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World's timeline 1968
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1968 Jan 1-1968 Dec 31, The year was marked by protest marches. In 1998 Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins published: "1968: Marching in the Streets." In 2004 Mark Kurlansky authored "1968: The Year That Rocked the World."
(SFC, 5/22/98, p.C12)(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.M1)
1968 Jan 5, The US Justice Dept. indicted Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rev. William Coffin of Yale (1924-2006) and 3 others for conspiring to violate draft law.
(SFC, 4/13/06, p.B7)
1968 Jan 5, A newspaper strike shut down the SF Chronicle, the Examiner and the News-Call Bulletin for 53 days. Bill O'Brien (d.2004) became president of the SF-Oakland Newspaper Guild the next day and supported the strike, which had originated with Hearst papers in LA. Senior executives of the SF Chronicle put out a special edition of the paper on a copy machine.
(SFC, 2/05/04, p.A27)(SSFC, 6/7/09, p.W3)(http://tinyurl.com/nkszr8)
1968 Jan 5, Alexander Dubcek (1921-1992) was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.
(http://www.radio.cz/en/article/112505)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDdubcek.htm)
1968 Jan 6, Dr. Norman E. Shumway of Stanford performed the 1st US adult heart transplant. Mike Kasperak (54) lived for 2 weeks before he died of massive bleeding from other organs.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9067567)(SFC, 2/11/06, p.B5)
1968 Jan 8, Jacques Cousteau's 1st undersea special aired on US network TV.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0845400/)
1968 Jan 9, The TV show "It Takes A Thief" with Robert Wagner began on ABC. It written and produced by Leslie Stevens (d.1998) and ran to 1970.
(SFC, 8/13/97, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 4/29/98, p.C2)
1968 Jan 9, The Surveyor VII space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
(AP, 1/9/99)
1968 Jan 10, Lyle Menendez was born in NY and grew up in Princeton, NJ. In 1989 he and his brother Erik killed their parents.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm1062652/)
1968 Jan 13, Hester & Appolinar's musical "Your Own Thing," premiered in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Own_Thing)
1968 Jan 13, The U.S. reported shifting most air targets from North Vietnam to Laos.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1968 Jan 14, The Green Bay Packers under Vince Lombardi, after winning its third consecutive NFL championship, won the 2nd Super Bowl Football game over the Oakland Raiders. This was Lombardi's last game as coach of the Packers. The game drew the first $3 million gate in football history. In 1999 David Maraniss authored "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi."
(WSJ, 1/28/97, p.A16)(SFEC, 1/9/00, BR p.5)(Superbowl.com)
1968 Jan 14, US forces in Vietnam launched Operation Niagara I to locate enemy units around the Marine base at Khe Sanh.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=1613)
1968 Jan 16, The UK announced that it would end all "East of Suez" presence by 1971.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Jan 19, Cambodia charged that the United States and South Vietnam had crossed the border and killed three Cambodians.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1968 Jan 21, An American B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed at North Star Bay, Greenland, killing one crew member and scattering radioactive material. Reports began to surface later and in 1995 the Danish government paid a $15.5 million settlement to some 1,700 exposed workers.
(www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-09-02.asp)(AP, 1/21/08)
1968 Jan 21, A group of 31 North Korean commandos trudged undetected for about 40 miles from the border to the presidential Blue House of South Korean President Park Chung-hee in downtown Seoul. South Korean security forces repelled the assault. 28 North Koreans and 34 South Koreans were killed.
(SFC, 9/19/96, p.A8)(AP, 12/25/03)
1968 Jan 21, In Vietnam the Battle of Khe Sahn began as North Vietnamese forces attacked a US Marine base; the Americans were able to hold their position until the siege was lifted 2 1/2 months later. It was the longest and bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War. The Battle began at 0530 hours when North Vietnamese Army forces hammered the Marine-occupied Khe Sanh Combat Base with rocket, mortar, artillery, small arms, and automatic weapons fire. Hundreds of 82-mm mortar rounds and 122-mm rockets slammed into the combat base. Virtually all of the base's ammunition stock and a substantial portion of the fuel supplies were destroyed.
(WSJ, 5/2/02, p.D7)(AP, 1/21/08)(www.vietnam-war.info/battles/siege_of_khe_sanh.php)
1968 Jan 22, The TV variety show "Laugh In" began on NBC with comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. It continued running to May 14, 1973. It was the top ranking network show on television for two seasons (1968-1969) with rankings of 31.8 and 26.3%.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_&_Martin%27s_Laugh-In)(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1968 Jan 22, The off Broadway show "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" premiered at the Village Gate Theater. A film version was produced in 1975. Brel (1929-1978), a Belgian singer, was later buried in the Marquesas Island of Hiva Oa, in the same cemetery as Paul Gauguin.
(www.talkinbroadway.com/regional/sfla/sfla176.html)
1968 Jan 22, Apollo 5 was launched to the Moon; unmanned lunar module tests made.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_5)
1968 Jan 23, North Korea seized the U.S. Navy intelligence ship Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation's territorial waters on a spying mission. One crewman was killed in the attack. Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher (d.2004 at 76) was quickly separated from the 81-man crew. The crew was released 11 months later.
(NG, 8/74, p.266)(AP, 1/23/98)(SFC, 10/2/01, p.A15)(SFC, 1/30/04, p.A25)
1968 Jan 24, Mary Lou Retton, gymnast (Oly-gold/2 silver/2 bronze-84), was born in Fairmont, WV.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Retton)
1968 Jan 24, An Israeli submarine, the Dakar, a British-made submarine with a 69-man crew, was lost in the Mediterranean Sea while enroute from England to Israel. The sunken ship was found May 28, 1999, between Crete and Cyprus.
(SFC, 5/31/99, p.A8)(www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/9650/dakar.html)
1968 Jan 28, Vince Lombardi resigned as coach of Wisconsin’s Green Bay Packers, two weeks after winning Super Bowl II. He remained as general manager. On Feb 1 Phil Bengtson was named coach of the Packers.
(www.packers.com/history/chronology/)(www.nfl.com/history/chronology/1961-1970)
1968 Jan 29, A court convened in Vietnam for the murder of Cambodian, triple agent Inchin Lam, by Special Forces Captain John J. McCarthy Jr. Murder charges were later dropped due to exculpatory evidence and proven prosecutorial fraud on the court. A civil action for $1.3 billion in US Federal District Court, Washington D.C. against the CIA and associated agencies was dismissed in 2003.
(www.copvcia.com/Mac.htm)(http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id299.html)
1968 Jan 29, Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita (b.1886), painter and engraver born in Tokyo, Japan, died in Zurich, Switz. He applied French oil techniques to Japanese-style paintings. In 2006 Phyllis Birnbaum authored “Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita – The Artist Caught Between East and West.”
(SSFC, 11/26/06, p.M1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuguharu_Foujita)
1968 Jan 31, In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive began as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers attacked strategic and civilian locations throughout South Vietnam. The Viet Cong, under General Vo Nguyen Giap (b.1911), seized part of the US embassy in Saigon for 6 hours. They attacked more than 100 cities in South Vietnam with many US casualties. Although the Communists were beaten back, the offensive was seen as a major setback for the US and its allies. During the Tet Offensive, the Communist troops who took control of the ancient capital of Hue killed an estimated 6,000 civilians before they again lost control of the city.
(www.vwam.com/vets/tet/tet.html)(SFC, 2/3/00, p.A25)(AP, 1/30/08)
Jan, Ralph Ginzburg (1929-2006), American author and publisher, began publishing Avant Garde, a literary and arts magazine in NYC. The magazine continued to July, 1971.
(SFC, 7/7/06, p.B9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Ginzburg)
1968 Feb 1, Richard M. Nixon announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
(AP, 2/1/08)
1968 Feb 1, Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, was born. Lisa Marie married ‘The Gloved One’, Michael Jackson, in the ‘90s.
(SFC, 8/11/97, p.A1)(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1968 Feb 1, US troops drove the North Vietnamese out of Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon. South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu declared martial law. Saigon's police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head in a scene captured by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and NBC News.
(HN, 2/1/99)(SFC, 7/16/98, p.B2)(AP, 2/1/08)
1968 Feb 1, The Pennsylvania Railroad and NYC Central merged into Penn Central.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Central)
1968 Feb 4, Neal Cassidy (b.1926), friend of Jack Kerouac and one of the Merry Pranksters, died on a Mexican highway.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.E5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady)
1968 Feb 5, US troops divided Viet Cong at Hue while the Saigon government claimed they would arm loyal citizens. The main assaults at Khe Sanh started.
(HN, 2/5/99)(http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Siege_of_Khe_Sanh/)
1968 Feb 6, Former president Dwight Eisenhower hit a golfing hole-in-one.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, Z1 p.8)
1968 Feb 6, Charles de Gaulle opened the 19th Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1968 Feb 7, The Arthur Miller play "Price" premiered in NYC.
(www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/arthur_miller_timeline.html)
1968 Feb 7, North Vietnamese used 11 Soviet-built light tanks to overrun the U.S. Special Forces camp at Lang Vei at the end of an 18-hour long siege.
(HN, 2/7/99)
1968 Feb 8, George Wallace, the pro-segregation governor of Alabama, entered the US presidential race. Wallace ran as a third-party candidate. He was mainly popular in the deep south, but he was able to attract 14% of the popular vote in the November election.
(HN, 2/7/97)(www.answers.com/topic/george-wallace)
1968 Feb 8, Robert F. Kennedy said that the US cannot win the Vietnam War.
(HN, 2/8/98)
1968 Feb 8, At South Carolina State 3 black students were killed in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, during a civil rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley. Nearly 50 were injured in the Orangeburg Massacre during confrontations with the National Guard. In 2001 Gov. Jim Hodges voiced his regret over the massacre. In 1970 Jack Nelson (1929-2009), LA Times reporter, authored “The Orangeburg Massacre.”
(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.8)(AP, 2/8/99)(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A3)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.D6)
1968 Feb 8, In South Carolina Lee Roy Martin, called the editor of a local newspaper, and told him where to find the bodies of two women he'd dumped in the woods. He threatened to kill even more women until he was "shot down like the dog I am." Clues in the area led to Martin's arrest. Martin, dubbed the “Gaffney Strangler,” was convicted of four murders and sentenced to four life terms. In 1972, he was stabbed to death in his cell.
(AP, 7/4/09)
1968 Feb 10, Peggy Fleming of the United States won the gold medal in women's figure skating at the Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble, France.
(AP, 2/10/97)
1968 Feb 12, "Soul on Ice" by Eldridge Cleaver (full name: Leroy Eldridge Cleaver), a militant activist and Black Panther, was first published. Cleaver spent much of his early life in and out of prison on charges ranging from drug possession to assault. It was in prison that he began the essays that would become Soul on Ice. Shortly after being paroled in 1966, Eldridge Cleaver met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther party. Cleaver quickly became the party's minister of information. Faced with further prison time after a shootout with police in April 1968, Cleaver jumped bail and fled the country, first to Cuba, then to Algeria. He returned voluntarily in 1975 having broken with the Panthers and disillusioned with communism. His change in thinking is reflected in his 1978 book Soul on Fire. He died on May 1, 1998, in Pomona, California.
