1968

Decades: 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

Years: 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 - 1968 - 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973

Events

• January 2 - Dr. Christian Barnard performs the first successful heart transplant.
• January 5 - "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia
• January 23 - North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship violated its territorial waters while spying.
• January 30 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive begin when Viet Cong forces launch series of a surprise attacks in South Vietnam.
• January 31 - Viet Cong attack the United States embassy in Saigon
• January 31 - Nauru's president Hammer DeRoburt declares independence from Australia
• February 1 - Vietnam War: A Viet Cong officer is executed by Nguyen Ngoc Loan a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. The execution was videotaped and photographed and helped sway public opinion against the war.
• 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 three college students.
• February 11 - Peggy Fleming wins Olympics figure skating gold medal, Grenoble, France.
• February 11 - Israeli-Jordan border clashes.
• February 11 - Madison Square Garden III closes, Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York.
• February 16 - In Haleyville, Alabama the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service.
• February 17 - In Springfield, Massachusetts the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opens.
• February 24 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted - South Vietnam recaptures Hué
• March 7 - Vietnam War: The First Battle of Saigon begins.
• March 12 - Mauritius achieves independence from British Rule.
• March 16 - Vietnam War: My Lai massacre American troops kills scores of women and children.
• March 18 - Gold standard: The United States Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.
• March 31 - American President Lyndon Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.
• April 3 - Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "mountaintop" speech.
• April 4 - Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
• April 20 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau becomes Canada's fifteenth prime minister.
• April 23-April 30 - Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
• May - Student and worker strikes sometimes referred to as the French May nearly bring down the French government
• May 22 - The nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
• June 5 - Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, California.
• June 20 - Austin Currie, Member of Parliament (MP) at Stormont in the six counties of northern Ireland, along with others, squats a house in Caledon to protest discrimination in housing allocations.
• July 26 - Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Truong Dinh Dzu is sentenced to five years hard labor for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war.
• August 20 - 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to end the "Prague Spring" of political liberalization.
• August 22-August 30 - Police clash with antiwar protesters in Chicago outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention
• September 6 - Swaziland becomes independent.
• October 2 - A student demonstration ends in a massacre at the La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, Mexico.
• October 5 - A civil rights march in Derry, (of the six counties of northern) Ireland, which included several Stormont and British MPs, was batoned off the streets by the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
• October 8 - Vietnam War: Operation Sealords - United States and South Vietnamese forces launched a new operation in the Mekong Delta.
• October 11 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Don Fulton Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham aboard. Goals for the mission include the first live television broadcast from orbit and testing the lunar module docking maneuver.
• October 14 - Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will be sending about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.
• October 16 - Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two 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 first and third place.
• October 31 - Vietnam War: Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.
• November 5 - U.S. presidential election, 1968: In one of the closest elections in US history, Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace.
• November 11 - Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated - The goal of the operation is 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 were dropped on Laos, which slowed but did not seriously disrupt trail operations).
• November 11 - A second republic is declared in the Maldives.
• November 26 - Vietnam War: United States Air Force 1st Lt. and Bell UH-1F helicopter pilot James P. Fleming gets and responds to an urgent message from an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire. After a failed first rescue attempt Fleming lands under heavy fire and picks up the unit (he was later rewarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery).
• Booker Prize for Fiction is established by Booker plc.
• 1968 is known as the year of the Prague Spring and also the year of the Paris riots.
• The ASCII character code is standardized as ANSI Standard X3.4.
• December 27 - The long-running radio program The Breakfast Club signs off for the last time (ABC radio).

Year in topic

• 1968 in film
  • Oliver!
  • , directed by Stanley Kubrick
  • The Green Berets starring John Wayne
  • Once Upon a Time in the West, directed by Sergio Leone
• 1968 in literature
• 1968 in music
• 1968 in sports
• 1968 in television
  • January 22 - Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, debuts on NBC.
  • October 14 - First live network transmission of video from inside a manned U.S. space capsule in orbit ("Apollo 7") There were six such broadcasts during their eleven-day mission.
  • CBS uses a portable minicam for political convention coverage.
  • Nearly 200 million households now own television sets, (78 million of which are in the U.S.).
  • Hawaii Five-O premieres

Births

• January 6 - John Singleton, director and writer
• January 14 - LL Cool J, rapper, actor
• January 24 - Mary Lou Retton, gymnast
• January 27 - Mike Patton, singer
• January 28 - Sarah McLachlan, singer
• January 29 - Edward Burns, actor
• February 1 - Lisa Marie Presley, actress
• February 8 - Gary Coleman, actor
• February 27 - Matt Stairs, professional baseball player
• March 4 - Patsy Kensit, actress
• March 11 - Lisa Loeb, singer
• March 26 - James Iha, musician ("Smashing Pumpkins")
• March 29 - Lucy Lawless, actress, singer
• March 30 - Céline Dion, singer
• April 3 - Sebastian Bach, musician ("Skid Row")
• May 1 - D'Arcy Wretzky, musician
• May 7 - Traci Lords, erotic actress
• May 9 - Marie-José Perec, French athlete
• May 12 - Tony Hawk, skateboarding legend
• May 26 - Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark
• May 27 - Jeff Bagwell, baseball player
• May 27 - Frank Thomas, baseball player
• May 28 - Kylie Minogue, actress and singer
• July 19 - Antonina Astorino
• September 1 - Mohammed Atta, Egyptian hijacker and alleged terrorist
• September 7 - Marcel Desailly, French footballer
• September 25 - Will Smith, rapper, actor
• October 7 - Toni Braxton, singer
• November 12 - Sammy Sosa, baseball player
• November 15 - Jennifer Charles, singer
• December 9 - Kurt Angle, Olympic gold medalist in wrestling, now a WWE performer
• December 17 - Paul Tracy, auto racing champion

Deaths

• January 22- Duke Kahanamoku, American swimmer.
• February 4 - Neal Cassady, writer
• February 11 - Howard Lindsay, United States playwright.
• February 20 - Anthony Asquith, director, writer
• February 22 - Peter Arno, cartoonist
• February 27 - Frankie Lymon, singer
• March 27 - Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space (and the first to orbit the Earth)
• April 1 - Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist
• April 4 - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights activist, minister
• April 7 - Jimmy Clark, racing driver
• June 1 - Helen Keller
• June 6 - Robert F. Kennedy, American politician
• August 27 - Her Royal Highness Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent
• September 12 - Tommy Armour, professional golfer
• November 4 - Michel Kikoine, Belarus painter
• November 26 - Arnold Zweig, German writer (b. 1887)
• December 10 - Thomas Merton, American author
• December 12 - Tallulah Bankhead, American actress
• December 20 - John Steinbeck, American writer
• December 30 - Trygve Lie, the first United Nations Secretary General

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Luis Walter Alvarez
• Chemistry - Lars Onsager
• Medicine - Robert W Holley, Har Gobind Khorana, Marshall W Nirenberg
• Literature - Yasunari Kawabata
• Peace - René Cassin

Referenced By