1968

Years: 1965 1966 1967 - 1968 - 1969 1970 1971
Decades: 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century 1968 in aviation 1968 in film 1968 in literature 1968 in music 1968 in science 1968 in sports 1968 in television 1968 in Canada

Table of contents

1 Events

1.1 General
1.2 January
1.3 February
1.4 March
1.5 April
1.6 May
1.7 June
1.8 July
1.9 August
1.10 September
1.11 October
1.12 November
1.13 December

2 Year in topic
3 Births
4 Deaths
5 Nobel Prizes

Events

General

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.

January

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

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

March 1 - Clark Clifford starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Defense, serving under President Lyndon Johnson
March 1 - Alexander Buel Trowbridge ends his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, serving under President Lyndon Johnson
March 1 - United States Navy George Washington class fleet ballistic missile submarine USS Patrick Henry (SSBN-599) completes her 22nd patrol at Holy Loch.
March 1 - Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat first presented as a cantata at the Colet Court School in London
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

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 11 - Premiere of the musical Hair on Broadway.
April 20 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau becomes Canada's fifteenth prime minister.
April 20 - English politician Enoch Powell makes controversial Rivers of Blood Speech
April 23-April 30 - Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
April 29 - Official opening of the musical Hair on Broadway.

May

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

June 5 - U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan (He died on June 6).
June 8 - James Earl Ray is arrested for the murder of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr
June 8 - The body of assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
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

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

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

September 6 - Swaziland becomes independent.

October

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

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).

December

December 24 - Apollo 8 enters moon orbit. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A. Anders are the first humans to see the far side of the moon and planet earth as a whole.
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 (Toys, In Too Deep, Any Given Sunday)
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 5 - Roberto Alomar, baseball player
February 8 - Gary Coleman, actor
February 14 - Jules Asner, model, television personality
February 22 - Jeri Ryan, actress (, Boston Public)
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")
April 8 - Patricia Arquette, actress
April 19 - Ashley Judd, actress
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 22 - James Luecke, saxophonist, musician
May 26 - Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark
May 26 - Jeanette Jones, dominatrix and fetishistist
May 27 - Jeff Bagwell, baseball player
May 27 - Frank Thomas, baseball player
May 28 - Kylie Minogue, actress and singer
June 4 - Rachel Griffiths, actress
July 10 - Hassiba Boulmerka, Algerian athlete
July 16 - Barry Sanders, Pro Football Hall of Famer
July 19 - Antonina Astorino
August 9 - Eric Bana, actor
September 1 - Mohammed Atta, Egyptian hijacker and alleged terrorist
September 4 - Mike Piazza, baseball start
September 7 - Marcel Desailly, French footballerer
September 11 - Kay Hanley, musician
September 18 - Toni Kukoc, Croatian basketball player
September 20 - Darrell Russell, NHRA drag racer (d. 2004)
September 25 - Will Smith, rapper, actor
September 26 - James Caviezel, actor (The Passion of the Christ)
October 7 - Toni Braxton, singer
October 11 - Jane Krakowski, actress
October 12 - Hugh Jackman, actor
November 12 - Sammy Sosa, baseball player
November 13 - Pat Hentgen, baseball player
November 15 - Jennifer Charles, singer
November 27 - Michael Vartan, actor
December 9 - Kurt Angle, Olympic gold medalist in amateur wrestling, now a WWE performer
December 17 - Paul Tracy, auto racing champion

Deaths

January 19 - Ray Harroun, first winner of the Indianapolis 500 (b. 1879)
January 22 - Duke Kahanamoku, American swimmer
February 4 - Neal Cassady, writer
February 11 - Howard Lindsay, United States playwright
February 20 - Anthony Asquith, British 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
April 10 - Gustavs Celmins, politican
April 25 - John Tewksbury, American athlete
May 9 - Mercedes de Acosta, American poet, playwright, costume designer, and socialite (b. 1893)
June 1 - Helen Keller
June 6 - Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator (assassinated)
June 15 - Sam Crawford, Baseball Hall of Famer (b. 1880)
August 27 - Her Royal Highness Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent
September 12 - Tommy Armour, professional golfer
October 30 - Rose Wilder Lane, author, reporter (b. 1886)
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 19 - Norman Thomas, Socialist Party leader
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;