(AP, 2/12/98)(HNQ, 2/2/01)
1968 Feb 13, The US sent 10,500 more combat troops to Vietnam.
(HN, 2/13/98)
1968 Feb 15, The Anaheim Amigos’ Les Selvage scored 10, 3-pt baskets in an ABA game vs. the Denver Nuggets.
(www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/sports/spor1968.htm)
1968 Feb 16, Beatles George Harrison & John Lennon flew to India with their wives for transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
(www.beatles.ws/1968.htm)
1968 Feb 16, America’s first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated in Haleyville, Ala.
(AP, 2/16/98)
1968 Feb 18, Three US pilots, who had been held by the Vietnamese, arrived in Washington. The Vietnamese people later pressured Hanoi to account for their own 300,000 MIAs.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1968 Feb 18, British adopted year-round daylight savings time.
(www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/time-facts/british-summer-time-(bst))
1968 Feb 18, Some 10,000 people in West Berlin demonstrated against US in Vietnam War.
(www.dreamsville.net/?p=196)
1968 Feb 19, The children's program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, created by Fred Rogers (1928-2003), premiered on NET (later PBS).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Rogers%27_Neighborhood)
1968 Feb 19, Mississippi state troopers used tear gas to stop Alcorn A&M demonstrations.
(http://tinyurl.com/c5flal)
1968 Feb 20, A Hue, South Vietnam, army chief ordered all looters to be shot on sight.
(HN, 2/20/98)
1968 Feb 26, Thirty-two African nations agreed to boycott the Olympics because of the presence of South Africa.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1968 Feb 26, Clandestine Radio Voice of Iraqi People (Communist) made its final transmission.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1968 Feb 27, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite‘s commentary on the progress of the Vietnam War solidified President Lyndon B. Johnson‘s decision not to seek re-election in 1968. Cronkite, who had been at Hue in the midst of the Tet Offensive earlier in February, said: "Who won and who lost in the great Tet Offensive against the cities? I‘m not sure." He concluded: "It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out...will be to negotiate, not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could." Johnson called the commentary a "turning point," saying that if he had "lost Cronkite," he‘d "lost Mr. Average Citizen." On March 31, Johnson announced he would not seek re-election.
(HNQ, 10/30/00)
1968 Feb 27, Frankie Lymon (b.1942), American singer died. He was an African-American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of a New York City-based early rock and roll group called the Teenagers. Their first single, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" (1956), was also their biggest hit. The 1998 film "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" was a musical comedy-drama with Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox, Lela Rochon and Little Richard. It was directed by Gregory Nava and set in the 1950s based on the life of Frankie Lymon.
(SFC, 8/28/98, p.C1)(SFC, 9/2/98, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Lymon)
1968 Feb 29, At the Grammy Awards, the Fifth Dimension's "Up, Up and Away" won record of the year for 1967, while album of the year honors went to the Beatles for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
(HN, 2/29/00)(AP, 2/29/04)
1968 Feb 29, President Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move "toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."
(AP, 2/29/00)
1968 Feb 29, Robert McNamara resigned as US Secretary of Defense as a result of the Tet disaster. He was succeeded by Clark Clifford for 9 months who worked to reverse US policy in Vietnam.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFEC, 10/11/98, p.A2)
1968 Feb 29, The discovery of the first "pulsar," a star which emits regular radio waves, was announced by Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell at Cambridge, England.
(AP, 2/29/00)(HN, 2/29/00)
1968 Feb, The Federal Hourly Minimum Wage was set at $1.60 an hour.
(http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/blminwage.htm)
1968 Mar 1, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was replaced by Clark Clifford.
(HN, 3/1/99)
1968 Mar 1, Singers Johnny Cash (36) and June Carter (38) wed.
(SFC, 9/13/03, p.A12)
1968 Mar 1, The first 15-minute version of the musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" by Andrew Lloyd Weber was performed at Central Hall, Westminster, London.
(www.thisistheatre.com/joseph/index.html)
1968 Mar 2, The Poor Peoples' March on Washington, envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a means of dramatizing the plight of the poor of all races, got under way.
(www.project1968.com/in-the-news-may-2-1968.html)
1968 Mar 2, In Switzerland the World Ice Pairs Figure Skating Championship in Geneva was won by Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov (USSR). The Ladies Figure Skating Championship was won by Peggy Fleming (USA). The Men's Figure Skating Championship was won by Emmerich Danzer (Austria).
(SC, 3/2/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Figure_Skating_Championships)
1968 Mar 2, In Vietnam the siege of Khe Sanh ended and the US Marines stationed there were still in control of the mountain top. Gen. John J. Tolson presented a briefing and laid out the concept of what became known as Operation Pegasus. The siege of Khe Sanh was the longest and bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War. During the siege Manny Babbit was wounded. Babbit in 1980 killed a 78-year-old woman in Sacramento, Ca., and was convicted and sentenced to death. He was awarded his Purple Heart while on death row in 1998.
(HN, 3/2/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khe_Sanh)(SFC, 3/20/98, p.A1)
1968 Mar 2, The USSR launched space probe Zond 4. It failed to leave Earth orbit.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_4)
1968 Mar 3, The musical "Here's Where I Belong" opened and closed at Billy Rose Theater in NYC. The book was by Alex Gordon and Terrence McNally, lyrics by Alfred Uhry, and music by Robert Waldman.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here%27s_Where_I_Belong)
1968 Mar 3, The embassies of Greece, Portugal and Spain were bombed in the Hague.
(http://1968ineurope.sneakpeek.de/index.php/chronologies/index/42)
1968 Mar 3, The Tet offensive at Hue, South Vietnam, ended with the crushing of the last Viet Cong resistance. North Vietnamese troops had captured the imperial palace in Hue, South Vietnam. US troops reconquered Hue, Vietnam.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(HN, 2/24/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hue)
1968 Mar 4, Martin Luther King Jr. announced plans for Poor People's Campaign. In late March and early April 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. devoted his organizing talents to a drive to bring the nation's poor people to Washington, D.C. for a series of massive nonviolent demonstrations. King's "Poor People's Campaign" would attempt to unify African Americans, Latinos, and lower-income whites in pressing the Johnson Administration and Congress in an election year to enact a $30 billion-a-year domestic "Marshall Plan" to alleviate poverty.
(SC, 3/4/02)(http://hnn.us/articles/49016.html)
1968 Mar 4, NASA launched its Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5.
(http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/missions/ogo.html)
1968 Mar 7, The First Battle of Saigon, begun on Jan 30 as part of the Tet Offensive, ended.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Saigon)
1968 Mar 8, Some 1500 students demonstrated in Warsaw following a government ban on the performance of a play by Adam Mickiewicz, (Dziady), written in 1824). Within four days, protests spread to Krakow, Lublin, Gliwice, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Poznan, and Lodz.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polish_political_crisis)
1968 Mar 8, The Russian K-129, a Golf-II class, diesel-electric submarine armed with nuclear missiles and 98 seamen aboard, sank in 16,000 feet of water northwest of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Russian officials suspected that the K-129 was struck by an American submarine, the USS Swordfish. The US Navy said the vessel suffered a catastrophic internal explosion. A US sub, the Halibut, found the Soviet vessel 6 months later and recovered 3 missiles with nuclear warheads, Soviet code books and an encryption machine. In August 1974 the CIA recovered part of the sub. A 100 foot section was pulled in by the Glomar Explorer with 2 nuclear tipped torpedoes and the bodies of 6 Russian sailors.
(SFC, 7/15/96, p.A6)(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A19,21)(AP, 9/11/07)(AP, 2/13/10)
1968 Mar 9, General William Westmoreland asked for 206,000 more troops in Vietnam.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1968 Mar 10, Robert Kennedy visited Delano, Ca., in his bid for the presidency. He joined Cesar Chavez in a chapel where Chavez broke his fast on behalf of organizing farm workers.
(SFEM, 11/17/96, p.18)
1968 Mar 10-1968 Mar 11, The ultra secret facility Lima Site 85 in Phou Phathi, Laos, was manned by USAF personnel and 11 were KIA or MIA as it was overran. The event has been characterized as the largest single day ground loss for the USAF.
(www.cia.gov/csi/studies/95unclass/Linder.html)(http://limasite85.us/)
1968 Mar 12, President Lyndon Johnson won the New Hampshire Democratic primary, but a strong second-place showing by anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota played a role in Johnson's decision not to seek re-election. Johnson won over Eugene McCarthy 49.6 to 41.9%. Republican Richard Nixon won the New Hampshire primary over Nelson Rockefeller 77.6 to 10.8%.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A19)(AP, 3/12/08)
1968 Mar 12, A Miami-bound flight was commandeered to Cuba.
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.E8)
1968 Mar 12, The British-ruled African island of Mauritius became an independent country within the Commonwealth of Nations and many Europeans left the country. GDP per person was about $200. By 2008 it rose to $7,000 per person.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(SSFC, 12/9/01, p.C9)(AP, 3/12/08)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.58)
1968 Mar 13, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon Company, U.S.A.) announced the discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope (Prudhoe Bay). The oil companies soon began efforts to construct a pipeline, but work was suspended due to environmental concerns.
(AH, 2/05, p.14)(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)
1968 Mar 15, The U.S. mint halted the practice of buying and selling gold.
(HN, 3/15/98)
1968 Mar 15, American intelligence noted withdrawal of major NVA units from the Khe Sanh area.
(www.geocities.com/Pentagon/4867/timeline.html)
1968 Mar 16, Robert F. Kennedy decided to join the presidential race.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1968 Mar 16, LBJ decided to send 35-50,000 more troops to Vietnam.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1968 Mar 16, In Vietnam Lt. Calley led 105 men of Company C into My Lai and at least 347 of 700 Vietnamese civilians were killed. Estimates of villagers massacred ranged from 347-504. Other killings by B company occurred nearby. Col. Oran K. Henderson (d.1998 at 77) was on his first day as commanding officer of the new 11th Infantry Brigade and watched from a command helicopter. Hugh Thompson (d.2006), a helicopter pilot, observed the end of the massacre. He landed between some remaining villagers and his fellow soldiers and ordered his gunner to fire on American troops if necessary. With 2 other gunships he airlifted to safety a dozen villagers. He and his gunner were awarded the Soldier's Medal in 1998. The atrocity was exposed by Ron Ridenhour (d.1998 at 52), a door gunner on an observation helicopter, who flew over the village a few days after the event. He waited several months until he was out of the service before reporting the event to state and congressional officials. The Army later charged 25 officers and enlisted men in the massacre but only Lt. Calley was convicted. Gen. Samuel W. Koster (d.2006) was charged with covering up the killings, but criminal charges were eventually dismissed. Koster was censured, stripped of a medal and demoted one rank to brigadier general. John Sack (d.2004), war correspondent, later authored "Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story." In 1999 Trent Angers authored "The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story."
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A9)(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A8)(SFC, 5/11/98, p.A20)(SFC, 6/6/98, p.A23)(WSJ, 11/2/99, p.A24)(SFC, 3/31/04, p.B7)(SFC, 1/6/06, p.B5) (SFC, 2/14/06, p.B7)(AP, 3/16/08)
1968 Mar 16, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (b.1895), Italian composer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Castelnuovo-Tedesco)
1968 Mar 17, A peaceful anti-Vietnam War protest in London was followed by a riot outside the US Embassy; more than 80 people were reported injured. Some 20,000 people at the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in London were mowed down by police on horses as they marched.
