[ Previous page - File 13 - Chronologies] [You are now on a page filed as File 14 of Merchants and Bankers Listings. (http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/merchants/merchants14.htm] [Next page - File 15 - Chronologies] -

This webpage updated 14 October 2014

Merchants logo gif - 9347 BytesMerchants and Bankers
1960-1970


Trade - an international perspective

This Merchants and Bankers Listings website is years old and is now (from 2009) undergoing a marked identity change. Its timeline material on economic history (for 1560-1930) is being moved to a website managed by Ken Cozens and Dan Byrnes, The Merchant Networks Project. This will empty many of this website's pages which have always been in series. In due course, Merchants and Bankers Listings will carry information from the Crusades on the early development of what became “capitalism” in Europe to 1560 or so. As well as a conglomeration of data on modern developments, mostly on modern/technical industry, computing, and for the future, today's climate change problems. The editor's view is that in the context of climate change, the views of Merchants and Bankers (and Economists, politicians), the keepers of matters economic, are due for a considerable shake-up. If this website can encourage the shake-up, and help inform it reliably, well and good. -Ed

1960s: UNIX appears from Bell Laboratories as a data-handling system. Later, in the 1990s, the Internet still relies heavily on UNIX due to its cross-platforming capabilities.

1960: The first ANNCCAC Conference held in Sydney, attracting 650 delegates. Later conferences attract over 900 registrations as interest in computing grows. Australia's first computer society is The Computer Society of South Australia, formed in November 1960 with Ren Potts as president and Don Overhu as vice-president. Also in 1960: Australia's first transistor computer, SNOCOM, is developed by David Wong and Murray Allen at CSIRO/Sydney University, for the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Authority's (SMHA) Snowy Mountains Scheme. Use of transistors means SNOCOM is one-tenth the size of its vacuum-tubed predecessors and uses much less power. The Weapons Research Establishment needs to predict where items land on earth, which requires high-speed real-time processing of various telemetry data streams, so Hinckfuss, Keith and Macauley invent remote digital communications and use the UK's TREAC design to build ATROPOS, a Digital Impact Predictor (DIP) at Woomera.
Also in 1960, the high-speed, bargain-basement ARCTURUS computer is installed at Sydney University. IBM unveils its first transistorised mainframe, the IBM 7090. In 1960, Digital Equipment Corporation releases the DEC PDP-1, the world's first transistor minicomputer, the first commercial computer equipped with a keyboard and monitor, which cost US$120,000. (Yes, one hundred and twenty thousand!)

PayPal preferred graphic

PayPal - safe and secure

If you value the information posted here,
and the projects of these websites in general,
you may like to consider making a donation
to help reduce our production costs?
It would be greatly appreciated.
Options include:
paying via PayPal which this website uses - Ed

September 1960: The Vietnamese Civil War begins officially, when the Communists declare for overthrow of Diem and American imperialist rule.

1960: Japan: Revision of the Security Treaty. Opposition to the US-Japan Security Treaty brings down Kishi Government.

1960-1964: Japan: Ikeda Government. Income-doubling Plan by Prime Minister Ikeda (but actually doubling every seven years) Ikeda's famous quote, "Japan doesn't need the poor!" MITI helps engineer three decades of unsurpassed economic growth.

1960: The first communications satellite (non-commercial), is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and placed in orbit.

1960: Malaya: In Malaya 1948-1960 the leader of Malayan Communist Party (MCP) is Chin Peng.

1960: Malayan state of emergency ends, with all Malaya cleared except for Chin Peng and 400 men astride the Thai border.

1958-1961: China has a catastrophic famine in which about 30 million people starve to death.

1961: Soviet Union proposes immediate ban on nuclear testing without international controls.

