Billie Jean King

Billie Jean King

1943 – present

Sports

Billie Jean King, also known as BJK, is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. She was a member of the victorious United States team in seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups.

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Contemporaries

Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola

Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi

Their World

Global Events

1944 D-Day: Allied invasion of Normandy

1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; WWII ends

1945 United Nations founded

1947 India and Pakistan gain independence

1948 State of Israel established

1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted

1949 People's Republic of China proclaimed

1950 Korean War begins

1953 Watson and Crick discover DNA structure

1955 Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1957 Sputnik launched; Space Age begins

1959 Cuban Revolution; Castro takes power

1961 Berlin Wall constructed

1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

1963 Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

1964 Civil Rights Act signed in the United States

1969 Apollo 11: first humans walk on the Moon

1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and independence

1973 1973 oil crisis

1975 Fall of Saigon; Vietnam War ends

1979 Iranian Revolution

1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster

1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall

1989 Tiananmen Square protests

1990 Nelson Mandela released from prison

1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union

1994 Rwandan genocide

1994 End of apartheid; South Africa holds first free elections

1997 Dolly the Sheep cloned

1998 Good Friday Agreement signed in Northern Ireland

2001 September 11 attacks

2003 Human Genome Project completed

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

2008 Global financial crisis

2010 Arab Spring begins

2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster

2015 Paris Agreement on climate change adopted

2016 United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union

2020 COVID-19 pandemic declared

2022 Russia invades Ukraine

In Their Field

1947 Jackie Robinson breaks baseball's color line

1954 Roger Bannister runs first sub-4-minute mile

1960 Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) wins Olympic gold

1966 England wins FIFA World Cup at Wembley

1967 First Super Bowl played

1972 Title IX enacted, transforming women's sports in the US

1980 Miracle on Ice: US hockey defeats Soviet Union at Olympics

1995 South Africa hosts and wins Rugby World Cup

2008 Usain Bolt sets 100m world record at Beijing Olympics

2016 Leicester City wins Premier League against 5000-1 odds