(AP, 3/17/08)(SFC, 5/22/98, p.C12)(www.springerlink.com/content/qg812p1147300117/)
1968 Mar 18, Pres. Johnson signed Public Law 90-269 removing gold backing from US paper money.
(www.peterdavidbeter.com/docs/txt/dbal33.txt)
1968 Mar 19, Howard University students in Washington DC staged rallies, protests and a 5-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building, shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program, and demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968)
1968 Mar 20, Pres. Lyndon Johnson held talks with Paraguay’s Pres.-Gen. Alfredo Stroessner in Washington DC.
(Econ, 2/14/04, p.34)(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28747)
1968 Mar 21, Israeli forces attacked a Palestinian base belonging to Fatah in the village of Al-Karameh in Jordan. Israeli forces engage in a battle with Palestinian fighters for the first time. On 24 March 1968, the Security Council adopted resolution 248 (1968), condemning the large scale and premeditated military actions by Israel against Jordan. The Karameh mission failed. Muki Betser, Israeli commando, was wounded. He later became commander of the Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite counter-terrorist unit.
(SFC, 7/16/96, p.E5)(www.un.int/palestine/chron60.shtml)
1968 Mar 22, Gen'l. William Westmoreland (1914-2005) was relieved of his duties in the wake of the Tet disaster. Troop strength under Westmoreland had reached over 500,000 and he wanted more. He was succeeded by Gen'l. Creighton Abrams. Abrams reversed Westmoreland's strategy. He ended major "search and destroy" missions and focused on protecting population centers. William Colby took charge of the pacification campaign. President Lyndon B. Johnson named Gen. William C. Westmoreland to be the Army's new Chief of Staff.
(HN, 3/22/97)(WSJ, 6/23/99, p.A24)(Econ, 7/30/05, p.79)(AP, 3/22/08)
1968 Mar 22, In southern Thailand Tuanku Biyo Kodoniyo set up the Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO). It called for an independent Islamic country.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/pulo.htm)
1968 Mar 23, Reverend Walter Fauntroy became the 1st non-voting congressional delegate from Washington DC, since Reconstruction.
(www.thehistorymakers.com/timeline/index.asp?string=1968)
1968 Mar 27, Suharto succeeded Sukarno as president of Indonesia. Gen'l. Suharto thwarted a Communist coup and gradually assumed power. Thousands of alleged communists were executed amid widespread violence.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.A15)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)(MC, 3/27/02)
1968 Mar 27, Yuri Gagarin (34), Soviet cosmonaut (Vostok I) and the first man to orbit the Earth, died in a plane crash.
(AP, 3/27/97)(MC, 3/27/02)
1968 Mar 28, The U.S. lost its first aircraft in Vietnam. An F-111 vanished in a combat mission over North Vietnam. Republic Aircraft's F-105 Thunderchief, better known as the 'Thud,' was the Air Force's warhorse in Vietnam.
(HN, 3/28/98)
1968 Mar 28, In Memphis a riot erupted during a protest march in support of striking sanitation workers led by Martin Luther King. One African-American marcher was killed and King urged calm as National Guard troops are called to Memphis to restore order. King subsequently departed Memphis, but vowed to return on April 4 to attend another march.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/atrl3z)
1968 Mar 29, In SF Linda Harmon (14) was raped and stabbed to death while babysitting for a neighbor in Visitacion Valley. In lat 2003 police matched DNA evidence to William Speer, who was undergoing therapy for sexually violent tendencies at an Arizona mental hospital.
(SFC, 11/4/05, p.B1)
1968 Mar 29, Students seized a building at Maryland’s Bowie State College.
(www.amoeba.com/blog/tags/baseball/page1.html)
1968 Mar 30, General Ludvik Svoboda (1895-1979) was elected president of Czechoslovakia. He stayed in office to 1975.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludv%C3%ADk_Svoboda)
1968 Mar 31, Pres. Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election and declared a partial bombing halt in Vietnam. The stock market soared. Citing national divisions over the war in Vietnam, Johnson declares that "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(TMC, 1994, p.1968)(SFC, 8/18/96, Z1 p.4)(AP, 3/31/97)
1968 In Poland some 4,000 students marched through Warsaw yelling: "Down with the dictatorship."
(SFC, 5/22/98, p.C12)
1968 Apr 1, In Vietnam the U.S. Army launched Operation Pegasus to reopen a land route to the besieged Khe Sanh Marine base.
(HN, 4/1/99)(www.geocities.com/Pentagon/4867/timeline.html)
1968 Apr 2, The influential science-fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey," produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, had its world premiere in Washington.
(AP, 4/2/08)
1968 Apr 2, Senator Eugene McCarthy won the Democratic primaries in Wisconsin. In 2004 Dominic Sandbrook authored "Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism."
(http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/06/15_newsroom_mccarthytimeline/)(SSFC, 4/11/04, p.M6)
1968 Apr 2, In West Germany the Baader-Meinhof gang was formed and named after its founders, Andreas Baader (d.1977) and Ulrike Meinhof (d.1976). Both later committed suicide in prison. The gang became known as the Red Army Faction and led assassinations, bombings and bank robberies in West Germany through the 1970s and 1980s. The RAF published a letter to Reuters in 1998 and declared to have disbanded.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A18)(www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1968.html)
1968 Apr 3, Less than 24 hours before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "mountaintop" speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers, "It really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountain top, and I don't mind."
(AP, 4/3/98)
1968 Apr 3, North Vietnam agreed to meet with US representatives to set up preliminary peace talks.
(AP, 4/3/97)
1968 Apr 4, Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, 39, was assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray (d.1998) confessed and pleaded guilty in Mar, 1969, but later tried to recant and said he was a fall guy. In 1993 Lloyd Jowers (d.2000), a Memphis businessman, said on ABC-TV that he had hired King's killer as a favor to an underworld figure who was a friend. Jowers said he received $100,000 from Memphis produce merchant Frank Liberto to arrange King’s murder. In 1997 Ray identified an arms smuggler named "Raoul" as the real killer. In 1998 a former FBI agent produced documents from Ray’s car with the name Raul. In 1999 a civil trial jury in Memphis ruled that the 1968 killing of Rev. Martin Luther King was a conspiracy. The jury concluded that Lloyd Jowers, a former café owner, had conspired with elements of the Memphis Police Dept., the federal government and organized crime to kill King. In 2000 a Justice Dept. report rejected allegations of conspiracy. In 2002 Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson (61) said that his father, Henry Clay Wilson (d.1990), had shot King. In 2003 Stewart Burns authored "To the Mountaintop: Martin Luther King's Sacred Mission to Save America."
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-15)(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.A3)(AP, 4/4/97)(SFC, 4/7/97, p.A10)(SFC, 3/25/98, p.A3)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A12)(SFC, 11/23/99, p.A9)(SFC, 12/9/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A15)(SFC, 5/24/00, p.C5)(SFC, 6/10/00, p.A3)(SFC, 4/4/02, p.A2)(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.M1)
1968 Apr 4, Bobby Kennedy spoke at a black ghetto in Indianapolis just after hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King. His speech registered the enormity of the event and began the work of healing. Riots over the next few days hit 76 American cities, but Indianapolis remained quiet.
(Econ, 4/22/06, p.79)
1968 Apr 5, Riots erupted across the US following the King assassination.
(CL, 4/5/96)
1968 Apr 5, Robert F. Kennedy assured the nation that "no martyr's cause had ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet."
(SFEC, 1/16/00, BR p.1)
1968 Apr 5, In Vietnam the siege of Khe Sahn ended after 76 days.
(HN, 5/5/97)
1968 Apr 6, In Richmond, Indiana, gunpowder stocks at a sporting-goods store exploded and at least 16 people were killed.
(www.gendisasters.com/data1/in/explosions/richmond-gasexplosion-apr1968.htm)
1968 Apr 6, Black Panther member Bobby Hutton (17) was killed in a gun battle with police in West Oakland, Ca., and Eldridge Cleaver was arrested.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)(SFC, 4/25/98, p.A13)
1968 Apr 6, East German voters approved a new socialist constitution by a 94.5% margin.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_Constitution)
1968 Apr 8, The Academy Awards and Baseball's Opening Day were postponed because of the M.L. King assassination.
(www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/The-Assassination-of-Martin-Luther-King-201065.html)
1968 Apr 8, Clay Felker (1925-2008), former editor of the New York Herald’s Sunday magazine, re-introduced New York magazine as a glossy after the paper folded.
(SFC, 7/2/08, p.A2)
1968 Apr 8, In Czechoslovakia a new government was formed under Oldrich Cernik.
(http://archiv.radio.cz/history/history14.html)
1968 Apr 8, In Vietnam Khe Sanh was officially relieved after 77 days by the US 2nd Cavalry. US forces in Operation Pegasus finally retook Route 9, ending the siege of Khe Sanh. Khe Sanh had been the biggest single battle of the Vietnam War to that point. The official assessment of the North Vietnamese Army dead was just over 1,600 killed, with two divisions all but annihilated. Thousands more were probably killed by American bombing.
(www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/timeline/index2.html)
1968 Apr 10, In the 40th Academy Awards "In the Heat of the Night" won as best film. Rod Steiger won as best actor for his role in the film. Katherine Hepburn won as best actress for her role in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40th_Academy_Awards)
1968 Apr 10, President Johnson replaced General Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam [see Mar 22].
(HN, 4/10/98)
1968 Apr 10, A ferry boat sank in harbor of Wellington, NZ, and 51 were killed.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/10/newsid_2924000/2924897.stm)
1968 Apr 11, President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. This included a Fair Housing Act and the Indian Civil Rights Act, which limited sentences that tribes could hand down on any charge to six months. In 1968 Congress increased the maximum to one year. The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae - FNMA), established by the government in 1938, became a private, shareholder-owned company as part of the Fair Housing Act.
(http://tinyurl.com/2o3p2q)(AP, 4/11/98)(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A23)(http://tinyurl.com/ldx765)
1968 Apr 11, Riots erupted in West Berlin after the shooting of student leader Rudi Dutschke (1940-1979). He survived the assassination attempt by a right-wing extremist, living for another twelve years until related health problems caused his death.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudi_Dutschke)
1968 Apr 14, The gay-themed play, "The Boys in the Band" by Mart Crowley, opened off Broadway at Theater Four and set a new genre. A film version was released in 1970.
(AP, 4/14/08)(WSJ, 8/28/96, p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_in_the_Band)
1968 Apr 16, The Pentagon announced the "Vietnamization" of the war; troops will begin coming home.
(HN, 4/16/99)
1968 Apr 16, Edna Ferber (b.1885), US author (Giant, Showboat), died. Her novels included “Show Boat” (1926), which was produced on Broadway in 1927 and later adopted 4 times as a movie.
(www.apl.org/history/ferber/edna.bio.html)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_Ferber)
1968 Apr 18, Some 178,000 employees of US Bell Telephone System went on strike.
(www.project1968.com/in-the-news-april-14-apri.html)
1968 Apr 18, London Bridge was sold to a US oil company. It was later erected in Arizona.
(www.londonbridgeresort.com/history/london_bridge.html)
1968 Apr 18, There was a coup in Sierra Leone. A new government under Siaka Stevens was announced.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Apr 19, Ralph S. Plaisted (1927- 2008), insurance salesman turned explorer, reached the North Pole by snowmobile with 3 other men. This was the first expedition to indisputably reach the North Pole.
