Friday, April 30, 1965: 'Drama of Life Before Birth'

Lennart Nilsson's groundbreaking photography appears in Life magazine. The photos, depicting the development of a fetus from fertilization to age 28 weeks, would become enduring images for their scientific value as well as in the subsequent debate over abortion in the United States. (The magazine said at the time that most of the embryos "had been surgically removed for a variety of medical reasons.")

* April 30 edition: @

* Remembrance (life.time.com): @

* "A Child is Born" (www.lennartnilsson.com): @

* Q&A with Nilsson (www.lennartnilsson.com): @

* Embryo Project Encyclopedia (Arizona State University): @
* "The Lonesome Space Traveller" (from "Making Visible Embryos," University of Cambridge): @
* "Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science, Individuality" (Karen Newman, 1996): @
* "Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions" (edited by Lynn W. Morgan and Meredith W. Michaels, 1999): @
* "Pregnant Pictures" (Sandra Matthews, 2000): @
* "The Social Worlds of the Unborn" (Deborah Lupton, 2013): @ 

---

April-May 1965: Super 8

Eastman Kodak Co. introduces its Super 8 film format, with press releases in April followed by a public debut on May 1 at the International Photography Exposition in New York. One of the main selling points: the plastic cartridge that made loading the film much easier. (Around the same time, Fuji Photo Film Co. was launching a similar system known as Single 8.)

     -- Advertisement from Life magazine, August 6, 1965 (linked below)

* "Super 8 mm Film History" (Kodak): @
* www.super8data.com (database): @
* "Instamatic Technique Goes to the Movies" (J. Walter Thompson Company News, April 30, 1965, from Duke University Libraries): @

* "Bigger Format for Movie Fans" (United Press International, April 11, 1965): @
* Advertisements in Life magazine, June 11 and August 6, 1965: @ and @

* "Kodak's Revolution in Home Movies" (Popular Science, June 1965): @

* "War of the Photo Systems" (Popular Science, July 1965): @ 

---

April-July 1965: 'Satisfaction'

April 1965 *

     I was between girlfriends at the time, in my flat in Carlton Hill, St. John's Wood. Hence maybe the mood of the song. I wrote "Satisfaction" in my sleep. I had no idea I'd written it, it's only thank God for the little Philips cassette player. The miracle being that I looked at the cassette player that morning and I knew I'd put a brand-new tape in the previous night, and I saw it was at the end. Then I pushed rewind and there was "Satisfaction." It was just a rough idea. There was just the bare bones of the song, and it didn't have all that noise, of course, because I was on acoustic. And forty minutes of me snoring. -- From "Life," by Keith Richards, 2010: @

     * According to other accounts, this occurred the night of May 6 in Clearwater, Florida, during the Rolling Stones' tour of North America. However, since Richards places it in London, this would have been before the tour, which began April 23 in Montreal, Canada. 

     Mick Jagger was also later quoted as saying that he and Richards worked on the song "half in Canada, half in Florida" (Melody Maker, June 26, 1965). Regardless, the opening riff and the phrase "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" are credited to Richards, while Jagger wrote most of the rest of the lyrics.

May 10-12
     The band records the song, first in Chicago (May 10) and then in Los Angeles (May 11-12).

May 20, May 26
     The band premieres the song on the television show "Shindig!" (The show was taped on May 20 and aired on ABC on May 26.)

Late May *
     The song is released in the United States.
     * Many accounts say the song was released June 5 or June 6, but the single was already on sale by then. The image above is from The Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Herald, June 3, 1965. Also, a music survey from KMEN in San Bernadino, California, indicates that the song was released on May 25; link: @.

June 5
     "Satisfaction" is first mentioned in Billboard magazine's "Singles Reviews," above.
     * June 5 issue: @

June 12
     The song debuts on Billboard's Hot 100 at No. 67.
     * June 12 issue: @

July 10
     "Satisfaction" reaches No. 1 on the Billboard charts; it stays at the top for four weeks, displaced on August 7 by "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" by Herman's Hermits.
     * Billboard chart for July 10 (from billboard.com): @
     * July 17 issue: @
     * July 24 issue: @
     * July 31 issue: @
     * August 7 issue: @

August 20 *
     "Satisfaction" is released in Britain. The B-side was "The Spider and The Fly," unlike the American release, whose B-side was "The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man."
     * Date approximate; from Billboard, August 21: "This week Decca rushes out in Britain the Stones' recent big American hit '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' ..."

