1968

1968 in other calendars
Gregorian calendar	1968; MCMLXVIII
Ab urbe condita	2721
Armenian calendar	1417; ԹՎ ՌՆԺԷ
Assyrian calendar	6718
Bahá'í calendar	124–125
Bengali calendar	1375
Berber calendar	2918
British Regnal year	16 Eliz. 2 – 17 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2512
Burmese calendar	1330
Byzantine calendar	7476–7477
Chinese calendar	丁未年十二月初二日; (4604/4664-12-2) — to — 戊申年十一月十二日; (4605/4665-11-12)
Coptic calendar	1684–1685
Ethiopian calendar	1960–1961
Hebrew calendar	5728–5729
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2024–2025
- Shaka Samvat	1890–1891
- Kali Yuga	5069–5070
Holocene calendar	11968
Igbo calendar
- Ǹrí Ìgbò	968–969
Iranian calendar	1346–1347
Islamic calendar	1387–1388
Japanese calendar	Shōwa 43; (昭和43年)
Juche calendar	57
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4301
Minguo calendar	ROC 57; 民國57年
Thai solar calendar	2511
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Millennium:	2nd millennium
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1930s 1940s 1950s – 1960s – 1970s 1980s 1990s
Years:	1965 1966 1967 – 1968 – 1969 1970 1971

This article is about the year 1968.

"'68" redirects here. For the 1988 film, see '68 (film).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 1968

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

Events [edit]

January [edit]

January 30: Tet begins.

January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as the leader of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.^[1]
January 8 – British Prime Minister Harold Wilson endorses the 'I'm Backing Britain' campaign for working an additional half hour each day without pay.^[2]
January 15 – An earthquake in Sicily kills 380 and injures around 1,000.^[3]^[4]
January 17 – Lyndon B. Johnson calls for the non-conversion of the U.S. dollar.
January 21
- Vietnam War – Battle of Khe Sanh: One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins, ending on April 8.
- A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging four 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 23 USS Pueblo

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 US Embassy, Saigon.
- Nauru president Hammer DeRoburt declares independence from Australia.

February [edit]

February 1
- Vietnam War: A Viet Cong officer named Nguyễn Văn Lém is executed by Nguyễn Ngọc 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.
- The Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad merge to form Penn Central, the largest ever corporate merger up to this date.
February 6–February 18 – The 1968 Winter Olympics are 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; 3 college students are killed.
February 11
- Border clashes take place between Israel and Jordan.
- Madison Square Garden in New York City opens.
February 12 – Phong Nhi and Phong Nhat massacre.
February 13 – Civil rights disturbances occur at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
February 17 – Administrative reforms in Romania divide 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.
- NET televises the very first episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
February 24 – Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted; South Vietnam recaptures Huế.
February 25 – Vietnam War: Ha My massacre.
February 27 – Ex-Teenagers singer Frankie Lymon is found dead from a heroin overdose in Harlem.

March [edit]

March 6 – Un-recognized Rhodesia executes three black citizens, the first executions since UDI, prompting international condemnation.
March 7 – Vietnam War: The First Battle of Saigon ends.
March 8 – The first student protests spark the 1968 Polish political crisis.
March 10–11 – Vietnam War: Battle of Lima Site 85, largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members (12) during the then-secret war later known as the Laotian Civil War.
March 11 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson mandates that all computers purchased by the federal government support the ASCII character encoding.^[5]
March 12
- Mauritius achieves independence from British rule.
- 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, and the party, over Vietnam.
March 13 – The first Rotaract club is chartered in North Charlotte, North Carolina.
March 14 – Nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground near Skull Valley, Utah.
March 15 – British Foreign Secretary George Brown resigns.
March 16
- Vietnam War – My Lai massacre: American troops kill scores of civilians. The story will first become public in November 1969 and will help undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam.
- U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy 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 are 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, Vietnam War: 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 5-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building, shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War, 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 7 other students occupy the administrative offices of the University of Nanterre, setting in motion a chain of events that lead France to the brink of revolution in May.
March 24 – Aer Lingus Flight 712 crashed en route from Cork to London near Tuskar Rock, Wexford, killing 61 passengers and crew.
March 26 – Joan Baez marries activist David Harris in New York.
March 28 – Brazilian high school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto is shot by the police in a protest for cheaper meals at a restaurant for low-income students. The aftermath of his death was one of the first major events against the military dictatorship.
March 31 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.

