1965

1950–1980	UK [television]	Watch With Mother, a series for young children featuring favourite characters such as Andy Pandy, the Flowerpot Men, Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, and the Woodentops, is shown on British television.
1960–1969	UK [popular music]	The Beatles' song ‘She Loves You’ is the best-selling single of the 1960s in Britain. The Beatles are responsible for five out of the top six singles in Britain in the 1960s.
1962–1965	Vatican [Catholicism]	The Second Vatican Council, a council of the Roman Catholic Church convened by Pope John XXIII, is held, its aim being to reform Catholic ministry and liturgy, and to seek reunion with other Christian denominations.
1965	UK [cinema and film]	The film Doctor Zhivago, directed by David Lean, is released in Britain. Based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, it stars Julie Christie and Omar Sharif.
1965	USA [cinema and film]	The film musical The Sound of Music, directed by Robert Wise, is released in the USA, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. It is a huge box-office success, becoming the most successful film of the 1960s and even outperforming Gone With the Wind.
1965	USA [computing]	US computer scientists John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz develop BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a simplified computer programming language used in schools, businesses, and microcomputers.
1965	USA [computing]	US Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces the PDP-8 (Programmed Data Processor) computer. The first minicomputer, it has 4 kilobytes of memory, is easy to use, and costs $18,000. It stimulates the growth of computers in business and education.
1965	Italy [companies and organizations]	The Benetton clothing company is founded in Italy. Through its chain of franchises, it will attain commercial success worldwide.
1965	Canada [earth sciences]	Canadian geologist John Tuzo Wilson publishes ‘A New Class of Faults and Their Bearing on Continental Drift’, in which he formulates the theory of plate tectonics to explain continental drift and seafloor spreading.
1965	UK [clothing and fashion]	The first miniskirts appear in Mary Quant's boutique, Bazaar, in the King's Road, Chelsea, London, England. Affordable and liberating, they rapidly become fashionable throughout the Western world.
1965	USA [fiction]	The short-story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge by the US writer Flannery O'Connor is published posthumously.
1965	USA [food and drink]	The artificial sweetener aspartame is launched in the USA, marketed under the name of Nutra-Sweet.
1965	USA [political events]	The US journalist Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, publishes Thousand Days, an account of the presidency of John F Kennedy.
1965	USA [religious music]	The US composer Leonard Bernstein completes his choral work Chichester Psalms.
1965	USA [poetry]	The poetry collection Ariel, by the US writer Sylvia Plath, is published posthumously.
1965	France [political theory]	The Algerian-born French political philosopher Louis Althusser publishes Pour Marx/For Marx.
1965	USA [popular culture]	Ex-Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary writes The Psychedelic Reader and coins the phrase ‘Tune in, turn on, drop out’ to describe the experience of using the hallucinogenic drug LSD.
1965	USA [popular culture]	The beat poet Allen Ginsberg coins the term ‘flower power’ for the antiwar, alternative lifestyle attitudes of the 1960s.
1965	USA [health and medicine]	The first soft contact lenses are marketed in the USA.
1965	England [historical study]	The English historian Christopher Hill publishes Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution.
1965	UK [everyday life]	Britain decides to adopt metric measurements.
1965	USA [everyday life]	The lava lamp is launched in the USA.
1965	Japan [media and communication]	The Japanese electronic company Sony launches the Sony CV-2000, the first home video recorder, using Sony's Betamax format. The first colour video recorder is available the following year.
1965	UK [media and communication]	The pornographic magazine Penthouse is launched in Britain by Robert Guccione.
1965	USA [orchestral music]	The US composer Virgil Thomson completes his orchestral work Ode to the Wonders of Nature.
1965–1966	UK [television]	Thunderbirds, a puppet animation series for children, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, featuring the International Rescue family the Traceys, is shown on British television
1965	world [statistics and demography]	The world population is over 3 billion.
1965	USA [statistics and demography]	The rate of population growth in the USA stands at 1.2%, the lowest since 1945, the year before the baby boom.
4 January 1965	England, USA [births and deaths]	T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot, US-British modernist poet and playwright who had a strong influence on 20th-century poetry, dies in London, England (76).
18 January 1965	USA [civil rights]	Protest marches begin in Selma, Alabama; civil-rights campaigners led by Martin Luther King, Jr, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference demand that blacks be allowed to register as voters. Many marchers are repressed by local police.
24 January 1965	England [births and deaths]	Winston Churchill, British prime minister 1940–45 and 1951–55 who led Britain through World War II, dies in London, England (90).
8 February 1965	USA, South Vietnam, North Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)]	US aircraft bomb North Vietnam following Vietcong attacks on US areas in South Vietnam. This begins a pattern of regular US bombing of North Vietnam known as Operation Rolling Thunder or Operation Flaming Dart.
14 February 1965	UK [motor vehicles]	The British Motor Corporation manufactures the millionth Mini. Since its launch in 1959, the small car has become a significant status symbol for young people.
15 February 1965	USA [births and deaths]	Nat ‘King’ Cole, US jazz and popular singer, dies in Santa Monica, California (45).
18 February 1965	Gambia [decolonization]	Gambia becomes independent within the British Commonwealth.
21 February 1965	USA [civil rights]	Malcolm X, US black militant leader, is shot dead at the Audubon Ballroom, in New York City (39).
8 March 1965	USA, South Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)]	Two battalions of US Marines, 3,500 soldiers, land to defend Danang airbase in South Vietnam. They are the first US combat troops to enter the war.
18 March 1965	USSR [space exploration]	Soviet cosmonaut Alexsi Leonov leaves spacecraft Voskhod 2 and floats in space for 20 minutes – the first space walk.
5 April 1965	world [communications]	The first international communication satellite, Intelsat 1 (Early Bird), is launched into geostationary orbit over the Atlantic Ocean at the Equator. It provides 240 two-way telephone circuits or one television channel.
June 1965	USA [Vietnam War (1954–75)]	The USA employs the B-52 bomber for the first time in a raid against Vietcong forces north of Saigon.
3 June - 7 June 1965	USA [space exploration]	US astronaut Edward White, during the Gemini 4 space mission, demonstrates the ability of humans to function in outer space when he makes a 22-minute space walk, the first by a US astronaut. He is also the first to use a personal propulsion pack during the walk.
18 July 1965	Congo [sports]	The first All-African Games sports festival opens in Brazzaville, Congo, with 29 nations competing. Because of political problems the next games are not held until 1973.
25 July 1965	USA [popular music]	US folksinger Bob Dylan plays an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, supported by the Butterfield Blues Band; his fans jeer, but he shows how folk music could merge with rock.
26 July 1965	UK [telephone services]	The British General Post Office announce that telephone numbers are to lose their letters and will consist of numerals only, to facilitate direct-dial international calls.
1 August 1965	UK [health and medicine]	Cigarette advertising is banned on British television.
6 August 1965	USA [civil rights]	The Voting Rights Act becomes law in the USA, making illegal the southern states' practice of disenfranchising black voters by imposing taxation, literacy, or other requirements on potential voters.
6 September 1965	USA [popular culture]	The US newspaper the San Francisco Examiner is the first to observe the birth of the hippie movement by noting that the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, California has become ‘a hip hangout’ for beatniks.
7 October 1965	UK [architecture]	The Post Office Tower (now the Telecom Tower), is opened in London, England; it is the tallest building in Britain.
11 November 1965	Rhodesia, UK [diplomacy]	The Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith makes a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Britain declares the regime illegal and introduces exchange and trade restrictions.
29 November 1965	UK [media and communication]	Mary Whitehouse founds the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in Britain to campaign against offensive and immoral broadcasting.