Gary Powers released from Soviet prision

February 10, 1962 – Pilot and CIA Operative Gary Powers is returned to the United States in a prisoner exchange with the Soviet Union.

Powers, piloting the secretive U2 spy plane, was shot down by Soviet missiles on May 1, 1960.  The US first reports a “weather plane” had been reported missing only to be embarrassed when they learn that not only had the pilot survived and was captured, but the aircraft had been recovered largely intact.  It is learned that the US had been conducting spying missions since 1956 and the Soviets knew about them but lacked the technology to stop them.

Furthermore, Powers had in his procession not only a survival kit, but also 7500 Soviet rubbles and “jewelry for women.”  The Cold War escalated when it was proven that the US had been spying on the Soviet Union.  Tried and convicted as a spy, Powers was sentenced to 10 years in prison.  Later Powers, along with an American student Fredric Pryor, is swapped for Soviet Spy KGB Colonel Vilyan Fisher.  He worked for Lockheed, manufacturer of the U2, as a test pilot from 1963 until 1970.  In 1970, he co-wrote a book called Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident. It is rumored that this led to his termination from Lockheed due to negative publicity for the CIA from the book.  He became a helicopter pilot for Los Angeles TV stations and died in 1977 at age 47 covering fires in Santa Barbara when his helicopter ran out of fuel.  Parts of the US Spy Plane remain on display at a Moscow museum.  Throughout the 60s and 70s, the name Gary Powers was well-recognized.  His capture by the Soviets was a major embarrassment to the US as undisputable proof that we too were spying.  Eventually other battles in the Cold War overshadowed his name and today is rarely mentioned outside history class.

The Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan Show

February 9, 1964 – 73 million Americans – 40% of the population – tuned into the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS that evening.  For months the airwaves and popular culture where abuzz about a new group from England.  Teenage girls were hysterical in their infatuation.  John, Paul, Ringo and George, The Fab Four, were the subject of rabid devotion as screaming mobs followed their every move.  More than 50,000 requests were made for the 700 seats in the Ed Sullivan Theater.  The screams of the audience drowned out their singing and young girls bumped and grinded to their parent’s horror in living rooms across America.  It was a welcome relief to a tragic assaination just 77 days prior.  And the Beatles were handsomly compansated $2500 for their efforts.

Hasbro introduces the Action Figure – GI Joe

 February 9, 1964 – In 1964 everybody knew that real, red blooded American boys did not play with dolls.  So Hasbro launches a new concept – it’s not a doll, it’s an Action Figure!  Now little boys can act out their aggressive fantasies indoors as well as out, as the try to kill and maim the enemy rather than each other.  Mothers sighed with relief when they learned that though GI Joe was a male, he was not exactly anatomically correct.  No need to worry about embarrassing questions from grandma or little sis. And fathers, many of them veterans of WWII, could explain to their sons what dog tags were and how to clean a rifle.  Ah, the Spartans!  Now they had something,  Strart training warriors from the begining.

The British Invasion has begun

February 7, 1964 – The Beatles arrive at JFK airport on Pan Am Flight 101.  For months the airwaves had been abuzz about this new group from Liverpool with strange clothes and long hair.  All around the city, posters proclamed “The Beatles are Coming!”  More than 3,000 screaming fans were there to meet them and Beatlemania had begun.  They would give three concerts and appear for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show.  They would return to the U.S. in August 1964, 1965, and 1966.  Their concert in San Francsico on August 29, 1966 was their last.

You can’t say THAT on Television!

February 6, 1967 – The Smother Brothers Comedy Hour premiers on CBS.  Using the typical comedy/variety stick of the era, the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour became what the “cool people” watched on TV.  Pushing the envelope of what was considered permissible for television, the conservative looking Smother Brothers and their writers (including Steve Martin, Rob Reiner and Al Brooks) were often at odds with CBS censors.  While their parents watched Bonanza on NBC, kids in the 15 – 25 year old demographic were watching guest stars like of The Who, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Joan Baez, and Steppenwolf.  Once taboo topics such as  politics, sex, race, and drugs were openly discussed for the first time.  Battles with the network over delivering shows 10 days prior to broadcast for approval or editing finally led CBS to cancel the show.  The Smother Brothers filed suit for breach of contract, which they won, but the show never renewed.  In 1970 they did a summer show for ABC but it was not picked up for the fall season.  In 1975 they had a show on NBC, but it too was cancelled after a few weeks.

Touchdown!

February 3, 1966 – The Space Race is now in full gear and the Soviets achieved another first by safely landing a spacecraft on the surface of the moon.

The Soviet Space Program had achieved a series of firsts including:

• the first satellite (Sputnik 1),
• first animal (Laika the dog),
• first man (Yuri Gagarin),
• first woman (Valentina Tereshkova),
• the first spacewalk (Alexey Lenov),
• the first impact on the moon (Lunik 2),
• and the first images from the dark side of the moon (Lunik 3).

