U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater announces that he will seek the Republican nomination for President.
January 8 – In his first State of the Union Address, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson declares a “War on Poverty”.
January 18 – Plans to build the New York City World Trade Center are announced.
February 3 – Protesting against alleged de facto school racial segregation, Black and Puerto Rican groups in New York City boycott public schools.
February 6 – Cuba cuts off the normal water supply to the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in reprisal for the U.S. seizure 4 days earlier of 4 Cuban fishing boats off the coast of Florida.
February 7 A Jackson, Mississippi jury, trying Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers in June 1963, reports that it cannot reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial.
February 9 – The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, marking their first live performance on American television. Seen by an estimated 73 million viewers, the appearance becomes the catalyst for the mid-1960s “British Invasion” of American popular music.
February 25 – Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) beats Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, Florida, and is crowned the heavyweight champion of the world.
March 4 – Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa is convicted by a federal jury of tampering with a federal jury in 1962.
Malcolm X, suspended from the Nation of Islam, says in New York City that he is forming a black nationalist party.
The first Ford Mustang rolls off the assembly line at Ford Motor Company.
March 13 – The New York Times misreports that 38 neighbors of Kitty Genovese, 28, fail to respond to her cries, as she is being stabbed to death in Queens, New York City, prompting investigation into the bystander effect.
March 14 – A Dallas, Texas jury finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
March 15 – Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor marry (for the first time) in Montreal.
March 26 – U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara delivers an address that reiterates American determination to give South Vietnam increased military and economic aid, in its war against the Communist insurgency.
March 30 – Merv Griffin’s game show Jeopardy! debuts on NBC; Art Fleming is its first host.
April 4 The Beatles hold the top 5 positions in the Billboard Top 40 singles in America, an unprecedented achievement. The top songs in America as listed on April 4, in order, are: Can’t Buy Me Love, Twist and Shout, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Please Please Me.
From Russia with Love premiers in U.S. movie theaters.
April 13 Sidney Poitier is the first African-American to win an Academy Award in the category Best Actor in a Leading Role in Lilies of the Field.
April 16 The Rolling Stones release their debut album, The Rolling Stones.
Shea Stadium opens in Flushing, New York.
April 20 U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in New York, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, simultaneously announce plans to cut back production of materials for making nuclear weapons.
The 1964 New York World’s Fair opens.
May 2 Senator Barry Goldwater receives more than 75% of the votes in the Texas Republican Presidential primary.
May 12 Twelve young men in New York City publicly burn their draft cards to protest the war; the first such act of war resistance.
June 10 The U.S. Senate votes cloture of the Civil Rights Bill after a 75-day filibuster.
Cologne school massacre: In Cologne, West Germany, Walter Seifert attacks students and teachers in an elementary school with a flamethrower, killing 10 and injuring 21.
June 12 Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton announces his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination, as part of a ‘stop-Goldwater’ movement.
Nelson Mandela and 7 others are sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa, and sent to the Robben Island prison
June 17 – Author Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters embark on their cross-country trip aboard Further (bus) spreading the gospel of LSD.
June 21 Three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, are murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, by local Klansmen and a deputy sheriff.
July 2 – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, officially abolishing racial segregation in the United States.
July 8 – U.S. military personnel announce that U.S. casualties in Vietnam have risen to 1,387, including 399 dead and 17 MIA.
July 16 – At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, U.S. presidential nominee Barry Goldwater declares that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”, and “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”.
July 18 Six days of race riots begin in Harlem.
July 27 – Vietnam War: The U.S. sends 5,000 more military advisers to South Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
August 1 The Final Looney Tune, “Señorella and the Glass Huarache”, is released before the Warner Bros. Cartoon Division is shut down by Jack Warner.
August 4 American civil rights movement: The bodies of murdered civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found.
Vietnam War: United States destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy are attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga sinks one gunboat, while the other two leave the battle.
August 7 – Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.
August 8 – A Rolling Stones gig in Scheveningen gets out of control. Riot police end the gig after about 15 minutes, upon which spectators start to fight the riot police.
August 18 – The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from the Tokyo Olympics on the grounds that its teams are racially segregated.
August 24–27 – The Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City nominates incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnsonfor a full term, and U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate.
August 27 – Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins has its world premiere in Los Angeles.
August 28–30 – Philadelphia 1964 race riot: Tensions between African American residents and police lead to 341 injuries and 774 arrests.
September 11 – In Jacksonville, Florida, John Lennon announces that the Beatles will not play to a segregated audience.
September 16 – Shindig! premieres on the ABC, featuring the top musical acts of the Sixties.
September 17 Goldfinger opens in the UK.
Bewitched, starring Elizabeth Montgomery, premieres on ABC.
September 24 – The Warren Commission Report, the first official investigation of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, is published.
September – Pete Townshend of The Who destroys his first guitar in the name of auto-destructive art at the Railway Hotel, London.
October – Dr. Robert Moog demonstrates the prototype Moog synthesizer.
October 1 Three thousand student activists at University of California, Berkeley, surround and block a police car from taking a CORE volunteer arrested for not showing his ID, when he violated a ban on outdoor activist card tables. This protest eventually explodes into the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
October 5 Twenty-three men and thirty-one women escape to West Berlin through a narrow tunnel under the Berlin Wall.
October 10–24 – The 1964 Summer Olympics are held in Tokyo
October 14 – American civil rights movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States.
October 14–15 – Nikita Khrushchev is deposed as leader of the Soviet Union; Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin assume power.
October 15 The Labour Party wins the parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom, ending 13 years of Conservative Party rule. The new prime minister is Harold Wilson.
Craig Breedlove’s jet-powered car Spirit of America goes out of control in Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and makes skid marks 9.6 km long.
The People’s Republic of China explodes an atomic bomb in Sinkiang.
October 24 – Northern Rhodesia, a former British protectorate, becomes the independent Republic of Zambia, ending 73 years of British rule.
October 26 – Eric Edgar Cooke becomes the last man executed in Western Australia, for murdering 8 citizens in Perth between 1959 and 1963.
November 3 United States presidential election, 1964: Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Republican challenger Barry Goldwater with over 60 percent of the popular vote.
November 9 – The House of Commons of the United Kingdom votes to abolish the death penalty for murder in Britain.
The Verrazano–Narrows Bridge across New York Bay opens to traffic (the world’s longest suspension bridge at this time).
November 28 Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965.
Vietnam War: United States National Security Council members, including Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and Maxwell Taylor, agree to recommend a plan for a 2-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam, to President Lyndon B. Johnson.
France performs an underground nuclear test at Ecker, Algeria.
December 3 Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Police arrest about 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover of and massive sit-in at the Sproul Hall administration building.
December 6 – The 1-hour stop-motion animated special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, based on the popular Christmas song, premieres on NBC. It becomes a beloved Christmas tradition, still being shown on television more than 50 years later.
December 11 Sam Cooke, African-American singer and songwriter was shot and killed at a motel in Los Angeles, California.
December 11 – Che Guevara addresses the U.N. General Assembly.
December 14 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that, in accordance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, establishments providing public accommodation must refrain from racial discrimination.
December 22 Comedian Lenny Bruce is sentenced to 4 months in prison, concluding a 6-month obscenity trial.