What’s Your Number? The Vietnam War Selective Service Lottery
During the Vietnam War, young men gathered in college dorms and friends’ homes to listen to live TV and radio broadcasts of the U.S. Selective Service System drawing lottery numbers to determine who would and would not be drafted. The 2010 issue of Vietnam magazine revisits those days in the article, “Live from Washington, It’s Lottery Night 1969!!”
366 blue plastic capsules contained the birthdays that would be chosen in the first Vietnam draft lottery drawing on December 1, 1969. The first birth date drawn that night, assigned the lowest number, “001,” was September 14.
How would YOU have done?
Find your birthday in the chart below to see what order you would have been called to service.
Oliver Stone: 113, September 14, 1946
Pat Sajak: 007, October 26, 1946
Bruce Springsteen: 119, September 23, 1949
Sylvester Stallone: 327, July 6, 1946
Samuel Alito: 032, April 1, 1950
Clarence Thomas: 109, June 23, 1948
Dan Quayle: 210, February 4, 1947
Al Gore: 030, March 31, 1948
Bill Clinton: 311, August 19, 1946
George W. Bush: 327, July 6, 1946
Billy Crystal: 354, March 14, 1947
David Letterman: 346, April 12, 1947
Tom Daschle: 043, December 9, 1947
Howard Dean: 143, December 17, 1948
Tom DeLay: 312, April 8, 1947
Jay Leno: 223, April 28, 1950
Rudy Giuliani: 308, May 28, 1944
Stephen King: 204, September 21, 1947
Donald Trump: 356, June 14, 1946
OJ Simpson: 277, July 9, 1947
Bill Murray: 204, September 21, 1950
*Some in this list, who were already serving and whose draft status had been resolved, were not affected by the draft lottery. Otherwise, every male aged 19 to 26 had a stake in the 1970 draft lottery, as it determined the order in which men with birth dates between 1944 and 1950 were called to report for induction in 1970. Some on the above list were already serving, received student or medical deferments, volunteered for other service, or for various other reasons were not drafted in 1970.
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