Pop Culture
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HISTORY OF ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, BY THE BEATLES On June 25, 1967, The Beatles released the song “All You Need Is Love.” At that time, they participated in the Our World TV show, which used the recently constructed communication satellite system and broadcast their performance across the globe. Beatles drummer Ringo Starr said…
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HISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: PART 4, ROCK & ROLL It was twenty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play They’ve been going in and out of style But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile Rock & Roll in the late ’60s was exemplified when The Beatles…
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HISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: DRUGS When I was a Resident Assistant at U.C. Berkeley in the early ’70s, a local police officer I knew gave me a tour down nearby Telegraph Avenue. He told me: “All the major drug deals on the West Coast go down within a two block stretch…
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HISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: PART 2, SEX “Make love, not war” and the call for “free love” represented a cultural shift in mores in 1967. Even The Beatles sang “All You Need Is Love.” If the ’60s was the time of the “sexual revolution,” the natural question is: who won? There were…
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HISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK & ROLL The Summer of Love was fifty-five years ago, the Summer of 1967, with its epicenter in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It was a summer of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Both San Francisco and Liverpool celebrated 30-year anniversaries in 1997. While…
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HISTORY OF FIELD OF DREAMS: A Father’s Day Treat One of my all-time favorite movies is not an action movie, a science fiction movie, a comic book blockbuster, or a fantasy film. It’s a baseball movie. Or is it? Is it a movie about Berkeley, Iowa, Fenway Park, or America? It’s all of them, and…
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History of Explo ’72: The Apex of the Jesus Movement, 50 Years Ago Fifty years ago, Explo ’72 was held in Dallas, Texas, from June 12 to June 17, 1972. It was the most conspicuous event of the Jesus Movement, at least in the media. Sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ, it was initially called…
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HISTORY OF D-DAY Why has D-Day captured the imagination of American consciousness for over three-quarters of a century? Seventy-eight years ago, on June 6, 1944, the Allies launched an offensive on the Normandy coast of France to liberate continental Europe from the Nazi German occupation. On Twitter, the hashtag is #DDay78 D-Day was the largest invasion…
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HISTORY OF THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE This week we celebrate the 84th anniversary of the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. On May 27, 1937, the bridge opened to traffic after taking over five years to build. I remember asking my father when I was young: “Why isn’t the Golden Gate Bridge golden?” He didn’t…
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HISTORY OF TOWEL DAY May 25 celebrates Towel Day as a day to honor Douglas Adams, the author of the five (or six) book trilogy Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Created in May of 2001 to mark the passing of English science fiction humor author Douglas Adams, the day is set aside for fans of his…
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HISTORY OF STAR WARS The original Star Wars movie premiered on May 25, 1977. Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away… in Berkeley, in November 1976, I picked up a new science fiction novel called “Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker” by George Lucas. I did not know at the time that…
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HISTORY OF THE WHO’s TOMMY Fifty-three years ago today, on May 23, 1969, the British rock group The Who released the double-album rock opera, Tommy. Commercially the record went Gold in the UK and Double Platinum in the US. Several of the songs were released as singles that charted in the Top 20 in both…
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