At the end of the 1961 Western The Misfits, Clark Gable's grizzled wrangler frees the horses he'd intended to sell to the slaughterhouse. "I've just gotta find another way to be alive now," he says. "If there is one." It's a poignant comment in a movie so focused on the dying of the Old West. It's also a prescient statement on the film itself since its release was followed not long thereafter by the deaths of its leads.

Penned by legendary playwright Arthur Miller, directed by Oscar-winner John Huston and starring heavyweights Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, The Misfits had all the makings of an instant classic. Instead, it's known mostly for its macabre aftermath: The day after production wrapped, Gable suffered a severe coronary thrombosis and died in the hospital. As for Monroe, she'd be dead of a drug overdose just a year and a half later. And while Montgomery Clift lived a few years longer, it was one of his last films. (The night Clift died, The Misfits was on TV. When asked if he wanted to see it, the actor replied, "Absolutely not." Supposedly, his last words.)

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Mary McCarthy's The Group rose to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for fiction in 1963 then remained there for almost two years. A sharply written page-turner about eight Vassar graduates and their lives in NYC and beyond, the novel tackled such then-taboos as extramarital affairs, premarital sex, homosexuality, contraception, abortion, and psychoanalysis in a style noted for its bluntness as well as its wit. The New York Times hailed McCarthy's works for its "miraculous precision" and "believable clarity" in portraying Manhattan Bohemia, while Time Magazine noted that "for the first time, highbrow readers who have long acknowledged an athletic and logical brain will meet those who prefer the fictional products of female temperament."

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At 10:22 AM on Sun., Sep. 15, 1963, a bomb went off at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Though the previous spring the church had been used as a staging ground for Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birmingham Campaign -- a non-violent protest against racial segregation -- on that day it was merely a meeting place for Sunday school attendees. Four girls were killed in the blast, three of them 14 years old; the other 11.

Three days later, Dr. King performed the eulogy to a crowd of 8,000 mourners. While King bemoaned the loss of "these children -- unoffending, innocent, and beautiful," he also used the tragedy as a call to action: "God still has a way of wringing good out of evil," he said. "The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city."

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"The two most powerful words you can use in a headline are FREE and NEW. You can seldom use FREE, but you can always use NEW."

So says ad man David Ogilvy in his 1963 tell-all Confessions of an Advertising Man. Still considered the de facto guide on modern advertising, Confessions lays out in fine print the strategies the door-to-door salesman turned "Father of Advertising" used to create Ogilvy & Mather, one of the most successful ad agencies in the world.

The book was inspired by Ogilvy's belief that his industry faced systemic problems in 1963: Manufacturers spent more money on price-off deals than solid advertising while agencies were more interested in awards than products. The solution, Ogilvy contended, relied on research, discipline, creativity with an emphasis on the "Big Idea," and most importantly, results. "In the modern world of business," he wrote, "it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create."

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Got a case of the D.E.D.s (or the "Day's End Drag")? In the '60s, manufacturer Oster offered a Stim-U-Lax vibrating hand massager as the cure for just such work-a-day blues. The electronic device -- strapped on the user's hand -- turned each finger into a palpitating pleasure pusher.

Now, before you get any dirty ideas, keep in mind that the device -- introduced in 1902; widely marketed by 1933 -- was developed for the hair-care industry. In addition to curing D.E.D.s, the Stim-U-Lax also claimed to stimulate hair growth and during its heyday in the '50s and '60s was a de rigueur piece of equipment for every barber worth his salt.

Around this time of its peak in popularity, the city of Racine, Wisconsin had over twenty manufacturing companies producing units as magazines urged women to "Hold It!" and experience the "soothing, tingling effects of a real Swedish-type massage." Nowadays, the vibrating hand massagers are primarily sold as retro novelties.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X may be the best-known figures of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, but they stand alongside scores of other men and women who laid down their lives in the name of equality. One such pioneer was Medgar Evers, a World War II vet turned NAACP activist gunned down in front of his Mississippi home in 1963.

Unlike Malcolm X who indicted white America for its racism, or King who dreamed of universal racial equality, Evers was striving for the most basic rights in his home state of Mississippi: To make it possible for blacks to try on hats in department stores, to have black school crossing-guards, and most famously, to allow a black man, James Meredith, to enroll in the University of Mississippi in 1962.

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The '60s were the Golden Age for jai alai. Time magazine hailed its "bursts of breathtaking action" while celebrities like Johnny Unitas and Buddy Hackett gave the sport a certain (temporal) luster. Staged on a 176-foot court called a fronton, the game pits two players equipped with oversized basket-like gloves against each other for a supercharged game of handball. Catching and flinging the ball (a pelota) against the far wall, a player scores points by getting his opponent to drop the ball on the rebound, or by literally knocking him out.

Indeed, jai alai -- Basque for "merry festival" -- can be decidedly un-merry on a bad point. The hard-as-a-rock pelota travels as fast as 180 miles per hour and can easily crush a player's skull or knock out a few teeth. Said Buddy Berenson, son of Richard Berenson who promoted the sport as a gambling alternative, "Whenever a player is hit, the others rush up trying to laugh it off and praying for the sight of blood," ...and a pulse.

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It might surprise those who associate the early '60s with Cuban cigars and conservative fashions that sex scandals were as alive and well then as they are now. Take the case of cordage heiress Margaretta "Happy" Murphy who married New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1963 just one month after she divorced her husband, with whom she had had four children.

The news of a former Rockefeller staff member marrying her boss was a major scandal in its day. Nelson was cast as the man who tossed aside his wife of 31 years to wed a woman 18 years his junior. Happy -- who signed away her rights to her children -- was the heartless mother and femme fatale. Even the minister who performed the ceremony was disciplined by his superiors.

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The 1960s Handbook takes a closer look at the cultural references that appear in each week's episode of Mad Men.

"New! A sugar-free cola with rewarding true-cola taste!" That was the message sent to American housewives in 1963 when they opened their newspapers to advertisements that fired the first shots in the diet cola wars. This particular smoking gun belonged to Patio Diet Cola, Pepsi's first entry into a market already occupied by Coca-Cola's Tab and then-powerhouse Royal Crown Cola's Diet Rite.

What had begun as a soft drink alternative for diabetics in the '50s exploded into a full-blown diet craze a decade later. Patio redefined the conversation by aiming its marketing squarely at weight-conscious women via ads depicting svelte spokeswoman Debbie Drake assuming acrobatic poses while explaining how gals could maintain their figure through proper diet and exercise. ("Great to your waist!" "The refreshing way to stay slim!")

In no time at all, Pepsi thereby changed the diet cola conversation. "All of the leading diet colas are practically alike," Pepsi declared. "They look alike. They're all sugar-free. And they all have but one tiny calorie to the glass. The only real difference is taste!" (This same argument continues today.)

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You've heard mention of Old Fashioneds, Tom Collinses, and Vodka Gimlets but do you actually know how to mix any of these cocktails, really? Check out our 1960s cocktail guide to get the details on which ingredients are needed for which drinks -- from the Classic Martini to the Harpoon.

Click here for recipes.