What Life Was Like 50 Years Ago Compared to Now
The world has changed a lot, mostly for the better.
Getting cash required a trip to the bank.
Although Barclays introduced the world's first automated teller machine in London in 1967, ATMs didn't make their way across the big pond until 1969.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The were no 'R' rated movies.
Or any other rated films, in fact. The voluntary Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system replaced the all-or-nothing Motion Picture Production Code on Nov. 1, 1968 with G, M, R, and X designations.
RELATED: 10 of the Best Movies for Kids Coming Out In 2018
PHOTO: Getty Images
The Beatles were still a band.
The group released their White Album and their movie, Yellow Submarine, in November 1968.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Humans hadn't walked on the moon.
In 1968, the first manned spacecraft reached the moon and safely returned on Dec. 21 with Apollo 8—seven months before Apollo 11's actual moon landing.
RELATED: 60 Unforgettable Things That Happened in the 1960s
PHOTO: Getty Images
There was no MLK Jr. Day.
Congressman John Conyers Jr. introduced legislation to create the holiday shortly after Dr. King's assassination on April 4, 1968, but it took 15 years and a petition signed by more than 3 million people to make it a reality. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1983 and it was first observed on Jan. 15, 1986.
Pictured: Dr. King's widow Coretta Scott King, son Dexter, and sister Christine Farris with President Reagan.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Housing discrimination was rampant.
President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also called the Fair Housing Act, on April 11, 1968, just seven days after King's assassination. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or national origin when renting or selling a home.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Couples married much earlier in life.
In 1968, the median age of first marriage was 20 for women and 23 for men. Back then, close to 70 percent of American adults were married; today only 51 percent are, according to a Pew Research Center study from 2011. The modern bride is 26.5 years old on average and the groom 28.7.
Pictured: Julie Nixon, daughter of President Richard Nixon, and David Eisenhower, grandson of former President Dwight Eisenhower, on their wedding day, Dec. 22, 1968.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Secret Service didn't protect presidential candidates.
After presidential hopeful Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on the campaign trail on June 5, 1968, Congress passed legislation calling for Secret Service protection for major presidential candidates.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The drinking age was 18.
It became 21 when Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act on July 17, 1984.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Interracial romance wasn't for TV.
William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols broke that barrier with a kiss on Nov. 2, 1968 in the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren." Before it aired, NBC censors reportedly expressed concern that Southern TV affiliates would refuse to run it.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Seatbelts weren't mandatory.
The first federal seatbelt law, requiring all new cars to have a belt for each seat, took effect in1968, but it would be decades before the first state law that required wearing one—that happened in New York on December 1, 1984.
RELATED: 27 Things '60s Kids Did That Would Horrify Us Now
PHOTO: Getty Images
A gallon of gas cost 34 cents.
That's the equivalent of $2.31 today when adjusted for inflation—very comparable to today's national average of $2.48 a gallon.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Air travel was for the privileged.
The 1969 debut of the Boeing 747, which could hold double the number of passengers as its predecessor, the 707, led to a dramatic drop in flight prices.
RELATED: Everything You Need to Know About Airplane Etiquette
PHOTO: Getty Images
9-1-1 didn't exist.
A single, nationwide phone number for emergency assistance was established in1968 following a meeting between the FCC and AT&T. The digits 9-1-1 were chosen because they had never before been used as an area code or other service code.
Pictured: 911 call center workers in Los Angeles circa 1996.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Lead-based paint was all the rage.
Widely used in homes and schools, the hazardous substance wasn't banned until 1978, which is why the CDC recommends that children and pregnant women stay away from any homes built before then that are undergoing renovation.
RELATED: 8 of the Most Famous Paint Colors In American History
PHOTO: Getty Images
Cars weren't equipped with airbags.
The automated safety devices were invented in 1968 and developed to deploy on impact, inflating with nitrogen gas.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Heart transplants weren't an option.
Although South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard completed the first successful heart transplant in 1967, the first adult heart transplant in the U.S. took place at the Stanford University Hospital in 1968. Of the roughly 100 heart transplants worldwide that year, only a third were successful beyond three months.
