February 5 - The harbor of Santa Barbara, California is closed because of a huge oil slick.
February 13 - J. L. Searles III of New York City is the first African American member of the New York Stock
Exchange.
March 10 - James Earl Ray pleads guilty to the shooting death of Martin Luther King Jr. and is sentenced to 99 years in prison.
May 2 - Wawona Tunnel Tree, a sequoia in Yosemite National Park, is discovered to have fallen.
May 12 - The first woman to sail solo across the Pacific Ocean is Sharon Sites Adams.
June 8 - The first commercially made ice cream is offered for sale in New York.
June 9 - The U.S. destroyer Frank E. Evans is cut in two after colliding with the Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne in the South China Sea.
July 16 - The Crew of Apollo XI, Neil Armstong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins, lift off for the moon from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
July 20 - Apollo XI touches down on the Sea of Tranquillity on the moon's surface. Neil Armstrong becomes the first human being to set foot on another world.
August 18 - Senator Edward Kennedy is involved in an automobile accident that kills Mary Jo Kopechne.
August 18 - Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, a three-day concert featuring a line-up of such bands as The Who, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Sly and The Family Stone, Canned Heat, and Jimi Hendrix, is held on Max Yasgur's Dairy Farm in Bethel, New York. The event is attended by 500,000 people and becomes the symbol of the counter-culture movement.
August 22 - The world's tallest totem pole is dedicated at Kake, Alaska.
October 3 - The last wooden passenger train cars are taken out of service in Brooklyn, New York.
October 15 - In the U.S., demonstrations are staged to protest against the Vietnam War.
November 20 - Alcatraz Island off the coast of San Francisco, California is seized by militant Native Americans.
November 24 - Lieutenant William Calley, a U.S. Marine platoon commander at My Lai, Vietnam, is to be court marshalled for charges of murdering 109 innocent Vietnamese.