1961: Henry Stommel suggests in 1961, re the addition of fresh water to the ocean surface, diluting the salt-heavy surface waters before they became unstable enough to start sinking. More rain falling in the northern oceans -- exactly what is predicted as a result of global warming -- could stop salt flushing. So could ice carried south out of the Arctic Ocean. (Greenhouse Timeline)
William H. Calvin, The Great Climate Flip-Flop, The Atlantic Monthly, January 1998, Volume 281, No. 1, pp. 47-64.

1961: Iran: Shah of Persia tries to institute "white revolution" which includes calls for end of serfdom.

5 December 1961: A turning point, Sir Howard Beale Ambassador for Australia sends a cable that Australia supports Republic of Vietnam and he suggests Australia can supply counter-insurgency training personnel, small arms and ammunition.

22 November 1961: as North Vietnam steps up its efforts, US authorizes more military aid for South Vietnam including helicopters, transport aircraft and strike aircraft. General Duong Van Minh takes over South Vietnam.

1961: Vietnam: During 1961 the US military effort in Vietnam was expanding, advisers worked with battalion and company level while civilian advisers worked with provincial governments. US wanting political support of other nations. Intense nationalism of the Vietnamese on both sides.

14 August, 1961: Berlin Wall erected.

29 June, 1961: Australia and US announce joint guided missile research project to be at Woomera, South Australia.

May 1961: Tunku Abdul Rahman proposes formation of Malaysia. Later arises idea for a merger of Malaya and Singapore, though conflict possible over place of British North Borneo with Philippines; Borneo people want a Malaysia link.

18 April, 1961: Cuba invaded by sea by anti-Castro rebels, Bay of Pigs situation.
April 1961: Bay of Pigs fiasco as JFK tries to liberate Cuba from Communists, using CIA and Cuban exiles.

March-Spring 1961: With possible loss of Laos to Communism, the domino theory gradually appears all too credible.

January 1961: John F. Kennedy assumes US presidency. He views USSR as a danger to American security. 20 January 1961: President Kennedy inaugurated in US.

1961: Ludo De Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba. Verso, ? (On "Belgium's abject colonial history in Africa". Patrice Lumumba was murdered in 1961)

Computing history: 1961, Development of first computer video game.

Computing history: 1960s, UNIX appears from Bell Laboratories as a data-handling system. Later, in the 1990s, the Internet still relies heavily on UNIX due to its cross-platforming capabilities.

1961: Development of first computer video game.

1961: The Victorian Computer Society is established and becomes a member of ANCCAC. Prof. Tom Cherry of University of Melbourne is founding president, with his University of Melbourne associate Trevor Pearcey as vice-president. ANCCAC is accepted as 16th full member of International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), the global society representing computing professionals.

1961: Establishment of R. J. Kingsmiths, believed to be first Australian software company.

1962: Britain agrees to provide arms to India to resist Chinese aggression.

1962: Indonesia's President Sukarno proclaims West New Guinea an independent province.

1962: Jamaica achieves independence after 300 years of British rule.

1962: Britain makes first of her two unsuccessful bids to join European Common Market.

1962-1963: Severe credit squeeze in Australia.

1961-1962: Indonesia: Indonesia's President Suharto covets West New Guinea/Irian Jaya, last part of former Dutch East Indies under colonial Dutch rule. The US is already embroiled in Laos and Vietnam. US has investments in Indonesia, and Indonesia supplies most of the oil for Japan. Finally, the Indonesians got the New Guinean land.

1962: Rwanda and Burundi gain independence from Belgium.

1962: Burma outlaws opium.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1962: Vietnam: US advisor numbers leap from 1000 to 11,000 men.

1962: Britain makes first of her two unsuccessful bids to join European Common Market.

1962: Vietnam situation becomes the first war in which Australia did not fight with the British.

1962-1963: Severe credit squeeze in Australia.

December 1962: Indonesia declares confrontation policy and a revolt in Brunei fails.

