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1968

Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Decades: 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

Years: 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 - 1968 - 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973

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 their 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 Hué
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 - Uprising in Paris, France, nearly brings down the 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.
August 21 - Warsaw Pact nations invade Czechoslovakia
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
- Oliver!
- 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick
- The Green Berets starring John Wayne
- Once Upon a time in the West[?], directed by Sergio Leone
1968 in literature
1968 in music
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:

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 - Céline Dion, singer
April 3 - Sebastian Bach[?], musician ("Skid Row")
May 7 - Traci Lords, erotic actress
May 9 - Marie-José Perec, French athlete
May 26 - Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark[?]
May 28 - Kylie Minogue, actress and singer
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:

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