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THE BEAT TIMELINE:

Inventions, Culture, and The Beats

1940

Auschwitz Opens

Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and

Herbert Huncke meet for the first time in in New York City

1944

WWII

 D-Day landing of U.S. and allied troops at Normandy. 

1946

Post-War Baby Boom (birth rate in

U.S. increases by 20%)

1941

Pearl Harbor

1945

First atom bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (189,000 casualties), then Nagasaki.

Allen Ginsberg is expelled from Columbia University 

Microwave Oven Invented 

1949

Cold War with Communist China

and Russia grows

1948

Kerouac coins "Beat Generation" 

1956

Howl and Other Poems

Beginning of The "San Francisco Renaissance" era of the Beat movement begins

1950

Korean War Begins

1951

Burroughs accidentally shoots and kills his wife, Joan Vollmer

Color TV introduced

1953

Stalin dies

&

Rosenbergs are executed as spies

DNA discovered

&

First Playboy magazine published

1954

Racial segregation in public schools legalized 

1955

Vietnam War begins

&

Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus

Oral contraceptives invented "the pill"

Culture

Inventions 

The Beats 

1958

NASA founded

&

Peace symbol is created 

1959

Naked Lunch

1957

On the Road

 

 

Soviet Satellite

 Sputnik Launches Space Age

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