(SFC, 9/11/08, p.B4)
1968 Apr 19, The Secretary of the National Assembly in Czechoslovakia promised rehabilitation of political prisoners and freedom of the press, assembly and religion.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Apr 19, Makhosetive, later King Mswati III of Swaziland, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mswati_III_of_Swaziland)
1968 Apr 20, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was sworn in as Canada’s 15th Prime Minister. He succeeded Lester B. Pierson and continued in office to 1979.
(CFA, '96, p.81)(AP, 4/20/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Trudeau)
1968 Apr 21, In the 22nd Tony Awards: "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" and "Hallelujah Baby" won.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22nd_Tony_Awards)
1968 Apr 23, The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church.
(AP, 4/23/97)
1968 Apr 23, At Columbia Univ. in NYC the SDS held a rally in support of the IDA Six. An 8-day student sit-in began at Columbia Univ. to protest ties to the Defense Dept. and plans to build a gym over neighborhood objections. Within 72 hours students seized 5 buildings and 628 people were arrested. [see Apr 24] In 2009 Mark Rudd, prominent student leader at Columbia, authored “Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen.”
(www.wikicu.com/1968_protests)(SFC, 9/1/03, p.B4)(WSJ, 3/28/09, p.W8)
1968 Apr 24, Leftist students at Columbia University in New York City began a weeklong occupation of several campus buildings in protest over the Vietnam War [See Apr 23].
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(AP, 4/24/97)(HN, 4/24/99)
1968 Apr 26, The US Social Security Administration (SSA) convened an interagency meeting of technical staff from Federal agencies with an interest in poverty. SSA personnel presented to the group their proposal to use the revised food plans to recalculate the poverty and low income thresholds, and the group agreed to the proposal.
(www.ssa.gov/history/fisheronpoverty.html)
1968 Apr 26, Students seized administration building at Ohio State University.
(HN, 4/26/98)
1968 Apr 26, The United States exploded a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called "Boxcar" beneath the Nevada desert.
(AP, 4/26/08)
1968 Apr 26, In Sierra Leone Pres. Siaka Stevens (1905-1988) re-assumed the post of prime minister following brief military rule. He led a one-party socialist state that was later described as a “17-year plague of locusts.”
(WSJ, 5/31/00, p.A26)(Econ, 8/4/07, p.42)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siaka_Stevens)
1968 Apr 27, In the Netherlands part of a group of Catholic radicals left their own party and formed the Political Party of Radicals (PPR). The party dissolved in 1991.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Party_Radicals)
1968 Apr 28, In Baden-Wurttenburg, West Germany, the far-right National Democratic Party gained 12 seats.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Apr 29, The counterculture musical "Hair" opened on Broadway following limited engagements off-Broadway.
(AP, 4/29/08)
1968 Apr 29, Dr. Ralph Abernathy led The Poor People's Campaign in Washington D.C., less than a month after the assassination of King. It concluded on June 23. The campaign was for reforms in welfare, employment and housing policies. Abernathy was the successor to Rev. Martin Luther King as head of the Southern Christian Leadership conference.
(HNQ, 1/19/99)
1968 Apr 30, US Marines attacked a division of North Vietnamese in the village of Dai Do.
(HN, 4/30/99)
1968 Apr, Simon & Garfunkel released their song "Mrs. Robinson."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Robinson)
1968 Apr, The South Korean Silmido Unit was forged of misfits to "blast Kim Il Sung's palace in Pyongyang and cut his throat."
(AP, 12/25/03)
1968 May 1, In a second day of battle, US Marines, with the support of naval fire, continued their attack on a North Vietnamese Division at Dai Do.
(HN, 5/1/99)
1968 May 2, The US Army attacked Nhi Ha in South Vietnam and began a fourteen-day battle to wrestle it away from Vietnamese Communists.
(HN, 5/2/99)
1968 May 3, A Black Student Sit-In at the Bursar's Office began. It lasted for 38 hours, after the Northwestern University refused to accede to the demands of For Members Only, the black undergraduate student group.
(www.library.northwestern.edu/archives/onthisday/2009/05/)
1968 May 3, After three days of battle, the US Marines retook Dai Do complex in Vietnam, only to find the North Vietnamese had evacuated the area.
(HN, 5/3/99)
1968 May 3-1958 May 17, Student riots and strikes hit France. 10 million workers went on strike. Workers struck the Renault factory on Seguin Island for 33 days until the government recognized their union.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFC, 5/22/98, p.C12)(WSJ, 3/31/99, p.B14)
1968 May 5, US Air Force planes hit Nhi Ha, South Vietnam, in support of attacking infantrymen.
(HN, 5/5/99)
1968 May 5, Spain closed its frontier with Gibraltar. This Followed a referendum in which Gibraltar's voters were asked whether they wished to become part of Spain and voted with a resounding no vote.
(www.thepeoplehistory.com/may5th.html)
1968 May 6, Astronaut Neil Armstrong was nearly killed in a lunar module trainer accident.
(HNQ, 7/20/99)
1968 May 6, In Paris violent fighting took place in the morning and then from 2 p.m. in the afternoon to 1 a.m. the next morning on the Boulevard Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain. Close to 600 students and police were wounded. Student strikes spread to the provinces.
(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/writers/frank/1968/may1968/chronology.htm)
1968 May 8, William Styron (1925-2006), a white author, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “The Confessions of Nat Turner.” The book was based on the true story of an 1831 slave revolt in Virginia. Some black intellectuals, including Cornell historian John Henrik Clarke, published a critical response to the book.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/sfeature/sf_1968_text_05.html)
1968 May 8, Catfish Hunter of the Oakland Athletics pitched the first perfect game in the American League in 47 years before a crowd of 5,000 at the Oakland Coliseum.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W39)
1968 May 10, FBI director Hoover sent all field offices an urgent memo escalating the FBI’s attack on dissent. It authorized an operation called “Counterintelligence Program – New Left.”
(SFCM, 10/10/04, p.23)
1968 May 10, Preliminary Vietnam peace talks began in Paris.
(AP, 5/10/97)
1968 May 11, In France PM Georges Pompidou made a speech conceding to the demand to reopen the universities and implied the government would release arrested students. The night of May 10-11 became known as the ``Night of the Barricades.’ These events galvanized public support for the students.
(http://links.org.au/node/491)
1968 May 12, In Israel the Knesset passed the Jerusalem Day Law, making the day a national holiday. Israel’s government proclaimed Jerusalem Day, to be celebrated on the 28th of Iyar, the Hebrew date on which the divided city of Jerusalem became one.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Day)
1968 May 13, Peace talks between the US and North Vietnam began in Paris.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(HN, 5/13/98)
1968 May 13, In France a general strike and monster demonstration took place in Paris. Some 1,000,000 French demonstrated in support of student protesters.
(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/writers/frank/1968/may1968/chronology.htm)
1968 May 14, The Beatles in NYC announced the formation of their Apple Corp.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps)
1968 May 14, Adm. Husband Edward Kimmel (b.1882), commandant US Ocean fleet WW II, died in Connecticut. Some historians, such as submariner Captain Edward L. "Ned" Beach, later believed Admiral Kimmel and Army Lieutenant General Walter Short became scapegoats for the failures of their superiors prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and that their careers were effectively and unfairly ruined.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husband_Kimmel)
1968 May 15, US Marines relieved army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam, after a fourteen-day battle.
(HN, 5/15/99)
1968 May 15, A tornado at Jonesboro, Arkansas, killed 34 people. Another near Anchorage, Alaska, killed one person.
(SFC, 5/15/09, p.D8)
1968 May 17, In Maryland the Catonsville Nine including Daniel and Phillip Berrigan (d.2002), a Catholic priest, took hundreds of files from the draft board at the Knights of Columbus building and set them on fire with gasoline and soap chips.
(www.amazon.com/Trial-Catonsville-Nine-Daniel-Berrigan/dp/0823223310)(SFC, 12/7/02, p.A3)
1968 May 18, In Maryland’s 94th Preakness Ismael Valenzuela aboard Forward Pass won in 1:56.8.
(http://gallery.pictopia.com/bloodhorse/gallery/6826/photo/1259538/)
1968 May 20, The US Supreme Court (United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corp., 391 U.S. 244) ruled for the breakup of United Shoe Machinery Company in Mass.
(http://supreme.justia.com/us/391/244/)(WSJ, 10/2/97, p.A16)
1968 May 22, The nuclear-powered US submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, sank in the Atlantic Ocean. It was declared lost on June 5. Remains of the sub were found in October on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
(AP, 5/22/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589))
1968 May 24, The Rolling Stones, an English rock band, released "Jumping Jack Flash" in England. The US release was on June 1.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpin%27_Jack_Flash)
1968 May 24, Pres. De Gaulle proposed a referendum and students set fire to Paris. Rioters set fire to the Paris Bourse.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(MC, 5/24/02)
1968 May 25, The Gateway Arch, part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, was dedicated by Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall.
(AP, 5/25/08)
1968 May 25, Charles K. Feldman, film producer, died. His film productions included Casino Royale (1967).
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0271012/)
1968 May 25, George KFW von Kuchler (b.1881), German marshal, died. Kuchler’s forces had moved into Belgium and occupied Antwerp on 18 May 1940.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_von_K%C3%BCchler)
1968 May 25, In Newcastle, England, Mary Flora Bell, one day before her 11th birthday, strangled Martin Brown (4). She and unrelated friend Norma Bell (13) were later tried for the murders of 2 boys Martin Brown (4) and Brian Howe (3), committed 9 weeks apart. In 1972 Gitta Sereny published "The Case of Mary Bell," based on her coverage of the trial. In 1999 Gitta Sereny published "Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell," based on interviews with Mary Bell.
(SFEC, 6/6/99, BR p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bell)
1968 May 27, Memorial Day was celebrated. The last Monday of the month was set aside in 1968 to remember those who had died in the service of their country. Memorial Day, which began in 1868 as Decoration Day, had been celebrated on May 30 for the first 100 years.
(HNPD, 5/31/99)
1968 May 28, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy beat Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in the Democratic primary in Oregon.
(http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/06/15_newsroom_mccarthytimeline/)
1968 May 29, Pres. Johnson signed the Truth in Lending Act into law.
(http://altlaw.org/v1/cases/552046)
1968 May 29, UN Resolution 253 resolved sanctions on white-minority-ruled Rhodesia.
(www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,RESOLUTION,ZWE,456d621e2,3b00f27434,0.html)
1968 May 30, French Pres. Charles de Gaulle delivered a forceful televised address in order to regain control of public opinion, thrown into confusion by the political events resulting from a student protest.
(www.ena.lu/address_given_charles_gaulle_events_1968_paris_1968-022600052.html)
1968 May 30, Authorities blew up the University Church in Leipzig, Germany, to make room for the re¬construction of Karl-Marx-Platz, the city’s main square.
(http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=61806)
1968 May, The Lawrence Hall of Science opened in the Berkeley Hills. It was built in honor of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who developed the cyclotron. The octagonal shape represented the 8 branches of physical science.
(LHS, 2/12/1998)
1968 May, Bill Hambrecht & George Quist founded Hambrecht & Quist, an investment banking firm in SF, California, that focused on hi-growth issues. In 1999 it was acquired for $1.35B by Chase Manhattan Bank.