Resources
* Entry from "Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones" (Bill Janovitz, 2013): @

* Entry from "The Billboard Book of Number One Hits" (2003): @

* Entry from www.allmusic.com: @

* "The Rolling Stones' ('I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' " (Performing Songwriter, 2013): @

* "Behind the Song: 'Satisfaction' " (American Songwriter, 2012): @

* "Let It Read! The Ultimate Literary Guide to the Rolling Stones" (The Daily Beast, 2012): @
* "Rolling Stoned" (Andrew Loog Oldham, 2011): @
* "Stone Alone: The Story of a Rock 'n' Roll Band" (Bill Wyman, 1990): @

* "The Complete Works of the Rolling Stones" (database): @
* "The Rolling Stones: Off the Record" (Mark Paytress, 2003): @
* "The Rolling Stones: Fifty Years" (Christopher Sandford, 2012): @

* "1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music" (Andrew Grant Jackson, 2015): @

* Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out" (Gordon Thompson, 2008): @

---

1965: LBJ's Amphicar

     Built in Germany from 1961 to 1968, the Amphicar is the only civilian amphibious passenger automobile ever to be mass produced. A total of 3,878 vehicles were produced in four colors: Beach White, Regatta Red, Fjord Green (Aqua) and Lagoon Blue -- the color of President Johnson's Amphicar. President Johnson enjoyed surprising unsuspecting guests when taking them for a ride in his Amphicar.

     "The President, with Vicky McCammon in the seat alongside him and me in the back, was now driving around in a small blue car with the top down. We reached a steep incline at the edge of the lake and the car started rolling rapidly toward the water. The President shouted, 'The brakes don't work! The brakes won't hold! We're going in! We're going under!' The car splashed into the water. I started to get out. Just then the car leveled and I realized we were in an Amphicar. The President laughed. As we putted along the lake then (and throughout the evening), he teased me. 'Vicky, did you see what Joe did? He didn't give a damn about his President. He just wanted to save his own skin and get out of the car.' Then he'd roar." -- Joseph A. Califano Jr. (special assistant to Johnson, 1965-1969).

     -- Text from "Presidential Vehicles" (Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park): @

     -- Photo from LBJ Library, dated April 10, 1965; passengers are Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Paul Glynn; photo by Yoichi Okamoto 

* "LBJ's Amphibious Car" (footage from LBJ Library): @

* "Remembering Amphicar, the swim-utility vehicle" (BBC, 2015): @

* "I Drove Through a Flood in a Car That 'Swims' " (Popular Science, August 1967): @
* "The Amphicar: What It's Like to Drive" (Popular Science, July 1960): @ 
* The International Amphicar Owner's Club: @
* www.amphicars.com: @

* www.amphicarbroker.com: @
* Amphicar forums: @ 

---

Monday, April 19, 1965: Moore's Law

Electronics magazine publishes Gordon Moore's paper, "Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits." His observation -- "the amount of computing power available for a given cost has increased and continues to increase by a factor of two every 18 months to 2 years" -- came to be known as Moore's Law.

-- Quoted material from "The Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security" (2011): @

-- Image (cost vs. time sketch from Moore's 1964 notebook) from Computer History Museum: @

* PDF of Electronics article: @
* "Moore's Law at 50: Its past and its future" (Extreme Tech): @

* "Moore's Law Hits Middle Age" (EE Times, April 2015): @

* "The Multiple Lives of Moore's Law" (IEEE Spectrum, March 2015): @
* "10 images that explain the incredible power of Moore's Law" (Washington Post, April 2015): @

* "Understanding Moore's Law: Four Decades of Innovation" (Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2006): @ 

---

Saturday, April 17, 1965: March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam

Thousands of students demanding an end to the war in Viet Nam massed in Washington Saturday, picketing, singing and shouting for their case. The demonstration, one of the largest ever to take place around the White House, was billed by its sponsors, an organization calling itself Students for a Democratic Society, as the start of a national protest movement against U.S. policy in Viet Nam. Demonstration leaders said 20,000 students responded to the call they sent to colleges across the nation for support. Police estimated the number at 12,000 to 15,000.

