Chapter V

1964.The year past had seen the birth of Matt Dillon,Michelle Obama,Chris Farley,Prince Edward,Sarah Palin,Barry Bonds and serial killer Paul Bernardo.

Herbert Hoover,Douglas McArthur and actor Alan Ladd left this world.

It was a year of racial unrest in the American south,and three civil rights workers were killed in Philadelphia,Mississippi.John Lennon announced that the Beatles would not play to a segregated audiance in Jacksonville.Sydney Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award:Best Actor for Lilies Of The Field.
Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and Cassius Clay became the World Heavy Weight Champion.Plans to build The World Trade Center were announced.A massive earthquake,9.2 on The Richter Scale struck Anchorage, Alaska,buildings came tumbling down and 125 people were killed.Towns in British Columbia were damaged by an accompanying tsunami.The final design for the new Canadian Flag was chosen,The Verrazano Narrows Bridge was opened and the Ford Mustang was unveiled.Comedian Lenny Bruce was convicted of obsenity and sentenced to four months in jail..Canada began a peace keeping mission in Cyprus and The United Kingdom abolished capital punishment.

In America,President Johnson declared war on poverty in January,then signed The Civil Rights Act,abolishing racial segregation into law in July.In November he defeated Barry Goldwater and won his first full term as President.The Warren Commission published it's report,concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.Martin Luther King won The Nobel Peace Prize.

New words appearing in The Oxford English Dictionary in 1964 included ninja,sit-com and Pop Tart.Nomex refered to a kind of fire resistant fabric.Ans Paki appeared for the first time as well,refering to a person of Pakistani or East Indian decent in a derogatory fashion.I guess the world at that time needed another racial slur,with all the progress that was seemingly being made in the American South.

In 1965 the average yearly income was about six thousand dollars.A new car cost about thirty five hundred dollars ans a new house about thirteen thousand.A loaf of bread was twenty one cents and it cost a dollar and a quarter to go to a movie.

1965.A new house cost just over thirteen thousand dollars.A new car was about two thousand,six hundred dollars.Gas was about thirty one cents per gallon.Average monthly rent was one hundred eighteen dollars.The federal minimum wage in Canada was a dollar and a quarter.

Early on in the year Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President Of The United States.A few days later Winston Churchill passed.That must have seemed the end of an era,given his longevity and dominating persona.Poet T.S.Eliot and singer Nat King Cole also passed in 1965.

Charlie Sheen,Shania Twain,Rodney King,Brooke Shields Dr.Dre,and professional wrestler,The Undertaker all came into the world in 1965.

On February 15 Canada got a new flag.That was known as National Flag Day.On March 25, the Province of New Brunswick got it's present flag as well.

South of the border it was the year of the Watts riots and civil rights marches in Alabama.State troopers attacked civil rights marchers in the town of Selma.In July President Johnson signed The Social Security Act into law,followed by The Voting Rights Act in August,which guaranteed the vote to African Americans.In November there was a massive blackout in the American Northeast and parts of Canada.

The world population in 1965 was 3.3 billion.Asia was the most populous continent with 1.89 billion people.Tokyo surpassed New York City as the worlds largest city.

Life expectancy in The United States was 70.2 years.In Canada it was 71.8 years.

The oxford English Dictionary introduced three hundred,sixty eight new words in 1965.They included log-in and megabyte,both from the world of computer technology.The term naked ape was used to refer to human beings.Music  gave us the word Motown.It was also the debut of the word Bio-hazard.Shake and Bake was  also among those words..And ironically both the words Zamboni and jet lag were first used.Ironically because,to this day I'm not aware of anyone getting jet lag from riding a Zamboni.1965 also saw the inception of the word clusterfuck.It came from the world of pornography(use your own imagination) but was adopted by the military as a means of describing a monumental mess.After all,it was the era of the Vietnam War,so the word just seemed to find a natural niche.It was ,in fact more common in that context,and gradually migrated into the language in a more general sense.There was much in the world of 1965,and the years to come that could be aptly described by that word.But of course,I was yet to turn four years old,so I'd never heard of such a word.It only existed in The World Just Beyond.