(SFC, 6/22/96, p.D1)(www.nndb.com/company/084/000057910/)
1968 Jun 1, The British television series "The Prisoner," starring Patrick McGoohan, had its American premiere on CBS.
(AP, 6/1/08)
1968 Jun 1, Author-lecturer Helen Keller (87), who earned a college degree despite being blind and deaf most of her life, died in Westport, Conn. In 1980 Joseph Lash published "Helen and Teacher," the story of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan.
(AP, 6/1/97)(SFEC, 8/16/98, BR p.3)
1968 Jun 3, Valerie Solanas, founder of the Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM), and author of the "SCUM Manifesto," shot Andy Warhol with a .32 automatic in his New York film studio, known as The Factory. Warhol survived but Solanas was judged insane and served three years in a psychiatric prison. She died in 1989 at 52 in a welfare hotel in San Francisco of bronchial pneumonia and emphysema. A film titled "I Shot Andy Warhol" opened in 1996 and featured Lili Taylor as Solanas.
(SFC, 5/15/96, p.E-1)(AP, 6/3/98)
1968 Jun 4, Robert Kennedy won the California democratic Presidential Primary whose candidates included Eugene McCarthy. Vice-Pres. Hubert Humphrey had declined to enter the California primary. Kennedy was shot the next day in LA by Sirhan Sirhan and died on June 6.
(SFEM, 11/17/96, p.26)
1968 Jun 4, Alexandre Kojeve (b.1902), French-Russian philosopher, died in Brussels. He was suspected of serving as a Soviet spy from 1938 to his death.
(WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Koj%C3%A8ve)
1968 Jun 5, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded at the Ambassador Hotel in LA just after claiming victory in California's Democratic presidential primary. Gunman Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was immediately arrested.
(HFA, '96, p.32)(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(AP, 6/5/97)
1968 Jun 6, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, a day after he was shot by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. In 2000 Ronald Steel authored "In Love With Night: The American Romance With Robert Kennedy." In 1969 Jack Newfield (d.2004) authored “Robert Kennedy: A Memoir.” In 2000 Evan Thomas authored "Robert Kennedy: His Life."
(AP, 6/6/97)(SFEC, 1/16/00, BR p.1)(WSJ, 9/7/00, p.A24)(SFC, 12/22/04, p.B5)
1968 Jun 7, Michael Robert Smith (25) escaped from California’s Soledad prison while serving time for a robbery conviction. He headed to Nevada, then New Jersey and into a marriage that didn't work out. In 2001 Smith moved to a tiny trailer in a heavily wooded area of Creek County, Okla., where he was recaptured in 2006.
(AP, 5/20/06)
1968 Jun 7, Dan Duryea (b.1907), film, stage and TV actor, died. His numerous films included “The Pride of the Yankees” (1942) and “The Flight of the Phoenix” (1965).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Duryea)
1968 Jun 7, In South Vietnam the week long Operation Swift Saber began. US Marines swept an area 10 miles northwest of Danang.
(www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers/histories/cv45-valleyforge/cv45-valleyforge.html)
1968 Jun 7, In Spain ETA, a Basque Homeland and Freedom separatist group, shot and killed Civil Guard Jose Pardines Arcay at a checkpoint. This marked ETA’s 1st killing as it began fighting for independence. Its political wing was Herri Batasuna.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.A11)(SFC, 7/21/97, p.A10)(AP, 3/22/06)
1968 Jun 8, Authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
(AP, 6/8/97)(HN, 6/8/98)
1968 Jun 12, The UN General Assembly adopted a Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons effective as of Mar 5, 1970. It acknowledged that some countries had nuclear weapons and charged them the obligation of negotiating their elimination. This obligation was expressed in stronger terms in 1996 by the Int’l. Court of Justice. It was opened for signatures on July 1, 1968.
(http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq7.html)(Econ, 8/20/05, p.14)
1968 Jun 13, Johnny Cash performed a live concert at California’s Folsom Prison. Applause from the inmates was dubbed into his "At Folsom Prison" album.
(WSJ, 11/26/97, p.CA4)(Econ, 9/18/04, p.88)
1968 Jun 13, US Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974) submitted his resignation to Pres. Johnson.
(www.presidentialtimeline.org/html/record.php?id=1338)
1968 Jun 14, Four of the Boston Five were convicted of conspiracy in their organized draft protest. Mitchell Goodman (1924-1997) organized the protest that included the burning of draft cards. Dr. Benjamin Spock (1903-1998), American pediatrician, was one of the defendants and the trial came to be known as the "Spock trial." The convictions were later overturned.
(SFC, 2/7/97, p.A28)(www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968/reference/timeline.html)
1968 Jun 17, The US Supreme Court in Jones v. Mayer banned racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_v._Mayer)
1968 Jun 17, The UK enacted sanctions against Rhodesia.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Jun 19, Some 50,000 marched on Washington, DC, to support the Poor People's Campaign. Rev. Jesse Jackson preached “I Am Somebody” at Resurrection City, a tent city set up in front of the White House. In 1971 he turned the speech into a poem for Sesame Street.
(http://cheyannescampsite.blogspot.com/2008_06_15_archive.html)(SFC, 7/5/96, BR, p.6)(HN, 6/19/98)
1968 Jun 19, In SF newlywed Officer Peter McElligott was fatally shot in a shootout with 2 robbery suspects in Golden Gate Park. The 2 attackers were later convicted of murder.
(SFC, 1/27/07, p.A8)
1968 Jun 24, "Resurrection City," a shantytown constructed as part of the Poor People's March on Washington, D.C., was closed by authorities.
(AP, 6/24/97)
1968 Jun 24, The St. Jean Baptiste parade in Montreal, an annual celebration of Quebec nationalism, erupted in violence.
(WSJ, 10/3/00, p.A26)
1968 Jun 25, The Canadian federal election was held to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 28th Parliament of Canada. The Liberal Party won a majority government under its new leader, PM Pierre Trudeau.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_1968)
1968 Jun 26, President Johnson read and released Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren's two June 13 letters, his June 26 reply, and announced that he had named Associate Justice Abe Fortas to succeed Warren.
(AP, 6/26/98)(www.mdeansutton.com/warren.htm)
1968 Jun 27, The Czechoslovak parliament abolished censorship and provided for rehabilitation of political prisoners.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Jun 28, Pres. Johnson signed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. It moved official recognition of Washington’s birthday and some other holidays to Mondays. Columbus Day, previously celebrated on Oct. 12, was moved to the 2nd Monday of October. In 2004 Pres. Bush set it to Oct 11.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Monday_Holiday_Act)(SFC, 2/21/05, p.A7)
1968 Jun 29, "Tip-Toe Thru' The Tulips With Me" by Tiny Tim (1932-1996), aka Herbert Khaury, peaked at #17.
(SFC, 12/2/96, p.A4)(www.dreamsville.net/index.php?paged=2)
1968 Jun 29, In Costa Rica the Arenal volcano, dormant for 450 years, burst into life and killed 95 people. The village of Tabacon was wiped out.
(SFC, 5/9/98, p.A7)(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.T6)
1968 Jun 30, The Lockheed C-5A Galaxy, a large US Air Force transport plane, made its first flight.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-5_Galaxy)
1967 Jun, The theme song from the film "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly" by Hugo Montenegro (1925-1981) reached No. 2 on the US record charts.
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0599359/bio)
1968 Jun, Ralph Nader formed his first task force of crusading students, comprised of seven law student volunteers. The group, later known as Nader’s Raiders, began looking into the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a sleepy bureaucracy entrusted with protecting consumers from shoddy products, fraudulent business practices and deceptive advertising.
(www.csrl.org/csrlhistory/index.html)
1968 Jun, In Quebec, Canada, the summertime Festival d’Ete de Quebec was begun.
(www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0001201)
1968 Jul 1, The Band released their "Music From Big Pink" album. It features one of their best-known songs, "The Weight."
(WSJ, 12/15/99, p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_from_Big_Pink)
1968 Jul 1, The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India refused to sign.
(AP, 7/1/97)(SFC, 5/28/98, p.A9)(http://tinyurl.com/d5cf45)
1968 Jul 1, Dominica’s left-wing government brought in the Seditious and Undesirable Publications Act to suppress dissent. Eugenia Charles led the opposition to get it withdrawn and was made the leader of the Dominica Free Party.
(Econ, 9/17/05, p.90)(http://tinyurl.com/l5lh6m)
1968 Jul 4, Arthur Kopit's "Indians," premiered in London.
(www.enotes.com/indians)
1968 Jul 4, The radio astronomy satellite Explorer 38 launched.
(www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=28608)
1968 Jul 8, Golda Meir resigned from her post as secretary of the Labor Party.
(www.jafi.org.il/education/jafi75/timeline5i.html)
1968 Jul 15, Commercial air travel began between US & USSR.
(www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1968/1968%20-%201275.html)
1968 Jul 15, Intel was founded. Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore had left Fairchild Semiconductor to form NM Electronics in Mountain View, Ca. In 1997 Tim Jackson published "Inside Intel: Andrew Grove and the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Chip Company." Grove joined Intel in this year and became its president in 1979. They bought the rights to the name Intel from Intelco fro $15,000.
(SFEC,10/26/97, BR p.3)(SFEC,12/21/97, p.A2)(SFC, 10/11/00, p.A6)(SFC, 7/16/03, p.B1)
1968 Jul 17, Beatle's animated film "Yellow Submarine" premiered in London. The US premiere was on November 13.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqUKJj0gGkM)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0063823/releaseinfo)
1968 Jul 17, The Arab Socialist Baath Party staged a bloodless coup in Iraq and gained control as the Revolution Command Council. Abdul Rahman Arif, brother of Abdul Salam Arif (d.1966), was ousted in the Baathist coup and exiled to Istanbul. Ahmed Hasan-al-Bakr became president of Iraq after the July 17 coup. This became a national holiday until it was abolished in 2003. Saddam Hussein soon became recognized as the strongman of the regime.
(NG, 5/88, p.653)(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A10)(AP, 7/13/03)(NW, 9/8/03, p.32)
1968 Jul 18, Intel was incorporated as N M Electronics (the letters standing for Noyce and Moore), but quickly changed its name to Intel, formed from the first syllables of the words integrated and electronics.
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5202/is_2004/ai_n19123399)
1968 Jul 18, The UK enacted sanctions against Rhodesia for a 2nd time. The first time was on June 17.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(http://tinyurl.com/c5kcs9)
1968 Jul 20, Joseph Keilberth (b.1908), German conductor (Bayreuth Festival), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Keilberth)
1968 Jul 25, H. Wroblewski discovered asteroid #1993 Guacolda on exposures by G. Plouguin and I. Belyaiev at the University of Chile, Cerro El Roble Station.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Guacolda)
1968 Jul 26, Britain’s Theater Act abolished censorship of the theatre and amended the law in respect of theatres and theatrical performances. .
(www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1968/cukpga_19680054_en_1)
1968 Jul 27, A 3-day race riot began in Gary, Indiana.
(www.project1968.com/july-28-august-3-1968.html)
1968 Jul 29, Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which reaffirmed the Church’s opposition to abortion and to all contraception except the rhythm method.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(AP, 7/29/98)(SSFC, 7/8/01, p.A4)
1968 Jul 30, In Gary, Indiana, policemen took aim at snipers after the third night of racial unrest. 64 people were taken into custody. Mayor Richard G. Hatcher, the first Negro mayor in a city with a Negro majority, said that he now believes that gangs realize they will not be allowed to use violence to get what they want.
