The
Royal Canadian Air Force, the
Royal Canadian Navy and the
Canadian Army merged to form the unified
Canadian Armed Forces.[1] The 105,000 members all wore the same type of "dull-green uniform" to replace the distinct sailors, soldiers, and airmen standard issue; naval rank designations were retained, but the insignia for seagoing armed forces officers was similar to those used by those in the army or air force, with a common symbol for a navy captain and an army colonel, or an army captain and a navy lieutenant.[2]
The day after the
Tet Offensive had seen a massive attack on
South Vietnam's capital,
Saigon's police chief, Brigadier General
Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, displayed a captured Viet Cong officer,
Nguyễn Văn Lém, to a group of reporters. As the journalists watched, the chief pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and executed the Viet Cong prisoner with a single shot to the head at point-blank range.[3] Photographer
Eddie Adams captured the moment in an iconic photo.[4] In addition, a crew for the American
NBC television network filmed the event and the footage was broadcast on the Huntley–Brinkley Report the following night.[5]
Two garbage men for the sanitation department of Memphis,
Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death when the compactor within the truck accidentally activated as the truck was driving along Colonial Road near Quince Road to the city dump. The accident was initially blamed on a shovel falling from the truck onto some wires and causing a short circuit.[6] Eleven days later,
sanitation workers went on a strike[7] that would last for more than two months and would bring civil rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr. to the city on April 4.
In the United States, the
Pennsylvania Railroad and the
New York Central Railroad merged to form the "
Penn Central", the service name for the new corporation officially called the "Pennsylvania New York Central Transportation Company". The merger took effect at 12:10 a.m. Eastern time, and, at $4.29 billion, was the biggest in corporate history at the time.[8] The last obstacle to the combination was cleared when the
United States Supreme Court concluded on January 15 that it would not violate antitrust laws.[9]
At the
Columbus Zoo outside of Columbus in
Powell, Ohio, a gorilla was born to
Colo — who had, on December 22, 1956, been the first gorilla born in captivity[10] — marking the first time in recorded history that a second generation of gorillas had been born in a zoo.[11] Colo's offspring, a female, would be named "Emmy".[12]
The
USS Rowan collided with the Soviet merchant ship Kapitan Vislobokov in the
Sea of Japan, roughly 95 miles (153 km) east of the
South Korean port of
Pohang, leaving a 6-foot (1.8 m) wide hole in the Russian vessel's stern, but causing no injuries.[13]
Former U.S. Vice President
Richard M. Nixon announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States.[14][15] Nixon had been the Republican candidate in 1960 but lost to
John F. Kennedy.
In
Bangui, the capital of the
Central African Republic (CAR), President
Jean-Bedel Bokassa, President
Joseph Mobutu of the Congo, and President
Francois Tombalbaye of Chad agreed to form the Union of Central African States (UEAC, the Union des etats de l'Afrique centrale). Ten months after setting up the alliance, Bokassa would announce the CAR's withdrawal.[21]
British musicians Ian Anderson, Jeffrey Hammond and John Evan, who had played under various billings such as "Navy Blue", "Ian Anderson's Bag o'Nails" and "Bag o'Blues", appeared in concert for the first time under the name that they would become their trademark,
Jethro Tull. Their
talent agent, Dave Robson, had suggested that they borrow the name of an 18th Century agriculturalist and inventor, the Viscount
Jethro Tull (1674–1741), who had invented the horse-drawn
seed drill that revolutionized agriculture. Robson's reasoning was that the name "had a nice grubby farmer sound to it".[22]
The United States 1st Cavalry Division was able to take back the city of
Quang Tri from the
Viet Cong two days after the provincial capital had been taken during the
Tet Offensive.[25]
Deputy U.S. Secretary of Defense
Paul H. Nitze inaugurated a program to curtail the growing use of
marijuana among U.S. troops fighting in the Vietnam War.[26]
U.S. and North Korean officials met for the first time at Panmunjom regarding the recent seizure of the USS Pueblo by North Korean forces.[27]
Denmark held a royal wedding at
Copenhagen, as
Princess Benedikte, second in line to the throne as the daughter of
King Frederik IX and the younger sister of
Crown Princess Margrethe, married Richard zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. The wedding was limited to 200 family guests and no diplomatic representatives were present.[28]
Following many unpopular decisions including devaluation of the pound Harold Wilson's Labour Party slumped in the polls against the Conservatives.[30]
Born:
Vlade Divac, Serbian basketball player and executive who played in Yugoslavia for six seasons, followed by 17 seasons in the NBA; in
Prijepolje,
Serbian SR,
Yugoslavia
Martin Luther King Jr., returned to the
Ebenezer Baptist Church where he had been pastor, and delivered what would prove to be his final sermon there. Made two months before his
assassination on April 4, his sermon was titled "The Drum Major Instinct", about the human desire for recognition of one's good works. Citing Mark 10:35, King would go on to say that one's ambition should be a life of service, and added, "I just want to leave a committed life behind." A recording of the sermon would be played at King's funeral.[31]
