Saturday, April 22, 1967: Birth of the Big Mac

The Big Mac -- advertised as a hamburger "made with 2 freshly ground patties, tangy melted cheese, crisp lettuce, pickle and our own Special Sauce" -- is added to the menu at the McDonald's in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, thanks to Jim Delligatti (the franchise owner who created it) and Esther Glickstein (the corporate secretary who named it). Following the Big Mac's success locally, the parent company would make it available nationwide starting in 1968. (The famous "twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun" ad campaign would follow in early 1975.)

-- Above: advertisement in The Morning Herald, Uniontown, April 21, 1967

-- Below: advertisement in The Morning Herald, September 28

* "A Meal Disguised as a Sandwich: The Big Mac" (Pennsylvania Center for the Book, 2009): @

* "McDonald's: Behind the Arches" (John F. Love, 1995): @

* "Golden Arch Angel" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1993): @

* "Michael James Delligatti, Creator of the Big Mac, Dies at 98" (New York Times, 2016): @

* "Woman Who Named Big Mac Finally Recognized" (Associated Press, 1985): @

* Big Mac Museum (North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania): @ (website) and @ (RoadsideAmerica.com) 

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Saturday, April 15, 1967: Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam

Tens of thousands of people march in anti-war rallies in New York and San Francisco. The rallies themselves were evidence of Americans' ever-increasing disenchantment with the Vietnam War, while an instance of flag burning in New York's Central Park (pictured above) was a pivotal event in leading to a 1968 flag desecration law. 

     -- Photo by New York Daily News

Vietnam protests

* Summary (www.vietnamwar.net): @

* Summary ("The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War," edited by Spencer C. Tucker, 2011): @

* San Francisco summary, photos (Harvey Richards Media Archive): @

* Pamphlet (NYU Archives Collection): @

* Various documents (The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change): @

Flag burning

* "Flag-burning overview" (First Amendment Center): @
* "State flag-protection laws" (First Amendment Center): @

* "Timeline of Flag Desecration Issues" (www.ushistory.org): @
* "The Flag Bulletin; Two Centuries of Burning Flags, A Few Years of Blowing Smoke" (New York Times, 1995): @

* Text of flag desecration law (July 5, 1968): @

* "Congress Passes Flag Protection Act" (Today in Civil Liberties History): @

* "Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest" (Michael Welch, 2000): @

* "Flag Burning and Free Speech: The case of Texas v. Johnson" (Robert Justin Goldstein, 2000): @
* "Flag Protection: A Brief History of Recent Supreme Court Decisions and Proposed Constitutional Amendment" (Congressional Research Service, 2001): @
* "Inside the Supreme Court's flag burning decision" (National Constitution Center): @ 

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Tuesday, April 11, 1967: Robert Kennedy's tour of the Mississippi Delta

CLEVELAND, Mississippi -- Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., trekking through poverty pockets in rural Mississippi, said Tuesday the United States spends $3 billion annually caring for its dogs and "we could do more for children." Standing at the rear of a weather-beaten, wooden frame house near this community in the cotton-growing Delta, the senator said: "We spend about $3 billion each year on dogs. You'd think we could do more for children. I think that it is our responsibility as American citizens." Negroes in this area are increasingly being idled by the replacement of hand labor with mechanized farm equipment. ... Sen. Joseph Clark, D-Pa, said the money spent to fight poverty was inadequate but more money in itself won't solve the problem. It will take more skills and community interest to help poor people, he said. His subcommittee has been looking into War on Poverty programs for two days in Mississippi.

CLARKSDALE, Mississippi -- A Senate subcommittee, carrying volumes of testimony and memories of hungry children, returned to Washington today (April 12) after a look at poverty conditions among Negroes in the Mississippi Delta. "We need a reawakening of the social conscience of America," said Sen. Joseph S. Clark, D-Pa., chairman of the subcommittee on employment, manpower and poverty. Both Clark and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., spent a long day driving through the low-lying cotton country with stops at several ramshackle Negro homes and anti-poverty centers, interviewing dozens of Negro families. The tour, which ended here late Tuesday, came on the heels of a hearing in Jackson at which several witnesses told of widespread hunger and unemployment among Negro farm workers displaced by mechanization and reduced cotton acreage.

