Timeline 1968 Feb 18, British adopted year-round day -- FEC

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Date Posted: 06:34:09 07/20/12 Fri
Author: American Express promotion re world report Private dancer (980FriJuly20=38wk29)
Subject: Timeline 1968 Feb 18, British adopted year-round day

Timeline 1968

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1968 Jan 1-1968 Dec 31, The year was marked by protest marches. In 1998 Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins published: "1968: Marching in the Streets." In 2004 Mark Kurlansky authored "1968: The Year That Rocked the World."
(SFC, 5/22/98, p.C12)(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.M1)

1968 Jan 5, The US Justice Dept. indicted Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rev. William Coffin of Yale (1924-2006) and 3 others for conspiring to violate draft law.
(SFC, 4/13/06, p.B7)
1968 Jan 5, A newspaper strike shut down the SF Chronicle, the Examiner and the News-Call Bulletin for 53 days. Bill O'Brien (d.2004) became president of the SF-Oakland Newspaper Guild the next day and supported the strike, which had originated with Hearst papers in LA. Senior executives of the SF Chronicle put out a special edition of the paper on a copy machine.
(SFC, 2/05/04, p.A27)(SSFC, 6/7/09, p.W3)(http://tinyurl.com/nkszr8)
1968 Jan 5, Alexander Dubcek (1921-1992) was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia.
(http://www.radio.cz/en/article/112505)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDdubcek.htm)

1968 Jan 6, Dr. Norman E. Shumway of Stanford performed the 1st US adult heart transplant. Mike Kasperak (54) lived for 2 weeks before he died of massive bleeding from other organs.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9067567)(SFC, 2/11/06, p.B5)

1968 Jan 8, Jacques Cousteau's 1st undersea special aired on US network TV.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0845400/)

1968 Jan 9, The TV show "It Takes A Thief" with Robert Wagner began on ABC. It written and produced by Leslie Stevens (d.1998) and ran to 1970.
(SFC, 8/13/97, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 4/29/98, p.C2)
1968 Jan 9, The Surveyor VII space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
(AP, 1/9/99)

1968 Jan 10, Lyle Menendez was born in NY and grew up in Princeton, NJ. In 1989 he and his brother Erik killed their parents.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm1062652/)

1968 Jan 13, Hester & Appolinar's musical "Your Own Thing," premiered in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Own_Thing)
1968 Jan 13, The U.S. reported shifting most air targets from North Vietnam to Laos.
(HN, 1/13/99)

1968 Jan 14, The Green Bay Packers under Vince Lombardi, after winning its third consecutive NFL championship, won the 2nd Super Bowl Football game over the Oakland Raiders. This was Lombardi's last game as coach of the Packers. The game drew the first $3 million gate in football history. In 1999 David Maraniss authored "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi."
(WSJ, 1/28/97, p.A16)(SFEC, 1/9/00, BR p.5)(Superbowl.com)
1968 Jan 14, US forces in Vietnam launched Operation Niagara I to locate enemy units around the Marine base at Khe Sanh.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=1613)

1968 Jan 16, The UK announced that it would end all "East of Suez" presence by 1971.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)

1968 Jan 19, Cambodia charged that the United States and South Vietnam had crossed the border and killed three Cambodians.
(HN, 1/19/99)

1968 Jan 21, An American B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed at North Star Bay, Greenland, killing one crew member and scattering radioactive material. Reports began to surface later and in 1995 the Danish government paid a $15.5 million settlement to some 1,700 exposed workers.
(www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-09-02.asp)(AP, 1/21/08)
1968 Jan 21, A group of 31 North Korean commandos trudged undetected for about 40 miles from the border to the presidential Blue House of South Korean President Park Chung-hee in downtown Seoul. South Korean security forces repelled the assault. 28 North Koreans and 34 South Koreans were killed.
(SFC, 9/19/96, p.A8)(AP, 12/25/03)
1968 Jan 21, In Vietnam the Battle of Khe Sahn began as North Vietnamese forces attacked a US Marine base; the Americans were able to hold their position until the siege was lifted 2 1/2 months later. It was the longest and bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War. The Battle began at 0530 hours when North Vietnamese Army forces hammered the Marine-occupied Khe Sanh Combat Base with rocket, mortar, artillery, small arms, and automatic weapons fire. Hundreds of 82-mm mortar rounds and 122-mm rockets slammed into the combat base. Virtually all of the base's ammunition stock and a substantial portion of the fuel supplies were destroyed.
(WSJ, 5/2/02, p.D7)(AP, 1/21/08)(www.vietnam-war.info/battles/siege_of_khe_sanh.php)