Porsche automobiles came in first, second and third place in the
24 Hours of Daytona motor event. The winning car, the new
Porsche 907, was so far ahead of the second place team, that "five unnecessary driver changers were made in the last two hours, so each member of the Porsche team could share the honor of the triumph"; when the 24 hours came to an end, the three Porsches "swept across the finish line abreast, taking the checkered flag of victory together".[32]
Eleven students from the
Jesuit University of Guadalajara died in a sudden snowstorm that overwhelmed their party of 29 who were attempting to climb the 17,343-foot (5,286 m)
Iztaccihuatl volcano. The hikers had gotten as far as the 14,100-foot (4,300 m) level when they were trapped by the weather.[33]
The
SR.N4 (
Saunders-Roe Nautical 4), the world's largest
hovercraft, was launched. It would enter commercial service on August 1, and would run for 22 years, ceasing on October 1, 2000.[34]
Nine residents, all
transients, of the Hotel Roosevelt on
Boston's
skid row died in a fire, and another 15 were injured.[35]
The sinking of the British fishing trawler Ross Cleveland killed 18 of the 19 crew aboard. The ship capsized in a storm off of the coast of
Isafjordur at
Iceland. The only survivor was the ship's cook, who managed to escape before the ship was seen to go down. The Ross Cleveland was the third fishing vessel from the English port of
Hull to have been lost in Iceland within less than a month. The St Romanus had disappeared with 20 crew on January 11, and the Kingston Peridot had vanished with a crew of 20 on January 26.[37][38]
Greece passed legislation to end a practice that had been given the name "baby marketing", with parents legally selling their infants to brokers who would then resell them to purchasers in the United States and the Netherlands. According to the law's proponents, "A boy, purchased on the Greek market for around $US400 could fetch from $3,000 to $5,000 in America. Girls were said to sell for about half that figure." In 1966, the number of babies "exported" from Greece was claimed to be 1,000 per year. Under the new law, no Greek child, being adopted by a foreigner, would be allowed to leave the country until a social worker filed a report and a court gave its approval.[39]
Saturn VOrbital Workshop (OWS) study teams were examining a range of concepts in two distinct categories, OWS B and OWS C. OWS B would be a relatively simple, generic evolution from the
Saturn I OWS being developed for the first
Apollo Applications Project (AAP) missions. It would retain the basic elements of the Saturn I OWS but would incorporate the
Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM)
solar astronomy payload as an integral part of the OWS. Other modifications to improve overall effectiveness would be incorporated where this could be achieved with small increments of funds or time. OWS C would be a more advanced concept in the evolution toward a flexible operational system for sustained operations in
Earth orbit. It would provide living and working quarters for a crew of nine and would be operable for two or more years.[41]
Rashid Karami resigned as
Prime Minister of Lebanon along with his entire cabinet as the Middle East nation prepared for elections. Karami would be replaced on February 8 by senior statesman
Abdallah El-Yafi in order to form a caretaker government to supervise the voting process.[42]
"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it" became one of the most famous quotes arising out of the
Vietnam War, as a news story by Associated Press war correspondent
Peter Arnett was published worldwide about the death and destruction caused by American forces during the retaking of the
South Vietnamese coastal city of
Ben Tre. At least 1,000 civilians had died and 45 percent of Ben Tre's buildings were destroyed in the bombardment by American airplanes and shelling by U.S Navy ships, a measure taken as a last resort after 2,500 Viet Cong had taken control of the city. The quote (often restated as "We had to destroy the village in order to save it") was attributed by Arnett to "a U.S. major"; later in the story, Arnett referred to his interview with U.S. Air Force Major Chester L. Brown, who had directed the bombing.[46] The phrase, however, was actually coined by the reporter; Arnett asked the question, "So you had to destroy the village in order to save it?" and then attributed the words to Major Brown.[47]
All 102 people aboard an Indian Air Force plane, many of them members of
The Garhwal Rifles, were lost when the Antonov An-12 disappeared in the
Himalayan mountains while flying to
Chandigarh from
Leh.[48] No trace of the plane would be found for 33 years until an Italian mountaineering expedition's discovery of several Garhwal Rifle badges in 2001. In 2003, glacial movement at the 17,323-foot (5,280 m) level of one of the Chandrabhaga Peaks of the Dhaka Glacier would lead to the disinterment of several aircraft parts and the body of one of the servicemen, Bali Ram.[49] Three more bodies would be found in 2007.[50] On August 31, 2013, another soldier's remains would be recovered, although most of the servicemen remain entombed under the ice.[51][52]
Nine people were killed and 69 others injured in a fire and subsequent explosions at
a meat-packing plant in Chicago. The blast, which occurred at 4:27 in the afternoon, happened when a gasoline tanker truck was traveling through an alley behind the Mickelberry's Food Products plant at 801 West 49th Place, and struck a pipe on the plant's outside wall. The tank ruptured, sending a pool of gasoline into the plant's basement, where it reached a furnace and ignited. Five people were killed immediately, and four more died of their burn injuries.[53]
