1968 Totally Explained

Everything about 1968 totally explained

Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events of 1968

January

January 5 - Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is elected leader of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.
January 8 - British Prime Minister Harold Wilson endorses the 'I'm Backing Britain' campaign for working an additional half hour each day without pay.
January 13 - Johnny Cash records Live at Folsom Prison.
January 14 - Green Bay Packers win Super Bowl II.
January 15 - An earthquake in Sicily kills 231 and injures 262.
January 17 - Lyndon B. Johnson calls for the non-conversion of the U.S. dollar.
January 19 - At a White House conference on crime, singer and actress Eartha Kitt denounces the Vietnam War directly to President Lyndon Johnson.
January 21 - Vietnam War: Battle of Khe Sanh begins - One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins, ending on April 8.
January 21 - A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs.
January 22 - Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In debuts on NBC.
January 23 - North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship violated its territorial waters while spying.
January 25 - The Israeli submarine INS Dakar sinks in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 69.
January 27 - A French submarine sinks in the Mediterranean Sea with 52 men.
January 30 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive begins, as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam.
January 31 - Viet Cong soldiers attack the United States Embassy in Saigon.
January 31 - Nauru president Hammer DeRoburt declares independence from Australia.

February

February 1 - Vietnam War: A Viet Cong officer is executed by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. The event is photographed by Eddie Adams. The photo makes headlines around the world, eventually winning the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and sways U.S. public opinion against the war.

February 6-February 18 - The 1968 Winter Olympics were held in Grenoble, France

February 8 - American civil rights movement: A civil rights protest staged at a white-only bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina is broken-up by highway patrolmen, leading to the deaths of 3 college students.

February 11 - Border clashes take place between Israel and Jordan.

February 13 - Civil rights disturbances occur at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

February 17 - Administrative reform in Romania divides the country into 39 counties.

February 19 - The Florida Education Association (FEA) initiates a mass resignation of teachers to protest state funding of education. This is, in effect, the first statewide teachers' strike in the United States.

February 24 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted - South Vietnam recaptures Hué.

February 27 - Ex-The Teenagers singer Frankie Lymon is found dead from a heroin overdose in Harlem.

February 29 - Leap Day. List of leap years

March

March 7 - Vietnam War: The First Battle of Saigon begins.

March 8 - First student protests in Poland's 1968 political crisis.

March 12 - Mauritius achieves independence from British Rule.

March 12 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson edges out antiwar candidate Eugene J. McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a vote which highlights the deep divisions in the country, as well as the party, over Vietnam.

March 13 - First Rotaract club chartered in North Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

March 14 - Nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground near Skull Valley, Utah.

March 15 - George Brown, British Foreign Secretary, resigns.

March 16 - Vietnam War: My Lai massacre - American troops kill scores of civilians.

March 16 - U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

March 17 - A demonstration in London's Grosvenor Square against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War leads to violence - 91 people injured, 200 demonstrators arrested.

March 18 - Gold standard: The Congress of the United States repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.

March 19-March 23 - Afrocentrism, Black power: Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. Students stage rallies, protests and a five-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.

March 21 - Vietnam War: In ongoing campus unrest, Howard University students protesting the Vietnam War, the ROTC program on campus and the draft, confront Gen. Lewis Hershey, then head of the U.S. Selective Service System, and as he attempts to deliver an address, shout him down with cries of "America is the Black man's battleground!"

March 22 - Daniel Cohn-Bendit ("Danny The Red") and seven other students occupy Administrative offices of the University of Nanterre, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead France to the brink of revolution in May.

March 27 - Russian space pioneer Yuri Gagarin is killed in a training flight crash.

March 31 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he won't seek re-election.

April

April - Carl Brashear, the first African American United States Navy diver, becomes the first amputee certified to make diving missions, after a long battle which started with the accident which amputated his leg in 1966.

April 2 - Bombs placed by Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin explode at midnight in 2 department stores in Frankfurt-am-Main; they're later arrested and sentenced for arson.

April 4 - Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupt in major American cities for several days afterward.

April 4 - Apollo Program: Apollo-Saturn mission 502 (Apollo 6) is launched, as the second and last unmanned test-flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle.

April 4 - La, la, la by Massiel (music and text by Manuel de la Calva and Ramón Arcusa) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 for Spain.

April 6 - Double explosion rocks Richmond, Indiana in downtown area. The explosion killed 41 people and injured more than 150.

April 6 - A shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police results in several arrests and deaths, including 16-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.

April 7 - Racing driver Jim Clark is killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim.