Pictured: A mock operating theatre at the Heart of Cape Town museum at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Dialing involved clockwise finger rotation.
Push-button phones became available commercially in1963, but rotary phones remained popular for household use until well into the '70s.
RELATED: What Vintage Phones Are Worth Now
PHOTO: Getty Images
Phone calls meant staying in one spot.
Unless you had a really long cord. A cordless phone prototype was invented in 1965, but it didn't become popular for residential use until the early '80s. The first cell phone came along in 1979, followed by the digital cell phone 1988.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Local calls were only 7 digits.
Calling someone in the same town didn't require an area code until the early 2000s, when, the New York Times reported, telecomm regulators began facing "number exhaustion" due to an expanding population.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Getting a credit card was a breeze.
In fact, many were opened by credit card companies on behalf of the recipient without their consent. Consumers received active cards in the mail that they hadn't even applied for. The Unsolicited Credit Card Act of 1970 put a stop to that practice.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Chicken pox killed 100 children a year in the U.S.
Before a vaccine came along in 1995, rest and calamine lotion were the best treatments for the itchy disease.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Catholics were okay with the pill.
Pope Paul VI hadn't yet released his July 1968 report, Humanae Vitae ("on human life"), doubling down on the church's anti-contraceptive stance, which some cardinals and bishops had previously voted to roll back.
RELATED: The Pope Has a Dress Code That Even Presidents and Royals Must Follow
PHOTO: Getty Images
No U.S. president had ever resigned.
Although that would soon change: President Richard Nixon was elected in1968.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Soda cans had pull tabs.
Beaches used to be littered with the shrapnel of discarded soda-can pull tabs (hence the Jimmy Buffett lyrics "I blew out my flip flop/Stepped on a pop top") prior to the invention of the push-through tab in 1975.
PHOTO: Flickr Creative Commons/Roadside Pictures
Cigarette ads played on TV.
Prior to a ban that became effective September 1970, tobacco companies advertised on TV and radio for the general U.S. population to see and hear—including little eyes and ears.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Lenders could discriminate based on gender or race.
When the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed in 1974, it outlawed discrimination against applicants based on gender, race, marital status, national origin, or religion.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Skin cancer was an afterthought.
Although the first effective sunscreens were developed in the 1940s, they generally had SPFs below 10. The FDA proposed its first sunscreen guidelines in 1978, simply stating, "In the long run, suntanning is not good for the skin."
PHOTO: Getty Images
Playgrounds were relatively dangerous.
Hot metal slides, see-saws that required way too much trust in your fellow kid, and tire swings that harbored spiders and other insects were just the beginning.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Builders still used hazardous materials like asbestos.
The EPA's ban on asbestos-laden fireproofing and other installation didn't happen until 1973.
Pictured: A technician removes asbestos from a New York City apartment building in 1995.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Getting kids to take their vitamins was a challenge.
Yummy Flintstones vitamins hit the market in 1968 but the real kid favorite, gummy vitamins, didn't appear until 1997.
PHOTO: Flickr Creative Commons/Mike Mozart
Millions more people suffered from untreated depression.
Prozac, the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), entered the market in 1987. Since then, more than 35 million people around the world have taken the drug to combat symptoms of depression.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The internet hadn't even been invented.
The internet's predecessor, ARPAnet, developed as an alternative means of government communication should telephones fail, sent its first message in 1969. Pictured above is the first Interface Message Processor (IMP), similar to a rudimentary Wi-Fi router.
PHOTO: Flickr Creative Commons/Andrew 'FastLizard4' Adams
There was no fast track to fat loss.
Italian gynecologist Giorgio Fischer invented liposuction in 1974.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Computers took up entire rooms.
Floppy disks and microprocessors made the devices more manageable in the '70s, but IBM's PC (1981) and Apple's Macintosh (1984) brought the computer home.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Child car seats weren't regulated.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration set the first standards in 1971, requiring that all seats be held by safety belts and include a harness to keep the child in place.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Millions more people sported eyeglasses.