Shortly after midnight, the
Battle of Khe Sanh and the
Vietnam War took a new turn as the
North Vietnamese Army attacked with
tanks and other armored vehicles for the first time.[54] The
304th Division of the
North Vietnamese Army overran the U.S. Army Special Forces camp at
Lang Vei with 11 Soviet
PT-76 tanks.[55] In all, 316 defenders of the camp would be killed; all but seven of them were Montagnards fighting for South Vietnam and members of the Royal Laotian Army.[56]
Died:Nick Adams, 36, American television actor best known for starring in the TV series
The Rebel; apparently of a drug overdose. The inquest could not agree whether his death was suicide or an accident, but murder has also been suggested.[57]
The
Orangeburg massacre took place in
Orangeburg, South Carolina, when officers of the
South Carolina Highway Patrol fired into a crowd of African-American students on the
South Carolina State College campus.[58][59][60] Three students — Harry Ezekial Smith, 19;
Samuel Hammond Jr., 18; and Delano Middleton, 17 — were killed, another 27 were wounded. Middleton, a high school student, had been visiting friends on the campus, and was shot four times.[61] On Monday, the college's NAACP chapter had organized a move to desegregate the
All-Star Bowling Lanes near the campus; a brawl broke out the next day when more African-American students showed up at the bowling alley, and the day after, tensions were high as SCSC students made plans to picket the Orangeburg City Hall. The triggering incident was when a group of students was building a bonfire at the edge of the campus near the highway patrolmen's command post; someone threw a piece of wood and, whether intended or accidentally, it struck a patrolman. When other officers saw the man fall down, they began firing into the crowd.[62] This was the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American campus.
The
Netherlands inaugurated its very first subway transit system, the
Rotterdam Metro, with the opening of one of the world's smallest
subway systems. For its first 14 years of existence, the city's Metro, ceremonially opened by
Crown Princess Beatrix, had only 3.7 miles (6.0 km) of track. However, it was successful in easing the city's traffic jams; a reporter noted that during rush hour, "Instead of taking 90 minutes by car,
Rotterdam's commuters can now do the trip from one end of the town to the other in 12 minutes by subway."[65]
The Soviet government newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, whose audience was the young Communist Party members who belonged to the Party's youth wing, the Komsomol, published an unusually frank admission that the Soviet Union lagged behind the capitalist Western nations in almost every aspect of economic development. Noting that a 1961 prediction by former party leader
Nikita Khrushchev— that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States in its standard of living by 1970— was not going to happen and was not even close to occurring, the newspaper survey presented statistics that Soviet citizens had 6.75% as many automobiles, one-fourth the number of radios, less than half as much new clothing and half as much meat and dairy products as Americans. The survey noted, however, that the Soviets were ahead in the number of physicians, the amount spent per student on education, and the amount of housing construction.[66]
Twenty-one people in
Ceylon were killed while riding from the capital city of Colombo, after the bus that they were in fell 150 feet (46 m) off a cliff.[67]
The
Boeing 737 "CityJet", a twin-engine jet aircraft, was used to fly commercial airline passengers for the first time, as the West German carrier
Lufthansa inaugurated its CityJet service, using the smaller 737–100 series of airplanes for short "feeder" flights within the German borders. The first flight was made out of
Hamburg.[68]
The fourth, and current version of New York City's
Madison Square Garden arena was opened to the public at Eighth Avenue and 34th Street, fifteen blocks away from the
previous Madison Square Garden at Eighth Avenue and 49th Street. The new arena was inaugurated with a show, featuring
Bob Hope and
Bing Crosby, billed as "The Night of the Century".[70] Earlier in the day, the older arena hosted its final
New York Rangers hockey game, a 3–3 tie with the
Detroit Red Wings.[71]
Born:
Mo Willems, award-winning American children's book author known for the Pigeon series, the Knuffle Bunny series, and the Elephant and Piggie series of books; as Maurice Charles Williams in
Des Plaines, Illinois
Two weeks after the
Tet Offensive in the
Vietnam War, U.S. Army General
William C. Westmoreland asked President Johnson to commit an additional 10,500 troops to the War.[72] President Johnson was advised to grant Westmoreland's request by U.S. Ambassador to Saigon
Ellsworth Bunker, Assistant U.S. Commander in South Vietnam
Creighton Abrams, Head of Pacification Robert Kromer,[73] Secretary of Defence
Robert McNamara, Secretary of State
Dean Rusk, CIA Director
Richard Helms, General
Earle Wheeler, Former U.S. Ambassador to Saigon
Maxwell Taylor and Presidential Advisor
Walt Rostow.[74] The U.S. Department of Defense publicly announced the commitment of new troops the following day.[75] The President's thinking behind the decision can be heard in a recorded telephone conversation with Secretary of Defence
Robert McNamara.[76]
Satellite photography showed that the spy ship
USS Pueblo (recently captured by North Korea in International Waters) had been moved from the North Korean port of Wonsan to a more secure naval base.[79]
Around three hundred unarmed civilians in the
South Vietnam city of
