The Labour Party defeats the Conservatives and Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister, having gained a majority of five seats. The election result spells the end of 13 years of Conservative government, although the Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home had entered office only 12 months ago.
From top to bottom, left to right: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ends legal segregation in the United States; the Gulf of Tonkin incident escalates U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War; Beatlemania sparks in the U.S. as The Beatles rise in popularity; the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo mark Japan's postwar return; the ...
For the second successive year, The Beatles (photographed with Ed Sullivan) had the biggest-selling single of the year with "Can't Buy Me Love", which spent three weeks at number-one and finished as the fourth best-selling single of the 1960s.
A cup of tea in London in the 1960s was around 6d (6 old pence) at a cafe (src). So 30d for two was very expensive. "Half a crown" (30d of 240d per £1) in 1963 would be £2.21 in 2024 with inflation, which is $2.71. The USD:GBP exchange rate in 1960 (closest easily found via Wikipedia) was $1.00:£0.2525.
Summary: From 1950 to 2024, the price of milk increased from approximately 7 pence to 26 pence per pint, while the price of beer rose from 22 pence to £4.79 per pint. This indicates that beer prices have escalated more significantly than milk prices over the same period.
China tested its first atomic bomb, the Beatles made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and Ford unveiled its first Mustang at the New York World's Fair. Pop-Tarts debuted, while Diet Pepsi bubbled onto the market, the nation's first mass-distributed diet soda.
PL/I (Programming Language I), a block-structured computer language, is created by George Radin, while at IBM. Programma 101 is announced at the World's Fair. Invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, It is one of the first commercial desktop programmable calculators.
In the summer of 1964, nearly 1,000 college students traveled to the state of Mississippi. Organized by civil rights groups, the students sought to work with the African American community in a voter registration drive. The effort became known as Freedom Summer.
In 1964, young couples looking for a new home could look at the average house for £3,360. At the time the average wage was £18 a year meaning that a house was only three-and-a-half times the annual wage of £960. Interest rates during the period were 5.5 per cent.
Some of the most memorable 1964 news reports include stories about the Beatles and the “Beatle-Mania” which had gripped the world. It was the year in which the Rolling Stones released their first album, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa, and BBC Two began broadcasting in Britain.
These are the Billboard magazine Hot 100 number one hits of 1964. The Beatles had six number-one singles in 1964. "I Want to Hold Your Hand", one of those number ones, became the number-one single of the year.
Mary Poppins premiered 61 years ago today ☂️ The 1964 Disney film introduced the world to Julie Andrews in her first movie role as the magical nanny, alongside Dick Van Dyke as Bert. It became a huge success, winning five Academy Awards including Best Actress for Andrews and Best Original Song for Chim Chim Cher-ee.
The Best Picture winner, George Cukor's My Fair Lady, was an adaptation of a 1956 stage musical of the same name, which was itself based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which had been nominated for Best Picture in 1938.
On the evening of August 4, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation in a televised speech in which he announced that two days earlier, U.S. ships had been attacked twice in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin near North Vietnam.
June was very wet, expecially in south-east England where Worthing had its wettest June since records began there in 1887, but many people in southern England will remember 1964 for its fine summer once June was out. July was a dry month generally but there were heavy thunderstorms; during one such storm 2 -2 in.