(www.project1968.com/july-28-august-3-1968.html)
1968 Jul 30, Saddam Hussein took charge of internal security services in Iraq.
(AP, 10/17/05)
1968 Jul 31, The Beatle's recorded Hey Jude.
(http://oldies.about.com/od/thebeatlessongs/a/heyjude.htm)
1968 Jul 31, In Boston 4 men were convicted for shooting Edward "Teddy" Deegan in a Chelsea, Mass., alley in 1965. In 2007 a federal judge in Boston ordered the government to pay a record nearly $102 million for the FBI's role in the wrongful murder convictions of the 4 men. Two of the men convicted, Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo, died behind bars. The others, Peter Limone (73) and Joseph Salvati (74) spent three decades in prison.
(www.justicedenied.org/issue/issue_27/fbi%27s_legacy_of_shame.html)
1968 Aug 3, The Bratislava statement conceded Czechoslovakia’s right to pursue its own path. The conference was held in Bratislava, Slovakia, for representatives of the communist and workers' parties of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the Hungarian People's Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the Polish People's Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(http://library.thinkquest.org/C001155/documents/doc41.htm)
1968 Aug 5, The Republican national convention convened in Miami Beach. Ronald Reagan announced that he would seek the GOP nomination for president. He soon threw his support to Nixon.
(AP, 8/5/08)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F6)(SSFC, 6/6/04, A16)
1968 Aug 8, Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. Later that day, Nixon chose Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew to be his running mate.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1968 Aug 8, In Florida a riot broke out in several neighborhoods of Miami, Florida, including one community just 10 miles from the Republican Convention. 3 negroes were killed by gunfire.
(www.project1968.com/august-4-10-1968.html)
1968 Aug 9, The 267-day Detroit newspaper strike ended.
(www.loc.gov/rr/news/chronological/exception_report.html)
1968 Aug 10, In West Virginia 35 people were killed in the crash of a Piedmont Airlines Fairchild FH-227 at Kanawha County Airport.
(AP, 8/10/08)
1968 Aug 11, Eight US troops were killed and 50 wounded when an Air Force F100 fighter accidentally bombed a US unit near Ta Bat, northeast of Saigon. The fighter intended on hitting Viet Cong who were located in front of the troops.
(www.project1968.com/august-11-17-1968.html)
1968 Aug 11, The USSR announced new military maneuvers along the Czechoslovak border.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Aug 13, In Greece there was an assassination attempt against Col. George Papadopoulos (1919-1999), the right-wing military leader, organized by Alexandros Panagoulis (1939-1976), Greek politician and poet.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandros_Panagoulis)
1968 Aug 15, Pirate Radio Free London began transmitting.
(http://radio.eric.tripod.com/in_breach_of_the_law.htm)
1968 Aug 19, George Gamow (b.1904), physicist and writer, died. He popularized the idea of The Big Bang.
(V.D.-H.K.p.335)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gamow)
1968 Aug 20, Some 650,000 Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact troops began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek's regime.
(AP, 8/20/97)(SFC, 8/25/04, p.B7)
1968 Aug 21, William Dana reached 81.53 km. in the last high-altitude X-15 flight.
(http://pages.prodigy.net/pxkb94ars/Astro_X-15_Flights_9.htm)
1968 Aug 21, After 5 years Russia once again jammed Voice of America radio.
(http://radio.about.com/library/history/blhistory0821.htm)
1968 Aug 21, The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive led by Alexander Dubcek.
(AP, 8/21/08)
1968 Aug 22, Pope Paul VI arrived in Bogota, Colombia, for the start of the first papal visit to Latin America.
(AP, 8/22/98)
1968 Aug 22, In Czechoslovakia a Soviet-led invasion crushed the Prague Spring reforms. In 1997 3 Communist Party leaders, Milos Jakes, Karel Hoffmann and Joseph Lenart, were accused of conspiring with the Soviets.
(SFC, 5/3/97, p.A10)
1968 Aug 24, France became the world's fifth thermonuclear power as it exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.
(AP, 8/24/97)
1968 Aug 25, Seven dissidents (Larisa Bogoraz (d.2004), Pavel Litvinov, Konstantin Babitskii, Nataliya Gorbanevskaya, Viktor Fainberg, Vadim Delone and Vladimir Dremlyuga) came out in the Red Square to protest against the invasion of the soviet troops in Czechoslovakia and paid for it with years of lagers, exile and "special" mental hospitals.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Red_Square_demonstration)(SFC, 4/8/04, p.B7)
1968 Aug 26, The Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago. Thousands of antiwar demonstrators took to Chicago's streets to protest the Vietnam War during the Democratic National Convention.
(AP, 8/26/08)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F6)
1968 Aug 27, Tom Haden, anti-war organizer, was beaten up, put in a paddy wagon and whisked off to a Cook County Jail.
(SFC, 8/18/96, Z1 p1)
1968 Aug 28, In Chicago, Ill., Vice-President Hubert Horatio Humphrey was nominated by the Democrats for US Presidency on the first ballot. Riots broke out outside the Democratic National Convention as police and anti-war demonstrators clashed in the streets. The 1969 film "Medium Cool" was set during the Chicago Convention riots of 1968.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(TMC, 1994, p.1968)(Hem, 8/96, p.86-88)(AP, 8/28/97)(SFEC, 9/6/98, DB p.52)
1968 Aug 28, Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff (1910-1998) nominated George McGovern for the US Presidency and strongly criticized Chicago’s Mayor Daly for his strong-arm tactics in controlling protestors at the Democratic National Convention.
(SFC, 2/23/98, p.A5)(www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/abrahamribicoff1968dnc.htm)
1968 Aug 29, Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie was chosen to be the Democratic nominee for vice president at the party's convention in Chicago.
(AP, 8/29/08)
1968 Aug 31, In northeast Iran some 7-12 thousand people died in the 7.8 Dasht-e Bayaz earthquake, which also destroyed 60,000 buildings.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(www.bssaonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/59/5/1751)
1968 Aug, The play "You, Me and the Next War," by Hanoch Levin (1943-1999), Israeli dramatist, was produced.
(SFC, 8/19/99, p.D2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanoch_Levin)
1968 Sep 1, Pirate Radio Marina in the Netherlands began transmitting.
(www.historyorb.com/entertainment/radio/pirate-radio)
1968 Sep 4, In the Republic of Congo there was an army coup. Brazzaville deposed Pres. Masemba-Debat.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Sep 6, Feminists protesting outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, N.J., tossed articles including cosmetics, girdles and bras into a trash can ostensibly for burning, although nothing was actually set on fire. Miss Illinois Judith Ford won the pageant.
(AP, 9/7/08)
1968 Sep 6, Swaziland in southern Africa gained independence from Britain.
(http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FMarnham%20Q)
1968 Sep 8, In Poland Ryszard Siwiec (b.1909), accountant, teacher and anti-communist protester, self immolated in front of some 10,000 spectators during the national harvest festival at the Dziesieciolecia football stadium. He died 4 days later at a hospital.
(Econ, 10/10/09, p.55)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Siwiec)
1968 Sep 9, Arthur Ashe (1943-1993) became the 1st black to win the US Open men’s tennis singles championship.
(www.answers.com/topic/arthur-ashe)(http://tinyurl.com/d2xhty)
1968 Sep 11, The Soviet troops started leaving Prague for the countryside. At the beginning of October, the Czechoslovak leadership went to Moscow to negotiate "normalization". As an outcome, the political leaders remained in office and submitted to the Soviet demands.
(www.wien.gv.at/english/history/commemoration2008/prague-spring.html)
1968 Sep 13, Albania officially withdrew from the Warsaw Pact. Albania had condemned the August Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
(http://countrystudies.us/albania/153.htm)
1968 Sep 14, Al Frueh (b.1880), American caricature artist (New Yorker magazine), died.
(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A17)(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/221010/Al-Frueh)
1968 Sep 15, Rev. Billy Graham carried word to Pres. Johnson from Richard Nixon that Nixon would give Johnson a share of the credit when the Vietnam war was settled. Johnson later became convinced that Nixon was using Anna Chennault, widow of a WW II general, to persuade Pres. Nguyen Van Thieu to sabotage the Paris peace talks with the communists.
(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A2)
1968 Sep 15, The Organization of African Unity condemned the secession of Biafra.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Sep 16, Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon exclaimed, "Sock it to ME?" in a taped bit for the NBC-TV comedy program "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In."
(AP, 9/16/08)
1968 Sep 18, The film "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand premiered in NYC.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062994/releaseinfo)
1968 Sep 19, Marine Capt. Robert A. Holt and Capt. John A. Lavoo were killed when their F-4B Phantom jet crashed during combat a mission over Quang Binh Province. Their remains were identified and returned to the US in 1999.
(SFC, 6/8/99, p.A9)
1968 Sep 19, Chester Carlson (62), inventor of the photocopy machine (1960), died. In 2004 David Owen authored “Copies In seconds.”
(WSJ, 8/6/04, p.A8)(ON, 11/04, p.9)
1968 Sep 20, The TV show "Name of the Game" premiered with Gene Barry and Tony Franciosa. It was written and produced by Leslie Stevens (d.1998) and ran to 1971.
(SFC, 4/29/98, p.C2)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0062591/)
1968 Sep 23, The TV western "The Outcasts" premiered. The one season show featured Otis Young (d.2001 at 69) and Don Murray working together as post Civil War bounty hunters.
(SFC, 10/20/01, p.E2)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0062596/)
1968 Sep 24, The TV show "Mod Squad" premiered on ABC and continued to 1973. It was about 3 hip young cops who worked undercover in LA. A film version was begun in 1998.
(AP, 9/24/98)(SFC, 8/27/99, p.C14)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0062589/)
1968 Sep 24, The CBS news magazine "60 Minutes" premiered on CBS-TV on a Tuesday night. Don Hewitt created and produced the TV news show "60 Minutes." He wrote his book "Minute by Minute" in 1985.
(SFEM, 2/8/98, Par p.26)(AP, 9/24/98)
1968 Sep 26, Hawaii Five-O premiered on CBS TV and continued to 1980. It starred Jack Lord (d.1998 at 77) and was the longest running police show in TV history. It’s theme song was "Walk Don’t Run" by the Ventures. Lord (born as John Joseph Patrick Ryan) was a painter off TV and his canvasses sold privately for top dollar.
(SFC, 7/11/96, p.D4)(SFC, 1/22/98, p.D3)
1968 Sep 26, In Portugal Prof. Marcello Caetano replaced Antonio Salazar as Prime Minister.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Sep 27, Portugal’s President Americo Thomaz replaced PM Antonio de Oliveira Salazar with Marcelo Caetano after Salazar suffered a major stroke, caused by his falling from a chair in his summer house.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_de_Oliveira_Salazar)
1968 Sep 28, Beatles' "Hey Jude" single went #1 and stayed #1 for 9 weeks.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Jude)
1968 Sep 29, Piere Mulele voluntarily returned from exile to Kinshasa, Congo.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Sep 29, A Greek plebiscite was held by the then ruling dictatorial regime to endorse, by public vote, the junta's new Constitution. Participation was made obligatory and abstention punishable by imprisonment.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_plebiscite,_1968)
1968 Sep 30, The 1st Boeing 747 was rolled out of the Everett, Wa., assembly building.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747)
1968 Sep, The Big Mac was created by McDonald’s franchisee Jim Delligatti in Pittsburgh. It sold for 49 cents.
(SFC, 9/10/98, p.B2)
1968 Sep, The Plastic People of the Universe band was founded by Milan Hlavsa (d.2001 at 49).
(WSJ, 7/22/98, p.A12)(SFC, 1/8/01, p.A19)
1968 Sep, The Soviet spacecraft Zond ("Probe") 5 became the first to loop around the moon and return to Earth. The L-1, given the name Zond, was a spacecraft designed to carry two cosmonauts on a single loop around the moon. The L-1 suffered repeated failure and never flew with a crew. The unmanned L-1s traveled to the moon five times under the Zond name.