Glass contact lenses existed, but a more comfortable alternative became available in 1971 with the debut of soft contact lenses, followed by disposables 16 years later.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Babe Ruth was still the Home Run King.
Hank Aaron beat Ruth's record for the most home runs in 1974, and the current record holder, Barry Bonds, surpassed Aaron in 2007 with 755.
Pictured: President Warren G. Harding shakes hands with Ruth at Yankee Stadium, 1923.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Walmart was a mom-and-pop.
The Walton Family had just 24 stores in 1967. Walmart became a publicly traded company in 1970.
PHOTO: Getty Images
'Made in China' items were hard to find.
The Korean War put a freeze on all U.S.-China trade and travel until the early '70s, when President Nixon's administration reestablished diplomatic relations.
PHOTO: Getty Images
There were only three major TV networks.
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, pictured above, aired on one of them: NBC. ABC and CBS were the other two. (A previous contender, DuMont, shut down in 1956.) Fox joined the lineup in 1986 but didn't earn "major network" status until 1994.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Iran was America's ally.
Diplomatic relations crumbled after Iran's 1979 revolution, which overthrew the pro-American Shah (pictured with Queen Farah and their daughter in London) and installed anti-American Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iran Hostage Crisis later that year further complicated matters.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The U.S. was at war in Vietnam.
Despite widespread protests, the Vietnam War continued until April 30, 1975, bringing the total conflict time to 19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day.
PHOTO: Getty Images
And the draft was active.
The government employed conscription from 1940 until 1973, even during times of peace, to supplement armed forces without enough voluntary recruits. Muhammad Ali, above, right, was convicted of draft evasion in 1967 after refusing to join because of religious objections. His conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The environment was an afterthought.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed in 1970.
PHOTO: Getty Images
No one cared about bottled water.
Americans preferred soda or beer. That is until Perrier launched a mass marketing campaign in 1977 to attract status-hungry Baby Boomers.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The U.S. Senate had never had a black woman representative.
Carol Moseley Braun made history when she was elected to the Senate on Nov. 3, 1992.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Corporal punishment was widely used in public schools.
In 1977, the Supreme Court upheld that the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishments" clause did not apply to disciplinary actions in schools in the case Ingraham v. Wright. At the time only two states had laws against corporal punishment in schools. (Today, 19 states still find inflicting bodily pain an acceptable means of discipline.)
PHOTO: Getty Images
Radio was the only means of portable music.
Until Stereobelt developed the first portable cassette player in '72, transistor radio was it.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Sports and politics rarely intertwined.
Which is why U.S. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos made headlines worldwide with their Black Power salutes during the 1968 games. "If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say 'a Negro.' We are black and we are proud of being black," Smith later said.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Getting cash required a trip to the bank.
Although Barclays introduced the world's first automated teller machine in London in 1967, ATMs didn't make their way across the big pond until 1969.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The were no 'R' rated movies.
Or any other rated films, in fact. The voluntary Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system replaced the all-or-nothing Motion Picture Production Code on Nov. 1, 1968 with G, M, R, and X designations.
RELATED: 10 of the Best Movies for Kids Coming Out In 2018
PHOTO: Getty Images
The Beatles were still a band.
The group released their White Album and their movie, Yellow Submarine, in November 1968.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Humans hadn't walked on the moon.
In 1968, the first manned spacecraft reached the moon and safely returned on Dec. 21 with Apollo 8—seven months before Apollo 11's actual moon landing.
RELATED: 60 Unforgettable Things That Happened in the 1960s
PHOTO: Getty Images
There was no MLK Jr. Day.
Congressman John Conyers Jr. introduced legislation to create the holiday shortly after Dr. King's assassination on April 4, 1968, but it took 15 years and a petition signed by more than 3 million people to make it a reality. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1983 and it was first observed on Jan. 15, 1986.
Pictured: Dr. King's widow Coretta Scott King, son Dexter, and sister Christine Farris with President Reagan.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Housing discrimination was rampant.
