Do you remember March 1965? For some people, it’s a distant memory. For those born after 1965, it’s a month and  year in history. Here are three major events that took place in March, 55 years ago.

On March 2, 1965, “The Sound of Music” was released in theaters. It starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer and would go on to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The movie had a theatrical release that lasted 4 1/2 years, and it was the highest-grossing movie of 1965. By 1966, it was the highest-grossing movie of all time. In fact, it was the first movie in history to gross more than $100 million at the box office. “The Sound of Music” would remain the highest-grossing movie until 1972, when it was overtaken by Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather.”

On March 23, 1965, the U.S. launched Gemini 3, which was the county’s first crewed space mission. Gemini 3 was manned by astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young. The mission featured the first maneuverable spacecraft in history, which was the entire focus on the mission. Gemini 3 served as a test bed for a number of new technologies. When the astronauts successfully fired thrusters to change their orbit, they officially paved the way for the future of space travel.

On March 25, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. joined with more than 25,000 civil rights activists in Montgomery, Alabama. The event marked the end of a four-day and 54-mile-long march from Selma, Alabama. Once he got to Montgomery, King gave his speech entitled “How Long, Not Long.” It was one of three marches held in 1965 along that route, and those marches helped pave the way for the Voting Rights Act, which was a major achievement in the civil rights movement. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in August 1965, and it prohibited racial discrimination in voting.

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