What happened in 1969

World8

• Jan 16First successful docking of two crewed spacecraft in orbit and the first transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another (by a space walk) between Soviet craft Soyuz 5 and Soyuz 4.
• Feb 28The 1969 Portugal earthquake hits Portugal, Spain and Morocco.
• Mar 18An annular solar eclipse is visible in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and is the 49th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 129.
• May 17Venera program: Soviet space probe Venera 6 begins to descend into Venus's atmosphere, sending back atmospheric data before being crushed by pressure.
• May 26The Andean Pact (Andean Group) is established.
• Sep 11An annular solar eclipse is visible in Pacific Ocean and South America, and is the 41st solar eclipse of Solar Saros 134.
• Summer – Invention of Unix under the potential name "Unics" (after Multics).
• International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage, a maritime treaty, is adopted.

Japan2

• Jan 19End of the siege of the University of Tokyo, marking the beginning of the end for the 1968–69 Japanese university protests.
• Apr 15The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a US reconnaissance aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.

North America28

• Feb 9The Boeing 747 "jumbo jet" is flown for the first time, taking off from the Boeing airfield at Everett, Washington.
• Mar 30The body of former United States General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower is brought by caisson to the United States Capitol to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda; Eisenhower had died two days earlier, after a long illness, in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
• May 18Apollo program: Apollo 10 (Gene Cernan, Tom Stafford, John Young) is launched. It is to be a full rehearsal for the Moon landing, stopping 15 kilometers short of actually reaching the lunar surface.
• May 22Apollo program: Apollo 10's lunar module flies to within 15,400 m of the Moon's surface.
• May 26Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth, after a successful 8-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming first crewed Moon landing.
• Jun 28The Stonewall riots, a milestone in the modern gay rights movement in the United States, began in New York City.
• JulApollo 11 lands on the MoonOn July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon. The broadcast was watched around the world. It fulfilled President Kennedy's 1961 goal of reaching the Moon within the decade.
• Aug 15The Woodstock Festival is held near White Lake, New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.
• Sep 5Lieutenant William Calley is charged with six counts of premeditated murder for the 1968 My Lai Massacre deaths of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai, Vietnam.
• Sep 13Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! premieres on CBS, starting the Scooby-Doo franchise.
• OctARPANETA network linking computers, built by ARPA, the research agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. On October 29 the first message was sent from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute. It was the forerunner of the internet.
• Nov 14Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean), the second crewed mission to the Moon.
• Nov 19Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"), becoming the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
• Nov 24Apollo program: The Apollo 12 spacecraft splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second crewed mission to the Moon.
• Dec 2The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its first passenger flight. It carries 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, from Seattle to New York City.

13 more in the app

Europe11

• Jan 5Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to London's Gatwick Airport, killing 50 of the 62 people on board and two of the home's occupants.
• Mar 2In Toulouse, France the first Concorde test flight is conducted.
• Mar 20John Lennon and Yoko Ono are married at Gibraltar, and proceed to their honeymoon "Bed-in" for peace in Amsterdam.
• Mar 29The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 is held in Madrid, and results in four co-winners, with 18 votes each, from Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France.
• Apr 3The Mass of Paul VI is promulgated in the Catholic Church by the Pope.
• Apr 28Charles de Gaulle steps down as president of France after suffering defeat in a referendum the day before.
• May 26John Lennon and Yoko Ono conduct their second bed-in. The follow-up to the Amsterdam event is held at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec. Lennon composes and records the song "Give Peace a Chance" during the event.
• Aug 10A day after murdering Sharon Tate and four others, members of the Manson Family kill Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Angeles.
• Aug 14The Troubles: British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland to restore order following three days of political and sectarian violence, marking the beginning of the 37-year Operation Banner.
• Sep 26The Beatles release their eleventh studio album, Abbey Road in the United Kingdom
• Dec 12The Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, Italy, kills 17 people and injures 88.

USSR / Russia4

• Jan 18Failure of Soyuz 5's service module to separate correctly causes a near-fatal re-entry (not publicly acknowledged until 1997). The module makes a hard landing in the Ural Mountains.
• Jan 22Attempted assassination of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, by deserter Viktor Ilyin. One person is killed, several are injured; Brezhnev escapes unharmed. Very little is publicly admitted about the incident by the Soviet authorities at this time.
• May 16Venera program: Soviet space probe Venera 5 lands on Venus.
• Aug 13Serious border clashes occur between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

Asia5

• May 10The Battle of Dong Ap Bia, also known as Hamburger Hill, begins during the Vietnam War.
• Jul 14The Act of Free Choice for West Irian commences in Merauke, Indonesia.
• Sep 2Ho Chi Minh, the president of Democratic Republic of Vietnam, died at the age of 79.
• Oct 1The Beijing Subway begins operation.
• Nov 19Vietnam War: A Cleveland, Ohio newspaper, The Plain Dealer, publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.

Middle East3

• Jan 27Fourteen men, 9 of them Jews, are executed in Baghdad for spying for Israel.
• Mar 20One hundred of the 105 passengers and crew on a United Arab Airlines flight, most of them Muslim pilgrims returning to Aswan from Mecca, are killed when the Ilyushin-18 turboprop crashes during a sandstorm.
• Sep 25The Organisation of the Islamic Conference is founded.

Latin America7

• Feb 8The Allende meteorite explodes over Mexico.
• Mar 16Viasa Flight 742 crashes into a neighborhood in Maracaibo, Venezuela, shortly after taking off for Miami; all 84 people on board the DC-9 jet are killed along with 71 people on the ground.
• May 21Rosariazo: Civil unrest breaks out in Rosario, Argentina, following the death of a 15-year-old student.
• May 29Cordobazo: A general strike and civil unrest break out in Córdoba, Argentina.
• Jul 14Football War: After Honduras loses an association football match against El Salvador, rioting breaks out in Honduras against Salvadoran migrant workers. Of the 300,000 Salvadoran workers in Honduras, tens of thousands are expelled, prompting a brief Salvadoran invasion of Honduras. The OAS works out a cease-fire on July 18, which takes effect on July 20.
• Sep 1For Brazil, the Jornal Nacional was created on Monday, 1 September 1969.
• Dec 3Air France Flight 212, a Boeing 707 registered as F-BHSZ, crashed shortly after takeoff from Venezuela killing all 62 occupants on board. The cause of the accident is not yet known since the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) did not publish an investigation report. It will not be released until 2029, sixty years after the accident.

Africa3

• Sep 11969 Libyan coup d'état: A bloodless coup in Libya ousts King Idris and brings Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to power.
• Oct 21General Siad Barre comes to power in Somalia in a coup, 6 days after the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke.
• Common African, Malagasy and Mauritian Organization (OCAMM) (Organisation Commune Africaine Malgache et Mauricienne) is established.