Hue were murdered and buried in a mass grave by invading members of the invading
North Vietnamese army.[80]
The second-tallest man-made structure in the world, the 2,060-foot (630 m) tall
KXJB Tower at
Galesburg, North Dakota, near
Fargo, was accidentally knocked down by a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter that was on a training flight from
Grand Forks Air Force Base. All four men on the helicopter were killed after the aircraft struck a supporting
guy-wire and then the television tower itself. Fargo's CBS affiliate, KXJB Channel 4 (now KRDK-TV), went off the air. The tower had been second in height only to the world's tallest man-made structure, the nearby
KTHI tower, which was 2,068 feet (630 m) tall.[81]
U.S. Army General
Earle G. Wheeler, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called a
press conference after rumors circulated that he had told a closed congressional committee hearing that he would not rule out using nuclear weapons in the
Vietnam War. Asked about the prospect of a nuclear strike to prevent the fall of the critical
Khe Sanh Combat Base, General Wheeler did not completely reject using atomic bombs, and said, "I do not think they will be required to defend Khe Sanh but I refuse to speculate any further."[82]
Born:Gloria Trevi, Mexican pop singer; as Gloria de los Ángeles Treviño in
Monterrey
Died:Little Walter (Marion Walter Jacobs), 38, American blues musician; of coronary thrombosis thought to have been brought about by injuries sustained in a fight the previous evening.[86]
An arsonist killed 12 people inside a bar at the Randolph Hotel at 107 West Reed Street in
Moberly, Missouri. William Edward Coleman, angry after having been banned from buying drinks at the Randolph Tavern, was identified as the man walked in with a five-gallon bucket filled with gasoline, splashed it throughout the tavern, then set fire to it at about 3:00 in the afternoon. The four women and eight men who were killed had rushed to the back of the bar in the mistaken belief that they were heading to an exit.[87][88] Coleman would be convicted of the murder of one of the victims on September 25, 1969 and sentenced to death,[89] which would become a sentence of life imprisonment after the 1972 decision invalidating existing capital punishment laws.
With cameras rolling, North Vietnam released three American prisoners of war, the first of nine, to the custody of peace activists
Daniel Berrigan and
Howard Zinn.[90] As part of the propaganda event, the POWs each "expressed their thanks to their captors for the humane and lenient treatment" that they had received, and "expressed remorse over the war". All but one of the nine met the order of release approved by the senior ranking officers (SROs) in each POW camp ("sick and injured first, then enlisted personnel, and the remaining officers by order of shoot-down"). The exception would be a Navy seaman who was given permission by his superiors to accept release because he had memorized the names of all his fellow prisoners of war.[91]
The
Selective Service System of the United States revised its rules for deferments and exemptions from the draft, allowing the induction of most
graduate students who were pursuing a
master's degree, a decision that affected 600,000 men.[92] Students in medical school, dental school, or other health field remained exempt, as did those in a theological seminary who planned on "going into ministry".[93]
The world's first
9-1-1 emergency call was placed in
Haleyville, Alabama, by Alabama Speaker of the House
Rankin Fite, from the Haleyville City Hall; the call was routed by the operator to the city's police station, where it was referred to U.S. Representative Tom Bevill.[94] The United Kingdom had introduced the 9-9-9 emergency call in 1968.[95][96]
The NBC television network announced that Star Trek, tentatively set for cancellation, would be renewed for a third season. With the decision having been made following a well-publicized letter writing campaign, a voiceover at the close of
that evening's episode informed the viewers and asked that no further mail be sent.[97][98]
The crash of a Taiwanese
Civil Air Transport airlines Boeing 727 killed 21 of the 63 people on board when the plane attempted an emergency landing while flying from
Hong Kong to
Taipei.[99] At the time, C.A.T. was largely owned and secretly operated by the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency.[99]
At the Winter Olympics in
Grenoble in
France, skier
Jean-Claude Killy won the
Men's slalom to take his third gold medal of the Games. Two other competitors had faster runs, but
Haakon Mjoen of Norway missed one of 69 gates on the second of two runs, and
Karl Schranz of Austria, who had done exceptionally in his first slalom run, suddenly halted on the second attempt after complaining "that a French policeman had gotten in his way".[100] Killy's sweep of
alpine skiing's
"triple crown" (gold medals in the slalom, giant slalom and downhill races) has been accomplished only one other competitor,
Toni Sailer of
Austria in 1956.[101]
Legislative elections began in
Papua New Guinea, at the time administered by Australia as the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. There were 1.2 million people eligible to vote for representatives in the 94-member House of Assembly, and rival tribes called a truce so that people could cast their votes.[104]
Kailash Nath Katju, 80, Indian politician who had served as Law Minister, Home Minister and Defence Minister for Prime Minister Nehru. He was also executive in three states of India, as Governor of
Odisha (1947–1948) and
West Bengal (1948–1951), then later as Chief Minister for
Madhya Pradesh (1957–1962).