President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also called the Fair Housing Act, on April 11, 1968, just seven days after King's assassination. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or national origin when renting or selling a home.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Couples married much earlier in life.
In 1968, the median age of first marriage was 20 for women and 23 for men. Back then, close to 70 percent of American adults were married; today only 51 percent are, according to a Pew Research Center study from 2011. The modern bride is 26.5 years old on average and the groom 28.7.
Pictured: Julie Nixon, daughter of President Richard Nixon, and David Eisenhower, grandson of former President Dwight Eisenhower, on their wedding day, Dec. 22, 1968.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Secret Service didn't protect presidential candidates.
After presidential hopeful Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on the campaign trail on June 5, 1968, Congress passed legislation calling for Secret Service protection for major presidential candidates.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The drinking age was 18.
It became 21 when Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act on July 17, 1984.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Interracial romance wasn't for TV.
William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols broke that barrier with a kiss on Nov. 2, 1968 in the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren." Before it aired, NBC censors reportedly expressed concern that Southern TV affiliates would refuse to run it.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Seatbelts weren't mandatory.
The first federal seatbelt law, requiring all new cars to have a belt for each seat, took effect in1968, but it would be decades before the first state law that required wearing one—that happened in New York on December 1, 1984.
RELATED: 27 Things '60s Kids Did That Would Horrify Us Now
PHOTO: Getty Images
A gallon of gas cost 34 cents.
That's the equivalent of $2.31 today when adjusted for inflation—very comparable to today's national average of $2.48 a gallon.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Air travel was for the privileged.
The 1969 debut of the Boeing 747, which could hold double the number of passengers as its predecessor, the 707, led to a dramatic drop in flight prices.
RELATED: Everything You Need to Know About Airplane Etiquette
PHOTO: Getty Images
9-1-1 didn't exist.
A single, nationwide phone number for emergency assistance was established in1968 following a meeting between the FCC and AT&T. The digits 9-1-1 were chosen because they had never before been used as an area code or other service code.
Pictured: 911 call center workers in Los Angeles circa 1996.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Lead-based paint was all the rage.
Widely used in homes and schools, the hazardous substance wasn't banned until 1978, which is why the CDC recommends that children and pregnant women stay away from any homes built before then that are undergoing renovation.
RELATED: 8 of the Most Famous Paint Colors In American History
PHOTO: Getty Images
Cars weren't equipped with airbags.
The automated safety devices were invented in 1968 and developed to deploy on impact, inflating with nitrogen gas.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Heart transplants weren't an option.
Although South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard completed the first successful heart transplant in 1967, the first adult heart transplant in the U.S. took place at the Stanford University Hospital in 1968. Of the roughly 100 heart transplants worldwide that year, only a third were successful beyond three months.
Pictured: A mock operating theatre at the Heart of Cape Town museum at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Dialing involved clockwise finger rotation.
Push-button phones became available commercially in1963, but rotary phones remained popular for household use until well into the '70s.
RELATED: What Vintage Phones Are Worth Now
PHOTO: Getty Images
Phone calls meant staying in one spot.
Unless you had a really long cord. A cordless phone prototype was invented in 1965, but it didn't become popular for residential use until the early '80s. The first cell phone came along in 1979, followed by the digital cell phone 1988.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Local calls were only 7 digits.
Calling someone in the same town didn't require an area code until the early 2000s, when, the New York Times reported, telecomm regulators began facing "number exhaustion" due to an expanding population.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Getting a credit card was a breeze.
In fact, many were opened by credit card companies on behalf of the recipient without their consent. Consumers received active cards in the mail that they hadn't even applied for. The Unsolicited Credit Card Act of 1970 put a stop to that practice.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Chicken pox killed 100 children a year in the U.S.
Before a vaccine came along in 1995, rest and calamine lotion were the best treatments for the itchy disease.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Catholics were okay with the pill.
