American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story Rebel with a Cause: Civil Liberties and Government Crackdowns (2017– ) Online

American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story Rebel with a Cause: Civil Liberties and Government Crackdowns (2017– ) Online

Hefner becomes addicted to an amphetamine drug that lets him work around the clock, using the pages of the magazine to fight for civil rights and ultimately publish what would become Martin Luther King Jr's final written words.

Playboy introduced Ian Fleming's James Bond character in March of 1960. Fleming would stop by the Playboy offices that same year and was reported as saying: "I'm sure James Bond, if he were an actual person, would be a registered reader of Playboy.

Jayne Mansfield's daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield, posed for Playboy in 1976, thus making her the first Playboy model whose mother was also a Playmate.

The 1963 Playmate of the Year, Donna Michele, accompanied Hef to the Mansfield trial. She would then travel with Hef for a week's vacation in early 1964 to Jamaica before leaving Playboy to pursue a movie career.

1965 marked the year that the U.S. and North Vietnamese forces make direct contact at the Battle of Ia Drang. Although both sides claimed victory, the ability to survive a high-tech firestorm convinced Ho Chi Minh that the North Vietnamese could win the war.

Arthur Kretchmer studied creative writing and journalism, first at the University of Pennsylvania and then at City College of New York, before landing an assistant editor gig at Cavalier.

Kretchmer had become managing editor at Cavalier before being poached by A.C. Spectorsky and brought to Playboy in 1966 as an associate editor.

Michael DiSalle, the author of the capital punishment article, had served as Ohio's Governor from 1958 to 1963. In the article, he states that although he "reluctantly allowed six men to die in the electric chair" while in office, he is totally against the death penalty.

The Playboy Foundation contributed substantial funds to support William Masters and Virginia Johnson, whose groundbreaking research helped to usher in the sexual revolution. They were also the subjects of the hit show Masters of Sex.

The Playboy Foundation also helped to fund the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, when Hef donated $5,000 to their cause. Keith Stroup officially founded NORML in 1970.

At thirty-five years old, Martin Luther King Jr. was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He donated the prize money, $54,123 towards the Civil Rights Movement.

King's schedule was so hectic that he and interviewer Alex Haley only found time to talk at night, after a church barbecue. The interview took place at King's office, where King talked far into the night until he nodded off at his desk.

Alex Haley, who had also previously interviewed Miles Davis and Malcolm X for Playboy, would later write Roots, a fictionalized account of his own family's history. It was adapted into a famous TV miniseries that became the most-watched broadcast in history for some time.

The bridge that the protesters famously marched over to get from Selma to Birmingham was named after Edmund Pettus, a Civil War Confederate General and later a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Attempts to rename the bridge have been put down.

The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote, and a vote of 333-85 in the House of Representatives. When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists were present at the ceremony.

Although Jennifer Jackson broke the color barrier for Playboy, appearing as the first black centerfold, the cover of the March 1965 issue featured a sketch of a white woman.

The U.S. Military distributed Dexedrine to its troops during the Korean War in order to help infantry, sailors, and airmen stay alert for long periods. This military practice continued until a Congressional investigation during the Vietnam War brought attention to the issue.

Dexedrine, or "Greenies" became a staple in Major League Baseball due to its high demand of time, travel, and physical fitness of the competitive sport. The league decided to finally ban amphetamines in 2006.

Victor Lownes was the man who originally recommended Dexedrine to Hef in 1957, and by 1958, in a memo requesting more Dexedrine to the office, Hef wrote, "as you know, the total operation of Playboy is now dependent on those little orange pills.

During this Dexedrine phase, Playboy executives would call Rosenzweig, Hef's assistant at the time, to see where Hef was at in his drug cycle before calling a meeting with him. They all knew too well that Hef could be explosively ill tempered when coming off of a binge.

The Baltimore Playboy Club's opening was temporarily delayed when housewives mounted a picket and protested. This was puzzling to the Baltimore media as the site of the new club was not far from the notorious "Block" strip club.

Even when Hef decided to increase the cover price of Playboy from 75 cents to one dollar, the circulation graph was untouched as it soared upward.

Playboy would stay at their Palmolive Building offices until 1989. In 2000, the building at 919 N. Michigan Avenue would be designated a Chicago landmark.

Accompanying the Hugh Hefner feature in TIME was a photo of one of Hef's "movie nights," that described the usual event as a "Bacchanalia with Pepsis and orgies of popcorn."

Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert F. Kennedy after the senator had supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Sirhan was sentenced to the death penalty in 1969, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison after California abolished the death penalty in 1972.

30. When the Grateful Dead made their appearance on Playboy After Dark, their audio engineer, and famous LSD manufacturer Owsley Stanley, dosed the communal coffee pot with acid, resulting in the crew being high for the show.