April [edit]

April 2
- Bombs explode at midnight in two department stores in Frankfurt-am-Main; Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin are later arrested and sentenced for arson.
- The film 2001: A Space Odyssey premieres in Washington, D.C.
April 3 – The American movie Planet of the Apes is released in theaters.
April 4
- Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupt in major American cities, lasting for several days afterwards.
- 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 6
- La, la, la by Massiel (music and lyrics by Manuel de la Calva and Ramón Arcusa) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 for Spain, at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
- A shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police results in several arrests and deaths, including 16-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.
- A double explosion in downtown Richmond, Indiana kills 41 and injures 150.
April 7 – Racing driver Jim Clark is killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim.
April 8 – Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (under Department of Justice) (BNDD) created.
April 10 – The ferry TEV Wahine struck a reef at the mouth of Wellington Harbour, New Zealand, with the loss of 53 lives, in Cyclone Giselle, which created the windiest conditions ever recorded in New Zealand.
April 11
- Josef Bachmann tries to assassinate Rudi Dutschke, leader of the 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.
- German left-wing students blockade the Springer Press HQ in Berlin and many are arrested (one of them Ulrike Meinhof).
- U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
April 20
- Pierre Trudeau becomes Canada's 15th Prime Minister.
- English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood Speech.
- MGM's classic film The Wizard of Oz makes its NBC debut after being telecast on CBS since 1956. It will remain on NBC for the next eight years.
April 23
- President Mobutu releases captured mercenaries in the Congo.
- Surgeons at the Hôpital de la Pitié, Paris, perform Europe's first heart transplant, on Clovis Roblain.
- 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 26 – The nuclear weapon "Boxcar" is tested at the Nevada Test Site in the biggest detonation of Operation Crosstie.
April 29 – The musical Hair officially opens on Broadway.

May [edit]

May 2 – The Israel Broadcasting Authority commences television broadcasts.
May 3 – Braniff Flight 352 crashes near Dawson, Texas killing all 85 persons on board.
May 13 – Paris student riots; one million march through streets of Paris.
May 13 – Manchester City win 1967–68 Football League First Division; by two clear points over club rivals Manchester United.
May 14 – The Beatles announce 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
- A general election is held in Italy.
- Nigerian forces capture Port Harcourt and form a ring around the Biafrans. This contributes to a humanitarian disaster as the surrounded population already suffers from 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 – Manchester United win the European Cup Final, becoming the first English team to do so.

June [edit]

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, 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 8 – James Earl Ray is arrested for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr..
June 10 – Italy beat 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 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.
June 26 – Bonin Islands are returned to Japan after 23 years of occupation by the United States Navy.
June 30 – Lockheed C-5 Galaxy heavy military transport aircraft first flies in the U.S. This model will still be in service forty years on.

July [edit]

July 1
- The Central Intelligence Agency's Phoenix Program is officially established.
- The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opens for signature.
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 18 – The semiconductor company Intel is founded.
July 23–July 28 – Black militants led by Fred (Ahmed) Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio, in United States.
July 25 – Pope Paul VI publishes the encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, condemning birth control.
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.
July 30 – Thames Television starts transmission in London.

August [edit]

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 Railways steam locomotives make the 120-mile journey from Liverpool to Carlisle and return to Liverpool – the journey is known as the Fifteen Guinea Special.
August 18 – Two charter buses are pushed into the Hida River on National Highway Route 41 in Japan, in an accident caused by heavy rain; 104 are killed.
August 20–August 21 – The Prague Spring of political liberalization ends, as 750,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 6,500 tanks with 800 plans invade Czechoslovakia. It is dated as the biggest operation in Europe after WWII ended.
August 21 – The Medal of Honor is posthumously awarded to James Anderson, Jr.—he is the first black U.S. Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor.
August 24 – France explodes its first hydrogen bomb.
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.
August 29
- John Gordon Mein, US Ambassador to Guatemala, is assassinated on the streets of Guatemala City. First US Ambassador assassinated in the line of duty.
- Crown Prince Harald of Norway marries Sonja Haraldsen, the commoner he has dated for 9 years, in Oslo.