Donald Wolfit, 65, British stage, film and television actor
The emirs of
Abu Dhabi and
Dubai met at the village of as-Sameeh and announced their decision to make a federation of their two emirates, in what would be the first step in creating the
United Arab Emirates. At the close of their announcement,
Emir Zayed of Abu Dhabi and
Emir Rashid of Dubai invited the rulers of the five other kingdoms within the British protectorate (known then as the "
Trucial States") to join them in a union. On February 27, the rulers of the seven other Trucial States, as well as those of the emirates of
Bahrain and
Qatar, would sign a pledge to form a "Federation of Arab Emirates".[105] By the time that the area was granted on December 2, 1971, however, the UAE would consist of six of the seven states (Abu Dhabi and Dubai, as well as
Ajman,
Fujairah,
Kalba and
Sharjah), but not Bahrain or Qatar. The seventh state,
Ras al-Khaimah, would join two months later.[106]
The leaders of
China's Communist Party, its State Council, its Central Military Committee and the Central Cultural Revolution Panel announced the "Notice of February 18", directing financial institutions to freeze the bank deposits of on any persons accused of being part of ten categories of undesirables ("traitors, spies, capitalist roaders in the communist party, landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rightists who have not been well reformed, counterrevolutionary bourgeois and counterrevolutionary intellectuals").[107]
The first
snowboarding contest was held, a couple of years after the creation of the sport in which skiers ride a laminated wooden board in the same manner as a surfboard. The competition took place at the
Muskegon State Park outside
Muskegon, Michigan at a slope called Blockhouse Hill.[108]
Misterogers' Neighborhood (later called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood), described at the time by one critic as "probably the finest children's television series ever made",[109] debuted nationwide in the U.S. on
National Educational Television at 5:30 in the afternoon. While Presbyterian minister and child psychologist
Fred Rogers had been on the air on
Pittsburgh's
WQED-TV since 1963, and had expanded by 1966 to some other educational stations in
Chicago and along the east coast, it had run out of funding until the Sears Roebuck Foundation and the Ford Foundation made grants for new productions; the show had gone off the air in 1967, but was shown in reruns on stations after parents of preschoolers and young children demanded its return.[109] It would then continue as a staple of
Public Broadcasting System programming after NET's assets were acquired by PBS and would continue until Rogers's retirement on August 31, 2001.
The
International Court of Justice, commonly known as the "World Court", settled the dispute between
India and
Pakistan over the
Rann of Kutch salt marshes on the border between the two nations. The three member arbitration panel awarded 90% of the Rann to India and 10% to Pakistan.[110] With the exception of granting Pakistan the northern part of Rann, the panel restored the area to the areas occupied before the 1965 war between the two nations.[111]
A vote, in Canada's House of Commons, to raise income taxes by five percent, failed 82 to 84. Led by Robert Stanfield, opposition members of the Progressive Conservative Party called on Liberal Prime Minister
Lester B. Pearson and his coalition government to resign and to call new elections. Pearson— whose Liberal Party was looking for his successor in the wake of his announced retirement— declined to step down.[112]
The
Florida Education Association, a labor union for most of the schoolteachers in
Florida, called the first statewide teachers' walkout in American history, forcing the closure of the schools in 51 of Florida's 67 counties.[113][114] The unprecedented statewide walkout would continue for a month, and would inspire similar teacher strikes elsewhere in the United States.
Fifteen of the 20 crew on the Panamanian cargo ship Capitaine Frangos were killed when the ship sank after colliding with an unidentified ship at the entrance to the
Dardanelles in
Turkey.[115]
For the second time in its history, the Indian state of
West Bengal was put under
President's rule under Article 356 of the
Constitution of India, after the collapse of its coalition government and the resignation of Chief Minister
P. C. Ghosh. The state would remain under national control for a little more than a year, until February 25, 1969, when a new government would be formed under the leadership of
Ajoy Mukherjee.[116]
The first batch of
TDD units (also referred to as TTYs), designed to allow the deaf to communicate over the telephone by transmitting writing, was distributed by
American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) after the conclusion of litigation over a patent dispute.[118]
The British Trans-Arctic Expedition, led by English explorer
Wally Herbert with a team of three other men (
Roy Koerner, Allan Gill, and Kenneth Hedges) and 34
huskies, departed from
Point Barrow in
Alaska on what Herbert called "the one pioneer journey" left for mankind on the Earth's surface, a trip across the top of the world.[121] After being stranded during the Arctic winter of 1968–69 (and supplied by air-drops from the
Royal Canadian Air Force, the group would travel northward on the
156th meridian west and reach the
North Pole on April 5, 1969, then continue to the other side of the globe, southward along the
24th meridian east to the island of
Vesle Tavleøya in
Norway, arriving on May 29, 1969 following a journey of 3,620 miles (5,830 km).[122] The journey would come to a safe end on June 11, with a helicopter transporting the four men to a homebound ship.[123]
University students in
Egypt's two largest cities,
Cairo and
Alexandria, began an uprising in support of an ongoing workers strike, marking the first mass student arrest in Egypt since 1953. In the week that followed, 635 people would be arrested in Cairo, and 77 civilians and 146 policemen would be injured, with two workers being killed.[124]
Surveyor 7 was turned off permanently, six weeks after it had landed on the