(HNQ, 4/27/99)
1968 Oct 1, The cult horror movie "Night of the Living Dead" had its world premiere in Pittsburgh.
(AP, 10/1/98)
1968 Oct 1, The US Senate refused to shut down a filibuster against President Lyndon B. Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas to be US chief justice. Fortas withdrew the next day.
(AP, 10/1/08)
1968 Oct 1, The US Congress created the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in Wyoming.
(www.utah.com/nationalsites/flaming_gorge.htm)
1968 Oct 2, Pres. Johnson established Redwood National Park in northern California under Public Law 90-545. Congress created the Redwood National Park in California at a cost of $306 million. Large portions of the Arcata Redwood Corp. lands were detached to form sections of Redwood National Park. The land was initially assembled by Michigan timber baron Arthur Hill. His son, Harry Hill, built the French Renaissance townhouse that is now the Italian consulate.
(www.eoearth.org/article/Redwood_National_Park,_United_States)(SFC, 9/9/97, p.A19)(SFEC, 12/5/99, p.T1)
1968 Oct 2, Pres. Johnson signed a bill establishing Washington state’s North Cascades National Park.
(SSFC, 7/18/04, p.D7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Cascades_National_Park)
1968 Oct 2, The 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, spanning Mexico to Canada, was designated a National Scenic Trail as part of the US National Trails System Act.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Crest_Trail)
1968 Oct 2, US Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas withdrew his nomination as chief justice. Six months later, he resigned from the court, admitting he'd made a financial deal with the Louis Wolfson Foundation.
(http://hnn.us/articles/11753.html)
1968 Oct 2, In Mexico soldiers under Pres. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz used automatic weapons and killed some 300 students in the Mexico City Tlatelolco massacre prior to the start of the summer Olympics. The government said only 50 students were killed during gunfire that lasted 5 hours. Luis Echeverria, later president, was the interior minister and the man in charge of public security. He was called before a congressional committee in 1998. Evidence in 1999 confirmed that pre-positioned soldiers fired on the students. In 2002 a special prosecutor said he has found no evidence to support historians' claims that some 300 people died when army troops opened fire on demonstrators in 1968. He put the number killed at 38. A judge dismissed other genocide charges against Echeverria in July 2005, ruling that while he may have been responsible for a separate 1971 student massacre, he could not be tried because the statute of limitations had expired in 1985.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFC, 9/1/96, p.A16)(SFEC, 4/6/97, p.C12)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)(SFC, 2/4/98, p.C2,14)(WSJ, 9/10/98, p.A1)(SFC, 6/28/99, p.A10)(AP, 8/5/02)(AP, 3/27/09)
1968 Oct 2, Marcel Duchamp (b.1887), French painter, died. He was known best for his 1915 "Nude Descending a Staircase."
(V.D.-H.K.p.361)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp)
1968 Oct 3, The Howard Sackler play, "Great White Hope," starring James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, opened on Broadway.
(AP, 10/3/08)
1968 Oct 3, American Independent Party presidential candidate George Wallace tapped retired Air Force Gen. Curtis E. LeMay to be his running mate.
(AP, 10/3/08)
1968 Oct 3, In Peru the military seized power in a coup. Pres. Belaunde was overthrown by Gen. Juan Velasco.
(SFC, 12/20/96, p.B4)(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFC, 6/5/02, p.A23)
1968 Oct 4, Cambodia admitted that the Viet Cong used their country for sanctuary.
(www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200408180835.asp)
1968 Oct 5, Catholic demonstrators in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, clashed with police.
(SFC, 6/18/96, p.A8)(MC, 10/5/01)
1968 Oct 7, The Motion Picture Association of America adopted its film-rating system (G,M,R,X), ranging from "G" for "general" audiences to "X" for adult patrons only. The system was fathered by Jack Valenti (1921-2007), head of the MPAA.
(AP, 10/7/97)(SFC, 1/21/04, p.D2)(SFC, 4/27/07, p.B9)
1968 Oct 8, US forces in Vietnam launched Operation Sealord, an attack on North Vietnamese supply lines and base areas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sealords)
1968 Oct 9, Pierre Mulele, Congolese rebel leader, was publicly tortured and executed in the Congo [some sources give October 3].
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Mulele)
1968 Oct 9, The new military government of Peru seized the country's oil fields.
(AP, 10/9/08)
1968 Oct 11, Apollo 7, The first manned Apollo mission, was launched from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard. It made 163 orbits in 260 hours.
(AP, 10/11/97)(www.apollomissionphotos.com/index_AP7.html)
1968 Oct 11, In Panama Pres. Arnulfo Arias was ousted in a coup by Gen’l. Omar Torrijos. Arias was the founder of Panama's special security system and opened the vote to women before he was ousted.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFC, 1/2/97, p.A20)(SFC, 4/29/99, p.D5)
1968 Oct 12, Eq. Guinea gained Independence was from Spain. Eq. Guinea consists of two geographic entities: the mainland of Rio Muni and the island of Bioko, formerly Fernando Poo. Francisco Macias became the 1st president and proclaimed himself God’s "unique miracle." He drove the economy into the ground and over a third of the population went into exile.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)(SFC, 5/15/01, p.A10)(www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/eqguinea.html)
1968 Oct 12, The summer Games of the 19th Olympiad were officially opened in Mexico City by Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(HN, 10/12/98)
1968 Oct 14, The Beatles "White Album" was completed at the Abbey Road Studios.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album))
1968 Oct 14, The first live telecast from a manned US spacecraft was sent from Apollo 7.
(AP, 10/14/98)
1968 Oct 16, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos sparked controversy at the Mexico City Olympics by giving "black power" salutes during a victory ceremony after they'd won gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race.
(AP, 10/16/08)
1968 Oct 18, The US Olympic Committee suspended two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, for giving a black power salute as a protest during a victory ceremony in Mexico City. Bob Beamon soared 29 feet, 2 inches, to set a world record in the long jump. In 1976 Dick Schaap authored “The Perfect Jump.”
(AP, 10/18/98)(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W8)
1968 Oct 19, Yasonari Kawabata (1899-1972), Japanese novelist (Thousand Cranes) won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1968/kawabata-docu.html)
1968 Oct 20, Former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis on the island of Scorpios.
(AP, 10/20/97)(HN, 10/20/98)
1968 Oct 22, Pres. Johnson signed the Gun Control Act of 1968. It regulated firearms above .50-caliber as destructive devices and required registration and owner’s fingerprints. It also banned the sale of handguns to those under 21. Enforcement was up to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). It barred the import of assault weapons even if they were reconfigured if they were not found to have legitimate "sporting purposes." In the wake of the Kennedy and King assassinations the US Congress expanded gun ownership prohibitions to include dishonorably discharged veterans and other groups.
(WSJ, 3/24/97, p.A12)(SFC,10/17/97, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/p9lslc)(WSJ, 12/16/03, p.A4)(Econ, 12/4/10, p.44)
1968 Oct 22, Apollo 7 returned safely, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.
(AP, 10/22/97)
1968 Oct 23, In Nicaragua the Cerro Negro volcano began erupting again and continued to Dec 10. It had first appeared in 1850.
(DD-EVTT, Illustr.#9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Negro)
1968 Oct 24, At the National Air and Space Administration test pilot Bill Dana was at the controls of the North American X-15 rocket-propelled research aircraft when it made the 199th--and what turned out to be the final--flight of the X-15 program. He was flying the X-15-1, which had been the first of three aircraft to participate in a series of tests that spanned a decade and resulted in major advances for America's space flight program. In the course of that research, the X-15s spent 18 hours flying above Mach 1, 12 hours above Mach 2, nearly 9 hours above Mach 3, almost 6 hours above Mach 4, one hour above Mach 5 and a few short minutes above Mach 6. The X-15 was hailed by the scientific community as the most successful research aircraft of all time.
(HNPD, 10/24/98)
1968 Oct 26, Illinois state and the city of Chicago recognized Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable (1745-1818), a Haitian-born sea captain, as the founder of Chicago.
(www.usps.com/communications/community/_pdf/bhm06_poster.pdf)(http://tinyurl.com/cnt6tk)
1968 Oct 27, The 19th Olympic games closed at Mexico City, Mexico.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Summer_Olympics)
1968 Oct 27, In London there was a massive anti-Vietnam war demonstration.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
1968 Oct 27, Lisa Meitner (b.1878), Austrian-born Swedish physicist, died in England. During the war while in hiding from Hitler in Sweden, she analyzed and understood for its significance the work of Otto Hahn who in 1944 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on nuclear fission.
(MT, 10/94, letters, p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner)
1968 Oct 28, Pres. Johnson named Robert Komer (d.2000 at 78) as ambassador to Turkey. Komer had served Johnson as head of the "pacification" program in Vietnam, which used information and propaganda to gain political and social control of south Vietnam.
(http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/komer-robert-william)(SFC, 4/14/00, p.D5)
1968 Oct 28, In SF the first eviction notices were served to the 196 tenants of the International Hotel. This led to a 9-year struggle that resulted in their forced eviction on Aug 4, 1977.
(http://aam1968.blogspot.com/2008/01/third-world-student-strikes-at-sfsu-ucb.html)(SSFC, 8/19/07, p.B1)
1968 Oct 30, Luis W. Alvarez (1911-1988) of UC Berkeley won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the bubble chamber.
(SFC, 10/10/96, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Walter_Alvarez)
1968 Oct 30, Ramon Samaniego Novarro (b.1899), the 1st successful Latin star in Hollywood (Ben Hur), was killed by 2 male hustlers. In 2002 Andres Soares authored "Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Novarro)(SSFC, 1/5/03, p.M4)
1968 Oct 31, President Johnson announced a halt to all US bombing of North Vietnam, effective the next morning, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations.
(www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/681031.asp)
1968 Oct 31, Liu Shaoqi (1898-1968), president of China since 1959, was ousted.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi)
1968 Nov 1, Lyndon B. Johnson's halt to bombing in Vietnam went into effect at 8 AM, Washington time.
(www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/681031.asp)
1968 Nov 1, The Motion Picture Association of America unveiled its new voluntary film rating system: G for general audiences, M for mature audiences (later changed to GP, then PG), R for restricted audiences, and X (later changed to NC-17) for adults only.
(AP, 11/1/08)
1968 Nov 1, Georgios Papandreou (b.1888), Greek minister and premier, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Papandreou,_senior)
1968 Nov 3, In Greece thousands of people demonstrated against the fascist junta as ex-premier Georgios Papandreou is buried.
(http://1968ineurope.sneakpeek.de/index.php/chronologies/index/6)
1968 Nov 5, Richard M. Nixon was elected the 37th US President with Spiro Agnew as vice-president. He defeated Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George C. Wallace.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(TMC, 1994, p.1968)(AP, 11/5/97)(HN, 11/5/98)
1968 Nov 5, Barry Goldwater (1909-1998), former Republican presidential candidate (1964), was re-elected in Arizona to the US Senate.
