1968

Years: 1965 1966 1967 - 1968(MCMLXVIII) - 1969 1970 1971
Decades: 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century Template:C20YearInTopic

1968 was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar).

Events

Template:Year GF

Undated

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.
Nauru adopt its national anthem of the Nauru Bwiema
The Hong Kong Flu pandemic begins in Hong Kong
The International Baccalaureate Organisation was founded.

January

January 5 - Alexander Dubček elected as leader of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party - the "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia
January 15 - An earthquake in Sicily - 231 dead, 262 injured
January 21 - US B-52 bomber crashes in Greenland and in the process discharges four nuclear bombs
January 23 - North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship violated its territorial waters while spying.
January 25 - The Israeli Submarine Dakar sinks in the Mediterranean Sea - 69 dead
January 27 - French submarine sinks in the Mediterranean 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's president Hammer DeRoburt declares independence from Australia

February

February - Classical Gas by Mason Williams is released.
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 - Boeing 747 made its maiden flight
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 - Israeli-Jordan border clashes.
February 11 - Madison Square Garden III closes, Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York.
February 13 - Civil rights disturbances at the University of Wisconsin and University of North Carolina
February 16 - In Haleyville, Alabama the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service
February 18 - British Standard Time introduced
February 24 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted - South Vietnam recaptures Hué

March

March 7 - Vietnam War: The First Battle of Saigon begins.
March 12 - Mauritius achieves independence from British Rule
March 15 - George Brown, British Minister of Foreign affairs, resigns
March 16 - Vietnam War: My Lai massacre American troops kills scores of women and children
March 17 - A demonstration in London's Grosvenor Square against US involvement in the Vietnam War leads to violence - 91 police injured, 200 demonstrators arrested
March 18 - Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency
March 27 - Russian space pioneer Yuri Gagarin killed in a crash during a training flight.
March 31 - American President Lyndon Johnson announces he will not 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 two department stores in Frankfurt-am-Main - 3 dead. Culprits are later arrested and sentenced for arson
April 4 - In the morning after delivering his "mountaintop" speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
April 11 - London Bridge sold to Robert McCullough for £1 million. It is later re-erected in Arizona
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
April 11 - German left-wing students blockade the Springer Press HQ in Berlin and many are arrested - one of them Ulrike Meinhof
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 - Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
April 23 - Surgeons at the Hopital de la Pitie, Paris, perform Europe's first heart transplant on Clovis Roblain
April 29 - Official opening of the musical Hair on Broadway.

May

May - "May of 68" is a symbol of the resistance of that generation. Agitations and strikes in Paris led many young to believe that a revolution was starting. Student and worker strikes sometimes referred to as the French May nearly bring down the French government
May 22 - The US nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores

June

June 1 - Helen Keller dies in her sleep in Connecticut
June 3 - Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol as he enters his studio, wounding him
June 5 - U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy died from his injuries the next day
June 8 - James Earl Ray is arrested for the murder of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.
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
June 29 - Pope Paul VI announces an encyclical entitled "Humanae Vitae", condemning birth control

July

July 1 - The CIA's Phoenix Program is officially established.
July 15 - The soap opera One Life to Live premieres on the ABC network.
July 17 - Saddam Hussein becomes the Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'état
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
July 29 - Arenal Volcano erupts in Costa Rica for the first time for centuries

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
September 17 - the D'Oliveira Affair - 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 - A student demonstration ends in a massacre at 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, is 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, Donn Eisele and 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 16 - Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired 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 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 5- Luis A. Ferre is elected Governor of Puerto Rico
November 11 - Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt 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 26 - Vietnam War: United States Air Force 1st Lt. 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 24 - US 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.

Year in topic

1968 in film
- 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick
- The Green Berets starring John Wayne
- Lion in Winter, The, directed by Roman Polanski
- Oliver!, directed by Carol Reed
- Once Upon a Time in the West, directed by Sergio Leone
- Rosemary's Baby, directed by Anthony Harvey

1968 in art
1968 in literature
1968 in music
1968 in politics
1968 in culture
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

Deaths

January 19 - Ray Harroun, race car driver (b. 1879)
January 22 - Duke Kahanamoku, American swimmer (b. 1890)
January 26 - Merrill C. Meigs, newspaper publisher and aviation promoter (b. 1883)
February 4 - Neal Cassady, writer (b. 1926)
February 11 - Howard Lindsay, American playwright
February 20 - Anthony Asquith, British director and writer (b. 1902)
February 22 - Peter Arno, cartoonist (b. 1904)
February 27 - Frankie Lymon, singer (b. 1942)
February 29 - Tore Ørjasæter, Norwegian poet (b. 1886)
March 16 - Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Italian composer (b. 1895)
March 27 - Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut (b. 1934)
April 1 - Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist (b. 1908)
April 4 - Martin Luther King Jr., American civil rights activist and minister (assassinated) (b. 1929)
April 7 - Jimmy Clark, race car driver (b. 1936)
April 10 - Gustavs Celmins, politician (b. 1899)
April 14 - Al Benton, Major League Baseball player (b. 1911)
April 22 - Stephen H. Sholes, American record executive (b. 1911)
April 25 - John Tewksbury, American athlete (b. 1876)
May 9 - Mercedes de Acosta, American poet, playwright, costume designer, and socialite (b. 1893)
June 1 - Helen Keller, spokeswoman for deaf and blind (b. 1880)
June 6 - Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator and U.S. Attorney General (assassinated) (b. 1925)
June 15 - Sam Crawford, Baseball Hall of Famer (b. 1880)
July 11 - Mervyn Peake, British writer and illustrator (b. 1911)
July 28 - Otto Hahn, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1879)
August 27 - Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent (b. 1906)
September 12 - Tommy Armour, golfer (b. 1894)
October 2 - Marcel Duchamp, French artist (b. 1887)
October 13 - Bea Benaderet, actress (b. 1906)
October 30 - Rose Wilder Lane, author and reporter (b. 1886)
November 4 - Michel Kikoine, Belarusian painter (b. 1892)
November 6 - Charles Munch, French conductor and violinist (b. 1891)
November 26 - Arnold Zweig, German writer (b. 1887)
December 10 - Thomas Merton, American author (b. 1915)
December 10 - Karl Barth, Protestant theologian (b. 1888)
December 12 - Tallulah Bankhead, American actress (b. 1902)
December 19 - Norman Thomas, American politician (b. 1884)
December 20 - John Steinbeck, American writer (b. 1902)
December 30 - Trygve Lie, first United Nations Secretary General (b. 1896)
December 30 - Vladimir Peter Tytla, American animator (b. 1904)
Berthold Bartosch, Czech animator (b. 1893).

Nobel Prizes

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Categories: 1968

1968

Events

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