During the Democratic convention in Chicago peace demonstrations backing Senator Eugene McCarthy took place for a few days in Lincoln Park. Old Democratic Party boss Mayor Richard J. Daley decided to call a curfew and called up state troopers and the National Guard to help the Chicago Police Department enforce it. The demonstrations turned into protests calumniating on the night of August 29, 1968 in front of the Hilton Hotel at Democratic Party Headquarters. Cameras were running as the world watched the police pound the crap out of white people for a change. TV screens showed the mayhem while the vote was ensuing inside causing almost as much ruckus as outside. The old Democratic Party machine with Hubert Humphrey trounced the peace candidate going on to lose the upcoming election to Richard Nixon.
On April 4th, 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. King was 39 at the time. A white ex-convict named James Earl Ray was captured in London two months later, confessed but later recanted his confession. Ray was found guilty and sentenced to 99 years in prison. Over 100 American cities fell into race riots through the Spring and Summer of 1968.
On March 31, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson startled the nation by going on television to say "I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President". LBJ withdrew because he believed ge could not win the upcoming election because the Vietnam war had split the Democratic Party. Also his wife Ladybird Johnson lobbied him to come home to Texas for health reasons. This move made Robert Kennedy the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and likely the next President of the United States.
On June 5, 1968 Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after his victory speech winning the California Primary. Sirhan Sirhan, an angry Palestinian with a grudge against the Kennedy's support of Israel in the Six Day War in 1967 was arrested at the scene. He was sentenced to life in prison where he still resides.
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew win the November election over Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. Southern segregationist Gov. George Wallace carried five states and 13% of the vote, the most vote garnered by a third party in recent history.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren resigned. Warren had been the bane of Conservatives - most notably the John Birch Society - who had been trying to impeach him since he presided over the Brown v Board of Education case in 1954 which decided against American apartheid.
43 years after the infamous Scopes Trial in 1925, the Supreme Court in an Arkansas case banning teaching evolution in public schools, decided the ban was unconstitutional.
In the closing days of 1968 mankind took a break from the turmoil of the year and focused on the future as they first saw pictures of an Earth rise over the Moon. Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James Lovell and Major William Anders took Apollo 8 into orbit around the moon began a new age in space. A redemption of the Apollo 204 accident the year before when we lost astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee in a training fire.
On January 30, 1968 North Vietnam began what came to be called the Tet Offensive. Communist forces simultaneously attacked hundreds of cities including Saigon. It lasted for about six months and other than hard fighting in Hue and Khe Sanh, it was a military failure for the North but caused more political problems back in America concerning what our military was telling us.
The Tet Offensive also caused LBJ to halt to all bombing of North Vietnam in lieu of upcoming peace talks in Paris.
My Lai Massacre
The My Lai Massacre occurred in March 1968 but it was not until a year later that the media and America found about it. Lt William Calley ordered his men to line up 450 unarmed old men, women and children and shoot them all, which they did. After Calley was indicted he went on a successful speaking tour of American Legion posts. He was later found guilty of mass murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. He spent 3 days in jail before President Richard Nixon, under heavy pressure from conservatives, commuted his sentence to 3 years of house arrest. After his time was up he magically found funding to open a chain of jewelry stores in Atlanta, Georgia.
The United States spy ship USS Pueblo and its 83 man crew was seized by North Korea in Sea of Japan. Though indeed spying, the ship was in international waters. The crew was held for most of year before being released in 1969.
Nobel
Prizes 1968
Physics - Luis Walter Alvarez
Chemistry - Lars Onsager
Physiology or Medicine - Robert W. Holley, Har Gobind Khorana, Marshall W. Nirenberg
Literature - Yasunari Kawabata
Peace - René Cassin
On April 4th, 1968 
On March 31, 1968 
On June 5, 1968 
Richard Nixon
Supreme Court 
43 years after the infamous 
The 
