Readers of this blog, if there are any, will remember that while putting together the 1961 game, the first game of the year, I noted that I was making sure to leave a number of sources about the 1960s available for a subsequent 1966 game. Well, the time has come to write such a game, and the chickens are indeed coming home to roost. The main problem is the Beatles.
The Beatles?
Yes, the Beatles. Two seminal facts about the Beatles: their real period of activity was from 1963 to 1970. And lots and lots of people have written chronologies about the Beatles, mainly focused on the years from 1963 to 1970. Using our basic plan for the year--doing years that end in 1 or 6--you will note that only one year falls in the period from 1963 to 1970. That year is 1966.
Add to that a bunch of other things that fall heavily into that time period that can only be done in 1966 for this cycle (the Johnson administration, the Gemini program, the beginnings of the Vietnam War, the end of the really heavy civil rights period, the American Football League and a bunch of other pop groups), plus the plethora of books on the sixties we didn't use for 1961, plus a couple of oddities (something called "Report of the Chronicler" that deals with the years 1966 to 1968 and a Chronology of the U.S. Marine Corps I've had for years and years and didn't realize its third volume covered 1966 to 1969 and I'd never used it, plus a Facts on File yearbook for 1966, and by the time I had put only books focused on the period into my book rack, there wasn't much room left.
So 1966, the year of necessity. Not a lot of general sources outside the period, but heck, it's a year where a lot of things happened.
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