1968 Jan 22, The TV variety show "Laugh In" began on NBC with comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. It continued running to May 14, 1973. It was the top ranking network show on television for two seasons (1968-1969) with rankings of 31.8 and 26.3%.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_&_Martin%27s_Laugh-In)(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1968 Jan 22, The off Broadway show "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" premiered at the Village Gate Theater. A film version was produced in 1975. Brel (1929-1978), a Belgian singer, was later buried in the Marquesas Island of Hiva Oa, in the same cemetery as Paul Gauguin.
(www.talkinbroadway.com/regional/sfla/sfla176.html)
1968 Jan 22, Apollo 5 was launched to the Moon; unmanned lunar module tests made.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_5)

1968 Jan 23, North Korea seized the U.S. Navy intelligence ship Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation's territorial waters on a spying mission. One crewman was killed in the attack. Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher (d.2004 at 76) was quickly separated from the 81-man crew. The crew was released 11 months later.
(NG, 8/74, p.266)(AP, 1/23/98)(SFC, 10/2/01, p.A15)(SFC, 1/30/04, p.A25)

1968 Jan 24, Mary Lou Retton, gymnast (Oly-gold/2 silver/2 bronze-84), was born in Fairmont, WV.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Retton)
1968 Jan 24, An Israeli submarine, the Dakar, a British-made submarine with a 69-man crew, was lost in the Mediterranean Sea while enroute from England to Israel. The sunken ship was found May 28, 1999, between Crete and Cyprus.
(SFC, 5/31/99, p.A8)(www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/9650/dakar.html)

1968 Jan 28, Vince Lombardi resigned as coach of Wisconsin’s Green Bay Packers, two weeks after winning Super Bowl II. He remained as general manager. On Feb 1 Phil Bengtson was named coach of the Packers.
(www.packers.com/history/chronology/)(www.nfl.com/history/chronology/1961-1970)

1968 Jan 29, A court convened in Vietnam for the murder of Cambodian, triple agent Inchin Lam, by Special Forces Captain John J. McCarthy Jr. Murder charges were later dropped due to exculpatory evidence and proven prosecutorial fraud on the court. A civil action for $1.3 billion in US Federal District Court, Washington D.C. against the CIA and associated agencies was dismissed in 2003.
(www.copvcia.com/Mac.htm)(http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id299.html)
1968 Jan 29, Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita (b.1886), painter and engraver born in Tokyo, Japan, died in Zurich, Switz. He applied French oil techniques to Japanese-style paintings. In 2006 Phyllis Birnbaum authored “Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita – The Artist Caught Between East and West.”
(SSFC, 11/26/06, p.M1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuguharu_Foujita)

1968 Jan 31, In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive began as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers attacked strategic and civilian locations throughout South Vietnam. The Viet Cong, under General Vo Nguyen Giap (b.1911), seized part of the US embassy in Saigon for 6 hours. They attacked more than 100 cities in South Vietnam with many US casualties. Although the Communists were beaten back, the offensive was seen as a major setback for the US and its allies. During the Tet Offensive, the Communist troops who took control of the ancient capital of Hue killed an estimated 6,000 civilians before they again lost control of the city.
(www.vwam.com/vets/tet/tet.html)(SFC, 2/3/00, p.A25)(AP, 1/30/08)

