Evens in the Year 1969

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1969 was an extremely important year in history for many reasons. It was the end of a decade. It was the first year man walked on the moon. It was a big year for music with the first releases of several popular bands. It was a significant year for the civil rights movement. It was also eventful year at SEMO.

1969 was a very successful year for the U.S. space program, four U.S. astronauts walked on the surface of the moon for the first time in the history of mankind. First, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on Apollo 11. Also, Charles Conrad and Alan Bean on Apollo 12 (wikipedia). The Apollo 11 mission started at 9:32 AM on July 16. Approximately a million people came to Cape Kennedy, Florida, and hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world watched the Saturn 5 rocket take off (Americana, 21). The crew of Apollo 11 safely landed on the moon at 4:17 PM. Neil Armstrong was the first to exit the lunar module followed by Edwin Aldrin. They placed an American flag along with a plaque that said "Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind" (Americana, 24). The crew lifted off the surface of the moon at 1:55 P.M. on July 21 returned safely to earth about 60 hours later (Americana, 26) This was a very substantial achievement for the United States and mankind. It took almost a whole decade of training and preparation for the Apollo 11 mission (Americana, 17). The United States repeated this achievement four months later with the Apollo 12 mission where astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean walked on the moon and returned safely home.

In 1969 a trend of mixing different types of music together became popular with combinations like jazz-rock, folk-rock, country-rock. One of the most popular jazz-rock groups of the year was Blood, Sweat & Tears. They mixed jazz improvisations, rock rhythms, and blues vocals (Americana 579). Some other popular groups such as Three Dog Night, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Led Zepplin had there first releases in 1969. These bands combined simple traditional blues songs with electronic distortion effects, high intensity volume, and loud bass rhythms (Americana 579). 1969 was also the year of the Beatles last live performance on the top of Apple Records. The concert was broken up by the police (Wikipedia).

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