25 October, 1962, US and USSR on collision course over Cuban missile base. See re Bay of Pigs fiasco.

15 May, 1962: Thailand of SEATO is afraid of regional ramifications of the fall of Laos.

14 May, 1962, Australia assures Diem in Vietnam that Diem will have full support of Commonwealth of Australia.

10 May, 1962: Australia foreshadows establishment of a US naval communications centre at North-West Cape, Western Australia.

9 May 1962: Australian External Affairs minister Garfield Barwick announces that Australia "if invited" will send a handful of military instructors to South Vietnam; up to 30 instructors were committed on 24 May. The DMZ (demilitarized zone) is already spoken of. There are usually 20 Vietcong dead per week. (Beginning of habit of publicizing body count, a habit which lasts for the duration of the war.)

April 1962: Vietnam: In South Vietnam, the gigantic strategic hamlet program is initiated, aided by a British advisory mission led by former secretary for defense in Malaya, RKG now, Sir Robert Thompson. Some 12,000 hamlets are constructed in two years in Vietnam, versus 400 new villages made in Malaya. (Policy: winning the hearts and minds of the people fails in Vietnam since the reasons it worked in Malaysia are absent).

By 30 March 1962: US been repeatedly asking Australia to send military personnel to Vietnam. On 31 March, 1962, Diem appealed to heads of 93 non-communist states including Australia for increased military aid and support against North Vietnam as backed by the Communist bloc.
By 1962, Australian troops had been seven years in Malaysian jungles, engaged in counter-insurgency, useful experience.

21 February 1962: Space: Mankind enters a new environment, Space! John Glenn goes into space for three orbits and returns (following a successful earlier Russian venture).

February 1962: Vietnam: Historian Tuchman, March of Folly, p. 373, dates the beginning of the Vietnam War with a full field command with a three-star general established, MACV, Military Assistance Command Vietnam. Americans begin to take casualties; a kind of undeclared war begins. A futile "strategic hamlets" plan means re-settlement of peasants from ancestral land. (Tuchman, Folly, pp. 306ff, on 1946-1954ff.)

February 1962: Vietnam: Two South Vietnamese pilots try to strafe and assassinate Diem. Relations between the US press and US military sour considerably.

12 January, 1962: Australia reluctantly accepts Indonesian sovereignty over West New Guinea/Irian Jaya.

1962: Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute invents the mouse pointing device for computers.

1962: Queensland Computer Society is established, with founding chairman Prof. Hugh Webster and Don Overhu as deputy-chair. In Australia, first steps are taken to forming a national computer society at a meeting between Victorian Computer Society and ANCCAC.

1963: CSIROnet, Australia's first computer network, is built at CSIRO using a CDC 3600 in Canberra, and two CDC 3200s in Sydney and Melbourne. The "network" initially relied on overnight airfreight of magnetic tapes. In 1963, Trevor Pearcey and Murray Allen start a game to design "the perfect computer", which they christen CIRRUS. By the early 1960s, they have a paper design for hardware plus compilers and a multi-user operating system, and it seems a waste to fail to build it all. They obtain funding and work at University of Adelaide.

1963: Part of savage civil war in Rwanda, by the Bahutuu, more massacre of Batutsi in 1963 and more again in 1973.

1963: Federation of Malaya is formed, of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo. Some 100,000 help the celebrations by burning a British Embassy.

23 November, 1963: US President John Kennedy assassinated. Replaced by President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ).
Early 1964: LBJ determined not to lose in Vietnam. But even if US senators are terrified of a nuclear war, what would China do? What are implications if US withdraws from Vietnam? LBJ decided on an air-strike war with ground support. His election gave him massive electoral support. (Notes from Tuchman, Folly, pp. 306ff.)

1 November, 1963: In South Vietnam, a successful general coup.
1-2 November 1963, Military coup overthrows President Diem. Diem and his brother Hgo Dinh Diem are assassinated.

25 September, 1963: Australia pledges military assistance to new nation of Malaysia in event of direct or indirect aggression.

