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Top Song(s)
• Roy Orbison - Oh, Pretty Woman
• The Beatles - She Loves You
• The Animals - House of the Rising Sun
• The Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'
• The Supremes - Baby Love
Top Film(s)
• A Fistful of Dollars
• Woman in the Dunes
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
• Band of Outsiders
• Goldfinger
Best Selling Book(s)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
• Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh
• The Giving Tree - Shel Silverstein
• Nerve - Dick Francis
• A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
Famous Deaths
• January 29 - Adolfo Diaz Recinos, 2-time President of Nicaragua
• February 18 – Joseph-Armand Bombardier, Canadian inventor of the snowmobile
• April 5 – Douglas MacArthur, U.S. Army general, Supreme Allied Commander in Japan
• May 27 – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian politician, 1st Prime Minister of India
• July 15 – Luis Batlle Berres, Uruguayan political figure, 30th President of Uruguay
• August 7 - Aleksander Zawadzki, Polish politician, 12th President of Poland
• September 2 - Alvin York, American hero of World War I
• October 20 – Herbert Hoover, American politician, 31st President of the United States
• November 6 – Hans von Euler-Chelpin, German-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• December 31 - Ronald Fairbairn, Scottish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
Medical/Science/Technology
• British molecular biologist Robin Holliday proposes existence of the Holliday junction in nucleic acid.
• IBM announces the System/360, in six models with 32-bit architecture.
• PL/I (Programming Language I), a block-structured computer language, is created by George Radin, while at IBM.
• Paul Cohen proves the independence of the continuum hypothesis.
• Jacques Tits publishes significant work on group theory.
• Existence of the charm quark is speculated by James Bjorken and Sheldon Glashow.
• John Stewart Bell publishes a paper on the EPR paradox originating Bell's theorem.
• U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to health.
• First angioplasty carried out, on the superficial femoral artery by U.S. radiologist Charles Dotter.
• First heart transplantation on a human, using a chimpanzee heart, carried out by U.S. surgeon James D. Hardy.
Political
• January 3 – Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona announces that he will seek the Republican nomination for president.
• January 11 – United States Surgeon General Luther Leonidas Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to one's health.
• January 17 - John Glenn announces that he will seek the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator from Ohio.
• February 4 - The Government of the United States authorizes the Twenty-fourth Amendment, outlawing the poll tax.
• February 17 – The Supreme Court of the U.S. rules that congressional districts have to be approximately equal in population.
• April 20 – Lyndon Johnson and Nikita Khrushchev, announce plans to cut back production of materials for making nuclear weapons.
• May 2 - Senator Barry Goldwater receives more than 75% of the votes in the Texas Republican presidential primary.
• May 4 – The United States Congress recognizes Bourbon whiskey as a "distinctive product of the United States".
• May 22 – President Lyndon Johnson makes a speech at the University of Michigan, introducing the concept of the "Great Society".
• June 10 - The U.S. Senate votes cloture of the Civil Rights Bill after a 75-day filibuster.
National
• January 20 – Meet the Beatles!, the first Capitol Records Beatles album in the United States, is released.
• February 1 – The Beatles vault to the #1 spot on the U.S. singles charts for the first time.
• March 6 – Boxer Cassius Clay announces the change of his name to Muhammad Ali.
• March 24 – SeaWorld San Diego opens.
• April 3 – Malcolm X makes his "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech in Cleveland.
• April 17 - The Ford Mustang is officially unveiled to the public.
• July 2 – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, abolishing racial segregation in the United States.
• July 23 – The first Arby's sandwich restaurant opens in Boardman, Ohio.
• August 28–30 – Philadelphia 1964 race riot: Tensions between African American residents and police lead to 341 injuries and 774 arrests.
• October 20 – Former President Herbert Hoover dies in New York City.
Worldwide
• January 29–February 9 – The 1964 Winter Olympics are held in Innsbruck, Austria.
• March 6 - Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King Paul.
• April 11 – The Brazilian Congress elects Field Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco as President of Brazil.
• May 2 - An explosion caused by Viet Cong commandos causes carrier USNS Card to sink in the port of Saigon.
• June 12 – Nelson Mandela and 7 others are sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa, and sent to the Robben Island prison.
• July 6 – Malawi receives its independence from the United Kingdom.
• August 20 – The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat) began to work.
• September 4 – The Forth Road Bridge opens over the Firth of Forth in Scotland.
• October 17 – 596 (nuclear test): The People's Republic of China explodes an atomic bomb in Sinkiang.
• November 10 – Australia partially reintroduces compulsory military service due to the Indonesian Confrontation.