The acid tests started by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters gave birth to hippie culture in the 1960s.
Date and location unspecified.Ian Burt/Flickr
La Honda, California. 1971.Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Paul Ryan/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Both men have been lured into Ken Kesey's group of Merry Pranksters. Here, they are getting ready to take the magic bus Further to the next Acid Test.
San Francisco, California. October 30, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 30, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Photograph of the poster taken in Prague, Czech Republic on April 3, 2008.ex-Martin Hassman/Flickr
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. December 31, 1977.Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.© Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Date and location unspecified.Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 30, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 30, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
White Lake, New York. August 1969.John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
La Honda, California. 1971.Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
White Lake, New York. Circa August 15-18, 1969.Ralph Ackerman/Getty Images
San Francisco, California. October 31, 1966.Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
White Lake, New York. August 1969.Ralph Ackerman/Getty Images
White Lake, New York. Circa August 15-18, 1969.Ralph Ackerman/Getty Images
Seattle, Washington. September 1994.Wikimedia Commons
In 1965, Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, traveled across America in a tie-dye school bus with nothing but a few friends and enough LSD to get an entire country high.
He drove around America challenging people to take his "acid tests" — and thus helped start the entire hippie movement.
Strange though it may seem, this was all inspired by the CIA. Kesey had a part of their MKULTRA program, in which the CIA fed LSD and other psychedelics to citizen guinea pigs in order to see what would happen. For Kesey, the experience opened his mind and he wanted to share it with the world.
He set out with a group called the Merry Pranksters in order to conduct his acid tests with anyone that he could find. The group included beatniks like Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, who inspired Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Kesey's house band was the Grateful Dead, then an unknown group called the Warlocks. And his journey was chronicled by author Tom Wolfe, who would immortalize the trip in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
These Merry Pranksters threw parties across the country, inviting people to try LSD and "graduate" into what they considered a higher order of thinking. All kinds of people got involved. Artists, musicians, and even members of the Hells Angels flocked out to Ken Kesey's acid tests both to party and to become, as they would say, "aware."
But it was more than just that — it was a happening that changed the world. They passed LSD through the youth and the celebrities of the day and thus helped create a whole new era: the era of psychedelics, hippies, and rebellion.
It was a revolution. As Merry Prankster Ken Babbs told the BBC, "We won't blow up their buildings, we'll blow their minds."
Next, check out some of the most incredible Woodstock photos and see what life was like inside America's hippie communes. Then, read up on hippie history.