Moon. The lunar probe had functioned poorly after being reactivated on February 12 and "there would not be another
NASA transmission from the lunar surface until the first landing by an Apollo crew" on July 20, 1969.[125]
British Home Secretary
James Callaghan announced his government's decision to introduce the
Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 in response to the arrival of 7,000 Asian refugees who had been expelled from
Kenya and who, as members of a British Commonwealth nation, had British passports.[127] The law would pass both Houses of Parliament on February 27[128] and would receive royal assent on March 1, limiting the immigration of people with British passports into the United Kingdom to those who had a "substantial connection" with Britain.[129][130]
The first signs of what would be called the "
Prague Spring" began in
Czechoslovakia when Communist Party First Secretary
Alexander Dubček announced, in the presence of visiting Soviet party chief
Leonid Brezhnev, that steps would be taken to create "the widest possible democratization of the entire socio-political system."[131]
The newly incorporated
Hyundai Motor Company of South Korea, represented by its president,
Chung Ju-yung, signed an agreement with the
Ford Motor Company of the United States for a joint venture in which Ford Motor would supply Hyundai with the technology and equipment to construct a plant in
Ulsan, in return for a percentage of the profits.[132]
The first victim of a Scottish
serial killer, nicknamed "
Bible John" by the media, was found in
Glasgow. Patricia Docker, a 25-year-old nurse, had been raped and strangled after having last been seen at a Glasgow dance hall.[133]
Died:Fannie Hurst, 82, American novelist and short story writer
The
Archbishop Makarios III (Michael Mouskos) was
re-elected as
President of Cyprus by an overwhelming majority (95.45%) of
Greek Cypriot voters.[135] Makarios received 220,911 of the 231,438 valid ballots; his opponent,
Takis Evdokas, who was an advocate for enosis (the annexation of Cyprus by
Greece) got 8,577 votes for 3.71%, while another 1,950 ballots were declared invalid. Under the island nation's constitution, Greek Cypriots voted for the President and Turkish Cypriots voted for the Vice President.[136]
Zap Comix, the first successful title of the
underground comix genre, an alternative to standard
comic books, published its first issue. The book was drawn and written by 24-year old San Francisco cartoonist
Robert Crumb, and his wife Dana sold the initial copies in the
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood along with two other people. The next day, a small distribution company, Third World Distribution, would purchase 500 copies for distribution in outlets throughout the Bay Area.[137]
Major
Jan Šejna of the
Czechoslovak Army fled
Czechoslovakia after falling out of favor with President
Antonin Novotny, who was planning to use the military to regain his position as Communist Party First Secretary. Šejna would eventually defect to the United States, becoming the highest-ranking military officer of a
Warsaw Pact nation to flee to the
NATO alliance.[138]
The
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia adopted the first draft of an "Action Program" for allowing more freedom of the press within the Eastern European nation "and, in the longer run, the federalization of Czechoslovakia" with greater autonomy for the
Slovak minority in the eastern part of the nation in federation with the
Czech people in the west.[145]
Twenty-two female patients, all but one of them over 60 years old, were killed and 14 injured when a fire swept through their ward at the
Shelton Hospital, a mental institution located outside the English city of
Shrewsbury.[146][147] The ward, housing the most severely disturbed patients, was the only one that was locked from the outside.[148]
"Report from Vietnam by
Walter Cronkite", a 30-minute installment of a
CBS News special, aired at 10:30 in the evening Eastern time. At the close of the program, the host of the CBS Evening News told an audience of nine million viewers, "It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate... it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then 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. This is Walter Cronkite. Good night."[149] Although U.S. President Johnson is said to have remarked to advisers the next day that "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war!" (or in some accounts, "I've lost the American people."), historian W. Joseph Campbell would note after research that "Under scrutiny, the 'Cronkite moment' dissolves as illusory— a chimera, a media-driven myth."[150]
U.S. President Johnson visited
Dallas for the first time since he had been sworn in as President at
Dallas Love Field on November 22, 1963. Johnson spoke to about 10,000 delegates of National Rural Electric Cooperative convention and told them that he believed that the Vietnam War had reached "a turning point".[151]
The township of
Auroville was founded in
India's union territory of
Pondicherry by
Hindu spiritual leader
Mirra Alfassa, and named for her mentor,
Sri Aurobindo. In the inaugural ceremony, "about 5,000 people from some 125 nations gathered at a banyan tree in the future city", each bringing some dirt from their homelands to be placed in an urn. Forty years later, Auroville (which originally was conceived as home to 50,000 people) had 1,700 residents from 35 nations.[153]
Michigan Governor
George Romney became the first major presidential candidate to withdraw from the 1968 campaign. Romney had declared his intention to seek the nomination of the Republican Party, but concluded that he was well behind former U.S. Vice President
Richard M. Nixon in raising funds for the New Hampshire primary.[154]
Several changes took place within the
First Gorton Ministry of the new Australian government, including the renaming of
Charles Barnes' department as the Minister for External Territories. Future Prime Minister
Malcolm Fraser joined the Cabinet as Minister for Education and Science, as did
Ken Anderson as Minister for Supply.