(SFC, 5/30/98, p.A3)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAgoldwater.htm)
1968 Nov 5, Alan Cranston (1914-2000), former California state controller (12959-1967), was elected for his 1st term as US Senator.
(SFC, 1/1/01, p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cranston)
1968 Nov 5, Shirley Chisholm (1924-2004) of Brooklyn, New York, became the first black woman elected to serve in the US House of Representatives.
(HN, 11/5/98)(SFC, 1/3/05, p.A3)
1968 Nov 6, The play “The Ruling Class” by Peter Barnes (1931-2004) opened in Nottingham, England. It was a satirical attack on the church and British aristocracy. It was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination.
(SFC, 7/3/04, p.B6)(www.answers.com/topic/the-ruling-class-play-6)
1968 Nov 6, At SF State on the one year anniversary of the Gator incident, the Black Students' Union and the Third World Liberation Front issued a list of 10 "nonnegotiable" demands and called for a one day strike. The strike lasted 167 days.
(http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~runamuck/PACEPAPER.htm)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W3)(SFEC, 3/21/99, Z1 p.4)
1968 Nov 6, Charles Munch (b.1891), French-US conductor, died. He directed the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1949-1962.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M%C3%BCnch)
1968 Nov 11, The Maldives became a republic for a 2nd time with Ibrahim Naseer (Nasir) as President.
(www.pjsymes.com.au/articles/Maldives(article).htm)(Econ, 12/23/06, p.54)(AP, 11/11/08)
1968 Nov 12, Sammy Sosa, baseball outfielder (Chicago Cubs), was born in the Dominican Republic.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Sosa)
1968 Nov 12, The US Supreme Court in Epperson v. Arkansas voided an Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epperson_v._Arkansas)
1968 Nov 14, In the US "National Turn in Your Draft Card Day" featured draft card burning as the Vietnam death toll approached 30,000 and US troop strength in Vietnam reached its peak of 550,000.
(www.answers.com/topic/1968)
1968 Nov 14, Yale University announced its plan to go co-ed.
(HN, 11/14/98)
1968 Nov 17, NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the final minutes of a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game to begin a TV special, "Heidi," on schedule. The jets led 32-29 with one minute remaining. Viewers were deprived of seeing the Raiders come from behind to beat the Jets, 43-to-32.
(AP, 11/17/98)(SFC, 11/14/03, p.I8)
1968 Nov 18, Soviets recovered the Zond 6 spacecraft after a flight around the moon.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1968 Nov 19, Gen'l. Moussa Traore (b.1936) began serving as the 2nd president of Mali after leading the military ouster of Pres. Modibo Keita (1915-1977. Traore then ruled for 23 years.
(SFC, 9/23/99, p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moussa_Traor%C3%A9)
1968 Nov 22, Beatles released their "Beatles," (White Album) their only double album.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album))
1968 Nov 23, Five Cubans hijacked a US B-727 jet, from Chicago to Cuba.
(http://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0180.html)
1968 Nov 24, Eldridge Cleaver fled the US with his wife rather face assault charges from 1958. He returned to the US in 1975.
(www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_cleaver.html)
1968 Nov 24, Three Latins hijacked a US B-707 jet, from New York’s Kennedy Int’l. to Cuba. Pena Soltren, a US citizen, and two accomplices used weapons hidden in a diaper bag to hijack the Pan Am flight. In 2009 Luis Armando Pena Soltren (66) voluntarily returned to the same airport to surrender and face prosecution.
(http://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0180.html)(AP, 10/12/09)
1968 Nov 25, Upton B. Sinclair (b.1878), US novelist and social reformer (Jungle), died at age 90. His work included almost 50 novels, over 20 nonfiction books, plays and countless pieces of journalism. In 1975 Leon A. Harris Jr. (d.2000) authored "Upton Sinclair, American Rebel." In 2006 Anthony Arthur authored “Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair.”
(www.americanwriters.org/writers/sinclair.asp)(WSJ, 2/23/06, p.D8)(WSJ, 6/10/06, p.P8)
1968 Nov 28, In London, England, John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared at the Marylebone Magistrates' Court. John pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis resin and was fined 150 pounds plus 20 guineas costs.
(http://tinyurl.com/qjbdgb)
1968 Nov 30, Montesino Sanchez, a Cuban, hijacked a Boeing 720 from Miami to Cuba.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cuba-US_aircraft_hijackings)
1968 Nov, The album “Astral Weeks” by Irish-born singer and song-writer Van Morrison was released. In 1999 it was given a Grammy Hall of Fame award.
(WSJ, 4/14/07, p.P14)
1968 Dec 1, Burt Bacharach and Hal David's musical "Promises, Promises" opened at Shubert Theater in NYC for 1281 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promises,_Promises)
1968 Dec 2, Pres Nixon named Henry Kissinger (b.1923) security advisor.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger)
1968 Dec 4, The US stock market began a 18 month decline of 44%.
(www.stockmarketcycles.com/sign_of_the_bear.htm)
1968 Dec 5, Football star O.J. Simpson won a Heisman Trophy. In 1999 it was auctioned in LA for $230,000 to help cover the $33.5 million judgment against him in the wrongful death of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
(SFC, 2/17/99, p.A3)
1968 Dec 5, Eduardo Castera, a Latin successfully hijacked a B-727 from Tampa to Cuba.
(http://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0180.html)
1968 Dec 6, The original Malian constitution was abrogated after a military coup d’état and replaced by a new fundamental law.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Mali)
1968 Dec 7, The Rolling Stones released their album "Beggar’s Banquet" in the US, one day after it was released in the UK. They soon filmed a concert performance right after the Who’s performance of "A Quick One" that the Stones did not match and the film was shelved. In 1996 it was planned to release the film where Jethro Tull and Taj Mahal are also featured. The album included the song "Sympathy for the Devil."
(SFC, 8/16/96, p.D11)(SFC, 10/23/00, p.F3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_Banquet)
1968 Dec 7, The first orbiting astronomical observatory, OAO-2, was launched.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)
1968 Dec 8, South Vietnam’s vice president Nguyen Cao Ky arrived in Paris for peace talks.
(HN, 12/8/98)
1968 Dec 9, Doug Engelbart and researchers at Stanford Research Institute first demonstrated in SF the computer mouse along with a graphical user interface (gui), display editing, integrated text and graphics, hyper documents and 2-way video-conferencing with shared work spaces. In 2001 Thierry Bardini authored "Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing."
(SFC, 12/4/98, p.B2)(SSFC, 1/21/01, BR p.6)(SFC, 12/8/08, p.A1)
1968 Dec 10, Thomas Merton (b.1915), American Trappist monk and writer, died in Bangkok, Thailand from accidental electrocution. He had just finished his 7th journal "The Other side of the Mountain." Merton was influenced by the Hindu scholar Mahanambrata Brahmachari (d.1999). Merton's work also the spiritual autobiography "The Seven Story Mountain." In 1978 Monica Furlong (d.2003) authored a biography of Merton.
(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A22)(SFEC, 9/27/98, BR p.3)(SFC, 11/2/99, p.A26)(SFC, 2/3/03, p.B4)(WSJ, 3/26/03, p.D8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton)
1968 Dec 11, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was founded by Dr. George Habash, founder of the pan-Arab nationalist movement.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B2,4)
1968 Dec 11, Two blacks successfully hijacked a DC-8 from St. Louis to Cuba.
(http://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0180.html)
1968 Dec 12, Tallulah Bankhead (b.1903), American actress, died: "The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." In 2000 Tovah Feldshuh created "Tallulah Hallelujah," a one-woman show in salute to Bankhead.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallulah_Bankhead)(WSJ, 10/11/00, p.A24)(SSFC, 1/14/01, DB p.34)
1968 Dec 18, Carolyn Olsen was murdered during a robbery that netted $18 on a Santa Monica tennis court. Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt was accused of the murder though he maintained that he was in Oakland on the night the 27-year old teacher was shot to death. He was arrested in 1970 and convicted in 1972 and sentenced to a life term in prison. Julius "Buffo" Butler, a police informant who spied on the Black Panther Party, told police that he believed Pratt killed Olsen. In 1997 a judge ruled to reverse Pratt’s conviction based on the credibility of Butler. He was released on $25,000 bail on 6/10/97. In 2000 Pratt was awarded $4.5 million to be paid by Los Angeles and the FBI.
(SFC, 4/18/96, C-1)(SFC, 6/7/97, p.A5)(SFC, 6/11/97, p.C2)(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A3)
1968 Dec 19, Norman Thomas (b.1884), founder of the ACLU and Socialist Party leader (1926-55), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Thomas)
1968 Dec 20, The first known murder by the Zodiac killer took place. Two teenagers, David Farraday and Betty Lou Jensen, were shot to death in a parked car on Lake Herman Road outside Vallejo, Ca. The California Zodiac killer later identified himself with a letter to the Times-Harold in Vallejo. After that he claimed to have killed 37 people but the police connected him to only five deaths.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W20)(SFC, 10/2/00, p.A19)(SFC, 4/7/04, p.A7)
1968 Dec 20, John Steinbeck (b.1902), California-born author, died from a bad heart in New York City at age 66. He won the Nobel Prize in 1940. In 1995 Jay Parini published "John Steinbeck: A Biography."
(AP, 12/20/97)(SFEC, 6/21/98, DB p.35)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck)
1968 Dec 21, Apollo 8 with astronauts Borman, Lovell & Anders was launched on the 1st mission to orbit the moon.
(AP, 12/21/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8)
1968 Dec 23, The 82 crew members of the US intelligence ship Pueblo were released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.
(AP, 12/23/97)
1968 Dec 24, The 3 Apollo 8 astronauts (James A. Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman), orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve television broadcast. The first pictures of an Earth-rise over the Moon are seen as the crew of Apollo 8 orbits the moon.
(TL, 1988, p.117)(AP, 12/24/97)(HN, 12/24/99)
1968 Dec 26, Jay Allen's "Forty Carats," premiered in NYC. It was adapted from the French original by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy. The 1973 film adaptation starred Liv Ullman.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Carats)
1968 Dec 26, A Palestinian terrorist attack in Athens on an Israeli civilian airliner killed one person. Mahmoud Mohammad (25) and Maher Suleiman (19) were later captured by Greek officials, In 1970, a Greek court convicted Mahmoud Mohammad for his role in the attack. In 1987 Mahmoud Mohammed Issa Mohammed entered Canada, where he was ordered to be deported in 1988. In 2007 he was still in Canada after some 30 appeals and reviews.
(http://tinyurl.com/35olct)(Econ, 9/15/07, p.48)(www.skyjack.co.il/chronology.htm)
1968 Dec 27, The US agreed to sell fifty F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
(HN, 12/27/98)
1968 Dec 27, Apollo 8, the 1st manned mission to the moon, and its three astronauts made a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific.
(AP, 12/27/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8)
1968 Dec 28, The Beatles' "White Album," went #1 in the US, beginning this week, and stayed at the top for 9 weeks.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album))
1968 Dec 28, Israel attacked the Beirut Int’l. Airport, destroying 13 civilian planes. This was in response to an attack on an Israeli airliner in Athens by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Israeli_raid_on_Lebanon)
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