Full list  |  Top Global population: 3.1 billion Olympics: Rome, 1960 (5,338 athletes from 83 nations); Tokyo, 1964 (5,151 athletes from 93 nations); Mexico City, 1968 (5,516 athletes from 112 nations)

British politician Norman Tebbit looked back at the 1960s like this: 'The word “conservative” is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.' Tebbit’s loathing of the decade is perhaps unfair given progress during the 1960s appeared from both sides of the Cold War, left and conservative right. Officials in the four-decades old USSR Communist Party, unchallenged leaders of over 250 million people spread across 22.4 million square kilometres proudly predicted a rosy decade: ‘In the current decade (1961-70) the Soviet Union, in creating the material and technical basis of communism, will surpass the strongest and richest capitalist country, the USA, in production per head of population.’ While liberals of the sort Tebbit reviled often questioned the arms race – Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 published in 1961 questioning the logical paradoxes of war sold notably well – the American response looked varied and potent. Best summarized by newly elected President John Kennedy this rested much less on collective accomplishments and much more on gritty John Wayne-type individualism. Speaking in his inauguration address of 1961 President Kennedy stipulated: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’ Less famously, but clearly eyeballing Moscow and their satellite Soviet colonies, the young President mixed in a global challenge: ‘My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.’ For good effect he pursed his lips and nodded sagely.

Space continued absorbing interest and chiefly in how to extend wartime advances in rocketry and navigation. The first and most crucial incident appeared when the first person reached oxygen-less space in the spring of 1961 (Decisive Day #58, 12/04/1961). The Soviet achievement looked even greater when Yuri Gagarin returned safely and still breathing. Even though an American was in space soon afterwards some in Washington fretted privately at undue sensitivities to loss of life. Even in late 1961 America launched the Mercury-Atlas 5 with a cute but expendable chimpanzee called Enos. The monkeyed spacecraft orbited earth twice and splashed-down off Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. During the 1960s Russia also projected homo sapiens including the first woman into space (Valentina Tereshkova in 1963) and completed the first space walk (Alexei Leonov in 1965). In the 1970s it launched the first space station called Salyut – sitting permanently in space. Thanks to Saylut and later Mir, which appeared during the 1980s, adding up all the hours spent in space during the twentieth century it was Russians rather than Americans who topped the list. Russia’s Musa Manarov spent 13,000 hours in space compared with America’s John Blaha who spent 4,000 hours.

While the space race was close in technological terms, with Soviet nous narrowly if prominently in front, the schism of the two societies back on earth was much broader. Across Europe as the reconstruction period ended and fitting post-war economics kicked in labour voted with its feet for which system made most sense. Increasing numbers of immigrants seeped across porous Soviet borders to the capitalist west. Such east-to-west traffic was so strikingly prominent in Germany’s divided capital that in frustration Soviet planners erected the Berlin Wall (Decisive Day #59, 13/08/1961). Designed to isolate capitalist from communist, east from west, the wall caused nearly three decades of dramatic tension that spiralled far beyond a single European city and into global psyches.

America viewed a divided Berlin with sadness and a form of failure in the post-war continent. Plus, life stateside appeared increasingly politically stable and in 1961 for the first time the US senate reached 100 seats – divided that time 64 Democrat and 36 Republican. Globally there was growing confidence in American corporations dominating markets from Europe to Asia. Someone from Coca-Cola remarked: 'When I think of Indonesia - a country with 200 million people, a median age of 18, and a Muslim ban on alcohol, I know what heaven looks like.’ American military outposts also dotted all the major oceans and many containing nuclear weaponry. But beyond commercial and military advances came the founding the US Peace Corps (Decisive Day #60, 22/09/1961). Although often and unfairly politicized after its establishment, and many tried to portray it less as American altruism and more as imperialism-by-other-means, the good deeds from the Peace Corps set of a series of altruistic measures by industrialized nations. While at home people enjoyed political stability and might fret at famous deaths like Norma Jean Baker, stage name Marilyn Monroe, who died in the summer of 1962 aged only 36. Her marriage to Joe DiMaggio in 1954 and Arthur Miller in 1956 both ended in quick divorces. But America doing good deeds overseas and of Peace Corps activists grabbed a prominent strand of American life. Ms Monroe’s coroner, by the way, could not locate the entry-point for the overdose of barbiturates that killed her, leading some newspapers to speculate on a forcible rectal suppository and a fresh perspective on her more sexy lines: 'I just love finding new places to wear diamonds'.

