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Information about 1968

Events:

   * 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 declares independence from Australia
   * 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 Huˇ
   * 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 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 20 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau becomes Canada's fifteenth prime
     minister.
   * April 23-April 30 - Student protesters at Columbia University in New
     York City take over administration buildings and shut down the
     university.
   * May - Student riots in Paris 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 5 - Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los
     Angeles, California.
   * 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 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
   * November - Richard M. Nixon defeats Hubert H. Humphrey in the U.S.
     presidential election
   * 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.
   * December 27 - The long-running radio program The Breakfast Club signs
     off for the last time (ABC radio).

Art, Culture & Fashion

   * 1968 in film
        o Oliver!
        o 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick
        o The Green Berets starring John Wayne
        o Once Upon a time in the West, directed by Sergio Leone
   * 1968 in literature
   * 1968 in music
   * 1968 in sports
   * 1968 in television
        o January 22 - Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, debuts on NBC.
        o 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.
        o CBS uses a portable minicam for political convention coverage.
        o Nearly 200 million households now own television sets, (78 million
          of which are in the U.S.).
        o Hawaii Five-O premieres

Births:

   * January 6 - John Singleton, director and writer
   * January 14 - LL Cool J, rapper, actor
   * January 24 - Mary Lou Retton, gymnast
   * January 28 - Sarah McLachlan, singer
   * January 29 - Edward Burns, actor
   * February 1 - Lisa Marie Presley, actress
   * February 8 - Gary Coleman, actor
   * February 27 - Matt Stairs, professional baseball player
   * March 4 - Patsy Kensit, actress
   * March 11 - Lisa Loeb, singer
   * March 29 - Lucy Lawless, actress, singer
   * March 30 - Cˇline Dion, singer
   * April 3 - Sebastian Bach, musician ("Skid Row")
   * May 7 - Traci Lords, erotic actress
   * May 9 - Marie-Josˇ Perec, French athlete
   * May 26 - Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark
   * May 28 - Kylie Minogue, actress and singer
   * July 19 - Antonina Astorino
   * October 7 - Toni Braxton, singer
   * November 12 - Sammy Sosa, baseball player
   * November 15 - Jennifer Charles, singer

Deaths:

   * January 22- Duke Kahanamoku, American swimmer.
   * February 4 - Neal Cassady, writer
   * February 11 - Howard Lindsay, United States playwright.
   * February 20 - Anthony Asquith, director, writer
   * February 22 - Peter Arno, cartoonist
   * February 27 - Frankie Lymon, singer
   * March 27 - Yuri Gagarin, the first human 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
   * June 1 - Helen Keller
   * November 26 - Arnold Zweig, German writer (* 1887)
   * December 12 - Tallulah Bankhead, American actress
   * 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 - Renˇ Cassin

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