December 1, 1969

1969Richard Carrier, American author and blogger^[†]

Richard Cevantis Carrier is an American ancient historian. He is a long-time contributor to skeptical websites, including The Secular Web and Freethought Blogs. Carrier has published a number of books and articles on philosophy and religion in classical antiquity, discussing the development of early Christianity from a skeptical viewpoint, and concerning religion and morality in the modern world. He has publicly debated a number of scholars on the historical basis of the Bible and Christianity. He is a prominent advocate of the theory that Jesus did not exist, which he has argued in a number of his works. However, Carrier's arguments have been controversial and have not been accepted within academic scholarship, and remains fringe.

1969Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II.^[†]

The United States ran a draft, a system of conscription, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the peacetime years before the Vietnam War. It was administered by the Selective Service System. But the number of men actually drafted each year was modest. There were enough volunteers to meet most of the personnel needs of the military. In the second half of 1965, with American troops pouring into Vietnam, there was a substantial expansion of the US armed forces, and this required a dramatic increase in the number of men drafted each month. But the number of men drafted each month remained far below the number who potentially could have been drafted, the number of young men of draftable age who were considered adequately fit, physically and mentally, for military service.