What happened in 1964

World10

• Feb 17Gabonese president Léon M'ba is toppled by a military coup and his arch-rival, Jean-Hilaire Aubame, is installed in his place. However, French intervention restores M'ba's government the next day.
• Apr 8The U.S. Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft.
• May 1At 4:00 a.m., John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz run the first computer program written in BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), an easy to learn high level programming language which they have created. BASIC is eventually included on many computers and even some games consoles.
• Jul 22The second meeting of the Organisation of African Unity is held.
• Jul 31Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound telescopes).
• Oct 22Canada: A Federal Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects a design to become the new official Flag of Canada.
• Nov 10Australia partially reintroduces compulsory military service due to the Indonesian Confrontation.
• Nov 28Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.
• Rudi Gernreich designs the original monokini topless swimsuit in the U.S.
• The Vishva Hindu Pariṣad is founded in India.

Japan3

• Oct 1The Shinkansen high-speed rail system, the world's first such system, is inaugurated in Japan, for the first sector between Tokyo and Osaka.
• OctTōkaidō Shinkansen opensOn October 1, it linked Tokyo and Shin-Osaka at up to 210 km/h. It is regarded as the world's first high-speed railway and became the model for high-speed rail around the world.
• OctTokyo OlympicsThe first Olympics in Asia. The final torchbearer, Sakai Yoshinori, was 19 and had been born in Hiroshima Prefecture on August 6, 1945. Tokyo had given up the 1940 Games because of the war.

North America18

• Jan 29Ranger 6 is launched by the US space agency NASA, on a mission to carry television cameras and crash-land on the Moon.
• MarMarch 27 (Good Friday) – The Great Alaskan earthquake, the second-most powerful known (and the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history) at a magnitude of 9.2, strikes Southcentral Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
• Apr 13At the 36th Academy Awards ceremony, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award in the category Best Actor in a Leading Role in Lilies of the Field.
• May 2Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, hitchhiking in Meadville, Mississippi, are kidnapped, beaten and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their badly decomposed bodies are found by chance in July during the search for missing activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.
• Jun 14Freedom Summer, a volunteer Civil Rights project in the United States intended to promote voter registration for as many African Americans as possible in Mississippi, begins with orientation sessions for the 300 volunteers at Western College for Women, Oxford, Ohio.
• Jul 2The United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 is enacted.
• Aug 7Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.
• Aug 27Walt Disney's Mary Poppins has its world premiere in Los Angeles. It will go on to become Disney's biggest moneymaker, and winner of 5 Academy Awards, including a Best Actress for Julie Andrews. It is the first Disney film to be nominated for Best Picture.
• Sep 24The Warren Commission, the first official investigation of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, submits its written report.
• Nov 31964 United States presidential election: Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Republican challenger Barry Goldwater with over 60 percent of the popular vote.
• Nov 5Mariner program: Mariner 3 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy but fails.
• Nov 21The Verrazano–Narrows Bridge across New York Bay opens to traffic (the world's longest suspension bridge at this time).
• Dec 14Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (379 US 241 1964): The U.S. Supreme Court rules that, in accordance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, establishments providing public accommodation must refrain from racial discrimination.
• Dec 21The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark supersonic attack aircraft, developed for the U.S. Air Force, makes its first flight, at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas.
• Dec 22The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird makes its first flight at Palmdale, California.

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Europe16

• Jan 29The 1964 Winter Olympics are held in Innsbruck, Austria.
• Feb 9The Beatles perform for the first time for an American audience on The Ed Sullivan Show to a record television audience of 73 million people, launching Beatlemania in the United States, as part of The British Invasion.
• Mar 6Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King Paul.
• Mar 20The first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development takes place.
• Apr 16In the Assize Court at Buckingham, England, sentences totalling 307 years are passed on twelve men who stole £2,600,000 in used bank notes, after holding up the night train from Glasgow to London in August 1963 – a heist that becomes known as the Great Train Robbery.
• Apr 20In the UK, BBC Two television starts broadcasting for the first time.
• May 24The crowd at a football match in Lima, Peru, riots over a referee's decision in the Peru-Argentina game; 319 are killed, 500 injured.
• Jun 11Cologne school massacre: In Cologne, West Germany, Walter Seifert attacks students and teachers in an elementary school with a flamethrower, killing 10 and injuring 21.
• Jun 21Spain beats the Soviet Union 2–1 to win the 1964 European Nations Cup.
• Aug 20The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat) began to work.
• Sep 4The Forth Road Bridge opens over the Firth of Forth in Scotland.
• Sep 14The London Daily Herald ceases publication, replaced by The Sun.
• Sep 21The island of Malta obtains independence from the United Kingdom.
• Nov 21Second Vatican Council: The third period of the Catholic Church's ecumenical council closes. Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, is promulgated.
• Dec 30The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is established as a permanent organ of the UN General Assembly.

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USSR / Russia2

• Jan 29The Soviet Union launches two scientific satellites, Elektron I and II, from a single rocket.
• Oct 12The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits. The flight is cut short and lands again on October 13 after 16 orbits.

Asia4

• May 29Having deposed them in a January coup, South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Khanh has rival Generals Tran Van Don and Le Van Kim convicted of "lax morality".
• Jul 21Race riots begin in Singapore between ethnic Chinese and Malays.
• Oct 17596 (nuclear test): The People's Republic of China explodes an atomic bomb in Sinkiang.
• Dec 24The Brinks Hotel in Saigon, Vietnam, is bombed by the Viet Cong, resulting in the deaths of two US soldiers and injuries to a further 60 people, including civilians.

Middle East1

• May 28The Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is released by the Arab League.

Latin America2

• Mar 31The military overthrows Brazilian President João Goulart in a coup, starting 21 years of dictatorship in Brazil, lasting until 1985.
• May 27The ongoing Colombian conflict starts, with an assault by 1,000 Colombian soldiers, backed by fighter planes and helicopters, against about 50 guerrillas in the community of Marquetalia.

Africa7

• Apr 20Nelson Mandela makes his "I Am Prepared to Die" speech at the opening of the Rivonia Trial, a key event for the anti-apartheid movement.
• Apr 26Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.
• Jul 6Malawi receives its independence from the United Kingdom.
• Sep 10The African Development Bank (AfDB) is founded.
• Sep 25The Mozambican War of Independence is launched by FRELIMO.
• Oct 24Northern Rhodesia, a former British protectorate, becomes the independent Republic of Zambia, ending 73 years of British rule.
• Dec 12Jamhuri Day: Kenya becomes a republic, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first President.