Across the world the decade dominated by baby boomers born in the aftermath of war, the mid to late 1940s, coming of age. They brought with them a generation of free love and openness and attachment to much more leisure time. Some of this went into traditional sports in, for example, Mohammad Ali – the Louisville Lip – built on his gold medal at the Rome Olympics with a widely watched defeat of Billy Daniels in 1962 in New York. But a much more significant and pristine trend concerned popular music. In the autumn of 1962 a British music group called The Beatles released their first record (Decisive Day #61, 05/10/1962). ‘Love-Me-Do’ rocked to the top of musical charts listing the number of records bought by people and started a musical turning point that expanded the spirit of jazz much further. From now on, youth and rebellion was interwoven with accessible and widely sold music. Bigger music concerts and events like the three days of peace and music at Woodstock in New York State during August of 1969.

Although socially the climate was freeing and loosening political tensions still existed. Across the globe appeared many smaller tussles as part of the Cold War. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had said in 1956: ‘The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into a war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.’ Easily the most prominent of these face-offs was the Cuban missile crisis (Decisive Day #62, 22/10/1962). Bringing American and Soviet forces toe-to-toe over missiles placed in Cuba when the crisis first broke and President Kennedy spoke to America and the world prospects for war seemed terrifyingly real. The moment passed but this dodge arguably owed as much to luck as anything. Coming close to war without fighting was a fine art that increasingly absorbed Washington thinkers by the 1960s.

Tensions within America were also domestic. Riots in Los Angeles in the Watts district of the city exposed that after two centuries of an American commitment to all people being create equal deep racial divisions still existed. When more riots appeared in 1992 in Los Angeles riots confirmed no politician had fruitfully concreted over the cracks. Beyond racial tensions the 1960s also saw a brace of prominent assassinations the most prominent and notable of which was the killing captured on live television of President John Kennedy (Decisive Day #63, 22/11/1963). Creating widespread effects in the immediate years the tragedy became all the more upsetting to witness repeatedly on television and film.

The increasingly open society, notably on the music front, also influenced other media. Of several developments in media among the more important and entertaining was the launch of a pioneering newspaper in Britain called The Sun (Decisive Day #64, 14/09/1964). Scorn for authority pioneered by the newspaper proved influential on many fronts from investigative journalism to grilling of elected officials to demands for varied and increasingly garish entertainment. One of the first stories for the new paper in Britain was the murder of a prominent revolutionary that had formed part of the Cuban Revolution. Outside America perhaps the most prominent was killing the grass-roots revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia in the autumn of 1967 (Decisive Day #65, 09/10/1967). What Che stood for became a beacon of light for a raft of revolutions and protests. In 1967 the end of capital punishment slightly blunted the wish to string criminals up, for it was the only language they understood.

Healthcare also continued to improve though not usually universally and with concentrations on rich people living in the rich world. Attention extended beyond the discovery that thalidomide, as one of several drugs discovered to cause much harm in the decade, led to abnormal foetal births. In 1962 in America the first prominent report appeared linking smoking and cancer – even though similar thinking had first appeared in the 1930s. Other than drugs that could aid healing, though, a most significant medical development was continuing life based on replacing organs. Of all organs worth caring for none were more primary than the heart which successfully transplanted, for the first precarious time, in the spring of 1967 (Decisive Day #66, 03/12/1967). Medics around the world soon copied Dr Barnard’s success in South Africa to breath modern life into the age-old hope of placing a new heart inside an old body.

Talking of South Africa the Dark Continent was not a peaceful place. Apartheid flourished in the South Africa of Dr Barnard. To the north in November of 1964 a white referendum in Southern Rhodesia had overwhelmingly supported Ian Smith's one-sided declaration of independence, UDI, which the United Nations quickly condemned. The stability rocked Rhodesia until it transformed into Zimbabwe in 1980, after which more troubles awaited.

