1945, at the end of WWII, Germany was divided into a Soviet Zone in the East, and British, French and American Zone in the…
1966 was, in all respects, a crucial turning point for the black movement in America. In that year the Black Panther party was founded in Oakland, California, and…
Palestinian terrorists, members of the Black September Arab guerrilla group, broke into the Israeli athletes’ compound at the Munich Olympics on 5 September 1972. Over…
“Bloody Sunday” was the name given to the events of Sunday 30 January 1972 when 13 unarmed demonstrators in the Bogside area of Londonderry, Northern…
Beginning in 1949, for one week a year in April, all Scout groups across Britain ‘hired out’ their Scouts and Cubs for “Bob-a-Job week”, issuing…
On 26 April 1986 the Number 4 reactor of the V.I. Lenin nuclear power station at Chernobyl (Ukraine) exploded. The Soviet Union admitted the accident…
