This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first single. But as Love Me Do UK hit record stores, a number of issues - from the Cold War to the civil rights and sexual liberation - also began to shape a tumultuous decade and banish the austere ambiance years 1950
1962: a year of theater - in pictures
On 5 October 1962, a new wave of sound filled the nation. It was rudimentary, simple, straightforward and sexy. "Love, Love Me Do," Lennon and McCartney sang: "You know I love you." The Beatles had arrived, and a new generation had a new soundtrack to your life. Seventeen years after Day victory and VJ Day, the war was over. Rien - in culture, in society, in everyday life itself - would never be the same
When, exactly, the 1960s began? Was it when John F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Presidency (January 31, 1960)? When Harold Macmillan acknowledged the "wind of change" sweeping colonial Africa (February 3)? Or when the hotel chain Princess Margaret announced her engagement to a commoner, the photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones, February 26? Or was when Kennedy finally won the U.S. presidential election, a hair November 9
Some go further and deny that any transition has occurred until the new U.S. president, exciting, was sworn in ice blue on the morning of January 20, 1961. Until then, they say, the West was still under the influence of the sclerotic gerontocracy represented by Eisenhower and Khrushchev. One thing is certain: the 1950s took the time to pass into the limbo of lost time
In our reconciliation with the past, never underestimate the power of a line of very good quality. For Philip Larkin, the "annus mirabilis" confirming his discovery of sex, and so start the new decade, famous fallen ("a little late for me") between "the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP." From Larkin, has become commonplace to suggest that only 60 slipped out of bed to face the world as late as 1963.
Really? Almanac columns joyless contains evidence that the 60 actually began in October 1962. United States, for example, Monday, October 1 was the day the first black student, James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi white above. The civil rights activists were in motion. This was the month that has become a link between tight gray days of the 50s and the decade Technicolor.
We are, in other words, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of a moment of inattention when baby boomers burst through the door of a heavily guarded this decrease in the courtyard striking near future. Even before October 1962 looks promising as the dawn of a new decade.
In January, the first recording of the Beatles, a song called My Bonnie, credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, was released by Polydor. In February the United States to put an astronaut into orbit for the first time, when John Glenn was launched from Cape Canaveral on Friendship 7. After three circuits of the Earth, Glenn fell into the Atlantic. The race to the moon - a major challenge of the 60s - began
The
April 7, in a note, the phenomenon is not yet known as the "popular culture", a Brian Jones was presented to two young musicians, Philip Michael (Mick ') Jagger and Keith Richards in a jazz club in Ealing, west London. They formed their band, The Rolling Stones, later this year. A documentary that will be shown at London Film Festival next month is devoted to what happened next.
on April 16, there was more music for all ages: folk singer Bob Dylan, who recently released his first album Blowin 'in the Wind at a club in West 4th Street, New York City. During that time, June 14
Steptoe and Son
began a 12-year career in the BBC television, where he became, in the words of one critic, " the popular comedy in the history of British television. "
1962 was also an important year in the politics of the Cold War. In June, the second phase of construction of the Berlin Wall began. In the months that followed, several German fugitives died in the land of no man, a battlefield of mines and barbed wire.
Marilyn Monroe, August 5 was found dead in his bed in Los Angeles from an overdose of Nembutal. The next day, Nelson Mandela was arrested in South Africa, he was convicted of sabotage and, after escaping the gallows, sentenced to life
shot in autumn, and 60 came with the sound of the blues "harmonic spring" and a hint of sadomasochism: the release of Love Me Do and the UK premiere of the film James Bond first Dr No
the same day, Friday, October 5. Beatles raw candor of the working class, mixed with John Lennon riff teenager was the blood of the nation as a drug .
overnight, it seemed, there was a new style, language and rhythm, adding a new set of possibilities private, personal. The contraceptive pill (available in the UK since January 1961) was released from the tyranny of sex condom sad. The 50 "gramophone" became the 60 "turntable". Suddenly, I was hunting in the words of Lennon and McCartney, "someone to love, someone new."
Time flows like a river wide, but the story is in strange eddies and sudden floods. Prime Minister of the time, Harold Macmillan, was asked about the most likely threat to the stability of his government. "Events, dear boy, events," muttered the old Etonian languishing. Credits had rolled right
Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, popularly known as the Second Vatican Council, and the inspiration of the famous satirical song Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag.
more importantly, began a process of liberalization of the church and sponsorship in the Catholic Church a review of marital sexuality. Replicas of these debates continue to spread through the conservative papacy of Pope Benedict XVI. The problems faced by the Second Vatican Council remain at the heart of Catholicism in international relations, nuclear weapons make peace on earth.
In 1962 political superpower remains the archetypal post-war. On October 14, the day after the first Broadway Edward Albee 
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
(who placed another ancient institution - marriage - to honor) ?, An American spy plane had photographed four mobile launchers of Soviet nuclear missiles in western Cuba. On October 22, Kennedy passed that "unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites" had been set up in Cuba by the Soviet Union "to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere . "He continued:" I call on Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this threat illegal, irresponsible and provocative for world peace. " The world held its breath. With this Armageddon? After the missile crisis, the fate of the earth thought crystallized progressive left. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, founded in 1957, has acquired a new purpose. The Aldermaston March, the symbol of the NDA and its slogan "Ban the Bomb" became an integral part of the youth culture of the 1960s, the policy of the Labour Party and in the 1980s.
On October 28, after several days of suspense unbearable, the response of Moscow radio station Khrushchev, "interrupted work on the construction of weapons." As Khrushchev promised to "dismantle weapons, boxes and return to the Soviet Union," ships carrying missiles turned toward the middle of the ocean. Terrifying In this confrontation, it was said that the Russians had "flicker ".
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