By Mark Aumann, NASCAR.COM
January 10, 2005
08:30 AM EST (13:30 GMT)
Richard Petty dominated the sixth Daytona 500 on Feb. 23, 1964, leading 184 of the 200 laps in his Plymouth and lapping the field.  |  | NASCAR ACCELERATION | |
| ALSO IN 1964 ... |
| • | Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous for one's health. It's the first such statement from United States government (Jan. 11) |
| • | The U.S. Supreme Court rules that under the First Amendment, speech criticizing political figures cannot be censored (March 9) |
| • | The first Ford Mustang rolls off the assembly line (March 9) |
| • | A jury in Dallas, Texas finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (March 14) |
| • | The Warren Commission Report, the first official investigation of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, is published (Sept. 24) |
Courtesy: Wikipedia
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On the radio, the Beatles were dominating as well. Making their American television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, John, Paul, George and Ringo took over Cash Box's No. 1 with I Want To Hold Your Hand in January and wouldn't relinquish it until Louis Armstrong's Hello, Dolly! knocked Can't Buy Me Love out of the top spot in May. Petty went on to win nine races in 1964. The Beatles had seven different No. 1 songs that same year. Both Petty and the Fab Four were clean-shaven in 1964, but all would be sporting moustaches by the end of the decade. It was a good year to be British. In addition to the Beatles, My Fair Lady won the best picture Oscar and Rex Harrison and Julie Andews swept the best actor and actress categories. On March 9, the first Ford Mustang rolled off the assembly line. Available in hardtop, convertible and fastback styling and with either a 170-cubic inch six-cylinder or 271 horsepower V8, the Mustang was an instant hit. There were 22,000 orders on the first day of release (April 19) and more than 1 million were sold in the first two years of production. With a sticker price of $2,398, Petty could have purchased 13 new "1964 1/2" Mustangs with the purse of $33,300. Lefty Frizzell's Saginaw, Michigan had just hit the country charts in February of 1964. If Petty had wanted to drive his Plymouth from Level Cross, N.C., to Saginaw, the 744-mile journey would have taken almost 15 hours at the speed limit -- or four hours and 49 minutes at the race-winning speed of 154.334 mph. Jimmy Pardue was second and Paul Goldsmith third in the 1964 Daytona 500. Barry Goldwater finished second to incumbent Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election. Hasbro introduced the G.I. Joe "action figure" in 1964. No one thought boys would play with a doll, but the 12-inch plastic soldier was an instant hit. Joe Nemechek, who drives the U.S. Army car, turned 1 on Sept. 26, 1964. Combat was the 10th-most watched television show that year. The boys may be older, but they're still playing with their toys. The 2005 G.I. Joe Convention will be held June 23-26 in Minneapolis, Minn. A Battle of Kursk tank boxed set from the 2003 convention is worth in excess of $500, just a tad more expensive than an original Joe. In April, IBM introduced the System 360 mainframe, which typically had 24K of memory and was the first IBM computer to use eight-bit character strings. Disk storage drives could store 7.5 million bytes of information. The laptop used to type this story contains 512MB of memory. In July, 5,000 more U.S. military advisers are sent to Vietnam, bringing the total number of U.S. forces there to 21,000. Current drivers born in 1964:
• Tony Raines (April 14)
• Bobby Labonte (May 8)
• Jack Sprague (Aug. 8)
• Tim Sauter (Oct. 3)
• Shawna Robinson (Nov. 30) → Click here for more Daytona Countdown. | 