-- News accounts from Associated Press

-- Top photo from Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights; other photos by Jim Lucas: @ 

* "Clark and Kennedy Visit the Poor in Mississippi" (New York Times, April 12, 1967): @

* Excerpt from "Robert Kennedy and His Times" (Arthur Schlesinger, 1978): @

* "Bobby Kennedy in Mississippi" (Photos, The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, 2016): @

* "Robert Kennedy's Transformation Ran Through Mississippi" (Clarion-Ledger, 2016): @
* "Bobby Kennedy chose to see problems first hand" (Bill Minor, 2008): @

* "Mississippi docs helped fight 'war on poverty' " (Minor, 2016): @
* "With RFK in the Delta," (John Carr, 2002): @

* "Delta Ephipany: RFK in Mississippi" (Ellen Meacham, 2017): @

* Interview with Marian Wright Edelman (1988): @

* Interview with Peter Edelman (1974): @

* "Poverty" entry from Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights: @

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Friday, April 7, 1967: KMPX

Tom Donahue takes over the 8 p.m.-to-midnight shift at FM radio station KMPX in San Francisco, extending the station's embrace of what came to be known variously as underground radio, progressive radio or free-form radio -- in other words, music beyond the bounds of top 40. (In February, Larry Miller had brought the anything-goes format to KMPX with his midnight-to-6 a.m. program.)

     -- Tom Donahue, left, at KMPX in 1967; photo by Michael Ochs

* "A Brief History of 106.9 FM in San Francisco" (Bay Area Radio Museum): @

* "FM 107 KMPX, San Francisco: Tom Donahue" (includes sound clip from May 1967; Bay Area Radio Museum): @

* Larry Miller handbill (Bay Area Radio Museum): @
* KMPX staff, 1968 (photo by Baron Wolman): @

* Donahue biography ("Encyclopedia of Radio," edited by Christopher H. Sterling, 2004): @
* Donahue biography (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame): @

* "One More Page in the Book of Love: Tom Donahue, 1928-1975" (Greil Marcus, 1975): @

* "Birth of Community Rock Radio: A Brief History of KMPX and KSAN-FM" (FoundSF): @

* KMPX entry from www.jive95.com (site devoted to KSAN; includes sound clips): @

* "KMPX San Francisco Radio Workers Strike 1968" (Global Nonviolent Action Database): @

* "Free-Form Revolutionaries of Top 40 Radio / How Donahue, Syracuse Rocked the Bay Area Airwaves" (www.sfgate.com, 1998): @

* "Rock Stations Giving Albums the Air Play" (Billboard, July 22, 1967): @
* "KMPX's Tom Donahue Programs Music with a Wide Open View" (Billboard, December 30, 1967): @
* "The Underground Radio Turn-On" (Look magazine, June 24, 1969; from New York Radio Archive; scroll down for page images): @

* "FM Underground Radio: Love for Sale" (Rolling Stone, April 1970): @

* "Hip Capitalism" (Susan Krieger, 1979): @ 
* "The Republic of Rock" (Michael J. Kramer, 2013): @

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Tuesday, April 4, 1967: 'Beyond Vietnam'

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his most public and comprehensive statement against the Vietnam War. Addressing a crowd of 3,000 people in New York City’s Riverside Church, King delivers a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam.” King points out that the war effort is “taking the young black men who have been crippled by our society and sending them 13,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” Although some activists and newspapers supported King’s statement, most responded with criticism. King’s civil rights colleagues began to disassociate themselves from his radical stance, and the NAACP issued a statement against merging the civil rights movement and peace movement. 

