January 15, 1970. After a 32-month fight for independence from Nigeria, Biafran forces surrender to the Nigerian government.

April 17, 1970. Apollo 13, crippled by an explosion in its service module early in its flight, returns to the earth safely, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. The three astronauts on board are safe and in good health.

April 29, 1970. The U.S. invades Cambodia to hunt out the Viet Cong; widespread, large antiwar protests occur in the U.S.

September 1, 1970. An assassination attempt against King Hussein of Jordan precipitates the Black September crisis, war between Palestinian guerillas and Jordanian troops.

September 27, 1970. King Hussein of Jordan and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yassir Arafat sign a peace agreement to end the war between Jordanian troops and Palestinian guerrillas.

October, 1970. Anwar Sadat becomes president of Egypt after the death of Gamel Abdel Nasser. Sadat is expected to take a more moderate attitude toward Israel and the U.S.

October 9, 1970. The Khmer Republic is officially proclaimed in Cambodia. The Khmer Republic is a right-wing pro-United States military-led government headed by General Lon Nol and Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak that took power in the March 18, 1970 coup against Prince Norodom Sihanouk, then the country’s head of state.

October 22-24, 1970. Chilean army commander René Schneider is shot in Santiago; the government declares a state of emergency. Schneider dies October 25th. On October 24, Salvador Allende is elected President of Chile.

November 13, 1970. Hafez al-Assad comes to power in Syria, following a military coup within the Ba’ath party. Assad will rule Syria for the next thirty years until his death in June, 2000.

November 13, 1970. 500,000 people are feared dead after a tidal wave hits East Pakistan (Bangladesh).

February 4, 1969. In Cairo, Yasser Arafat is elected Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.

March 7, 1969. 70 year old Golda Meir, head of the Israeli Labor Party, becomes Israel’s new prime minister.

April 4, 1969. In Houston, Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart in a man, Hanskell Karp, who lives for 65 hours.

April 9, 1969. The supersonic airliner Concorde 002 takes to the air in the UK for a maiden flight of 21 minutes.

July 21, 1969. Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon.

August 15, 1969. The British government sends troops into Derry, Northern Ireland to restore the peace between groups of Protestant and Catholic street fighters in the war-torn city. Troops will also be sent to Belfast to break up fighting there.

August 15-17, 1969. The world’s biggest rock festival is held at Woodstock in upstate New York. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, The Who, and Santana are a few of he many performers at the festival.

September, 1969. North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh dies as the war in Vietnam continues.

September, 1969. In Libya, a group of army officers, led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, seize powere while King Idris of Libya is out of the country. Gaddafi will rule Libya until his death in 2011.

September 28, 1969. The Social Democrats and the Free Democrats receive a majority of votes in the German parliamentary elections, and decide to form a common government. Willy Brandt becomes chancellor, the first Social Democrat to be elected in 39 years.

October, 1969. Civil war rages in Nigeria as the rebel republic of Biafra fights for independence from Nigerian rule. 300,000 civilian refugees in Biafra are facing starvation as the Nigerian government has stopped Red Cross flights carrying relief aid. Nigeria says that the Biafran rebels are using the flights to get arms as well as food.

Published in 1967:
The Chosen by Chaim Potok. Set in the 1940’s, two Jewish teens, one Hasidic and the other orthodox, but less strict in his observance, develop a friendship that survives the vicissitudes of adolescence and changing times.
Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander. In this children’s fantasy novel, the fourth of five volumes in the series Chronicles of Prydain, based on Celtic/Welsh mythology, Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper, searches for his true heritage. The book is a classic coming-of-age story set in the fantasy kingdom of Prydain.
Endless Night by Agatha Christie. One of my favorite Christie novels, this mystery/suspense story features neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple, but rather stands on its own with its own fascinating characters. The title comes from a poem by William Blake.
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Ms. Hinton wrote this classic YA novel when she was only sixteen years old.
Christy by Catherine Marshall. A wonderful, wonderful book that I have been unable to “sell” any of my young adult children on reading. Christy is an eighteen year old innocent idealist when she goes to the mountains of Appalachia to teach school in a one-room schoolhouse. By the end of the story she’s a grown-up woman who’s experienced friendship, grief, and love. I don’t know why I can’t get my urchins to read it.
White Mountains and The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher. I read these classic science fiction/dystopian novels when I was a kid of a girl. I remember them being quite chilling. Perhaps they’re due for a republishing in light of the current popularity of dystopian fiction.
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin. I remember when everyone was talking about the movie version of this horror novel. Major elements of the story were inspired by the publicity surrounding Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan which had been founded in 1966. The eponymous Rosemary basically conceives a child with Satan.
Where Eagles Dare by Alistair McLean. World War II action adventure. The movie based on this book, starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton, is one of Engineer Husband’s favorites.
100 Years of Solitude, Cien años de soledad by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Garcia Marquez was a pioneer in the genre of “magical realism”, a style that has since become quite popular in all sorts of literature. (Magical realism: an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world.) I need to go back and read this book in English because when I read it in college in Spanish I couldn’t tell the magical elements from my lack of fluency in the language.
Nicolas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie. Nonfiction biography of the last Romanov rulers of Russia. For more books about this tragic family, see my post on Reading About the Romanovs.

