1960s Timeline

Aug. 30, 1963 - A former psychology lecturer dismissed from Harvard over a controversy involving his experiments with...

July 26, 1963 - Entertainer Marie (The Body) McDonald (pictured in 1948) pleaded guilty today in Van Nuys, Calif., to prescription...

May 28, 1963 - Dr. Richard Alpert (left) denied today that he had broken faith with Harvard University by involving an undergraduate in a...

May 27, 1963 - Harvard University will reportedly dismiss a clinical professor of psychology June 30 for testing so-called...

Apr. 24, 1963 - New York City’s Health Code will be amended next month in an effort to control the growing, harmful practice of...

Apr. 16, 1963 - Dr. Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist who believes in the ability of certain drugs to free men’s minds, announced...

Mar. 28, 1963 - American jazz trumpet player Chet Baker has been deported from Great Britain to France, the British home office announced...

Mar. 22, 1963 - Texas Governor John B. Connally today granted parole to former Dallas striptease dancer Candy Barr (pictured at Dallas...

Mar. 6, 1963 - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (pictured with John F. Kennedy Jr.) assured California Attorney General Stanley Mosk...

Feb. 23, 1963 - Comedian Lenny Bruce (left), 37, was arrested early today on suspicion of possessing heroin. The so-called “sick”...

Feb. 19, 1963 - A 19-year-old youth in Salinas, California who claimed he was addicted to sniffing glue has been committed to Patton...

Dec. 13, 1962 - Two Harvard psychiatrists charged that statements made by Dean John Munro in an effort to stop the use of “mind drugs”...

Dec. 12, 1962 - Alarmed by the increasing use of a hallucinatory drug, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), by unqualified persons and at...

Nov. 29, 1962 - Indians cannot plead religious freedom as a ground for eating a vision-producing cactus plant banned by state law, the...

Nov. 28, 1962 - A formal warning about the dangers of “mind-distorting drugs” was issued to undergraduates of Harvard College today....

Nov. 13, 1962 - An Indian’s right to eat vision-inducing cactus buds in half-Christian, half-pagan ceremonies was defended in California...

Oct. 10, 1962 - President Kennedy signed a new drug bill today that he said would help provide safe and more effective drugs to the...

Oct. 5, 1962 - Comedian Lenny Bruce (pictured) and Robert Coogan, brother of former child star Jackie Coogan, were arrested in North...

Sept. 13, 1962 - A health commissioner said today that the United States was a “nation of pill swallowers,” that this was dangerous, and...

Aug. 29, 1962 - The West German Federal Health Ministry announced today that the sleep-inducing drug Thalidomide had caused about 10,000...