September [edit]

September 6 – Swaziland becomes independent.
- 150 women (members of New York Radical Women) arrive in Atlantic City, New Jersey to protest against the Miss America Pageant, as exploitative of women. Led by activist and author Robin Morgan, it is one of the first large demonstrations of Second Wave Feminism as Women's Liberation begins to gather much media attention.
September 11
- The International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) was founded.
- French General René Cogny and 94 others die in an Air France Caravelle jetliner crash near Nice in the Mediterranean.
September 13
- Albania officially retreats from the Warsaw Pact upon the Soviet Union-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, having already ceased to participate actively in Pact activity since 1962.
- US Army Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware, WWII Medal of Honor recipient, is killed when his helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. He is posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
- Agreement for merger between the General Electric Company and English Electric, the largest industrial merger in the UK up to this date.
September 14 – Detroit Tiger Denny McLain becomes the first baseball pitcher to win 30 games in a season since 1934. He remains the last to accomplish the feat.
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 20 – Hawaii 5-O debuts on CBS and eventually becomes the longest-running crime show in television history until Law & Order overtakes it in 2003.
September 21 – The Soviet's Zond 5 unmanned lunar flyby mission returns to earth, with its first of a kind biological payload intact.
September 23 – Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive comes to an end in South Vietnam.
September 24 – 60 Minutes debuts on CBS and remains on the air as of 2013.
September 27 – Marcelo Caetano becomes prime minister of Portugal.
September 29 – A referendum in Greece gives more power to the military junta.
September 30 – At Paine Field, near Everett Washington in the United States, Boeing officially rolls out its new 747 for the media and the public.

October [edit]

October 2 – Tlatelolco massacre: A student demonstration ends in 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 power in a revolution.
October 5 – Police baton civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland, marking the beginning of The Troubles.
October 8 – Vietnam War – Operation Sealords: United States and South Vietnamese forces launch a new operation in the Mekong Delta.
October 10 – the Detroit Tigers win the 1968 World Series, defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 4 games to 3.
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.
- 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 ousts Martinez and takes 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 15 – Led Zeppelin makes their first live performance, at Surrey University in England^[6]
October 16
- In Mexico City, black American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their arms in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic men's 200 metres.
- Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, provoked by the banning of Walter Rodney from the country.
October 20 – Former U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis 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 has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.

November [edit]

November 5
- U.S. presidential election, 1968: Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace.
- Luis A. Ferre, of the newly formed New Progressive Party is elected Governor of Puerto Rico, by beating incumbent governor Roberto Sanchez Vilella of the People's Party, Luis Negron Lopez of the Popular Democratic Party and Antonio J. Gonzalez of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, he also becomes the first "statehooder" governor of the Island.
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.
- A second republic is declared in the Maldives.
November 14 – Yale University announces it is going to admit women.
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 2 late touchdowns to win 43–32; as a result, thousands of outraged football fans flood the NBC switchboards to protest.
November 20 – The Farmington Mine Disaster in Farmington, West Virginia, kills seventy-eight men.
November 22
- The Beatles release their self-titled album popularly known as the White Album.
- Plato's Stepchildren, 12^th episode of Star Trek:TOS's 3^rd season is aired, featuring the first-ever interracial kiss on US national television between Lieutenant Uhura and Captain Kirk
November 24 – 4 men hijack Pan Am Flight 281 from JFK International Airport, New York to Havana, Cuba.
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 [edit]

December 3 – The '68 Comeback Special marks the concert return of Elvis Presley.
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 goes on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
- The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is also filmed on this date, but not released until 1996.
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 20 – The Zodiac Killer is believed to have shot Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday on Lake Herman Road, Benicia, San Francisco Bay, California.
December 22
- David Eisenhower, grandson of former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, marries Julie Nixon, the daughter of US President-elect Richard Nixon.
- Mao Zedong advocates that educated youth in urban China 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.
December 26 – Led Zeppelin make their American debut in Denver, CO.
December 27/28 – Israeli army launch an attack on Beirut airport destroying 13 aircraft.

Dates Unknown [edit]

The Khmer Rouge is officially formed in Cambodia as an offshot movement of the Vietnam People's Army from North Vietnam to bring communism to the nation.
Mattel's Hot Wheels toy cars are introduced.