Canada's Prime Minister Pearson won a vote of confidence in the
House of Commons of Canada by a margin of 138 to 119, bringing an end to the crisis that had begun nine days earlier when his tax proposal failed.[155]
All but one of the 23 servicemen on board a U.S. Marines helicopter were killed when the
CH-46 Sea Knight was struck by ground fire and crashed about 11 miles (18 km) northeast of the
Khe Sanh Combat Base.[156]
The
Kerner Commission (officially, The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders) released its report on the riots of the previous summer and highlighted racial discrimination in the United States as a primary cause.[159] The 426-page report became a national bestseller, with two million copies purchased, and summarized the problem with the ominous warning, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."[160][161]
The
Apollo Applications Program (AAP) had first been presented as a separate Research and Development program in NASA's FY 1968 budget request, submitted to Congress in
January 1967. As originally conceived, AAP was designed to take full advantage of the United States' investment in
Apollo-developed hardware, facilities, staffing and expertise. However, in making adjustments to considerably lower funding, the program had by now been pared down to the minimum level for maintaining a reasonable
human spaceflight program in the early part of the next decade and preserving any basic capability for future U.S. crewed operations in space.[41]
U.S. President Johnson made an unscheduled appearance at
the Pentagon for the farewell ceremony for outgoing
Secretary of DefenseRobert S. McNamara. Johnson became the first president to be trapped in an
elevator when he, the Secretary and 11 other people were caught between the second and third floor when the elevator became stuck. It took another 12 minutes before maintenance men could release them. Johnson joked, "I never knew it took so long to get to the top in the Pentagon," while McNamara said, "This is what's wrong with there being 29 days in February."[162]
For the fourth time in the 20th century, a
supernova was observed from Earth. The explosion was detected from within the spiral galaxy
NGC 6946[163] at least 22 million years after it had occurred. Swiss astronomer
Paul Wild and Canadian astronomer David Dunlap, working independently of each other, both detected the supernova, now designated as SN1968B. Other supernovae had been seen by Earth astronomers in 1917, 1939, and 1948, and more would be observed in later years (1969, 1980, 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2017).
The
Brussels Convention of 1968, subtitled "on the mutual recognition of companies and bodies corporate within the EEC", was signed in the Belgian capital by the representatives of the six (
European Economic Community) members (France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg).[164]
In the continuing reforms of the
Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the Writers’ Union published the first copy of the magazine Literární listy not to require the approval of government censors.[167]
^Hariman, Robert;
Lucaites, John Louis (2015). "Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner, Saigon, 1968". In Hill, Jason; Schwartz, Vanessa R. (eds.). Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News.
Bloomsbury. p. 92.
^"Garbage Truck Kills 2 Crewmen". The Commercial Appeal (Memphis TN). February 2, 1968. p. 1.
^"CITY'S GARBAGE COLLECTORS STRIKE— — 200 Workers Out of 1300 Still on Job". Memphis Press-Scimitar. February 12, 1968. p. 1.
^"Denmark, Kingdom of", in Heads of States and Governments: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Over 2,300 Leaders, 1945 through 1992, by Harris M. Lentz (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1994) p1294
^"Chad", in Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic, by Richard Bradshaw (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) p159
^"Guardsmen Seal Off College Campuses After 3 Killed In Orangeburg Shooting", The Index-Journal (Greenwood SC), February 9, 1968, p1
^"Three Slain in Negro Rioting; Order Curfew— Emergency Declared by S. C. Governor", Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1968, p16
^Shuler, Jack (2012), Blood & Bone: Truth and Reconciliation in a Southern Town, Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, p. 21
^"Orangeburg (South Carolina) Massacre of 1968", by John G. Hall, in Encyclopedia of American Race Riots (Greenwood, 2007) p492
^"Orangeburg State College Police Riot (1968)", in Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement, ed. by Christopher M. Richardson and Ralph E. Luker (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) p357
^"Wallace Announces Race for Presidency", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 8, 1968, p1
^David Hofstede, Planet of the Apes: An Unofficial Companion (ECW Press, 2001) p14
^"Black Environmental Liberation Theology", by Dianne D. Glave, in To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005) p193
^Micheal Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (McFarland, 2017) p708
^John Roberts, Safeguarding the Nation: The Story of the Modern Royal Navy (Seaforth Publishing, 2009) p83
^Kristan Stoddart, Losing an Empire and Finding a Role: Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1964–70 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) p119
^Tony Glover, and Scott Dirks, Blues with a Feeling: The Little Walter Story (Routledge, 2002)