Pope Paul VI hadn't yet released his July 1968 report, Humanae Vitae ("on human life"), doubling down on the church's anti-contraceptive stance, which some cardinals and bishops had previously voted to roll back.
RELATED: The Pope Has a Dress Code That Even Presidents and Royals Must Follow
PHOTO: Getty Images
No U.S. president had ever resigned.
Although that would soon change: President Richard Nixon was elected in1968.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Soda cans had pull tabs.
Beaches used to be littered with the shrapnel of discarded soda-can pull tabs (hence the Jimmy Buffett lyrics "I blew out my flip flop/Stepped on a pop top") prior to the invention of the push-through tab in 1975.
PHOTO: Flickr Creative Commons/Roadside Pictures
Cigarette ads played on TV.
Prior to a ban that became effective September 1970, tobacco companies advertised on TV and radio for the general U.S. population to see and hear—including little eyes and ears.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Lenders could discriminate based on gender or race.
When the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed in 1974, it outlawed discrimination against applicants based on gender, race, marital status, national origin, or religion.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Skin cancer was an afterthought.
Although the first effective sunscreens were developed in the 1940s, they generally had SPFs below 10. The FDA proposed its first sunscreen guidelines in 1978, simply stating, "In the long run, suntanning is not good for the skin."
PHOTO: Getty Images
Playgrounds were relatively dangerous.
Hot metal slides, see-saws that required way too much trust in your fellow kid, and tire swings that harbored spiders and other insects were just the beginning.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Builders still used hazardous materials like asbestos.
The EPA's ban on asbestos-laden fireproofing and other installation didn't happen until 1973.
Pictured: A technician removes asbestos from a New York City apartment building in 1995.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Getting kids to take their vitamins was a challenge.
Yummy Flintstones vitamins hit the market in 1968 but the real kid favorite, gummy vitamins, didn't appear until 1997.
PHOTO: Flickr Creative Commons/Mike Mozart
Millions more people suffered from untreated depression.
Prozac, the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), entered the market in 1987. Since then, more than 35 million people around the world have taken the drug to combat symptoms of depression.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The internet hadn't even been invented.
The internet's predecessor, ARPAnet, developed as an alternative means of government communication should telephones fail, sent its first message in 1969. Pictured above is the first Interface Message Processor (IMP), similar to a rudimentary Wi-Fi router.
PHOTO: Flickr Creative Commons/Andrew 'FastLizard4' Adams
There was no fast track to fat loss.
Italian gynecologist Giorgio Fischer invented liposuction in 1974.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Computers took up entire rooms.
Floppy disks and microprocessors made the devices more manageable in the '70s, but IBM's PC (1981) and Apple's Macintosh (1984) brought the computer home.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Child car seats weren't regulated.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration set the first standards in 1971, requiring that all seats be held by safety belts and include a harness to keep the child in place.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Millions more people sported eyeglasses.
Glass contact lenses existed, but a more comfortable alternative became available in 1971 with the debut of soft contact lenses, followed by disposables 16 years later.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Babe Ruth was still the Home Run King.
Hank Aaron beat Ruth's record for the most home runs in 1974, and the current record holder, Barry Bonds, surpassed Aaron in 2007 with 755.
Pictured: President Warren G. Harding shakes hands with Ruth at Yankee Stadium, 1923.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Walmart was a mom-and-pop.
The Walton Family had just 24 stores in 1967. Walmart became a publicly traded company in 1970.
PHOTO: Getty Images
'Made in China' items were hard to find.
The Korean War put a freeze on all U.S.-China trade and travel until the early '70s, when President Nixon's administration reestablished diplomatic relations.
PHOTO: Getty Images
There were only three major TV networks.
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, pictured above, aired on one of them: NBC. ABC and CBS were the other two. (A previous contender, DuMont, shut down in 1956.) Fox joined the lineup in 1986 but didn't earn "major network" status until 1994.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Iran was America's ally.
Diplomatic relations crumbled after Iran's 1979 revolution, which overthrew the pro-American Shah (pictured with Queen Farah and their daughter in London) and installed anti-American Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iran Hostage Crisis later that year further complicated matters.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The U.S. was at war in Vietnam.
