December 24, 1961

By the winter of 1961, Kennedy was in the White House and the federal minimum wage stood at $1.15/hr — the Adolf Eichmann trial was delivering its guilty verdict in Jerusalem, marking the first time an international war crimes tribunal had captured and prosecuted a top Nazi official on Israeli soil. On the cultural front, Bert Kaempfert's "Wonderland By Night" was the number one song in the country, while "Spartacus" was packing movie theaters across the nation. The Green Bay Packers claimed the NFL championship that season, the same winter that Ham the chimpanzee became the first great ape launched into space aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket, a direct step toward putting American astronauts in orbit.