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In my essay I am going to write about some of the important events and traditions from the year 1965 which was the year that I was born. I am also going to show you that there are many similarities with the way life and events were in 1965 as compared to now.
Here is some basic information that I found from the year 1965. The President of the United States was Lyndon B Johnson and Vice President was Hubert Humphrey. The population of the United States in 1965 was 194,302,963, and as of 2000 it was 281,421,906 so it grew quite a bit over the 35 year period. Another fact that stood out to me is that the unemployment rate was 5.2%, which is not much different than today's rate.
Some of the big news stories if the year were as follows. The first US combat troops arrived in Vietnam. By the end of the year, 190,000 American soldiers were in Vietnam to fight the war. My father was also one of these soldiers over in Vietnam. And here we are today in the year 2003 getting ready to go to war with Iraq. Another news story which happened on July 1, 1965 was the race riots. For 6 days blacks rioted in the Watts section of Los Angeles: 34 dead, over 1,000 injured, nearly 4,000 arrested, fire damaged was put at $175 million. Those race riots were going on all over the United States. As a matter of fact, my uncle was driving down a city street in York, Pa that year during a race riot and a brick was thrown through the window of his vehicle. He was almost killed and ended up in the hospital with a metal plate in his head from the trauma. I am thankful that we do not have those riots now although in today's society we still have the KKK.
I also found some interesting facts from 1965. The cost of a postage stamp was 5 cents as compared to now when it is 37 cents. In sports, in the World Series the LA Dodgers beat the Minnesota Twins 4 games to 3, which is still a major event of today.