September 1963: US secretary of state Dean Rusk declares, "There can be no assured and lasting peace until Communist leaders abandon their goal of world revolution."

9 May, 1963: Australia and US sign agreement allowing US to establish a base at North-West Cape, Western Australia.

8 May, 1963: Vietnam: Buddhist riots in Hue, Vietnam.

April 1963: Indonesia: Sukarno flushed with his success in New Guinea in 1963 decides to try a confrontation with Malaysia, by now a newly-created state. The British to counter him decide to send 50,000 troops to Malaysia, mostly to the borders of Borneo. In April 1963, Indonesian guerrillas begin raiding North Borneo territories. By July 1963, Indonesia is prepared to concede support for Malaysia if UN indicates support in Sabah and Sarawak.

Summer 1963: Vietnam: Buddhist revolt in Vietnam. Riots. Monks set fire to themselves, hundreds of monks arrested. Idea in Washington to dump Diem by some sort of coup. De Gaulle in France proposed a neutralist idea, hoping for Vietnamese nationalist success free of external influences, re a possible negotiated settlement. US only annoyed at De Gaulle's "pomposity" here. The Burmese U Thant later also proposed a "Neutralist" settlement. (Notes from Tuchman, Folly, pp. 306ff.

1964: Japan: Tokyo Olympic Games - new sense of national pride and purpose The obligations of Article 8 of the IMF agreement. Membership in OECD. Bullet train (Hikari) service began

1964-1972: Japan: Sato Government.

1964: Palestinians form Fatah under Yassar Arafat; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is formed in 1967 by George Habash. Jordan becomes the main base for guerrilla actions.
1964: The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed by the Arab League under Egyptian direction. The PLO Charter calls for a united Palestine under Arab control. Only Jews there before 1946 can remain.

In 1964, Australia and 17 other countries set up group later called Intelsat, a satellite communications systems. A space tracking station is set up at Carnarvon, Western Australia. (29 Oct., 1966, OTC opens first satellite communications earth station at Carnarvon, WA (Another one is later set up at Moree, New South Wales).

30 January, 1964: After JFK assassinated, a military coup in South Vietnam as General Nguyen Khanh deposes Duon Van Minh.

23 April, 1964: US Pres. Johnson appeals for "more flags" for Vietnam, so by now, ten years pass and many flags have not joined the US in Vietnam since 1954 or so.

April 1964: Indonesian guerrillas land on mainland Malaya but are quickly mopped up.

28 May, 1964: Australian army engineers are sent to Sabah, Malaysia.

19 July, 1964: 34 Royal Australian Air Force personnel from Sydney to South Vietnam to fly and maintain Caribou aircraft there.

7 August 1964: The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gave "a blank cheque for Executive War", so the US Government did as it pleased. (Tuchman, March of Folly, pp. 306ff). US Congress provides Pres. Johnson "unlimited powers to repel communist aggression". Later was the US Bombing, Rolling Thunder, in March 1965, supervised directly from White House.

30 October, 1964: Australian troops capture Indonesian guerrillas in Malacca during their first action in Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation.

Computing history: 1964, IBM releases its 360 computer which took 70 per cent of the market. See p. 218, re use of a Russian computer, the Ural II, with 4K of memory, in Hungary by Charles Simyoni, later a programmer for Microsoft, a developer of the mouse. Development of BASIC at Dartmouth College, USA, (Beginners All Purpose Instruction Code).

1964: Australia's first mini-computer the DEC PDP-5 is delivered to University of NSW. Control Data Corporation delivers the world's first supercomputer, the CDC 6600. Dartmouth College in UK develops the BASIC programming language. IBM releases its general purpose System/360 range of computers.

1964: IBM releases its 360 computer which took 70 per cent of the market. (See Sinclair, p. 218, re use of a Russian computer, the Ural II, with 4K of memory, in Hungary by Charles Simyoni, later a programmer for Microsoft, a developer of the mouse.) Development of BASIC at Dartmouth College, USA, (Beginners All Purpose Instruction Code). The American Standard Association adopts ASCII as the standard code for data transfer.