Jan, Ralph Ginzburg (1929-2006), American author and publisher, began publishing Avant Garde, a literary and arts magazine in NYC. The magazine continued to July, 1971.
(SFC, 7/7/06, p.B9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Ginzburg)

1968 Feb 1, Richard M. Nixon announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
(AP, 2/1/08)
1968 Feb 1, Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, was born. Lisa Marie married ‘The Gloved One’, Michael Jackson, in the ‘90s.
(SFC, 8/11/97, p.A1)(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)
1968 Feb 1, US troops drove the North Vietnamese out of Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon. South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu declared martial law. Saigon's police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head in a scene captured by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and NBC News.
(HN, 2/1/99)(SFC, 7/16/98, p.B2)(AP, 2/1/08)
1968 Feb 1, The Pennsylvania Railroad and NYC Central merged into Penn Central.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Central)

1968 Feb 4, Neal Cassidy (b.1926), friend of Jack Kerouac and one of the Merry Pranksters, died on a Mexican highway.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.E5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady)

1968 Feb 5, US troops divided Viet Cong at Hue while the Saigon government claimed they would arm loyal citizens. The main assaults at Khe Sanh started.
(HN, 2/5/99)(http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Siege_of_Khe_Sanh/)

1968 Feb 6, Former president Dwight Eisenhower hit a golfing hole-in-one.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, Z1 p.8)
1968 Feb 6, Charles de Gaulle opened the 19th Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.
(HN, 2/6/99)

1968 Feb 7, The Arthur Miller play "Price" premiered in NYC.
(www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/arthur_miller_timeline.html)
1968 Feb 7, North Vietnamese used 11 Soviet-built light tanks to overrun the U.S. Special Forces camp at Lang Vei at the end of an 18-hour long siege.
(HN, 2/7/99)

1968 Feb 8, George Wallace, the pro-segregation governor of Alabama, entered the US presidential race. Wallace ran as a third-party candidate. He was mainly popular in the deep south, but he was able to attract 14% of the popular vote in the November election.
(HN, 2/7/97)(www.answers.com/topic/george-wallace)
1968 Feb 8, Robert F. Kennedy said that the US cannot win the Vietnam War.
(HN, 2/8/98)
1968 Feb 8, At South Carolina State 3 black students were killed in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, during a civil rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley. Nearly 50 were injured in the Orangeburg Massacre during confrontations with the National Guard. In 2001 Gov. Jim Hodges voiced his regret over the massacre. In 1970 Jack Nelson (1929-2009), LA Times reporter, authored “The Orangeburg Massacre.”
(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.8)(AP, 2/8/99)(SFC, 2/9/01, p.A3)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.D6)
1968 Feb 8, In South Carolina Lee Roy Martin, called the editor of a local newspaper, and told him where to find the bodies of two women he'd dumped in the woods. He threatened to kill even more women until he was "shot down like the dog I am." Clues in the area led to Martin's arrest. Martin, dubbed the “Gaffney Strangler,” was convicted of four murders and sentenced to four life terms. In 1972, he was stabbed to death in his cell.
(AP, 7/4/09)

1968 Feb 10, Peggy Fleming of the United States won the gold medal in women's figure skating at the Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble, France.
(AP, 2/10/97)

1968 Feb 12, "Soul on Ice" by Eldridge Cleaver (full name: Leroy Eldridge Cleaver), a militant activist and Black Panther, was first published. Cleaver spent much of his early life in and out of prison on charges ranging from drug possession to assault. It was in prison that he began the essays that would become Soul on Ice. Shortly after being paroled in 1966, Eldridge Cleaver met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther party. Cleaver quickly became the party's minister of information. Faced with further prison time after a shootout with police in April 1968, Cleaver jumped bail and fled the country, first to Cuba, then to Algeria. He returned voluntarily in 1975 having broken with the Panthers and disillusioned with communism. His change in thinking is reflected in his 1978 book Soul on Fire. He died on May 1, 1998, in Pomona, California.
(AP, 2/12/98)(HNQ, 2/2/01)

