Monday, June 13, 1960: Loretta Lynn

"I'm a Honky Tonk Girl," by little-known singer Loretta Lynn, enters the country music charts at Number 28. The 25-year-old mother of four has a recording contract with Zero Records, which had little to no money to promote the song. Lynn and her husband, Oliver "Mooney" Lynn, promote it themselves by sending out hundreds of copies to radio stations and by driving to stations across the country to get DJs to play the record.

* Listen to "Honky Tonk Girl": @

* Biography: @

* Loretta Lynn website: @

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Undated: 'Lifeline to an Oyster'

A short film made by the oil industry on how, through research, it was determined that oysters could not only survive, but thrive in oil-tainted waters.

* Watch the film: @

* A short summary of the Louisiana oyster industry: @

* Louisiana Oyster Task Force: @

* American Petroleum Institute: @

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Tuesday, June 7, 1960: Nuclear fire

An explosion and fire at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey burns a BOMARC nuclear missile shelter as well as a nuclear warhead. There is no nuclear explosion, but plutonium is released into the air and groundwater.

* More about the accident and cleanup: @ and @

* More about the BOMARC missile: @ and @ and @

* More about McGuire AFB: @ and @

* Air Force report from 1992 on "final remedial action for radioactive wastes": @

* Summaries of nuclear accidents, 1950-1980: @

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Undated: Volkswagen's 'Lemon' ad

One of the most successful campaigns in advertising history gets under way as Volkswagen begins publishing a series of witty, droll ads for the Beetle. "Lemon," part of what came to be called the "Think Small" campaign (after another famous ad), pointed to this car as failing VW's rigorous inspection system. The ad ended with the line, "We pluck the lemons; you get the plums."

* More pictures of ads: @ and @

* VW videos and enlarged "Lemon": @

* More about "Lemon": @

* More about the campaign: @

* "Think Small": @

* VW advertising in The New Yorker: @

* "Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?" (book): @

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Monday, June 6, 1960: Meter maids

Parking meter enforcement comes to the streets of New York as 100 female "meter maids" (also known as "Brownies" for the color of their uniforms) begin work. A ticket costs $5. "Flying squads of meter maids mixed reason with enforcement yesterday in an auspicious debut," said The New York Times. Men joined the unit in 1967.

* Magazine articles: @ and @

* Short history of the parking meter: @

* Patent for "Coin Controlled Parking Meter": @

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Saturday, June 4, 1960: Danish Embassy opens

Denmark's King Frederick IX and Queen Ingrid attend the official opening of the Royal Danish Embassy in Washington. The building is hailed as the first "modern" embassy in design; many countries had simply bought large mansions to house their embassies.

* More about the embassy: @

* Interior photos: @

* Embassy Row tour: @

* Overview of Danish architecture: @

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Friday, June 3, 1960: Aerospace Corporation

The Aerospace Corp. is established in El Segundo, California. Its mission is "to serve the Air Force in the scientific and technical planning and management of missile-space programs." It is set up as a nonprofit company, presumably free of conflicts of interest involving technology applications. Its first president, Ivan Getting (left), would later help create the Global Positioning System (GPS).

* More from Aerospace website: @ and @

* Oral histories: @

* Aerospace Corp. and TRW: @

* List of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers: @

* "The Quasi Government" (report to Congress on FFRDCs): @

* More on the origins of GPS: @ and @

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Wednesday, June 1, 1960: Broadway blackout

In a dispute over pension plans for actors, all Broadway shows are shut down, starting with "The Tenth Man." There are no performances for nearly two weeks, and 3 of the 22 shows never reopen. The New York Daily News, while urging a quick end to the work stoppage, is not entirely sympathetic: "The fact is that they are not engaged in an essential industry."