     -- From "A Time To Break Silence: The Essential Works of Martin Luther King Jr. for Students" (The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University): @

* Text and audio (American Rhetoric): @

* Text and audio (King Research and Education Institute): @

* Summary (King Research and Education Institute): @

* "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (et al.) speak on the war in Vietnam" (booklet, 1967): @

* "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" (King speech, April 30, 1967; typed speech from The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia): @

* "King's FBI File -- Riverside Church Speech on Vietnam" (American RadioWorks): @ 
* "When Martin Luther King Came Out Against Vietnam" (The New York Times, 2017): @

* "Martin Luther King's Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later" (The New Yorker, 2017): @

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Friday, March 31, 1967: Jimi Hendrix sets guitar on fire

During a show at London's Finsbury Park Astoria, Jimi Hendrix puts a match to his lighter-fluid-soaked guitar, a stunt that would be more famously repeated (and photographed) at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival in June.

     -- Image, news account from Associated Press

* Summary from www.jimihendrix.com: @
* Excerpt from "Jimi Hendrix Gear: The Guitars, Amps & Effects That Revolutionized Rock 'n' Roll" (Michael Heatley, 2009): @
* Excerpt from "The Words and Music of Jimi Hendrix" (David Moscowitz, 2010): @

* "Jimi Hendrix's PR Reveals Truth About First Guitar Burning" (Uncut, 2008): @

* "The Day Jimi Hendrix Set His Guitar on Fire for the First Time" (Ultimate Classic Rock, 2015): @

* Tour program (recordmecca.com): @ 

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Thursday, March 30, 1967: Photo shoot for 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'

The image on the album cover is composed of a collage of celebrities. There are 88 figures, including the band members themselves. Pop artist Peter Blake and his wife Jann Haworth conceived and constructed the set, including all the life-size cutouts of historical figures. The set was photographed, with the Beatles standing in the centre, by Michael Cooper. Copyright was a problem as Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager, had to locate each person in order to get permission to use their image in this context.

-- From Victoria and Albert Museum, London: @

* "Making The Cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (www.thebeatles.com): @

* "Cover shoot for Sgt. Pepper" (The Beatles Bible): @

* "Sgt. Pepper Cover" (The Beatles Website): @

* "Behind the Cover of Sgt. Pepper" (Entertainment Weekly): @
* "The Sgt. Pepper's Album Cover: Faces in the Crowd" (Performing Songwriter): @

* Summary from albumlinernotes.com: @

* More about Peter Blake ("The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four," Kenneth Womack, 2014: @ 

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Friday, January 27, 1967: Apollo 1

A flash fire occurred in command module 012 during a launch pad test of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle being prepared for the first piloted flight, the AS-204 mission. Three astronauts, Lt. Col. Virgil I. Grissom, a veteran of Mercury and Gemini missions; Lt. Col. Edward H. White, the astronaut who had performed the first United States extravehicular activity during the Gemini program; and Roger B. Chaffee, an astronaut preparing for his space flight, died.

     -- Summary, photo by NASA: @

* "Report of Apollo 2014 Review Board" (NASA, April 1967): @

* "Apollo 204 Accident" (report of the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, U.S. Senate, January 1968): @
* "3 Apollo Astronauts Die In Fire; Grissom, White, Chaffee Caught in Capsule During A Test on Pad" (New York Times): @

* "Three Apollo Spacemen Die As Blaze Sweeps Moonship" (Associated Press): @
* Life magazine, February 3, 1967: @
* Life, February 10: @

* "Apollo 1: The Fatal Fire" (www.space.com): @
* "Apollo 1: The Fire That Shocked NASA" (Scientific American): @
* Summary (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum): @
* "Space Tragedy: Astronauts Die in Apollo Fire" (Universal Newsreel): @
* ABC News report: @ 

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January 1967: 'The Peter Principle'

"The Peter Principle" first appeared as an article in Esquire magazine in January 1967; two years later, Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull turned the material into a best-selling book.