Despite widespread protests, the Vietnam War continued until April 30, 1975, bringing the total conflict time to 19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day.
PHOTO: Getty Images
And the draft was active.
The government employed conscription from 1940 until 1973, even during times of peace, to supplement armed forces without enough voluntary recruits. Muhammad Ali, above, right, was convicted of draft evasion in 1967 after refusing to join because of religious objections. His conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The environment was an afterthought.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed in 1970.
PHOTO: Getty Images
No one cared about bottled water.
Americans preferred soda or beer. That is until Perrier launched a mass marketing campaign in 1977 to attract status-hungry Baby Boomers.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The U.S. Senate had never had a black woman representative.
Carol Moseley Braun made history when she was elected to the Senate on Nov. 3, 1992.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Corporal punishment was widely used in public schools.
In 1977, the Supreme Court upheld that the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishments" clause did not apply to disciplinary actions in schools in the case Ingraham v. Wright. At the time only two states had laws against corporal punishment in schools. (Today, 19 states still find inflicting bodily pain an acceptable means of discipline.)
PHOTO: Getty Images
Radio was the only means of portable music.
Until Stereobelt developed the first portable cassette player in '72, transistor radio was it.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Sports and politics rarely intertwined.
Which is why U.S. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos made headlines worldwide with their Black Power salutes during the 1968 games. "If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say 'a Negro.' We are black and we are proud of being black," Smith later said.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Getting cash required a trip to the bank.
Although Barclays introduced the world's first automated teller machine in London in 1967, ATMs didn't make their way across the big pond until 1969.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The were no 'R' rated movies.
Or any other rated films, in fact. The voluntary Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system replaced the all-or-nothing Motion Picture Production Code on Nov. 1, 1968 with G, M, R, and X designations.
RELATED: 10 of the Best Movies for Kids Coming Out In 2018
PHOTO: Getty Images
The Beatles were still a band.
The group released their White Album and their movie, Yellow Submarine, in November 1968.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Humans hadn't walked on the moon.
In 1968, the first manned spacecraft reached the moon and safely returned on Dec. 21 with Apollo 8—seven months before Apollo 11's actual moon landing.
RELATED: 60 Unforgettable Things That Happened in the 1960s
PHOTO: Getty Images
There was no MLK Jr. Day.
Congressman John Conyers Jr. introduced legislation to create the holiday shortly after Dr. King's assassination on April 4, 1968, but it took 15 years and a petition signed by more than 3 million people to make it a reality. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1983 and it was first observed on Jan. 15, 1986.
Pictured: Dr. King's widow Coretta Scott King, son Dexter, and sister Christine Farris with President Reagan.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Housing discrimination was rampant.
President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also called the Fair Housing Act, on April 11, 1968, just seven days after King's assassination. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or national origin when renting or selling a home.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Couples married much earlier in life.
In 1968, the median age of first marriage was 20 for women and 23 for men. Back then, close to 70 percent of American adults were married; today only 51 percent are, according to a Pew Research Center study from 2011. The modern bride is 26.5 years old on average and the groom 28.7.
Pictured: Julie Nixon, daughter of President Richard Nixon, and David Eisenhower, grandson of former President Dwight Eisenhower, on their wedding day, Dec. 22, 1968.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Secret Service didn't protect presidential candidates.
After presidential hopeful Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on the campaign trail on June 5, 1968, Congress passed legislation calling for Secret Service protection for major presidential candidates.
PHOTO: Getty Images
The drinking age was 18.
It became 21 when Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act on July 17, 1984.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Interracial romance wasn't for TV.
William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols broke that barrier with a kiss on Nov. 2, 1968 in the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren." Before it aired, NBC censors reportedly expressed concern that Southern TV affiliates would refuse to run it.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Seatbelts weren't mandatory.
The first federal seatbelt law, requiring all new cars to have a belt for each seat, took effect in1968, but it would be decades before the first state law that required wearing one—that happened in New York on December 1, 1984.