1968 Feb 13, The US sent 10,500 more combat troops to Vietnam.
(HN, 2/13/98)

1968 Feb 15, The Anaheim Amigos’ Les Selvage scored 10, 3-pt baskets in an ABA game vs. the Denver Nuggets.
(www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/sports/spor1968.htm)

1968 Feb 16, Beatles George Harrison & John Lennon flew to India with their wives for transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
(www.beatles.ws/1968.htm)
1968 Feb 16, America’s first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated in Haleyville, Ala.
(AP, 2/16/98)

1968 Feb 18, Three US pilots, who had been held by the Vietnamese, arrived in Washington. The Vietnamese people later pressured Hanoi to account for their own 300,000 MIAs.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1968 Feb 18, British adopted year-round daylight savings time.
(www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/time-facts/british-summer-time-(bst))
1968 Feb 18, Some 10,000 people in West Berlin demonstrated against US in Vietnam War.
(www.dreamsville.net/?p=196)

1968 Feb 19, The children's program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, created by Fred Rogers (1928-2003), premiered on NET (later PBS).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Rogers%27_Neighborhood)
1968 Feb 19, Mississippi state troopers used tear gas to stop Alcorn A&M demonstrations.
(http://tinyurl.com/c5flal)

1968 Feb 20, A Hue, South Vietnam, army chief ordered all looters to be shot on sight.
(HN, 2/20/98)

1968 Feb 26, Thirty-two African nations agreed to boycott the Olympics because of the presence of South Africa.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1968 Feb 26, Lionel Rose (1949-2011) outpointed Fighting Harada in Tokyo and became a national sports hero and an icon for Australia's indigenous community. Hundreds of thousands lined Melbourne's streets to welcome him home after his title triumph. He lost the world bantamweight title to Mexican Ruben Olivares in a fifth-round knockout in August 1969.
(AFP, 5/9/11)(http://aso.gov.au/titles/radio/lionel-rose-wins-world-title/notes/)
1968 Feb 26, Clandestine Radio Voice of Iraqi People (Communist) made its final transmission.
(SC, 2/26/02)

1968 Feb 27, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite‘s commentary on the progress of the Vietnam War solidified President Lyndon B. Johnson‘s decision not to seek re-election in 1968. Cronkite, who had been at Hue in the midst of the Tet Offensive earlier in February, said: "Who won and who lost in the great Tet Offensive against the cities? I‘m not sure." He concluded: "It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out...will be to negotiate, not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could." Johnson called the commentary a "turning point," saying that if he had "lost Cronkite," he‘d "lost Mr. Average Citizen." On March 31, Johnson announced he would not seek re-election.
(HNQ, 10/30/00)
1968 Feb 27, Frankie Lymon (b.1942), American singer died. He was an African-American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of a New York City-based early rock and roll group called the Teenagers. Their first single, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" (1956), was also their biggest hit. The 1998 film "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" was a musical comedy-drama with Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox, Lela Rochon and Little Richard. It was directed by Gregory Nava and set in the 1950s based on the life of Frankie Lymon.
(SFC, 8/28/98, p.C1)(SFC, 9/2/98, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Lymon)

1968 Feb 29, At the Grammy Awards, the Fifth Dimension's "Up, Up and Away" won record of the year for 1967, while album of the year honors went to the Beatles for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
(HN, 2/29/00)(AP, 2/29/04)
1968 Feb 29, President Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move "toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."
(AP, 2/29/00)
1968 Feb 29, Robert McNamara resigned as US Secretary of Defense as a result of the Tet disaster. He was succeeded by Clark Clifford for 9 months who worked to reverse US policy in Vietnam.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFEC, 10/11/98, p.A2)
1968 Feb 29, The discovery of the first "pulsar," a star which emits regular radio waves, was announced by Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell at Cambridge, England.
(AP, 2/29/00)(HN, 2/29/00)

1968 Feb, The Federal Hourly Minimum Wage was set at $1.60 an hour.
(http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/blminwage.htm)

