September 6, 1966: In Cape Town, South Africa, the architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death by Dimitri Tsafendas.

October 1966: Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton found the Black Panther Party.

October 15, 1966: Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.

1966: In Boston: Lower Roxbury Community Corporation established; Haley House established; South End Historical Society established; Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity school desegregation program begins; Copley Square remodeled.

April 4, 1967: Martin Luther King, Jr. denounces the Vietnam War during a religious service in New York.

June 13, 1967: Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall is nominated as the first African American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He is confirmed August 30.

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. is slain in Memphis. James Earl Ray, indicted in the murder, is captured in London on June 8. In 1969, Ray pleads guilty and is sentenced to 99 years.

June 5, 1968: Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is shot and critically wounded by Sirhan B. Sirhan in a Los Angeles hotel after winning California primary. He dies on June 6.

January 20, 1969: Richard M. Nixon is inaugurated 37th President of the U.S.

June 28, 1969: Stonewall riot in New York City marks beginning of the gay-rights movement.

July 20, 1969: Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. take first walk on the moon.

1969: In Boston: New England Aquarium opens; Walk for Hunger begins.

March 1, 1970: Rhodesia severs last tie with British crown and declares itself a racially segregated republic.

May 1, 1970: U.S. troops invade Cambodia.

May 4, 1970: Four students at Kent State University in Ohio slain by National Guardsmen at demonstration protesting incursion into Cambodia.

April 20, 1971: The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that busing of students may be ordered to achieve racial desegregation.

May 3, 1971: Anti-war militants attempt to disrupt government business in Washington. Police and military units arrest as many as 12,000; most are later released.

October 25, 1971: The 26th Amendment to U.S. Constitution lowers voting age to 18.

1971: In Boston: Mass. Rehabilitation Hospital and Boston Food Co-op established; Government Service Center built in Government Center complex.

February 21-27, 1972: President Nixon makes unprecedented eightday visit to Communist China and meets with Mao Zedong.

May 15, 1972: Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama is shot by Arthur H. Bremer at a Laurel, Md., political rally.