The England national team have avoided wearing blue shirts, like the ones they donned that day, ever since.
In the States, however, such was the national indifference to soccer that the triumph went largely unreported until the 1970s, by which time Gaetjens was dead.
Mystery still surrounds exactly what happened to the goalscorer, who hailed from Haiti, but reports suggest he was shot in Port-au-Prince on 10 July 1964.
His family apparently worked for Louis Dejoie, a rival of Haiti dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and he was arrested by Duvalier's militia and never seen again.
In 1976 he was inducted into the US Soccer Hall of Fame.
Despite their triumph, the USA still finished bottom of the group on goal difference, going out with England and Chile.
It was 40 years before they returned to the world stage, at Italia 90, where they lost all three games.
Their next, and only subsequent, victory came four years later, when they hosted the tournament.
And the 2-1 victory over Colombia proved even more shocking, with the subsequent murder of Andres Escobar.
Tragedy, it seems, has followed all too readily in the wake of the USA's finest hours.