US President Lyndon Johnson declared, “We have spent 35 or 40 billion dollars on the space program so far; and even if we had gained nothing but information from spy satellite photography, these photographs would be worth ten times the sum spent; because tonight we learned how many missiles the adversary has, and our estimates were far wrong; we were doing things that were unnecessary; we had unfounded fears; thanks to the satellites I now KNOW how many missiles the adversary actually has.”

In the Kilby vs. Noyce case, pitting Texas Instruments against Fairchild Semiconductors over the first patent on integrated circuits, which began in 1959, the final verdict upheld Texas as the patent holder. Fairchild then appealed, and the court concluded in November 1969 that Noyce was in favor. Texas appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. Ultimately, however, the integrated circuit market was so vast and advanced compared to the original patent that the two companies agreed to grant each other cross-licenses.

An international treaty, signed simultaneously in Washington, London, and Moscow, prohibits the militarization of space and the claiming of territories above the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Boeing 737 goes into production. Over the next half century, 10,000 will be produced.

Nevada. Area 51. The A-12 spy plane is tested. It will fly several missions for the CIA, known as OXCART. It will be retired in 1968. It will be replaced by spy satellites and the SR-71 Blackbird.

After Mariner 4’s first close approach to Mars in 1965, NASA took advantage of the next window of opportunity for a Hohmann transfer to the Red Planet and launched Mariner 6 and 7. Both performed well and sent 201 images back to Earth.

Donald Campbell reaches a speed record of 485 km/h on the water in his Blue Bird, dies on the return journey after his speedboat rears up.

Russian physicist Yakov Borisovich Zel’dovich estimates the energy density of the quantum vacuum and finds that it would make an immense contribution in the direction of the cosmological constant that causes the universe to expand.

Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam develop a mathematical scheme that simultaneously describes the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces, which merge into a single force at high energies

DeWitt presents the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, a universal wave function that can be satisfied by a theory of quantum gravity. The time variable is omitted.

Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish discover very regular pulses at about 1Hz from the sources LGM1 and LGM2 (Little Green Men) later revealed to be pulsars

After diamond and graphite, a third arrangement of carbon atoms is discovered: lonsdaleite, which is even harder than diamond. It has a three-dimensional hexagonal structure. It is found in small quantities in some meteorites: the first is Canyon Diablo.

The Theory of Plate Tectonics is Born

Stront of Dayton University synthesizes the first samarium cobalt magnet, based on the discovery of the Austrian Snatam.

Gemini XII: Lovell and Aldrin performing a 5-hour Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA).

Gerard Boole builds, on behalf of the Canadian government, a super-cannon in Barbados: with a 36m barrel and special solid explosive, he manages to send a transmitting probe to an altitude of 185km in sub-orbital space flight.

While on a state tour of the Pacific, U.S. President Johnson makes a surprise visit to South Vietnam. He comes closer to the battlefield than any president since Lincoln at Fort Stevens and the Confederate push into Washington, D.C., in 1864.

Luna 11 entered lunar orbit in August 1966. It transmitted photos between two different frequencies, making it difficult to intercept the communication this time. The photos were never published. The probe oriented incorrectly and photographed space.

The US Surveyor 1 probe tests soft-landing technology on the Moon.

Gemini 8 Mission: Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott successfully dock with the unmanned Agena rocket; Neil then saves the day when the probe loses control and begins to spin rapidly (1 revolution per second); for this cold-blooded intervention, Armstrong is chosen to make the first lunar landing attempt.

Indonesia. President Sukarno is pressured to sign a letter handing over power to Suharto, the general who foiled the previous year’s coup. In March 1967, Suharto becomes acting president, with full powers from March 1968. He remains in power for 30 years.

Venera 3 falls on Venus

The first Saturn IB (AS-201 vehicle) lifts off from Launch Complex 34 at Cape Canaveral with no one on board. It is the first test of the J2 engines, which will be used in the second and third stages of the Saturn V, which will carry 12 men to the Moon a few years later.

NASA’s J2 engines, powered by liquid oxygen and hydrogen, completed their first test aboard the Saturn V rocket. This is the first engine capable of shutting down and restarting for a second mission in space.

The Soviet Luna 9, designed by the Lavochkin laboratories, successfully lands on our satellite, and opens its petals to transmit the first lunar photographs to Earth.

Beatrice and Allen Gardner are able to teach American Sign Language to the Shimpanzee Washoe; he uses words like “open” even when applied to contexts as diverse as a door or a peanut.

Bob Taylor takes over the leadership of the ARPA IPTO (Information Processing Techniques Office), which belonged to Licklider, the father of the Internet concept. Taylor arrives from NASA. Taylor realizes it would make sense to electronically connect different research centers in the United States to simplify data exchange. He calls his boss, ARPA Director Charles Hexfeld, and at the end of the meeting secures $1 million in funding to begin work. He chooses Larry Roberts as project manager, who will create the ARPANET.

Congress cancels Project Mohole, which attempted to drill a 5,000-meter hole from a vessel into the thin crust of the Pacific Ocean off Mexico; it actually reached a depth of only 180 meters (over 4,000 meters of ocean!)

Norwegian company TRALLFA builds and installs a spray painting robot

Ray Davis and Blair Munhofen began the experiment at the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota, where they installed a neutrino detector, using 400,000 liters of detergent (chlorine) as the detector, which arrived in 10 rail cars. The cost was $600,000 (or 10 minutes of a TV commercial, as Davis says). The experiment will be inconclusive, also because the theory is not yet complete. The experiment relies on the fact that every second, 66 billion solar neutrinos pass through every square centimeter of the Earth’s surface.

Argentina, military in government

In Uganda, General Amin has 2,000 followers of Kabaka, rival leader of Prime Minister Obote, exterminated. Kabaka flees to London.

Vietnam. American military strength rises to 385,000.

China. Cultural Revolution. In Beijing alone, Red Guard attacks destroy 4,922 of the 6,843 sites of historical or cultural interest. The Forbidden City itself is saved only by the personal intervention of Zhou Enlai. All universities are closed. Professional competence itself becomes a dangerous bourgeois concept.

China. Cultural Revolution. Mao sends an entire generation of leaders, professors, diplomats, and experts to work in the countryside to learn from the masses.

FIAT-USSR (Nikita Khrushchev) agreement for the construction of a plant in Togliattigrad to produce more than 2,000 cars per day

Lawyer Giovanni Agnelli Jr. (nephew of Senator Giovanni Agnelli) replaces Valletta at the helm of FIAT

France leaves NATO’s military side

Socialist Cultural Revolution in China, launched by Mao against “the Chinese Khrushchevs”