1968 in the United States

1968 in the United States
Years:	1965 1966 1967 – 1968 – 1969 1970 1971
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Events from the year 1968 in the United States. The year 1968 is considered to be one of the worst years in American history and is commonly associated with unrest and the Counterculture of the 1960s.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas)
• Vice President: Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota)
• Chief Justice: Earl Warren (California)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: John William McCormack (D-Massachusetts)
• Senate Majority Leader: Mike Mansfield (D-Montana)
• Congress: 90th

Events

January

• January 14 – The Green Bay Packers win Super Bowl II.
• January 17 – Lyndon B. Johnson calls for the non-conversion of the U.S. dollar.
• January 19 – At a White House conference on crime, singer and actress Eartha Kitt denounces the Vietnam War to Lady Bird Johnson while attending a "ladies' lunch".
• January 21 – A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 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 30 – The Viet Cong and North Vietnam launch the Tet Offensive against South Vietnam, the United States, and their allies.
• January 31 – Viet Cong soldiers attack the US Embassy, Saigon.

February

• 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 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 – Madison Square Garden in New York City opens.
• February 13 – Civil rights disturbances occur at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• 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.

March

March 16: My Lai Massacre

• March 11 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson mandates that all computers purchased by the federal government support the ASCII character encoding.^[1]
• March 12 – 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, as well as the party, over Vietnam.
• March 14 – Nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground near Skull Valley, Utah.
• 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 19–23 – 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 26 – Joan Baez marries activist David Harris in New York.
• March 31 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.

April

• April 2 – The film 2001: A Space Odyssey premieres in Washington, D.C.
• 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 6 is launched, the second and last unmanned test flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle.
• April 5
  • Robert F. Kennedy gave a Speech at the Cleveland City Club.
• April 6
  • 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 11 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
• April 23–30 – 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 29 – The musical Hair officially opens on Broadway.

May

• 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 22 – The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine 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. Kennedy dies from his injuries the next day.
• June 26 – Bonin Islands are returned to Japan after 23 years of occupation by the United States Navy.

July

• July 1 – The Central Intelligence Agency's Phoenix Program is officially established.
• July 18 – The semiconductor company Intel is founded.
• July 23–28 – Black militants led by Fred Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio.

August

• August 5–8 – The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. President and Spiro Agnew for Vice President.
• 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 22–30 – 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.^[2]

September

• September 7 – 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 13 – Army Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware, World War II Medal of Honor recipient, is killed when his helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. He is posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
• September 24 – 60 Minutes debuts on CBS

October

• 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.
• 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 16 – In Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, 2 black Americans competing in the Olympic 200-meter run, raise their arms in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals for 1st and 3rd place.
• October 20 – Former U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis on the Greek island of Skorpios.
• October 25 – The Jimi Hendrix Experience releases Electric Ladyland.
• 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

• 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 is elected Governor of Puerto Rico.
• 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.
• 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 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

• December 3 – The NBC special If I Can Dream marks the concert return of Elvis Presley.
• December 9 – Douglas Engelbart publicly demonstrates his pioneering hypertext system, NLS, in San Francisco.
• 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 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 marries Julie Nixon, the daughter of U.S. President-elect Richard Nixon.
• December 23–Release of the USS Pueblo crew after spending 11 months in captivity by the North Koreans.
• 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.

Undated

• Cañada College opens in Redwood City, California.
• The Cincinnati Bengals American football team is founded.
• In or about this year the HIV virus is thought to have first arrived in the U.S.^[3]

Ongoing

• Cold War (1945–1991)
• Space Race (1957–1975)
• Vietnam War, U.S. involvement (1962–1973)

Births

• January 2 – Cuba Gooding, Jr., actor
• January 4 – Mike Wilpolt, American football player and coach
• January 29 – Aeneas Williams, American football player and pastor
• February 12 – Josh Brolin, actor
• February 17 – Bryan Cox, American football player and coach
• February 22 – Jayson Williams, American basketball player and sportscaster
• March 12 – Aaron Eckhart, actor
• May 12
  • Mark Clark, baseball player and coach
  • Scott Schwartz, American actor
• June 2 – Jason Falkner, singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Jellyfish, The Grays, and The Three O'Clock)
• June 27 – Kelly Ayotte, United States Senator from New Hampshire since 2011.
• July 7 – Allen Payne, actor
• August 9 – Gillian Leigh Anderson, actress
• September 25 – Will Smith, actor, producer, and rapper
• November 13 – Pat Hentgen, American baseball player and coach

Deaths

• April 4 – Martin Luther King, Jr., activist, clergyman and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement (born 1929)
• May 10 – Scotty Beckett, American actor and singer (born 1929)
• June 6 – Robert Kennedy, younger brother of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator, presidential candidate.
• August 18 – Arthur Marshall, ragtime composer and performer (born 1881)
• December 22 – John Steinbeck, author (born 1902)

See also

• List of American films of 1968

References

External links

• Media related to 1968 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons