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1968

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

Events

January

• January 5 - Alexander Dubček elected as the leader of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party - the "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia.
  
  
• January 15 - An earthquake occurs in Sicily - 231 dead, 262 injured.
  
  
• January 21 - US B-52 Stratofortress 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.
  
  
• February 28 - Ex-singer Frankie Lymon is found dead from heroin overdose.
  
  

  March

  
  
  
• March 7 - Vietnam War: The First Battle of Saigon begins.
  
  
• March 12 - Mauritius achieves independence from British Rule.
  
  
• March 14 - Nerve gas leaks from US 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 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 - Martin Luther King, Jr assassinated.
  
  
• April 7 - Racing driver Jim Clark killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim.
  
  
• 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 - Mobutu releases captured mercenaries in Congo.
  
  
• 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-June

  
  
  
• May -'' "May of 68"'' is a symbol of the resistance of that generation. Agitations and strikes in Paris leads many young 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 1 - Professor Giorgios Rosas declares independence of his platform nation Isle of the Roses off Rimini, Italy. Italian troops demolish it two months later.
  
  
• May 2 - The Israel Broadcasting Authority commence television broadcasts.
  
  
• May 22 - The US nuclear-powered submarine the USS ''Scorpion'' sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
  
  
• 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 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 (MP) at Stormont in Northern Ireland, along with others, squats a house in Caledon to protest discrimination in housing allocations.
  
  
• June 23 - Soccer stampede in Buenos Aires - 74 dead, 150 injured.
  
  
• June 29 - Pope Paul VI announces an encyclical entitled "Humanae Vitae", condemning birth control.
  
  

  July-September

  
  
  
• July 1 - The CIA's Phoenix Program is officially established.
  
  
• July 4 - 59-year-old Yachtsman Alec Rose received a hero's welcome as he sailed into Portsmouth after his 354-day round-the-world trip.
  
  
• 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 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 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 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, Illinois outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
  
  
• 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 ten days before the inauguration of the 1968 Summer Olympics.
  
  
• 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 12 - The Games of the XIX Olympiad in Mexico City, Mexico is inaugurated. The games concludes October 27th.
  
  
• 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 19 - Cool dela Peña is born in Paniqui, Tarlac.
  
  
• 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-December

  
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• December 6 - Donald Crowhurst leaves to sail around the globe in hopes of winning Golden Globe award of ''Sunday Times''.
  
  
• 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 14 - Yale University announced it is going co-educational.
  
  
• 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 9 - Douglas Engelbart publicly demonstrates his pioneering hypertext system, NLS, in San Francisco.
  
  
• December 13 - Nichols Hall on the campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas burns to the ground precipitating the use of the Wabash Cannonball as a KSU fight song.
  
  
• 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.
  
  

  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 is founded.
  
  
• Equatorial Guinea became independent from Spain.
  
  
• In Panama Gen. Omar Torrijos with a coupe d`etat became president and leader.
  
  

  Births

  
  
  

January-March

• January 2 - Cuba Gooding Jr., American actor
  
  
• January 6 - John Singleton, American film director and writer
  
  
• January 14 - LL Cool J, American rapper and actor
  
  
• January 24 - Mary Lou Retton, American gymnast
  
  
• January 27 - Mike Patton, American singer
  
  
• January 28 - Sarah McLachlan, Canadian singer
  
  
• January 29 - Edward Burns, American actor
  
  
• February 1 - Lisa Marie Presley, American actress
  
  
• February 3 - Oscar Cabot, Vice-President Bonicca Natural Body Care
  
  
• February 5 - Roberto Alomar, baseball player
  
  
• February 8 - Gary Coleman, American actor
  
  
• February 10 - Atika Suri, Indonesian television newscaster
  
  
• February 14 - Jules Asner, American model and television personality
  
  
• February 22 - Brad Nowell, American musician (d. 1996)
  
  
• February 22 - Jeri Ryan, American actress
  
  
• February 27 - Matt Stairs, baseball player
  
  
• March 4 - Patsy Kensit, English actress
  
  
• March 11 - Lisa Loeb, American singer
  
  
• March 15 - Mark McGrath, American musician (Sugar Ray)
  
  
• March 23 - Mike Atherton, English cricketer
  
  
• March 23 - Damon Albarn, English musician (Blur and Gorillaz)
  
  
• March 26 - Kenny Chesney, American musician
  
  
• March 26 - James Iha, American musician (Smashing Pumpkins)
  
  
• March 28 - Iris Chang, American author (d. 2004)
  
  
• March 28 - Nasser Hussain, English cricketer
  
  
• March 29 - Lucy Lawless, New Zealand actress and singer
  
  
• March 30 - Céline Dion, Canadian singer
  
  

  April-June

  
  
  
• April 3 - Sebastian Bach, West Indian-born musician (Skid Row)
  
  
• April 8 - Patricia Arquette, American actress
  
  
• April 15 - Stacey Williams, American model
  
  
• April 19 - Ashley Judd, American actress
  
  
• April 23 - Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist
  
  
• May 1 - D'Arcy Wretzky, American musician
  
  
• May 7 - Traci Lords, American actress
  
  
• May 9 - Marie-José Perec, French athlete
  
  
• May 12 - Tony Hawk, American skateboarder
  
  
• May 26 - Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark
  
  
• May 27 - Jeff Bagwell, baseball player
  
  
• May 27 - Frank Thomas, baseball player
  
  
• May 28 - Kylie Minogue, Australian actress and singer
  
  
• June 4 - Rachel Griffiths, Australian actress
  
  
• June 20 - Peter Paige, American actor
  
  
• June 26 - Shannon Sharpe, American football player and commentator
  
  
• June 28 - Adam Woodyatt, British actor
  
  
• June 29 - Theoren Fleury, Canadian hockey player
  
  
• June 30 - Philip Anselmo, American musician
  
  

  July-September

  
  
  
• July 7 - Jorja Fox, American actress
  
  
• July 10 - Hassiba Boulmerka, Algerian athlete
  
  
• July 15 - Stan Kirsch, American actor
  
  
• July 16 - Dhanraj Pillay, Indian field hockey player
  
  
• July 16 - Barry Sanders, American football player
  
  
• July 27 - Julian McMahon, Australian actor
  
  
• July 30 - Robert Korzeniowski, Polish racewalker
  
  
• August 9 - Gillian Anderson, American actress
  
  
• August 9 - Eric Bana, Australian actor
  
  
• August 17 - Ed McCaffrey, American football player
  
  
• August 31 - Todd Carty, British actor
  
  
• September 1 - Mohamed Atta al Sayed, Egyptian terrorist
  
  
• September 4 - Mike Piazza, baseball player
  
  
• September 7 - Marcel Desailly, French footballer
  
  
• September 11 - Kay Hanley, American musician
  
  
• September 18 - Toni Kukoc, Croatian basketball player
  
  
• September 20 - Darrell Russell, race car driver (d. 2004)
  
  
• September 25 - Will Smith, American rapper and actor
  
  
• September 26 - James Caviezel, American actor
  
  
• September 28 - Naomi Watts, English-born actress, star of Peter Jackson's King Kong
  
  

  October-December

  
  
  
• October 7 - Toni Braxton, American singer
  
  
• October 10 - Bart Brentjens, Dutch mountainbiker
  
  
• October 11 - Jane Krakowski, American actress
  
  
• October 12 - Hugh Jackman, Australian actor
  
  
• October 31 - Vanilla Ice, American rapper
  
  
• November 4 - Lee Germon, New Zealand cricket captains
  
  
• November 8 - Zara Whites, Dutch actress
  
  
• November 9 - Nazzareno Carusi, Italian pianist
  
  
• November 12 - Sammy Sosa, Dominican Major League Baseball player
  
  
• November 13 - Pat Hentgen, baseball player
  
  
• November 15 - Jennifer Charles, American singer
  
  
• November 15 - Ol' Dirty Bastard, American rapper (d. 2004)
  
  
• November 18 - Owen Wilson, American actor
  
  
• November 23 - Hamid Hassani, Iranian scholar
  
  
• November 27 - Michael Vartan, French actor
  
  
• December 2 - Lucy Liu, American actress
  
  
• December 8 - Mike Mussina, baseball player
  
  
• December 9 - Kurt Angle, American amateur and professional wrestler
  
  
• December 12 - Rory Kennedy, son of Robert F Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy
  