1968 Mar 1, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was replaced by Clark Clifford.
(HN, 3/1/99)
1968 Mar 1, Singers Johnny Cash (36) and June Carter (38) wed.
(SFC, 9/13/03, p.A12)
1968 Mar 1, The first 15-minute version of the musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" by Andrew Lloyd Weber was performed at Central Hall, Westminster, London.
(www.thisistheatre.com/joseph/index.html)

1968 Mar 2, The Poor Peoples' March on Washington, envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a means of dramatizing the plight of the poor of all races, got under way.
(www.project1968.com/in-the-news-may-2-1968.html)
1968 Mar 2, In Switzerland the World Ice Pairs Figure Skating Championship in Geneva was won by Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov (USSR). The Ladies Figure Skating Championship was won by Peggy Fleming (USA). The Men's Figure Skating Championship was won by Emmerich Danzer (Austria).
(SC, 3/2/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Figure_Skating_Championships)
1968 Mar 2, In Vietnam the siege of Khe Sanh ended and the US Marines stationed there were still in control of the mountain top. Gen. John J. Tolson presented a briefing and laid out the concept of what became known as Operation Pegasus. The siege of Khe Sanh was the longest and bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War. During the siege Manny Babbit was wounded. Babbit in 1980 killed a 78-year-old woman in Sacramento, Ca., and was convicted and sentenced to death. He was awarded his Purple Heart while on death row in 1998.
(HN, 3/2/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khe_Sanh)(SFC, 3/20/98, p.A1)
1968 Mar 2, The USSR launched space probe Zond 4. It failed to leave Earth orbit.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_4)

1968 Mar 3, The musical "Here's Where I Belong" opened and closed at Billy Rose Theater in NYC. The book was by Alex Gordon and Terrence McNally, lyrics by Alfred Uhry, and music by Robert Waldman.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here%27s_Where_I_Belong)
1968 Mar 3, The embassies of Greece, Portugal and Spain were bombed in the Hague.
(http://1968ineurope.sneakpeek.de/index.php/chronologies/index/42)
1968 Mar 3, The Tet offensive at Hue, South Vietnam, ended with the crushing of the last Viet Cong resistance. North Vietnamese troops had captured the imperial palace in Hue, South Vietnam. US troops reconquered Hue, Vietnam.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(HN, 2/24/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hue)

1968 Mar 4, Martin Luther King Jr. announced plans for Poor People's Campaign. In late March and early April 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. devoted his organizing talents to a drive to bring the nation's poor people to Washington, D.C. for a series of massive nonviolent demonstrations. King's "Poor People's Campaign" would attempt to unify African Americans, Latinos, and lower-income whites in pressing the Johnson Administration and Congress in an election year to enact a $30 billion-a-year domestic "Marshall Plan" to alleviate poverty.
(SC, 3/4/02)(http://hnn.us/articles/49016.html)
1968 Mar 4, NASA launched its Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5.
(http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/missions/ogo.html)

1968 Mar 7, The First Battle of Saigon, begun on Jan 30 as part of the Tet Offensive, ended.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Saigon)

1968 Mar 8, Some 1500 students demonstrated in Warsaw following a government ban on the performance of a play by Adam Mickiewicz, (Dziady), written in 1824). Within four days, protests spread to Krakow, Lublin, Gliwice, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Poznan, and Lodz.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polish_political_crisis)
1968 Mar 8, The Russian K-129, a Golf-II class, diesel-electric submarine armed with nuclear missiles and 98 seamen aboard, sank in 16,000 feet of water northwest of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Russian officials suspected that the K-129 was struck by an American submarine, the USS Swordfish. The US Navy said the vessel suffered a catastrophic internal explosion. A US sub, the Halibut, found the Soviet vessel 6 months later and recovered 3 missiles with nuclear warheads, Soviet code books and an encryption machine. In August 1974 the CIA recovered part of the sub. A 100 foot section was pulled in by the Glomar Explorer with 2 nuclear tipped torpedoes and the bodies of 6 Russian sailors.
(SFC, 7/15/96, p.A6)(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A19,21)(AP, 9/11/07)(AP, 2/13/10)

1968 Mar 9, General William Westmoreland asked for 206,000 more troops in Vietnam.
(HN, 3/9/98)

1968 Mar 10, Robert Kennedy visited Delano, Ca., in his bid for the presidency. He joined Cesar Chavez in a chapel where Chavez broke his fast on behalf of organizing farm workers.
(SFEM, 11/17/96, p.18)
1968 Mar 10-1968 Mar 11, The ultra secret facility Lima Site 85 in Phou Phathi, Laos, was manned by USAF personnel and 11 were KIA or MIA as it was overran. The event has been characterized as the largest single day ground loss for the USAF.
(www.cia.gov/csi/studies/95unclass/Linder.html)(http://limasite85.us/)

1968 Mar 12, President Lyndon Johnson won the New Hampshire Democratic primary, but a strong second-place showing by anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota played a role in Johnson's decision not to seek re-election. Johnson won over Eugene McCarthy 49.6 to 41.9%. Republican Richard Nixon won the New Hampshire primary over Nelson Rockefeller 77.6 to 10.8%.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A19)(AP, 3/12/08)
1968 Mar 12, A Miami-bound flight was commandeered to Cuba.
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.E8)
1968 Mar 12, The British-ruled African island of Mauritius became an independent country within the Commonwealth of Nations and many Europeans left the country. GDP per person was about $200. By 2008 it rose to $7,000 per person.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(SSFC, 12/9/01, p.C9)(AP, 3/12/08)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.58)

1968 Mar 13, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) and Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon Company, U.S.A.) announced the discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope (Prudhoe Bay). The oil companies soon began efforts to construct a pipeline, but work was suspended due to environmental concerns.
(AH, 2/05, p.14)(www.alyeska-pipe.com/Pipelinefacts/Chronology.html)

1968 Mar 15, The U.S. mint halted the practice of buying and selling gold.
(HN, 3/15/98)
1968 Mar 15, American intelligence noted withdrawal of major NVA units from the Khe Sanh area.
(www.geocities.com/Pentagon/4867/timeline.html)

1968 Mar 16, Robert F. Kennedy decided to join the presidential race.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1968 Mar 16, LBJ decided to send 35-50,000 more troops to Vietnam.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1968 Mar 16, In Vietnam Lt. Calley led 105 men of Company C into My Lai and at least 347 of 700 Vietnamese civilians were killed. Estimates of villagers massacred ranged from 347-504. Other killings by B company occurred nearby. Col. Oran K. Henderson (d.1998 at 77) was on his first day as commanding officer of the new 11th Infantry Brigade and watched from a command helicopter. Hugh Thompson (d.2006), a helicopter pilot, observed the end of the massacre. He landed between some remaining villagers and his fellow soldiers and ordered his gunner to fire on American troops if necessary. With 2 other gunships he airlifted to safety a dozen villagers. He and his gunner were awarded the Soldier's Medal in 1998. The atrocity was exposed by Ron Ridenhour (d.1998 at 52), a door gunner on an observation helicopter, who flew over the village a few days after the event. He waited several months until he was out of the service before reporting the event to state and congressional officials. The Army later charged 25 officers and enlisted men in the massacre but only Lt. Calley was convicted. Gen. Samuel W. Koster (d.2006) was charged with covering up the killings, but criminal charges were eventually dismissed. Koster was censured, stripped of a medal and demoted one rank to brigadier general. John Sack (d.2004), war correspondent, later authored "Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story." In 1999 Trent Angers authored "The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story."
(SFC, 3/5/98, p.A9)(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A8)(SFC, 5/11/98, p.A20)(SFC, 6/6/98, p.A23)(WSJ, 11/2/99, p.A24)(SFC, 3/31/04, p.B7)(SFC, 1/6/06, p.B5) (SFC, 2/14/06, p.B7)(AP, 3/16/08)
1968 Mar 16, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (b.1895), Italian composer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Castelnuovo-Tedesco)

1968 Mar 17, A peaceful anti-Vietnam War protest in London was followed by a riot outside the US Embassy; more than 80 people were reported injured. Some 20,000 people at the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in London were mowed down by police on horses as they marched.
(AP, 3/17/08)(SFC, 5/22/98, p.C12)(www.springerlink.com/content/qg812p1147300117/)

1968 Mar 18, Pres. Johnson signed Public Law 90-269 removing gold backing from US paper money.
(www.peterdavidbeter.com/docs/txt/dbal33.txt)

1968 Mar 19, Howard University students in Washington DC staged 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 demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968)

1968 Mar 20, Pres. Lyndon Johnson held talks with Paraguay’s Pres.-Gen. Alfredo Stroessner in Washington DC.
(Econ, 2/14/04, p.34)(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28747)

1968 Mar 21, Israeli forces attacked a Palestinian base belonging to Fatah in the village of Al-Karameh in Jordan. Israeli forces engage in a battle with Palestinian fighters for the first time. On 24 March 1968, the Security Council adopted resolution 248 (1968), condemning the large scale and premeditated military actions by Israel against Jordan. The Karameh mission failed. Muki Betser, Israeli commando, was wounded. He later became commander of the Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite counter-terrorist unit.
(SFC, 7/16/96, p.E5)(www.un.int/palestine/chron60.shtml)

1968 Mar 22, Gen'l. William Westmoreland (1914-2005) was relieved of his duties in the wake of the Tet disaster. Troop strength under Westmoreland had reached over 500,000 and he wanted more. He was succeeded by Gen'l. Creighton Abrams. Abrams reversed Westmoreland's strategy. He ended major "search and destroy" missions and focused on protecting population centers. William Colby took charge of the pacification campaign. President Lyndon B. Johnson named Gen. William C. Westmoreland to be the Army's new Chief of Staff.
(HN, 3/22/97)(WSJ, 6/23/99, p.A24)(Econ, 7/30/05, p.79)(AP, 3/22/08)
1968 Mar 22, In southern Thailand Tuanku Biyo Kodoniyo set up the Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO). It called for an independent Islamic country.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/pulo.htm)

1968 Mar 23, Reverend Walter Fauntroy became the 1st non-voting congressional delegate from Washington DC, since Reconstruction.
(www.thehistorymakers.com/timeline/index.asp?string=1968)

1968 Mar 27, Suharto succeeded Sukarno as president of Indonesia. Gen'l. Suharto thwarted a Communist coup and gradually assumed power. Thousands of alleged communists were executed amid widespread violence.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.A15)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A17)(MC, 3/27/02)
1968 Mar 27, Yuri Gagarin (34), Soviet cosmonaut (Vostok I) and the first man to orbit the Earth, died in a plane crash.
(AP, 3/27/97)(MC, 3/27/02)

1968 Mar 28, The U.S. lost its first aircraft in Vietnam. An F-111 vanished in a combat mission over North Vietnam. Republic Aircraft's F-105 Thunderchief, better known as the 'Thud,' was the Air Force's warhorse in Vietnam.
(HN, 3/28/98)
1968 Mar 28, In Memphis a riot erupted during a protest march in support of striking sanitation workers led by Martin Luther King. One African-American marcher was killed and King urged calm as National Guard troops are called to Memphis to restore order. King subsequently departed Memphis, but vowed to return on April 4 to attend another march.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/atrl3z)

1968 Mar 29, In SF Linda Harmon (14) was raped and stabbed to death while babysitting for a neighbor in Visitacion Valley. In lat 2003 police matched DNA evidence to William Speer, who was undergoing therapy for sexually violent tendencies at an Arizona mental hospital.
(SFC, 11/4/05, p.B1)
1968 Mar 29, Students seized a building at Maryland’s Bowie State College.
(www.amoeba.com/blog/tags/baseball/page1.html)

1968 Mar 30, General Ludvik Svoboda (1895-1979) was elected president of Czechoslovakia. He stayed in office to 1975.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludv%C3%ADk_Svoboda)