February, 1967. The U.S. launches Operation Junction City, its biggest assault yet against the Vietcong in Vietnam.

April, 1967. General George Papadopoulos takes over the government of Greece in a military coup.

April 9, 1967. The first Boeing 737, a twin-engine narrow-body jet airliner, takes its maiden flight. As of December 2011, Boeing had built 7010 of this model airliner for use around the world.

May 22-27, 1967. Egyptian President Nasser declares the Straits of Tiran , between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas separating the Gulf of Aqaba from the Red Sea, closed to Israeli shipping. He says, “”Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight.”

May 30, 1967. Colonel Ojukwu of the Ibo tribe in eastern Nigeria proclaims the region to be the independent republic of Biafra. European and U.S. citizens flee Biafra as Nigerian troops attack the breakaway republic.

June, 1967. China detonates its first H-bomb in Xiang Jang, a remote area of southwestern China.

June 5-10, 1967. The Six Day War. The Israeli air force launches surprise air strikes against Arab forces. In a decisive victory, Israel takes control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

June 27, 1967. The first automatic cash machine is installed, in the office of the Barclays Bank in Enfield, England.

October 10, 1967. Ernesto “Che” Guevarra, Cuban revolutionary hero who helped Fidel Castro overthrow the Batista regime in Cuba, is shot to death by the Bolivian army while on a mission to spread the communist revolution to the rest of the world.

December, 1967. The first successful heart transplant is performed by Dr. Christian Barnard in South Africa.

January 12, 1966. President Lyndon Johnson says the US should stay in South Vietnam until communist aggression ends.

January 15-17, 1966. A bloody military coup is staged in Nigeria, deposing the civilian government. The Nigerian coup is overturned by another faction of the military, leaving a military government in power. This is the beginning of a long period of military rule.

January 19, 1966. Indira Ghandi, daughter of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, is elected prime minister of India. She pledges to “strive to create what my father used to call a climate of peace.”

February, 1966. While President Nkrumah of Ghana is on a state visit to North Vietnam and China, his government is overthrown in a military coup. Nkrumah is best known politically for his strong commitment to and promotion of Pan-Africanism, a movement that seeks to unify African people or people living in Africa, into a “one African community”. He never returns to Ghana, living the remainder of his life in exile.

April 8, 1966. In a reshuffling of power at the Kremlin, Leonid Brezhnev becomes the apparent leader of the Soviet Union. As General Secretary of the Communist Party in Russia, Brezhnev appears to be the real power behind the government in the USSR.

June, 1966. The U.S. unmanned spacecraft Surveyor is the first craft to land on the moon.

August, 1966. Mao Zedong launches the Cultural Revolution in China. The movement is led by thousands of students organized into bands called “Red Guards.” Teachers, artists, and other intellectuals are humiliated in the streets. Mao’s dictum to his young army is: “Revolution is not writing an essay or painting a picture . . . Revolution is an act of violence when one class overthrows another.”

November, 1966. In China, the Red Guard demands the dismissal of heads of state Lui Shaopi and Deng Xiaoping.

During the year 1966:
Botswana, Lesotho, and Guyana become independent states within the British Commonwealth.

Tension between the United Kingdom and the rebel state of Rhodesia in southern Africa continues. The United Nations authorizes sanctions against Rhodesia, and the British Navy enforces a blockade on oil shipments to Rhodesia.