1965-1970: US involvement in Vietnam is blamed for the surge in illegal heroin being smuggled into the States. To aid U.S. allies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sets up a charter airline, Air America, to transport raw opium from Burma and Laos. As well, some of the opium would be transported to Marseilles by Corsican gangsters to be refined into heroin and shipped to the U.S via the French connection. The number of heroin addicts in the U.S. reaches an estimated 750,000.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

In 1964, Australia and 17 other countries set up group later called Intelsat, a satellite communications systems. A space tracking station is set up at Carnarvon, Western Australia. (29 Oct., 1966, OTC opens first satellite communications earth station at Carnarvon, WA (Another one is later set up at Moree, New South Wales).

1965: Launch of Early Bird I, the world's first commercial communications satellite, from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

1965: The French depart Vietnam.

January 1965: Indonesia withdraws from UN on election of Malaysia to security council, concentrates troops maybe to invade Malaysia.

21 February 1965: US Black nationalist leader Malcolm X is murdered in New York as he is about to address a meeting of his Afro-American Unity Organisation.

In Australia's 12 months from March 1965 to March 1966 there were 80 or so demonstrations, vigils, sit-ins, strikes, folk concerts marches, teach-ins, all based on earlier-appearing protest movements/actions (anti-Vietnam War) in US.

2 March 1965: Vietnam War: Begins Operation Rolling Thunder to bomb North Vietnam into submission, supervised directly from White House. Bombing of Vietcong supply trails from Laos.

8 March 1965: First US combat troops arrive in South Vietnam, to Da Nang.

23-29 April, 1965: Australian Government announces commitment of an infantry battalion to supplement US 173rd airborne brigade at Bien Hoa, Vietnam.

27 May, 1965: First Battalion, Royal Australian Regt., leaves Sydney in aircraft carrier Sydney for active duty in Vietnam.

May 1965: US pauses its bombing of Vietnam.
Mid-1965, the American Univ campuses were reacting badly to Vietnam war. Tuchman, March of Folly, p. 404 writes: "The movement was less a sudden embrace of Asia than an extension of civil rights struggle and the "Free Speech" and other student radical enthusiasms of the early sixties". US has up to 82,000 troops in Vietnam.

Mid-1965: Indonesia: The Indonesian army fearing a rising communist influence has coup against Sukarno who'd sacked the US rubber plantations and confiscated remaining foreign property. A bloody coup, and successful, which toppled Sukarno and re-instituted Indonesian-US friendship. Coup allegedly activated by CIA, etc.


Advertisement on Dan Byrnes Word Factory logo

Advertisement


9 June, 1965: US "fateful decision" to authorise combat support of South Vietnam by US ground forces, and search and destroy missions are entailed.

July 1965: US drafts more troops, to get strength to 125,000 men by end of 1965; and got to 200,000 men. North Vietnamese regular army has over 400,000 men; US would demoralise these by end of 1966, which did not happen. (LBJ avoided asking Congress for a declaring of war for fear of what Russia or China might do, which in the long run opened a door to further dissent.

August 1965: Singapore decides to become an independent state, but promises close links with Malaysia and also wants to retain a British base.

1965: Second War between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

Computing history: 1965, First birth pangs in the US of a market for mini-computers. In Japan, Kuzohiko Nishi at age nine is using a Wang computer (the existence of which is not explained).

1965: The first commercial mini-computer sells for less than $10,000, the DEC PDP-8 as released by Digital Equipment Corporation.

1966: The Chinese Communist Party opens a plenum meeting declaring the start of the Cultural Revolution, which will last ten years and is a destructive disaster.

