What Life Was Like 50 Years Ago Compared to Now

The group released their White Album and their movie, Yellow Submarine, in November 1968.

Congressman John Conyers Jr. introduced legislation to create the holiday shortly after Dr. King's assassination on April 4, 1968, but it took 15 years and a petition signed by more than 3 million people to make it a reality. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1983 and it was first observed on Jan. 15, 1986.

Pictured: Dr. King's widow Coretta Scott King, son Dexter, and sister Christine Farris with President Reagan.

In 1968, the median age of first marriage was 20 for women and 23 for men. Back then, close to 70 percent of American adults were married; today only 51 percent are, according to a Pew Research Center study from 2011. The modern bride is 26.5 years old on average and the groom 28.7.

Pictured: Julie Nixon, daughter of President Richard Nixon, and David Eisenhower, grandson of former President Dwight Eisenhower, on their wedding day, Dec. 22, 1968.

After presidential hopeful Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated on the campaign trail on June 5, 1968, Congress passed legislation calling for Secret Service protection for major presidential candidates.

It became 21 when Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act on July 17, 1984.

William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols broke that barrier with a kiss on Nov. 2, 1968 in the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren." Before it aired, NBC censors reportedly expressed concern that Southern TV affiliates would refuse to run it.

The first federal seatbelt law, requiring all new cars to have a belt for each seat, took effect in1968, but it would be decades before the first state law that required wearing one—that happened in New York on December 1, 1984.

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That's the equivalent of $2.31 today when adjusted for inflation—very comparable to today's national average of $2.48 a gallon.

The 1969 debut of the Boeing 747, which could hold double the number of passengers as its predecessor, the 707, led to a dramatic drop in flight prices.

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A single, nationwide phone number for emergency assistance was established in1968 following a meeting between the FCC and AT&T. The digits 9-1-1 were chosen because they had never before been used as an area code or other service code.

Pictured: 911 call center workers in Los Angeles circa 1996.

Widely used in homes and schools, the hazardous substance wasn't banned until 1978, which is why the CDC recommends that children and pregnant women stay away from any homes built before then that are undergoing renovation.

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The automated safety devices were invented in 1968 and developed to deploy on impact, inflating with nitrogen gas.

Although South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard completed the first successful heart transplant in 1967, the first adult heart transplant in the U.S. took place at the Stanford University Hospital in 1968. Of the roughly 100 heart transplants worldwide that year, only a third were successful beyond three months.

Pictured: A mock operating theatre at the Heart of Cape Town museum at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

Push-button phones became available commercially in1963, but rotary phones remained popular for household use until well into the '70s.

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Unless you had a really long cord. A cordless phone prototype was invented in 1965, but it didn't become popular for residential use until the early '80s. The first cell phone came along in 1979, followed by the digital cell phone 1988.

Calling someone in the same town didn't require an area code until the early 2000s, when, the New York Times reported, telecomm regulators began facing "number exhaustion" due to an expanding population.

In fact, many were opened by credit card companies on behalf of the recipient without their consent. Consumers received active cards in the mail that they hadn't even applied for. The Unsolicited Credit Card Act of 1970 put a stop to that practice.

Although that would soon change: President Richard Nixon was elected in1968.

Beaches used to be littered with the shrapnel of discarded soda-can pull tabs (hence the Jimmy Buffett lyrics "I blew out my flip flop/Stepped on a pop top") prior to the invention of the push-through tab in 1975.

Prior to a ban that became effective September 1970, tobacco companies advertised on TV and radio for the general U.S. population to see and hear—including little eyes and ears.

When the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed in 1974, it outlawed discrimination against applicants based on gender, race, marital status, national origin, or religion.

Although the first effective sunscreens were developed in the 1940s, they generally had SPFs below 10. The FDA proposed its first sunscreen guidelines in 1978, simply stating, "In the long run, suntanning is not good for the skin."

The EPA's ban on asbestos-laden fireproofing and other installation didn't happen until 1973.

Pictured: A technician removes asbestos from a New York City apartment building in 1995.

Yummy Flintstones vitamins hit the market in 1968 but the real kid favorite, gummy vitamins, didn't appear until 1997.

Prozac, the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), entered the market in 1987. Since then, more than 35 million people around the world have taken the drug to combat symptoms of depression.

The internet's predecessor, ARPAnet, developed as an alternative means of government communication should telephones fail, sent its first message in 1969. Pictured above is the first Interface Message Processor (IMP), similar to a rudimentary Wi-Fi router.

Italian gynecologist Giorgio Fischer invented liposuction in 1974.

Floppy disks and microprocessors made the devices more manageable in the '70s, but IBM's PC (1981) and Apple's Macintosh (1984) brought the computer home.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration set the first standards in 1971, requiring that all seats be held by safety belts and include a harness to keep the child in place.

Glass contact lenses existed, but a more comfortable alternative became available in 1971 with the debut of soft contact lenses, followed by disposables 16 years later.

Hank Aaron beat Ruth's record for the most home runs in 1974, and the current record holder, Barry Bonds, surpassed Aaron in 2007 with 755.

Pictured: President Warren G. Harding shakes hands with Ruth at Yankee Stadium, 1923.

The Walton Family had just 24 stores in 1967. Walmart became a publicly traded company in 1970.

The Korean War put a freeze on all U.S.-China trade and travel until the early '70s, when President Nixon's administration reestablished diplomatic relations.

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, pictured above, aired on one of them: NBC. ABC and CBS were the other two. (A previous contender, DuMont, shut down in 1956.) Fox joined the lineup in 1986 but didn't earn "major network" status until 1994.

Despite widespread protests, the Vietnam War continued until April 30, 1975, bringing the total conflict time to 19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day.

The government employed conscription from 1940 until 1973, even during times of peace, to supplement armed forces without enough voluntary recruits. Muhammad Ali, above, right, was convicted of draft evasion in 1967 after refusing to join because of religious objections. His conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed in 1970.

Carol Moseley Braun made history when she was elected to the Senate on Nov. 3, 1992.

In 1977, the Supreme Court upheld that the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishments" clause did not apply to disciplinary actions in schools in the case Ingraham v. Wright. At the time only two states had laws against corporal punishment in schools. (Today, 19 states still find inflicting bodily pain an acceptable means of discipline.)

Until Stereobelt developed the first portable cassette player in '72, transistor radio was it.

Which is why U.S. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos made headlines worldwide with their Black Power salutes during the 1968 games. "If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say 'a Negro.' We are black and we are proud of being black," Smith later said.