1968 Mar 31, Pres. Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election and declared a partial bombing halt in Vietnam. The stock market soared. Citing national divisions over the war in Vietnam, Johnson declares that "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(TMC, 1994, p.1968)(SFC, 8/18/96, Z1 p.4)(AP, 3/31/97)

1968 In Poland some 4,000 students marched through Warsaw yelling: "Down with the dictatorship."
(SFC, 5/22/98, p.C12)

1968 Apr 1, In Vietnam the U.S. Army launched Operation Pegasus to reopen a land route to the besieged Khe Sanh Marine base.
(HN, 4/1/99)(www.geocities.com/Pentagon/4867/timeline.html)

1968 Apr 2, The influential science-fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey," produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, had its world premiere in Washington.
(AP, 4/2/08)
1968 Apr 2, Senator Eugene McCarthy won the Democratic primaries in Wisconsin. In 2004 Dominic Sandbrook authored "Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism."
(http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/06/15_newsroom_mccarthytimeline/)(SSFC, 4/11/04, p.M6)
1968 Apr 2, In West Germany the Baader-Meinhof gang was formed and named after its founders, Andreas Baader (d.1977) and Ulrike Meinhof (d.1976). Both later committed suicide in prison. The gang became known as the Red Army Faction and led assassinations, bombings and bank robberies in West Germany through the 1970s and 1980s. The RAF published a letter to Reuters in 1998 and declared to have disbanded.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A18)(www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1968.html)

1968 Apr 3, Less than 24 hours before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "mountaintop" speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers, "It really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountain top, and I don't mind."
(AP, 4/3/98)
1968 Apr 3, North Vietnam agreed to meet with US representatives to set up preliminary peace talks.
(AP, 4/3/97)

1968 Apr 4, Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, 39, was assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray (d.1998) confessed and pleaded guilty in Mar, 1969, but later tried to recant and said he was a fall guy. In 1993 Lloyd Jowers (d.2000), a Memphis businessman, said on ABC-TV that he had hired King's killer as a favor to an underworld figure who was a friend. Jowers said he received $100,000 from Memphis produce merchant Frank Liberto to arrange King’s murder. In 1997 Ray identified an arms smuggler named "Raoul" as the real killer. In 1998 a former FBI agent produced documents from Ray’s car with the name Raul. In 1999 a civil trial jury in Memphis ruled that the 1968 killing of Rev. Martin Luther King was a conspiracy. The jury concluded that Lloyd Jowers, a former café owner, had conspired with elements of the Memphis Police Dept., the federal government and organized crime to kill King. In 2000 a Justice Dept. report rejected allegations of conspiracy. In 2002 Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson (61) said that his father, Henry Clay Wilson (d.1990), had shot King. In 2003 Stewart Burns authored "To the Mountaintop: Martin Luther King's Sacred Mission to Save America."
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-15)(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.A3)(AP, 4/4/97)(SFC, 4/7/97, p.A10)(SFC, 3/25/98, p.A3)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A12)(SFC, 11/23/99, p.A9)(SFC, 12/9/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A15)(SFC, 5/24/00, p.C5)(SFC, 6/10/00, p.A3)(SFC, 4/4/02, p.A2)(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.M1)
1968 Apr 4, Bobby Kennedy spoke at a black ghetto in Indianapolis just after hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King. His speech registered the enormity of the event and began the work of healing. Riots over the next few days hit 76 American cities, but Indianapolis remained quiet.
(Econ, 4/22/06, p.79)
1968 Apr 4, Five days of race riots erupted in Washington, D.C. following assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil unrest affected at least 110 U.S. cities; Washington, along with Chicago and Baltimore, were among the most affected.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Washington,_D.C._riots)

1968 Apr 5, Riots erupted across the US following the King assassination.
(CL, 4/5/96)
1968 Apr 5, Robert F. Kennedy assured the nation that "no martyr's cause had ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet."

(AP, 10/11/97)(1968 Feb 18, British adopted year-round daylight savings time.
(www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/time-facts/british-summer-time-(bst))

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