1966: Origin of US policy on Vietnam on winning the hearts and minds of the people? Clutterbuck, a Britisher, publishing in 1966, and with a foreword by the chief of the staff of the US army, General Templer, on 1952 Malaya, quoting "The answer lies not in pouring troops into the jungle but in the hearts and minds of the people," perhaps following John Adams, USA, 1818, "The [American] Revolution was affected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people."

1966: Vietnam: Buddhist revolt in Vietnam itself.

8 March, 1966: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt (destined soon to mysteriously drown off Victorian coast), announces trebling of forces to Vietnam.
By April 1966, US has troops of 245,000 and war costs US $2 billion per month.

16 June, 1966: Australia and Pacific countries form the Asian and Pacific Council.

30 June, 1966: Australian prime minister Holt on visit to US promises support for escalation of Vietnam War = "All the way with LBJ". There is widespread outrage in Australia at such words from Holt.

18 August, 1966: Australian forces in Vietnam inflict heavy losses on large enemy force at Battle of Long Tan.
By late 1966, LBJ's advisors have turned against the Vietnam War, privately, and one thought it would take the US some 750,000 to a million men and some seven years to win. (Notes from Tuchman, March of Folly, p. 430).
Hanoi's intransigence seems built on an idea that US would tire first, from cost and/or public dissent about the war.

1966, 14 September: Indonesian confrontation ceases.

22 October, 1966: Lyndon Baines Johnston, US president, comes to Melbourne, and sees rowdy anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

29 October, 1966: OTC opens first satellite communications earth station at Carnarvon, WA (another one is later set up at Moree NSW).

22 December, 1966: Australian commitment to Vietnam is increased to 6300 men, with extra tanks, minesweepers and eight bombers.

1966: Australia: University of NSW installs an IBM 360/50 general purpose computer with 24-bit addressing capable of processing data items of 32 bits, 64 bits or 15 decimal digits, and it seems possible that a graphics display might be provided. Texas Instruments makes available the first generation of medium-scale integrated circuits allowing a team being Gordon Rose, Murray Allen and Trevor Pearcey to develop the programmable, multi-user INTERGRAPHIC.

1967: French president Charles de Gaulle rules out negotiations for early British entry into the European Common Market.

18 January, 1967: Premier of South Vietnam Marshall Ky visits Australia; many protest demonstrations.

17 March, 1967: Honeysuckle Creek space tracking station near Canberra opened. Later, a Joint Defence Space Research facility is established at Pine Gap near Alice Springs to become operational in 1969.
By 16 September, 1967, North-West Cape naval communications station officially commissioned. On 29 November, 1967, Australia's first satellite successfully launched from Woomera.

25 April, 1967: Soviet cosmonaut dies in space.

1967: June War (Six-Day War). Israel crushes Egypt, Jordan, Syria; Israel captures the Sinai peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan province from Syria, West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. Approximately 250,000 more Palestinian refugees flee, or are forced, into Jordan. More Palestinians are now under Israeli rule.

3 September, 1967: General Van Thieu is elected president of South Vietnam.

17 September, 1967: PM Holt announces Australia is to increase its military aid to South Vietnam with another battalion and support groups.

October, 1967: Massive anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington DC.

9 October, 1967: Bolivians and a CIA agent, Felix Rodriguez, shoot revolutionary Che Guevera and then cut off his hands.

1967: Dies Gregory Pincus, (1903-1967), father of the birth control pill.

1967-1968: Wilson's government in Britain announces the pound would be floated and all British troops east of Suez would be withdrawn by 1971.

30 January 1968: TV and Vietnam War: Begins Tet offensive, the Vietcong with up to 50 per cent casualty rates, very bloody, and public revulsion arises in US due to TV reportage. Arises the remark, which came from a US army major, "it becomes necessary to destroy the village in order to save it". The Wall St Journal now thinks the Vietnam War is doomed. Westmoreland wanted more troops. Johnson wanted to mobilise another 200,000 men. (Notes from Tuchman, March of Folly).

