1966

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.
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
1966	USA [consumer products]	The US manufacturer Procter and Gamble launches Pampers, the first disposable nappies. This product will go on to take nearly 50% of the worldwide market.
1966	UK [popular music]	The British rock group the Who releases the single ‘My Generation’ and an album of the same name.
1966	UK [popular music]	Soul is fashionable in Britain, with the music of James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and Stevie Wonder very popular.
1966	UK [popular music]	US-style open air music festivals become popular in Britain.
1966	UK [radio]	Annie Nightingale becomes the first female disc jockey on British radio when she appears on British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio 1.
1966	Poland [religious music]	The Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki completes his choral work St Luke Passion.
1966	USA [law and government]	The first conviction for burning the draft card is obtained in the USA.
1966	USA [law and government]	The hallucinogenic drug LSD is declared illegal in the USA.
1966	France [literature and language]	The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan publishes Ecrits/Writings.
1966	USA [literary criticism]	The US writer and critic Susan Sontag publishes Against Interpretation, a collection of essays.
1966	USA [media and communication]	Xerox develops the first desk-top fax machine, in the USA. It is able to operate on standard phone lines and takes 6 minutes to transmit a page.
1966	Estonia [orchestral music]	The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt completes his Symphony No. 2.
1966	USA [painting]	The US artist Robert Indiana paints LOVE.
1966	Germany, Austria [plays]	The play Publikumsbeschimpfung/Offending the Audience, by the Austrian writer Peter Handke, is first performed in Frankfurt, Germany.
1966	UK [plays]	The play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by the Czech-born British dramatist Tom Stoppard, is first performed, at the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland. It opens the following year at the Old Vic Theatre in London, England.
1966	USA [poetry]	The US writer Thomas Pynchon publishes his short novel The Crying of Lot 49.
1966	USA [art]	The US photographer Diane Arbus takes A Young Man in Curlers at Home on West Twentieth Street, New York City.
1966	USA [cinema and film]	The film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by Mike Nichols, is released in the USA, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It is based on the play by Edward Albee.
1966	UK [communications]	The British engineers Charles Kao and Georges Hockman of Standard Telecommunications Laboratories show that data can be carried on light transmitted over long distances in glass fibres rather than on electric currents in copper wire, leading to the development of fibre-optic cables.
1966	Italy [ecology]	The city of Florence, Italy, suffers heavy flooding, which destroys many valuable Renaissance works of art. A fund-raising drive is immediately set up, to prevent the recurrence of such as disaster.
1966	USA [clothing and fashion]	A craze for lapel badges starts in the USA.
1966	USA [clothing and fashion]	The miniskirt becomes fashionable in the USA.
3 February 1966	USSR [space exploration]	Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 (launched 31 January) makes the first soft landing on the Moon and transmits photographs and soil data for three days.
1 March 1966	USSR [space exploration]	Soviet probe Venera 3 (launched 16 November 1965) crash-lands on Venus, the first artificial object to land on another planet.
4 March 1966	UK, USA [popular music]	John Lennon speculates that the Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ; in response, Beatles records are burnt in the US Bible belt.
7 March 1966	UK [banking and finance]	The Midland Bank in Britain is the first to introduce cheque guarantee cards.
10 April 1966	England [births and deaths]	Evelyn Waugh, English satirical novelist, dies in Combe Florey, near Taunton, Somerset, England (62).
28 April 1966	USA [basketball]	The Boston Celtics win their eighth successive US National Basketball Association (NBA) title. Their coach, Red Auerbach, retires to be replaced by Bill Russell (as player/coach), who becomes the first ever black American head coach.
26 May 1966	British Guiana, Guyana [decolonization]	The colony of British Guiana gains independence as Guyana.
29 June 1966	UK [banking and finance]	The first British credit card, the Barclaycard, is launched.
1 July 1966	France [diplomacy]	France withdraws its forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) following a dispute over US involvement in Europe's defence.
30 July 1966	UK, West Germany [football]	The host nation, England, wins football's World Cup, beating West Germany in the final at Wembley, London, 4–2 after extra time. The England forward Geoff Hurst scores the first ever hat trick in a World Cup final.
30 July 1966	UK [television]	The football World Cup final between England and Germany is watched by 33 million viewers in Britain.
10 August 1966	USA [space exploration]	The US spacecraft Lunar Orbiter 1 enters the Moon's orbit and transmits pictures of the dark side. It is the first of a series of five uncrewed spacecraft that photograph the Moon to select sites for the Apollo missions and to make detailed lunar maps.
13 August 1966	China [political events]	The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, in its first plenary session since 1962, endorses the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’, the movement to ‘purify’ Chinese communism through a purge of the intelligentsia.
29 August 1966	USA [popular music]	The British rock group the Beatles give their last concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California.
31 August 1966	UK [aircraft]	British Aerospace's Harrier, a vertical take off and landing (VTOL) jet, makes its first test flight.
6 September 1966	USA [births and deaths]	Margaret Sanger, US birth control advocate who opened the first birth control clinic in the USA, dies in Tucson, Arizona (82).
13 September 1966	South Africa [administration]	Following the death of the South African prime minister Henrik Verwoerd on 6 September, he is succeeded by Johannes Vorster.
27 October 1966	South Africa, South West Africa [United Nations]	The United Nations (UN) Assembly ends South Africa's mandate over South West Africa because of its racial policies, but South Africa refuses to accept the decision.
20 November 1966	USA [musicals]	The musical Cabaret, by John Kander and Fred Ebb, is first performed, at the Broadhurst Theater, New York City.
1 December 1966	USA [births and deaths]	Walt Disney, US motion-picture producer and creator of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and other characters, dies in Los Angeles, California (65).