1967: A Year of Turmoil and Change

How to read this timeline

Below are the main events of 1967 in date order, with one line on why each mattered. It is a selection, not a full record, and it favours events with firmly established dates. Fuller accounts of most of these appear elsewhere on the site. Events that belong to 1966 or 1968 are left out except where noted as background.

January

14 January: The Human Be-In draws a large crowd to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, an early public sign of the counterculture.
15 January: Super Bowl I is played in Los Angeles; the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs.
27 January: Three astronauts die in a fire during a ground test of Apollo 1. On the same day, the Outer Space Treaty is opened for signature.

February and March

10 February: The 25th Amendment, covering presidential succession and disability, is ratified.
22 February: Operation Junction City begins, a large US operation in South Vietnam.
1 March: The US House of Representatives votes to exclude Adam Clayton Powell from his seat.
18 March: The oil tanker Torrey Canyon runs aground off Cornwall, causing a major oil spill.

April

4 April: Martin Luther King Jr. speaks against the Vietnam War at Riverside Church in New York.
15 April: Large antiwar demonstrations take place in New York and San Francisco.
21 April: Army officers seize power in Greece.
24 April: The Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies when Soyuz 1 crashes on return.
27 April: Expo 67 opens in Montreal.
28 April: Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the US Army in Houston.

May

2 May: Armed Black Panther members enter the California state capitol in Sacramento.
22 to 23 May: Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, sharply raising tension.
30 May: Eastern Nigeria declares itself the Republic of Biafra.

June

1 June: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released in Britain.
5 to 10 June: The Six-Day War is fought between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
12 June: The US Supreme Court strikes down bans on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia.
16 to 18 June: The Monterey International Pop Festival is held in California.
25 June: The Beatles perform All You Need Is Love in a worldwide television broadcast.

July

12 to 17 July: Rioting in Newark, New Jersey.
23 July onward: The Detroit riot begins and lasts for several days.
24 July: French President de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec libre” remark in Montreal sparks a diplomatic row.
Late July: President Johnson appoints the Kerner Commission to investigate the unrest.

August and September

14 August: Britain’s law against offshore pirate radio stations takes effect.
27 August: The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein dies.
30 August: The Senate confirms Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court.
Late September: BBC Radio 1 begins broadcasting, and Boeing’s first 747 is rolled out.

October

9 October: Che Guevara is executed in Bolivia, a day after his capture.
12 October: The St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series in seven games over the Boston Red Sox.
21 to 22 October: Tens of thousands march on the Pentagon.
27 October: Britain’s Abortion Act receives royal assent.

November

7 November: Carl Stokes is elected mayor of Cleveland and Richard Hatcher mayor of Gary, Indiana.
9 November: The first issue of Rolling Stone is published. The same day, the unmanned Apollo 4 flies on the first Saturn V.
18 November: Britain devalues the pound.
21 November: General Westmoreland tells a Washington audience that the US is making progress in Vietnam.
22 November: The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 242.
27 November: De Gaulle announces a second veto of British entry into the European Economic Community.
30 November: British forces complete their withdrawal from Aden.

December

3 December: Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant in Cape Town; the patient survives for 18 days.
10 December: Soul singer Otis Redding dies in a plane crash in Wisconsin.
11 December: The Concorde is unveiled in Toulouse.
17 December: Australian prime minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming near Melbourne.
26 December: The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour is broadcast on BBC television.
31 December: The Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys in the freezing Ice Bowl in Green Bay.

The shape of the year

The sequence shows how many of the year’s stories ran side by side: war and protest, space and science, music and the counterculture, and new laws and elections at home and abroad. Several threads were left unresolved, and the Tet Offensive of January 1968 was close enough to begin a different chapter.