-- Excerpt from Associated Press: @

-- Image of flier from  Students for a Democratic Society Papers, 1958-1970: @

* Summary from "Encyclopedia of Student and Youth Movements" via Facts on File: @

* Flier (The King Center): @

* Paul Potter's speech (www.sdsrebels.com): @

* "Paul Potter, 'The Incredible War' (17 April 1965)": @ (Jeffery P. Drury, Central Michigan University)
* www.sds-1960s.org: @ 

---

Wednesday, April 14, 1965: 'In Cold Blood' killers executed

Lansing, Kas. -- Richard Eugene Hickock, 34, and Perry Edward Smith, 36, were hanged early Wednesday for the 1959 slayings of a family of four. They were convicted of the Nov. 14, 1959, robbery-murder of rancher Herbert W. Clutter, his wife, and the couple's two teen age children. The four victims had been bound, gagged and shot point blank in the head with a 12 gauge shotgun. Clutter was a farm adviser of the Eisenhower administration. The killers had been searching for a nonexistent fortune supposedly stashed away by the Clutter family in their Garden City (Kas.) home. All Hickock and Smith got for their efforts was $80 a portable radio and a pair of cheap binoculars. Their last hope of avoiding the noose died Tuesday when United States Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White took no action on a last minute appeal for a stay of execution.
     -- Story by United Press International
     -- Photo by Associated Press; Hickock is at left

Note: "In Cold Blood," Truman Capote's account of the killings, first appeared as a four-part series beginning with the September 25, 1965, issue of The New Yorker magazine, and was then published in book form in January 1966.

* 50th-anniversary story from The Topeka Capital-Journal: @

---

Friday, April 9, 1965: The Astrodome

HOUSTON, Tex. -- There was a bomb scare but President Johnson showed no concern Friday night as he and 47,876 other fans watched air conditioned baseball. An anonymous report that a bomb had been placed in the $31.6 million Harris County Domed Stadium proved false but it caused the President and the first lady to be late for the opening of the all-weather structure. They saw 7 1/2 innings as the Houston Astros opened their astrodome by beating the New York Yankees 2-1 in 12 innings. The President told newsmen he was impressed with the stadium, which permits professional baseball to move indoors for the first time. Because of the bomb scare, the presidential party watched the game from the private suite of Roy Hofheinz and R.E. (Bob) Smith, owner of the Astros. The suite is 30 feet above the right field pavilion and the crowd saw the President and Mrs. Johnson only through its windows. They did not go down on the playing field.

     -- Story from Associated Press

     -- Photo from Houston Chronicle; caption reads: A photo taken from the Astrodome's gondola shows the stadium's baseball field on April 1, 1965.

* "First Game in the Astrodome" (www.astrosdaily.com): @

* "Rain or shine -- play ball!" (Life magazine, April 9, 1965): @
* "What a Wonder! What a Blunder!" (Life magazine, April 23): @
* Summary from Texas State Historical Association: @

* Summary from American Historic Engineering Record, National Park Service: @
* Overview from "Housing the Spectacle: Dome Case Studies" (Columbia University): @
* "Game Over for the Astrodome, 'Stadium of the Future' " (New York Times, March 2015): @ 

---

Wednesday, April 7, 1965: 'Peace Without Conquest' speech

On the evening of April 7, 1965, Lyndon Johnson spoke before a television audience at Johns Hopkins University to offer his rationale for recently ramped up American military presence in Vietnam and to tell the world of U.S. intentions to come to the aid of the people of Southeast Asia in a bold new way. ... The president suggested the whole area be developed and modernized as an alternative to continued war. The speech was designed to encourage those in Hanoi to agree to stop warring and to take part in the development of the region, and also to put a good face on the new American measures implemented since February, including sustained aerial bombardment and combat troops.

     -- From "Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954-1968" (James M. Carter, 2008): @ 

* Video (LBJ Library): @

* Transcript (LBJ Library): @

* "Independent South Viet Must Follow Any Peace Discussion, Says Johnson" (United Press International): @

* National Security Action Memorandum No. 328 (April 6): @ (U.S. State Department) and @ (LBJ Library) 

---