Europe too had its imbalances and tensions. Instinctively loath to Anglo-Saxon dominance France withdrew most of its troops from NATO command in 1966. Appearing not even two decades into the new organisation’s life this prompted barely disguised whispered and often stinging charges of bâtards ingrates around Washington. Many Americans saw in emotional terms the sacrifices of American troops made to free France and western Europe from Germany. Distaste worsened by seeing France’s colonial possessions lingering despite the complexities of life at home – as Charles De Gaulle wondered, how can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? Without French troops created a sense of limited choices when in August of 1968 Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia and a thousand tanks dominated the Prague metropolitan area. Alexander Dubchek continued relaxing control on press and democratic reform – a movement known as the Prague Spring – but for a while only. But America absorbed itself in another and more influential conflict and did nothing more than diplomatic protest at Soviet tanks on the streets of Prague. Of all the tensions the one standing out was fighting over the Tet offensive during the Vietnamese Civil War. Lasting for several weeks in the end the battles critically weakened American support for supporting South Vietnam – one ally of several in the Cold War (Decisive Day #67, 31/01/1968).

In 1965 Pope Paul VI had officially forgiven Jews for their role in killing Jesus. Reversing a stand taken in 1205 AD, which subjected Jews to eternal damnation, this reflected the influence of increasingly secular politicians demanding looser adaptations of religious canons. A few edgy months after Tet had finished a protester killed the Christian minister Dr Martin Luther King (Decisive Day #68, 04/04/1968). Looking back to the end of the Civil War in 1860 Dr King had noted and to widespread applause: ‘One hundred years later the life of the Negro is sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.’ Adding a political note he also said: ‘We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.’

In such a climate of frustrated tension concessions to black activitism advanced and retreat at the same time. In 1962 James Meredith successfully became the first black student at the University of Mississippi – something that should have appeared decades earlier. Aware of the need for more advances shortly afterwards in 1964 in the same state came the prominent death of three civil rights campaigners – one from Mississippi and two from New York. State authorities failed to bring any charges and it took federal authorities to prosecute 18 perpetrators of whom courts convicted seven. Of all events in this tumultous time the most notable and far-reaching was the untimely killing of Robert Kennedy – brother of the slain President Kennedy and a passionate promote of Civil Rights (Decisive Day #69, 05/06/1968). Coincidentally, by the way, the same Los Angeles coroner autopsied her and Robert Kennedy.

Scientific advances emerged not only in military fields or narrowly focused civilian purposes. Transport continued to improve on many fronts of which two stood out in particular – one earthbound and one beyond earth’s gravitational forces. When the first supersonic flight of a passenger aircraft happened (Decisive Day #70, 02/03/1969) it prised open prospects for connecting distant communities in a significantly smaller world. That however was small beer compared to the growing sense of control over space. Already outlined by Yuri Gagarin and Sputnik it now developed into a much beefier and more colourful etching – and one focused increasingly on the moon. As one mark of this fascination with moon travel, in 1968 three astronauts shared the Time Magazine Person of the Year award for the Apollo 8 circumnavigation of the moon: astronauts Frank Borman, Commander, plus William Anders and Jim Lovell. (Lovell later commanded the abandoned Apollo 13 landing of 1970). Circumnavigating the moon was one win but a far more prominent event arrived when a different group of eventually more famous American astronauts landed on the moon (Decisive Day #71, 20/07/1969). There too the astronauts – Armstrong, Commander, plus Aldrin and Collins, returned safely.

Fighting for four hard years through the Vietnamese Civil War, a messy tangle of urban and jungle clashes, had exposed ticklish points in the American psyche. Since 1965 American and British and many other nationalities of journalists accompanied larger military formations almost at will. On the one hand this jibed with Washington’s commitment to a free press. On the other hand such openness in the military sphere brought forth many challenges. Troops often grew frustrated and fearful and behaved in ways not universally consistent with what leaders wished. In 1969 the afterglow of the moon landings still equated America with the most technologically advanced society on earth but exposure of the My Lai massacre (Decisive Day #72, 20/11/1969) equated America with more abusive societies too. Beyond slippage in global prestige My Lai confirmed to many how America had misplaced its own heart and mind in prosecuting the war – and resurrected once more the old isolationist urge.