RELATED: 27 Things '60s Kids Did That Would Horrify Us Now
PHOTO: Getty Images
A gallon of gas cost 34 cents.
That's the equivalent of $2.31 today when adjusted for inflation—very comparable to today's national average of $2.48 a gallon.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Air travel was for the privileged.
The 1969 debut of the Boeing 747, which could hold double the number of passengers as its predecessor, the 707, led to a dramatic drop in flight prices.
RELATED: Everything You Need to Know About Airplane Etiquette
PHOTO: Getty Images
9-1-1 didn't exist.
A single, nationwide phone number for emergency assistance was established in1968 following a meeting between the FCC and AT&T. The digits 9-1-1 were chosen because they had never before been used as an area code or other service code.
Pictured: 911 call center workers in Los Angeles circa 1996.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Lead-based paint was all the rage.
Widely used in homes and schools, the hazardous substance wasn't banned until 1978, which is why the CDC recommends that children and pregnant women stay away from any homes built before then that are undergoing renovation.
RELATED: 8 of the Most Famous Paint Colors In American History
PHOTO: Getty Images
Cars weren't equipped with airbags.
The automated safety devices were invented in 1968 and developed to deploy on impact, inflating with nitrogen gas.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Heart transplants weren't an option.
Although South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard completed the first successful heart transplant in 1967, the first adult heart transplant in the U.S. took place at the Stanford University Hospital in 1968. Of the roughly 100 heart transplants worldwide that year, only a third were successful beyond three months.
Pictured: A mock operating theatre at the Heart of Cape Town museum at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Dialing involved clockwise finger rotation.
Push-button phones became available commercially in1963, but rotary phones remained popular for household use until well into the '70s.
RELATED: What Vintage Phones Are Worth Now
PHOTO: Getty Images
Phone calls meant staying in one spot.
Unless you had a really long cord. A cordless phone prototype was invented in 1965, but it didn't become popular for residential use until the early '80s. The first cell phone came along in 1979, followed by the digital cell phone 1988.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Local calls were only 7 digits.
Calling someone in the same town didn't require an area code until the early 2000s, when, the New York Times reported, telecomm regulators began facing "number exhaustion" due to an expanding population.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Getting a credit card was a breeze.
In fact, many were opened by credit card companies on behalf of the recipient without their consent. Consumers received active cards in the mail that they hadn't even applied for. The Unsolicited Credit Card Act of 1970 put a stop to that practice.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Chicken pox killed 100 children a year in the U.S.
Before a vaccine came along in 1995, rest and calamine lotion were the best treatments for the itchy disease.
PHOTO: Getty Images
Catholics were okay with the pill.
Pope Paul VI hadn't yet released his July 1968 report, Humanae Vitae ("on human life"), doubling down on the church's anti-contraceptive stance, which some cardinals and bishops had previously voted to roll back.
RELATED: The Pope Has a Dress Code That Even Presidents and Royals Must Follow
PHOTO: Getty Images
No U.S. president had ever resigned.
Although that would soon change: President Richard Nixon was elected in1968.
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Soda cans had pull tabs.
Beaches used to be littered with the shrapnel of discarded soda-can pull tabs (hence the Jimmy Buffett lyrics "I blew out my flip flop/Stepped on a pop top") prior to the invention of the push-through tab in 1975.
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Cigarette ads played on TV.
Prior to a ban that became effective September 1970, tobacco companies advertised on TV and radio for the general U.S. population to see and hear—including little eyes and ears.
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Lenders could discriminate based on gender or race.
When the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed in 1974, it outlawed discrimination against applicants based on gender, race, marital status, national origin, or religion.
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Skin cancer was an afterthought.
Although the first effective sunscreens were developed in the 1940s, they generally had SPFs below 10. The FDA proposed its first sunscreen guidelines in 1978, simply stating, "In the long run, suntanning is not good for the skin."
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Playgrounds were relatively dangerous.
