What numbers were drawn in the 1969 Vietnam draft lottery?
Executive summary
The December 1, 1969 Selective Service draft lottery assigned a unique draft number (1–366) to each calendar date; the first date drawn, September 14, was assigned number 1 and the draws continued until all dates had numbers, producing a full mapping used to call men born 1944–1950 for 1970 inductions (the results are published as the N69 table) [1] [2]. Statisticians later criticized the procedure as imperfectly randomized and the highest draft number actually called for induction that year was 195 [3] [4].
1. What the question really asks: the draft lottery produced a list, not a handful of winning numbers
The 1969 lottery did not draw a small set of “winning” numbers but instead produced a complete ordinal assignment — each of 366 calendar dates (including February 29) received a unique draft lottery number between 1 and 366, and those numbers determined order of call for men born January 1, 1944–December 31, 1950 [1] [5]. The government published the full mapping (commonly called the N69 results) so anyone could look up a birth date and find its assigned lottery number [2].
2. The first and some notable draws: September 14 was #1, then April 24, December 30, February 14…
The very first capsule drawn on December 1, 1969 contained September 14, which was assigned lottery number 1; subsequent draws assigned #2 to April 24, #3 to December 30, #4 to February 14, #5 to October 18, and so on — a running sequence recorded live and later reproduced in official and secondary sources [1] [6]. The last date drawn in that sequence was June 8, completing the 366-date list [6].
3. Where to find the exact full list of numbers assigned to each calendar date
The complete day-by-day assignments (the N69 table) are archived in public datasets and reproduced by historians and analysts; authoritative reproductions include the Selective Service’s Vietnam lotteries pages and compiled data tables such as those on RandomServices (N69) and in academic appendices that list the lottery number for every birth date [1] [2]. Those sources give the exact number for any given birthday in the 1944–1950 cohort [2] [1].
4. Who was actually called — the practical cutoff and the “highest number” drafted
Although numbers ran through 366, the Selective Service only called men up to a threshold determined by military need; for the 1970 induction year the highest lottery number actually called for induction from the 1969 drawing was 195, meaning men assigned 1–195 (and otherwise available) were the ones subject to immediate induction [4] [3]. Administrative records and contemporary summaries repeatedly note 195 as the effective call cutoff for that table year [4].
5. Controversy and critiques about whether the drawn numbers were truly random
Statisticians quickly alleged that the drawing procedure produced bias — notably that later-month birthdays tended to get lower (more-dangerous) lottery numbers, suggesting insufficient mixing of capsules — and this methodological criticism is documented in analyses and contemporary press reporting [3] [7] [2]. The Selective Service and later researchers did not change the 1969 assignments despite these critiques; subsequent lotteries (1970–1972) appear to have used improved methods and showed more uniform randomness by later analyses [4] [7].
6. How this list mattered: social and political impact of the numbers
Assigning a specific number to each birthday transformed a statistical procedure into a life-defining ticket for hundreds of thousands of men — the lottery’s public broadcast and the visible skew toward some months intensified already-large antiwar and anti-draft sentiment, fueling protests and litigation and altering individual decisions about college, enlistment, or evasion [8] [9] [3]. While the exact mapping can be retrieved from archival tables today, its immediate human consequences were profound and widely reported at the time [8] [9].