February 1968: Influential US newsman Walter Cronkite had visited Vietnam and went against the war and the Tet offensive, with about 1.2 million refugees also. LBJ said that if he'd lost "Walter", he'd lost Middle America. Notes from Tuchman, March of Folly).

4 July, 1968: Thousands demonstrate in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide against US and the war in Vietnam.

1967-1968: Wilson's government in Britain announces the pound would be floated and all British troops east of Suez would be withdrawn by 1971.

6 June 1968: Robert Kennedy is shot three times in US. Six neuro-surgeons were trying to remove a bullet from his brain. Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles.

6 April 1968: US race relations: Martin Luther King is assassinated.

3 April 1968: With a US presidential election coming up, Hanoi is contacted re ceasing bombing and beginning talks. This is LBJ's last year of office.

By 1968: Communist-types of the Western World are speaking of "workers control" of workplaces, around the world.

November 1968: Richard M. Nixon elected US president.

1968: Douglas Engelbart demonstrates his system of keyboard, numeric keypad, mouse and windows at the Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. He demonstrates use of a word processor, hypertext system and remote collaborative work with colleagues.

1969: Japan: Reversion of Okinawa - effective in 1972 by late 60's Japan became the 1st or 2nd largest trading partner of almost every country in East and Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, 60's - major role in the Asian Development Bank

1969: Yassar Arafat becomes head of the PLO. It becomes an umbrella organization aspiring to unite and speak for all Palestinians. It is controlled by Palestinians in exile.

1969: Woodstock Festival - Music and Art Fair, near Bethel, New York. A watershed for the counter-culture movement world-wide.

25 January, 1969: Formal truce negotiations in Paris re Vietnam war.
By 31 January 1969, US forces in Vietnam reach peak of 542,000 men.

January 1969: US President Nixon arrives with Kissinger, and by 1969, Pres Thieu in seat in South Vietnam. Privately, Nixon said he wanted to stop the war, yet he took it to his presidency and prolonged the war, partly by Vietnamizing the war as a way to bring home US troops, but also keep up air support for the war. (Notes from Tuchman, Folly).


Advertisement on Dan Byrnes Word Factory logo

Advertisement


March 1969: First secret bombing of Cambodia. Ground withdrawal started an irreversible process, for as forces became thinner, speedier withdrawal was necessary.

3 April 1969: Arrival of first container ship Encounter Bay in Sydney ushers in age of containerisation of sea cargo between Britain and Australia.

Moonwalking: 22 July, 1969: Having walked on moon, US astronauts prepare to leave. Armstrong et al.

July 1969: Nixon announces the "Guam Doctrine" re so-called Vietnamization of the war in Vietnam.

8 June 1969: Nixon announces first US withdrawals from Vietnam. Will lead to complete US disengagement.

1969, "By the year 2000, we will undoubtedly have a sizeable operation on the moon; we will have achieved a manned Mars landing and it's entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer planets." Wernher von Braun, NASA rocket engineer, 1969.

Sept 1969: Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh dies after fighting 50 years for his nation.

1969: Australia: The great Poseidon nickel boom for miners.

1969: UNIX is developed at Bell Laboratories by Thompson and Ritchie.

These pages will be added to and improved in quality as time permits. In time, some essays may appear on these pages

- Dan Byrnes (otherwise indicated in these pages as -Editor) Merchants logo gif - 9347 Bytes

Note: You will find even greater detail than is given here, for specific periods in American - English - Australian history, with regard to merchants, traders, bankers and financiers, as part of the website, The Blackheath Connection... Blackheath Connection website logo gif - 8235 Bytes

(Bookmark your page now)


This website is produced by Dan Byrnes Word Factory. Send any snail mail to:
Dan Byrnes, Unit 4, 145 Marsh Street, Armidale NSW 2350 Australia.

This Merchants and Bankers Listings website is still a work-in-progress

Stop Press: For late entries





View these domain stats begun 18 December 2005





Google logo


WWW Dan Byrnes Word Factory websites