The most memorable tenet -- "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence" -- was supplemented by Peter's Corollary ("in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties") and, lastly, "Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."

* Esquire, January 1967 (online subscription required): @

* "The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong" (1969 book): @

* "How the Peter Principle Works" (money.howstuffworks.com): @

* Peter obituary (New York Times, January 1990): @

* "Laurence Peter" (The Economist, January 2009): @

* "Lawrence J. Peter & Raymond Hull" (Literary Landmarks, Vancouver Public Libary; includes links to short biographies of Peter and Hull): @
* "Overcoming the Peter Principle" (Andrea Ovans, Harvard Business Review, December 2014): @ 

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Saturday, January 14, 1967: 'Human Be-In'

SAN FRANCISCO -- Anybody who was nobody was there.

     And if there were any anybodys, nobody knew.

     It was the city's biggest social event of the season but it failed to make the society pages.

     It was a happening.

     It took place Saturday at the polo field in Golden Gate Park. They were all there -- the hippy denizens of the Haight-Asbury District and outlying regions, the activists from Berkeley, the Hells Angles, students, beatniks, toddlers. Thirteen thousand of them under a sunny sky.

     And about 2,000 spectators, some of them bemused, some completely dumbfounded. The police also sent a delegation, mainly to ticket dozens of illegally parked cars.

     Word of the event began circulating earlier this month in the Haight-Asbury, home for many of the city's far-out types. It was billed as a "human Be-In" and a "Gathering of the Tribes," a get-together for political activists and hippies. The public was also invited and asked to bring "costumes, blankets, bells, flags, symbols, drums, beads, feathers and flowers."

     -- Story by United Press International

     -- Photo by Ted Streshinsky

* "Reliving the Human Be-In 50 Years Later" (San Francisco Chronicle, January 2017): @

* Summary from California Historical Society: @

* Description from Peter Coyote: @

* "Human Be-In in San Francisco 1967" (The Allen Ginsberg Project, July 2011): @

* "The Human Be-In" (Helen Perry, 1970): @

* "The Beginning is the Human Be-In" (Berkeley Barb, January 6, 1967): @
* "What Happened at the Hippening" (Berkeley Barb, January 20, 1967): @
* Footage: @ and @

* Photos by Larry Kennan: @

* Poster (Oakland Museum of California): @ 

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Thursday, January 12, 1967: Cryogenics

Phoenix, Arizona -- The body of an elderly California professor who died of cancer will arrive here this week for storage in a steel capsule at 220 degrees below zero centigrade for an experiment in bringing persons back from the dead, it was learned today.

     Identity of the professor was not disclosed, but the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner said friends reported he was Dr. James Bedford, 73, of Glendale, who died last Thursday.

     The Cryonics Society of California is conducting the experiment. When a cure for cancer is found, the body of the professor will be thawed and an attempt made to revive him, the experimenters said.

     -- United Press International, January 19, 1967. Full story: @

     -- Photo: Robert F. Nelson, left, president of the Cryonics Society of California, and physician-biophysicist Dr. Dante Branol demonstrate the cryogenic freezing process in 1967. Photo by J.R. Eyerman.

* "The cold way to new life" (Life magazine, January 27, 1967): @
* "The First Suspension" (Alcor Life Extension Foundation, 1991): @

* "Inside the Immortality Business" (Josh Dean, 2013): @
* "Freezing People Is (Not) Easy: My Adventures in Cryonics" (Bob Nelson, 2014): @

* "Into the Deep Freeze: What Kind of Person Chooses to Get Cryonically Preserved?" (California magazine, 2015): @
* "50 years frozen: The world's first cryonically preserved human's disturbing journey to immortality" (Quartz, 2017): @

* "Cool dude James Bedford has been cryonically frozen for 50 years" (CNET, 2017): @

* Cryonics Institute: @
* Earlier post on "The Prospect of Immortality" (1964): @

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