The Soviet Lunik 9 was a soft landing and produced the first image ever transmitted from the lunar surface.  It weighed just over 200 pounds and landed at about 34 mph in a hermetically sealed bag.  It’s landing proved the lunar surface was able to support a spacecraft that did not sink into the lunar soil.  The four petals that covered the top half on the craft opened to stabilized the craft and the antennas moved into position and began to survey the area.  For unknown reasons, the first images transmitted back to earth were not immediately published by the Soviets, and the British rushed to intercept and publish them.

In the race to the moon, this achievement gave the Soviets another psychological victory and the Americans struggled to keep up with Soviet striving to surpass them hopefully winning the Cold War. Slowly the tide would turn, and the American Apollo Program would take the lead.

Day Two of the Tet Offensive

February 1, 1968 – Saigon Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan tells reporters 

“These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me”

and walks up to a captive Vietcong prisoner and shoots him in the head at point-blank range.  This image, and the footage captured by an NBC News team, is published around the world.  America was stunned and the world gasped at the savage brutality.  As part of the Tet Offensive, over 1,000 Vietcong guerillas had infiltrated Saigon and waged a war of terror inside the city.  The photo would win a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1969, and for many came to symbolize everything wrong with American involvement in Vietnam.  Is this what we are fighting for? 

Loan was never prosecuted.  He narrowly escaped South Vietnam in the closing days of the war in 1975, and eventually resettled in Virginia, outside Washington, where he opened a pizzeria. He lived there quietly until 1991 when he identity was discovered and he closed the pizzeria.  He died of cancer in 1998.  His memory remains controversal.  Few could condone his treatment of an unarmed prisoner, but many remember him as something of a hero.  Eddie Adams, the photographer who took this picture, regretted the effect it had on Loan and his family.  After Loan died, Adams would write

“…. What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?  … The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.” 

Nothing about Vietnam was ever easy.

1968 – Richard Nixon announces his candidacy for President.

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On this date in 1968 Richard Millhouse Nixon announces he is a candidate for the President of the United States.  After losing the election of 1960 to John F. Kennedy, Nixon retired to his native California.  He ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Governor Pat Brown (father of the current governor Jerry “Governor Moonbeam” Brown) in 1962.  He was viewed as the moderate Republican alternative to the liberal Nelson Rockefeller and the conservative Ronald Reagan

The Tet Offensive

January 31, 1968 – In the pre dawn hours of January 30, 1968, North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars and Vietcong (National Liberation Front  – NLF) guerrillas launch surprise attacks up and down the length of Vietnam.  A cease-fire had been declared for the Tet festivities (Vietnamese Lunar New Year), but the Vietcong broke the peace with a series of small attacks.  On the 31st, the attack begins in earnest, most notably in the Hue, the former capital located midway on the coast between the North and South.  The Battle of Hue lasted for more than a month during which the NLF  executed thousands in the Massacre of Hue. The battle for Khe Sanh, a remote US Marine outpost near the Laotian border, would last till April.  Also on the 31st, the recently completed U.S. Embassy in Saigon was overrun by 15 Vietcong combatants and held for over 6 hours.

The Tet Offensive would be the turning point in the war.  The initial surprise and success of the attacks disillusioned Americans who had been told that progress was being made and we were “winning”.  Heavy casualties on both sides sickened many who grew weary of the carnage now broadcast into their homes nightly.  Eventually, the communists were beaten back and took heavy losses, but psychologically they scored a victory.  What had been viewed as a campaign against communist domination was now viewed as a hopeless quagmire that would never produce victory and consumed “the flower of our youth, our finest young men”.

Beatles on the Roof

January 30, 1969 – The Beatles last live concert was in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on August 29, 1966.  Exhausted by Beatlemania, they retreated to the studio where some say their best work was about to begin.  After wrapping up the White Album in October 1968, the Fab Four returned to the studio on January 2, 1969.  The plan was to eventually film a live concert which would be broadcast over television and release a new album.  Without a definite plan, it was decided to start rehearsals and a film crew and sound crew joined the band at Twickenham Film Studios, London.

Time had taken its toll on these young lads from Liverpool and tensions were running high.  On the 6th, McCartney and Harrison exchange heated words.  On the 10th, Harrison announces he was leaving the band and storms out.  On the 15th, Harrison returns, and they collectively decided to abandon the concept of a concert and reassemble at  Apple Studios to continue recording intending to produce a feature film.  They resume on the 21st, and Harrison invites Billy Preston to sit in and play keyboards.  Having someone new join them apparently rekindled the old feelings of cooperation and collaboration, and for the next 10 days they work peacefully together.  Ideas are kicked around for an ending to the film, and on the 30th, the Beatles and Billy Preston retreat to the rooftop of Apple Studios for an unannounced 45 minute live concert.  It would be the last time they were seen playing publicly.  Throughout the rest of the year they continued to unravel and they wrap-up Abbey Road in August.  After much post production haggling, Let It Be album is released on May 8th and the film premiered in New York City on May 13, 1970.  It was their final work.