* More about the dispute: @ and @ and @

* More about "The Tenth Man": @ and @

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Undated: 'The I Hate to Cook Book'

With its biting humor, easy-to-follow recipes and occasional social commentary, Peg Bracken's "The I Hate to Cook Book" becomes a surprise hit. Its appeal to the not-quite-perfect little homemaker is evident in this recipe for Skid Road Stroganoff: "Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink." Chapter titles include "Potluck Suppers, or how to bring the water for the lemonade" and "Last-Minute Suppers, or this is the story of your life."

* Tributes from New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution: @ and @

* Recipe for Skid Road Stroganoff: @

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Undated: Vinland

Springtime finds Norwegian explorer-author Helge Ingstad and his wife, Anne Stine Ingstad, at the northwestern tip of Newfoundland, Canada, where they are searching for evidence that Norse Vikings had lived in what was called "Vinland." At L'Anse aux Meadows ("Jellyfish Cove"), a local fishermen shows them what look to be house foundations. Subsequent excavations reveal this to be the earliest known European settlement in the New World, predating Christopher Columbus by some 500 years.

* More about Vinland: @

* Smithsonian's "Vikings" website: @

* "The Vinland Mystery" (documentary): @

* L'Anse aux Meadows Historic Site: @

* Map of Viking voyages: @

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Friday-Sunday, May 27-29, 1960: Daughters of Bilitis

The first national lesbian conference is held in San Francisco. It's organized by the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), an organization formed in 1955 and taking its name from a character in a series of poems by France's Pierre Louys. "The Ladder" is the name of the DOB's magazine.

* More on the DOB: @

* "The Songs of Bilitis," complete text by Pierre Louys: @

* "Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement" (book): @

* "Lesbians in the Twentieth Century" (from course in Lesbian History at the University of Michigan): @

* "Beebo Brinker" and lesbian pulp fiction: @ and @

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Thursday, May 26, 1960: The Great Seal bug

During a United Nations debate over the U-2 incident and U.S. spy operations, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.) displays a wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States. It contains a listening device planted there by the Soviet Union, which had given the carving to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1946. After the revelation, the U.N. Security Council votes 7-2 against censuring the United States for the U-2 incident.

* Summary (from www.history.com): @

* Summary (from www.spybusters.com): @

* "U.N. Spy Debate: Reds ' Bugged' American Embassy Lodge Claims" (newsreel): @

* Front page of Los Angeles Mirror: @

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Tuesday, May 24, 1960: Radiation experiments on humans

Physicians at Cincinnati General Hospital, part of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, carry out experiments on at least 100 terminally ill cancer patients by subjecting them to varying doses of full-body irradiation. Among the purposes of the experiments was to see how much radiation a soldier could withstand before becoming incapictated. The work, first funded by the Defense Atomic Support Agency of the Department of Defense, would continue until 1971; many patients would die shortly after exposure. (The experiments began in the spring of 1960; I used May 24 as the date because it appears to be the date when the first subject who died was first subjected to radiation.)

* More about experiments (from website of Department of Energy's Office of Health, Safety and Security): @ and @

* Text of April 1994 congressional hearings: @

* Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments: @

* "Report on Search for Human Radiation Experiment Records" (From DoD website): @

* 2007 obituary of lead researcher Dr. Eugene Saenger (pictured above): @

* About the book "The Treatment: The Story of Those Who Died in the Cincinnati Radiation Tests": @ and @

* Excerpts from the book: @ and @

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Tuesday, May 24, 1960: Pan Am's Worldport

Pan American World Airways opens Terminal 3 at New York's Idlewild Airport. The futuristic-looking building is variously described as an umbrella (Time magazine), a parasol and a mushroom (New York Times) and a flying saucer. It was designed to keep passengers dry as they go from the terminal to the airplane (in the days before boarding bridges). Pan Am would rename it the Worldport in 1971.

* Pan Am history websites: @ and @

* Maps: @

* Pictures: @

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Undated: I adore you like tomato sauce

With its smorgasbord of languages and ethnic rhythms, Bob Azzam's "Mustapha" is a hit in Europe. "Chefs abandon soufflés to hear it," says Time magazine.

* Time article (May 30, 1960): @

* Other versions: @

* Translated lyrics: @

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