April 10

The ferry Wahine strikes a reef at the entrance to Wellington Harbour, New Zealand, with the loss of 53 lives, during Cyclone Giselle, which provided the windiest conditions ever recorded in New Zealand.
40th Academy Awards ceremony

April 11 - Joseph Bachmann tries to assassinate Rudi Dutschke, leader of a left-wing movement (APO) in Germany, and tries to commit suicide afterwards, failing in both, although Dutschke dies of his brain injuries 11 years later.

April 11 - German left-wing students blockade the Springer Press HQ in Berlin and many are arrested (one of them is Ulrike Meinhof).

April 11 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

April 12 - The First Cathedral, a megachurch in Bloomfield, Connecticut is founded.

April 20 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau becomes Canada's 15th Prime Minister.

April 20 - English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood Speech.

April 20 - The film The Wizard of Oz temporarily moves to NBC, after a rights dispute between CBS, which had previously telecast it, and MGM. NBC will telecast the film for the next seven years. CBS telecasts of the film will resume in 1976, and will last until 1998, when Turner Broadcasting will win the rights to telecast it.

April 23 - President Mobutu releases captured mercenaries in Congo.

April 23 - Surgeons at the Hôpital de la Pitié, Paris, perform Europe's first heart transplant, on Clovis Roblain.

April 23 - The United Methodist Church is created by the union of the former Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren churches.

April 23-April 30 - Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university. See main article Columbia University protests of 1968

April 29 - The musical Hair officially opens on Broadway.

May

May - "May of 68" is a symbol of the resistance of that generation. Agitations and strikes in Paris lead many youth to believe that a revolution is starting. Student and worker strikes, sometimes referred to as the French May, nearly bring down the French government.

May 2 - The Israel Broadcasting Authority commences television broadcasts.

May 3 - Patrick Wall MP speech to Conservative Association at Leeds University stopped by large crowd and MP's wife Sheila Wall knocked to ground and kicked in ensuing scuffles. Jack Straw Leeds Students President says "this manhandling is deplorable."

May 14 - The Beatles annnounce the creation of Apple Records in a New York press conference

May 15 - An outbreak of severe thunderstorms produces tornadoes causing massive damage and heavy casualties in Charles City, Iowa, Oelwein, Iowa, and Jonesboro, Arkansas.

May 17 - The Catonsville Nine enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take dozens of selective service draft records, and burn them with napalm as a protest against the Vietnam War.

May 19 - General elections are held in Italy.

May 19 - Nigerian forces capture Port Harcourt and form a ring around Biafrans. This contributes to a humanitarian disaster as the surrounded population was already suffering with hunger and starvation.

May 22 - The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores.

May 29 - Soccer: Manchester United defeat SL Benfica 4–1 in the European Cup Final, becoming the first English team to do so, the game being 1–1 at FT, extra time strikes from Best,Kidd and Charlton (who had scored earlier) sealed the game.

June

June 1 - The grand opening of Astroworld theme park in Houston Texas.

June 3 - Radical feminist Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol as he enters his studio, wounding him.

June 4 - The Standard & Poor's 500 index closes above 100 for the first time, closing at 100.38.

June 5 - U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies from his injuries the next day.

June 6 - The film Yellow Submarine is released by The Beatles.

June 8 - James Earl Ray is arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

June 10 - Soccer: Italy beats Yugoslavia 2–0 in a replay to win the 1968 European Championship. The original final on June 8 ended 1–1.

June 20 - Austin Currie, Member of Parliament (MP) at Stormont in Northern Ireland, along with others, squats a house in Caledon to protest discrimination in housing allocations.

June 23 - A football stampede in Buenos Aires leaves 74 dead and 150 injured.

June 24 - Giorgio Rosa declares the independence of his Republic of Rose Island, an artificial island off Rimini, Italy. Italian troops demolish it not long after.

July

July 1 - The Central Intelligence Agency's Phoenix Program is officially established.

July 4 - Yachtsman Alec Rose, 59, receives a hero's welcome as he sails into Portsmouth, England after his 354-day round-the-world trip.

July 15 - The soap opera One Life to Live premieres on ABC.

July 17 - Saddam Hussein becomes Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'état.

July 23-July 28 - African-American militants led by Fred (Ahmed) Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio.

July 25 - Pope Paul VI publishes the encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, condemning birth control. Many American Catholics defy it.

July 26 - Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Truong Dinh Dzu is sentenced to 5 years hard labor, for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war.

July 29 - Arenal Volcano erupts in Costa Rica for the first time in centuries.

August

August 5-August 8 - The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. President and Spiro Agnew for Vice President.