  
• December 17 - Paul Tracy, Canadian race car driver
  
  

  Deaths

  
  
  

January-April

• January 11 - Isidor Isaac Rabi, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1898)
  
  
• January 19 - Ray Harroun, American race car driver (b. 1879)
  
  
• January 21 - Will Lang Jr., Chief Regional Director of Life (magazine)
  
  
• January 22 - Duke Kahanamoku, American swimmer (b. 1890)
  
  
• January 26 - Merrill C. Meigs, American newspaper publisher and aviation promoter (b. 1883)
  
  
• February 4 - Neal Cassady, American writer (b. 1926)
  
  
• February 11 - Howard Lindsay, American playwright (b. 1888)
  
  
• February 20 - Anthony Asquith, British director and writer (b. 1902)
  
  
• February 21 - Howard Walter Florey, Australian-born pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (b. 1898)
  
  
• February 22 - Peter Arno, American cartoonist (b. 1904)
  
  
• February 27 - Frankie Lymon, American 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, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1908)
  
  
• April 4 - Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., American civil rights activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (assassinated) (b. 1929)
  
  
• April 7 - Jimmy Clark, Scottish race car driver (b. 1936)
  
  
• April 10 - Gustavs Celmins, Latvian politician (b. 1899)
  
  
• April 14 - Al Benton, baseball player (b. 1911)
  
  
• April 22 - Stephen H. Sholes, American record executive (b. 1911)
  
  
• April 25 - John Tewksbury, American athlete (b. 1876)
  
  

  May-December

  
  
  
• May 7 - Mike Spence British race car driver (b. 1936)
  
  
• May 9 - Mercedes de Acosta, American poet, playwright, costume designer, and socialite (b. 1893)
  
  
• May 14 - Husband E. Kimmel, American admiral (b. 1882)
  
  
• June 1 - Helen Keller, American spokeswoman for deaf and blind (b. 1880)
  
  
• June 6 - Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator and U.S. Attorney General (assassinated) (b. 1925)
  
  
• June 14 - Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
  
  
• June 15 - Sam Crawford, baseball player (b. 1880)
  
  
• July 11 - Mervyn Peake, British writer and illustrator (b. 1911)
  
  
• July 18 - Corneille Heymans, Belgian physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1892)
  
  
• July 23 - Henry Hallett Dale, English scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1875)
  
  
• July 28 - Otto Hahn, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1879)
  
  
• August 19 - George Gamow, Ukrainian-born physicist (b. 1904)
  
  
• August 27 - Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent (b. 1906)
  
  
• August 29 - Ulysses S. Grant III, American soldier and planner (b. 1881)
  
  
• September 12 - Tommy Armour, Scottish golfer (b. 1894)
  
  
• October 2 - Marcel Duchamp, French artist (b. 1887)
  
  
• October 13 - Bea Benaderet, American actress (b. 1906)
  
  
• October 30 - Rose Wilder Lane, American author and reporter (b. 1886)
  
  
• November 4 - Michel Kikoine, Belarusian painter (b. 1892)
  
  
• November 6 - Charles Munch, French conductor and violinist (b. 1891)
  
  
• November 25 - Upton Sinclair, American writer (b. 1878)
  
  
• November 26 - Arnold Zweig, German writer (b. 1887)
  
  
• December 10 - Karl Barth, German protestant theologian (b. 1888)
  
  
• December 10 - Thomas Merton, American author (b. 1915)
  
  
• December 12 - Tallulah Bankhead, American actress (b. 1902)
  
  
• December 19 - Norman Thomas, American politician (b. 1884)
  
  
• December 20 - John Steinbeck, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
  
  
• December 30 - Trygve Lie, first United Nations Secretary General (b. 1896)
  
  
• December 30 - Vladimir Peter Tytla, American animator (b. 1904)
  
  

  Month/day unknown

  
  
  
• Berthold Bartosch, Czech animator (b. 1893)
  
  
• Robert Wood Johnson, American business leader and philanthropist (b. 1893)
  
  
• Jouett Shouse, American politician (b. 1879).
  
  

  Nobel Prizes

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

  Further reading

  
  
  
• Mark Kurlansky (2004), ''1968: the year that rocked the world'', Jonathan Cape*af:1968
  
  

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