Hot metal slides, see-saws that required way too much trust in your fellow kid, and tire swings that harbored spiders and other insects were just the beginning.
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Builders still used hazardous materials like asbestos.
The EPA's ban on asbestos-laden fireproofing and other installation didn't happen until 1973.
Pictured: A technician removes asbestos from a New York City apartment building in 1995.
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Getting kids to take their vitamins was a challenge.
Yummy Flintstones vitamins hit the market in 1968 but the real kid favorite, gummy vitamins, didn't appear until 1997.
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Millions more people suffered from untreated depression.
Prozac, the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), entered the market in 1987. Since then, more than 35 million people around the world have taken the drug to combat symptoms of depression.
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The internet hadn't even been invented.
The internet's predecessor, ARPAnet, developed as an alternative means of government communication should telephones fail, sent its first message in 1969. Pictured above is the first Interface Message Processor (IMP), similar to a rudimentary Wi-Fi router.
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There was no fast track to fat loss.
Italian gynecologist Giorgio Fischer invented liposuction in 1974.
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Computers took up entire rooms.
Floppy disks and microprocessors made the devices more manageable in the '70s, but IBM's PC (1981) and Apple's Macintosh (1984) brought the computer home.
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Child car seats weren't regulated.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration set the first standards in 1971, requiring that all seats be held by safety belts and include a harness to keep the child in place.
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Millions more people sported eyeglasses.
Glass contact lenses existed, but a more comfortable alternative became available in 1971 with the debut of soft contact lenses, followed by disposables 16 years later.
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Babe Ruth was still the Home Run King.
Hank Aaron beat Ruth's record for the most home runs in 1974, and the current record holder, Barry Bonds, surpassed Aaron in 2007 with 755.
Pictured: President Warren G. Harding shakes hands with Ruth at Yankee Stadium, 1923.
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Walmart was a mom-and-pop.
The Walton Family had just 24 stores in 1967. Walmart became a publicly traded company in 1970.
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'Made in China' items were hard to find.
The Korean War put a freeze on all U.S.-China trade and travel until the early '70s, when President Nixon's administration reestablished diplomatic relations.
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There were only three major TV networks.
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, pictured above, aired on one of them: NBC. ABC and CBS were the other two. (A previous contender, DuMont, shut down in 1956.) Fox joined the lineup in 1986 but didn't earn "major network" status until 1994.
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Iran was America's ally.
Diplomatic relations crumbled after Iran's 1979 revolution, which overthrew the pro-American Shah (pictured with Queen Farah and their daughter in London) and installed anti-American Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iran Hostage Crisis later that year further complicated matters.
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The U.S. was at war in Vietnam.
Despite widespread protests, the Vietnam War continued until April 30, 1975, bringing the total conflict time to 19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day.
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And the draft was active.
The government employed conscription from 1940 until 1973, even during times of peace, to supplement armed forces without enough voluntary recruits. Muhammad Ali, above, right, was convicted of draft evasion in 1967 after refusing to join because of religious objections. His conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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The environment was an afterthought.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed in 1970.
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No one cared about bottled water.
Americans preferred soda or beer. That is until Perrier launched a mass marketing campaign in 1977 to attract status-hungry Baby Boomers.
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The U.S. Senate had never had a black woman representative.
Carol Moseley Braun made history when she was elected to the Senate on Nov. 3, 1992.
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Corporal punishment was widely used in public schools.
In 1977, the Supreme Court upheld that the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishments" clause did not apply to disciplinary actions in schools in the case Ingraham v. Wright. At the time only two states had laws against corporal punishment in schools. (Today, 19 states still find inflicting bodily pain an acceptable means of discipline.)
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Radio was the only means of portable music.
Until Stereobelt developed the first portable cassette player in '72, transistor radio was it.
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Sports and politics rarely intertwined.
Which is why U.S. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos made headlines worldwide with their Black Power salutes during the 1968 games. "If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say 'a Negro.' We are black and we are proud of being black," Smith later said.
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The world has changed a lot, mostly for the better.
The world has changed a lot, mostly for the better.