The #1 song in 1965 was Wooly Bully. Okay – we’ve had many MANY achievements since 1965 but perhaps the best advancement is better music. Wooly Bully. Really? Thankfully music has made leaps and bounds since then. Because, seriously, Wooly Bully?
1965 had loads of good things happen. I’ll number things to make it easier to follow, but the numbers are in no particular order, just as a point of reference.
1) Days of Our Lives debuted in 1965. Who knew the fictional city of Salem, Illinois would hold the world’s attention for 57 years. Wouldn’t it be something if the started November 8, 2023 (the day it began in 1965) and started from the beginning and showed 1 episode a day? It would take 57 years to conclude it – and I’d have to live to 115 if I wanted to watch the final episode. Sure, I could stream it – but that’s cheating.
*Side Note 1 – Sadly, I never watched it – I was a Young and the Restless kind of guy.
2) Who hasn’t seen the creation of Eero Saarinen. Who? Oh you know….. You’ve seen his work. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis was completed in 1965 and was his design and it is still Missouri’s tallest accessible building.
3) The Dow closed at 969 / today’s DOW closed at 34,687.
4) I hold no ill-will towards Canada. I respect our neighbor to the north. Now, if you read my previous post where I exposed how Canada will join with France and be the catalyst to take down our great American culture you might think I dislike Canada. Far from it. That why I celebrate that in 1965 The Maple Leaf became Canada’s new national flag symbol.
5) MUCH political news. 1965 was a big year in America. Among big achievements in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson announced the creation of Medicare to help fight poverty.
6) Jerry Gargia burst onto the music scene in San Francisco and The Grateful Dead played their first concert there in San Francisco.
7) An American company had a vision. They were tired of hearing about all the cheese that was going bad. If you are my age, you can recall getting sliced cheese and having the edges get hard when the pack got dried out. But Kraft Foods heard the sighs of despair from that guy who, at 4:00 am, just wanted to make a damn sandwich. So, in 1965, Kraft created the individually wrapped cheese slice.
8) The hills were alive in 1965. A highlight for my oldest daughter Kate, Julie Andrews appeared in The Sound of Music on the big screen.
*Side Note 2 – Did you see what I did there?
9) A gallon of gas was $0.31. Yesterday I paid $3.49 a gallon.
10) More Politics – in 1965 the Voting Right Act became law which guaranteed African Americans the right to vote.
11) A big blackout occurred, throwing parts of Canada and the US North East in the dark.
*Side Note 3 Contrary to popular belief and urban legends, data suggests no significant baby boom 9 months later.
12) The Watts Riots occurred as a patrolman, Lee Minikus, arrested Marquette Frye as well as his brother and mother. Marquette was arrested for failing a sobriety test and the riot burned large parts of the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles.
13) Average cost of a new car was $2,650 / Estimated cost of a new car in 2023 is $48,000.
14) I’m not sure if this is where it began or not. But since 1965 two things started happening. 1st there was the constant looking for lost toy/game parts so you could just play the game. And 2nd, the very soft and stifled cursing us dads had to do when we stepped on a small toy/game part in the middle of the night. Initially produced by Milton Bradley in 1965 – the board game Operation was in instant success.
15) much to the delight of hungry kids everywhere – SpaghettiO’s was created and canned by The Campbell Soup Company. Now, it’s much to the dismay of kids everywhere as parents who were kids then attempt to make it for their kids now.
*Side Note 4 – YUCK!!!!
16) I’ve been to one. You’ve been to one. We’ve all been to one. In 1965 T.G.I. Fridays opened it’s first restaurant in Manhattan.
17) You might think it’s a recent phenomenon – but nope – pickleball was created as a combination of badminton, tennis and ping-pong.
18) Summer was proving brutal to Football players at the University of Florida. Many players were getting injured and the heat was having disastrous effects for the players. The coach reached out the the chemistry department and asked for their assistance. So they collected players sweat as the rode stationary bikes and the analyzed the sweat to find the items that the body was losing so that it could replenish the same nutrients. The result was a very gross tasting fluid that no one would drink. But they tweaked it and worked on it and started giving it to the JV team before it was finally perfected and the varsity football team began using it. YUP – talking about Gatorade
Lots more to celebrate and commemorate about 1965. But all of it pales in comparison to the birth of me. Yup, born in 1965 I am alive and doing well and writing this post for you to read !!!
You’re welcome.
My Take on Life and Events 