When Spider-Man first appeared in the August 1962 issue of Amazing Fantasy, teenagers in superhero comic books were usually relegated to the role of sidekick to the protagonist. The Spider-Man stories broke new ground by featuring Peter Parker, a high school student from Queens--a character with whose "self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness" young readers could relate.

Muhammad Ali, who became the world heavyweight champion in 1964 at the age of 22, was famous for his colorful quotations. He also said, "I'm so mean, I make medicine sick."

The U.S. Military used many herbicides/defoliants during the Vietnam War, including Agent Blue, Agent Green, Agent White, Agent Purple, Agent Pink, and Agent Orange. Agent Orange, however, has become the most infamous because it was later shown to have toxic dioxin contaminants which have been blamed for various health problems and birth defects among both the general Vietnamese population and U.S. soldiers who were exposed to recently sprayed areas.

The 1960s were a time of great political upheaval in America, leading to a rash of high-profile assassinations that included U.S. President John F. Kennedy (1963), his brother and presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy (1968), and civil rights activists Malcolm X (1965) and Martin Luther King Jr. (1968).

Lyndon B. Johnson quickly issued an executive order to create the Warren Commission--chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren--to investigate the assassination. The commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and that Oswald was not part of any conspiracy. The results of this investigation are widely disputed, however. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, while 74% thought that there had been a cover-up.

Before Daniel Craig or Pierce Brosnan, there was Sean Connery, who starred in the first James Bond film, Dr. No, in 1962. While the film received mixed reviews upon release, it launched a genre of "secret agent" films that flourished in the 1960s, and has since gained a reputation as one of the best instalments in the Bond series.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a confrontation on August 2, 1964, between the destroyer USS Maddox and three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Although U.S.-backed patrol boats had previously shelled two North Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Tonkin, the incident was reported as an "unprovoked attack" and served as President Johnson's justification for the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

Not having a human donor heart available, James D. Hardy of the University of Mississippi Medical Center transplanted the heart of a chimpanzee into the chest of dying Boyd Rush in the early morning of Jan. 24, 1964. Hardy used a defibrillator to shock the heart to restart beating, which it did for 60 to 90 minutes before Rush died without regaining consciousness.

Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on 13 August 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans had defected from the GDR. Between 1961 and 1989, the Wall prevented almost all such emigration.

Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison before his release in 1990, after which he led efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid. He would go on to serve as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, becoming the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election.