August 11 - The last steam passenger train service runs in Britain. A selection of British Rail steam locomotives make the 120-mile journey from Liverpool to Carlisle and returns to Liverpool before having their fires dropped for the last time - this working was known as the Fifteen Guinea Special.

August 18 - Two charter buses push into the Hida River on national highway route 41 in Japan, in an accident caused by heavy rain. 104 killed.

August 20 - The Prague Spring of political liberalization ends, as 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia.

August 21 - The Medal of Honor is posthumously awarded to James Anderson, Jr. — he's the first black U.S. Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

August 24 - France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.

August 22-August 30 - Police clash with anti-war protesters in Chicago, Illinois, outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominates Hubert Humphrey for U.S. President, and Edmund Muskie for Vice President.

September

September 6 - Swaziland becomes independent.

September 7 - 150 women protest against the Miss America Pageant, as exploitative of women. It is one of the first large demonstrations of Second Wave Feminism.

September 11 - French General René Cogny and 94 others die in a Air France Caravelle jetliner crash near Nice in the Mediterranean.

September 17 - The D'Oliveira Affair: The Marylebone Cricket Club tour of South Africa is cancelled when the South Africans refuse to accept the presence of Basil D'Oliveira, a Cape Coloured, in the side.

September 27 - Marcelo Caetano becomes prime minister of Portugal.

September 29 - A referendum in Greece gives more power to the military junta.

October

October 2 - Tlatelolco massacre: A student demonstration ends in a bloodbath at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, Mexico, 10 days before the inauguration of the 1968 Summer Olympics.

October 3 - In Peru, Juan Velasco Alvarado takes the power by a revolution.

October 5 - An illegal civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, which included several Stormont and British MPs, is batoned off the streets by the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

October 8 - Vietnam War: Operation Sealords - United States and South Vietnamese forces launch a new operation in the Mekong Delta.

October 11 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission (Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walter Cunningham). Mission goals include the first live television broadcast from orbit and testing the lunar module docking maneuver.

October 11 - In Panama, a military coup d'état, led by Col. Boris Martinez and Col. Omar Torrijos, overthrows the democratically-elected (but highly controversial) government of President Arnulfo Arias. Within a year, Torrijos will have ousted Martinez and taken charge as de facto Head of Government in Panama.

October 12-October 27 - The Games of the XIX Olympiad are held in Mexico City, Mexico.

October 12 - Equatorial Guinea receives its independence from Spain.

October 14 - Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will send about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.

October 16 - In Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, 2 African-Americans competing in the Olympic 200-meter run, raise their arms in a black power salute after winning the gold and bronze medals for 1st and 3rd place.

October 16 - Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, provoked by the banning of Walter Rodney from the country.

October 20 - Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy marry on the Greek island of Skorpios

October 31 - Vietnam War: Citing progress in the Paris peace talks, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he's ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.

November

November 5 - U.S. presidential election, 1968: Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace.

November 5 - Luis A. Ferre is elected Governor of Puerto Rico.

November 11 - Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt is initiated to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam. By the end of the operation, 3 million tons of bombs are dropped on Laos, slowing but not seriously disrupting trail operations.

November 11 - A second republic is declared in the Maldives

November 14 - Yale University announces it's going co-educational

November 17 - The Heidi game: NBC cuts off the final 1:05 of an Oakland Raiders-New York Jets football game to broadcast the pre-scheduled Heidi. Fans are unable to see Oakland (which had been trailing 32–29) score two late touchdowns to win 43–32; as a result, thousands of outraged football fans flood the NBC switchboards to protest.

November 22 - The White Album is released by The Beatles

November 26 - Vietnam War: United States Air Force First Lieutenant and Bell UH-1F helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire, earning a Medal of Honor for his bravery.

December

December 9 - Douglas Engelbart publicly demonstrates his pioneering hypertext system, NLS, in San Francisco.

December 10 - Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", occurs in Tokyo

December 11 - The film Oliver!, based on the hit London and Broadway musical, opens in the U.S. after being released first in England. It will go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

December 13 - Brazilian president Artur da Costa e Silva decrees the AI-5 (or the fifth Institutional Act), which lasts until 1978 and marks the beginning of the hard times of Brazilian military dictatorship.

December 22 - David Eisenhower marries Julie Nixon, the daughter of U.S. President-elect Richard Nixon

December 22 - Mao Zedong advocates educated youth in urban China to be re-educated in the country. It marks the start of the "Up to the mountains and down to the villages" movement.

December 24 - Apollo Program: U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A. Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole. The crew also reads from Genesis.