top of page

1968

January 23: North Korea seizes US Navy ship Pueblo; holds 83 on board as spies

#1

#2

hit of

1968

February 1: Following the first day of the Tet offensive, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a south Vietnamese security official, executes a Viet Cong prisoner and is photographed by American photographer Eddie Adams.
March 16: American soldiers massacre 347 civilians at My Lai

#3

March 31: President Johnson announces he will not seek or accept renomination

#4

April 4: Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis

#5

May 11: Resurrection City permit granted for an encampment on the Mall in Washington, DC
June 5: As Robert Kennedy leaves the San Francisco Ambassador Hotel stage at 12:13am, he is shot by Sirhan Sirhan

#6

#7

July 24: Arlo Guthrie performs his 20 minute ballad "Alice's Restaurant" at the Newport Folk Festival.
August 28: Chicago police take action against crowds of demonstrators, beating some unconscious, sending at least 100 to ERs, and arresting 175. Mayor Daley tried to explain the police action: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."

#8

#9

September 7: Women's Liberation groups,  target the Miss America Beauty Contest in Atlantic City. While nothing is actually set on fire, one organizer's comment - quoted in the New York Times the next day - that the protesters "wouldn't do anything dangerous, just a symbolic bra-burning."
October 18: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, US athletes and medalists in the 200-meter dash, disrupt the Summer Olympic Games by performing the black power salute during the "Star-Spangled Banner" at their medal ceremony.

#10

#11

November 5: Election Day. The results of the popular vote are 31,770,000 for Nixon, 43.4 percent of the total; 31,270,000 or 42.7 percent for Humphrey; 9,906,000 or 13.5 percent for wallace; and 0.4 percent for other candidates.
December 21: The launch of Apollo 8 begins the first US mission to orbit the Moon.

#12

bottom of page