^"Gasoline Hurled and Ignited; 12 Persons Die in Tavern Fire", Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1968, p1
^"12 Killed in Moberly Tavern Inferno; Bill Coleman Charged With Murders", Moberly (MO) Monitor-Index, February 17, 1968, p1
^"Missouri's High Court Upholds Death Sentence", Springfield (MO) News-Leader, December 15, 1970, p10
^"North Vietnam Frees Three U.S. Pilots", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 16, 1968, p1
^"The American POW experience", by Glenn Robbins, in New Perspectives on the Vietnam War: Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation, ed. by Andrew Wiest, et al (Routledge, 2009) p179
^"CUT DRAFT DEFERMENTS— Graduate Students Hit Hard by Change", Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1968, p1
^Francisco Jiménez, Taking Hold: From Migrant Childhood to Columbia University (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) p93
^"Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame— History and Inductee Listing", in The Sports Hall of Fame Encyclopedia: Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, Soccer, by David Blevins (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) p1145
^"Naismith's Son Among Dignitaries As Basketball Hall of Fame Opens", Hartford (CT) Courant, February 18, 1968, p4C
^"Papuans Quit Jungle for Day to Cast Votes", Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1968, p5
^Husain M. Albaharna, The Legal Status of the Arabian Gulf States: A Study of Their Treaty Relations and Their International Problems (Manchester University Press, 1968) p7
^Matteo Legrenzi, The GCC and the International Relations of the Gulf: Diplomacy, Security and Economic Coordination in a Changing Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2015) p14
^"China", by Wei Wang, in Can Banks Still Keep a Secret?, ed. by Sandra Booysen and Dora Neo (Cambridge University Press, 2017) p164
^Lowell Hart, The Snowboard Book: A Guide for All Boarders (W. W. Norton & Company, 1997) p10
^
ab"TV Today: Misterogers Rated High by Experts", by Clay Gowran, Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1968, p1-C11
^"Rann of Kutch", in Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements: N to S, ed. by Edmund Jan Osmańczyk (Taylor & Francis, 2003) p1894
^Lesley G. Terris, Mediation of International Conflicts: A Rational Model (Taylor & Francis, 2016) p152
^"DEFEAT TAX HIKE IN CANADA— Rivals Call on Pearson to Resign", Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1968, p1
^"Florida Teacher Walkout Paralyzes School System", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 19, 1968, p2A
^"Teacher Walkouts Shut Florida Schools", Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1968, p26
^"15 missing as ship sinks". The Times. No. 57180. London. 29 February 1968. col G, p. 5.
^Ramashray Roy, The Uncertain Verdict: A Study of the 1969 Elections in Four Indian States (University of California Press, 1975) p33
^"The Third World in 1968", by Arif Dirlik, in 1968: The World Transformed, ed. by Carole Fink, et al. (Cambridge University Press, 1998) p307
^David Harland, NASA's Moon Program: Paving the Way for Apollo 11 (Springer, 2010) p390
^Manfred Kohler, The Role of Languages and Language Policies in Belgian State and Politics with Emphasis on the Flemish-Walloon Conflict: Reason for a State to fail or Driving Force behind Federalism and Conciliation (Diplomica Verlag, 2009) p72
^"Asians Pour into London from Kenya", Chicago Tribune, February 25, 1968, p3
^Michael Zander, The Law-Making Process (Bloomsbury, 2015)
^Frank Reeves, British Racial Discourse: A Study of British Political Discourse About Race and Race-related Matters (Cambridge University Press, 1983) pp206-207
^"2 Million Face Loss of British Rights", Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1968, p3-16
^"Alexander Dubček", in Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century, ed. by Frank N. Magill (Routledge, 1999) p969
^A. J. Jacobs, The New Domestic Automakers in the United States and Canada: History, Impacts, and Prospects (Lexington Books, 2015) p183
^"Makarios Wins Reelection By 20–1 Vote Margin", Tampa Tribune, February 26, 1968, p4-A
^Chrysostomos Pericleous, Cyprus Referendum: A Divided Island and the Challenge of the Annan Plan (I.B.Tauris, 2009) p101
^"Zap Comix", by Robert Beerbohm, in Icons of the American Comic Book: From Captain America to Wonder Woman, ed. by Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith (ABC-CLIO, 2013) p844
^Galia Golan, Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia: The Dubcek Era 1968–1969 (Cambridge University Press, 1973) p183
^Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 (Yale University Press, 1985) p269
^"Another State In India Falls to Central Rule", Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, February 26, 1968, p5
^Rychlik, Jan (2010). "The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion as Seen from Prague". In Stolarik, M. Mark (ed.). The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968: Forty Years Later.
Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. p. 36.
^"Mental Hospital Fire Deaths Rise To 22". Indianapolis Star. February 27, 1968. p. 40.
^"Locked ward 'had duty nurse'". The Guardian. Manchester. February 27, 1968. p. 3.
^Jake Blood, The Tet Effect: Intelligence and the Public Perception of War (Routledge, 2005) p46
^W. Joseph Campbell, Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism (University of California Press, 2016) p115
^"LBJ: Blood, Sweat, Tears in Viet", Chicago Tribune, February 28, 1968, p1
^"Frankie Lymon Dies in Apartment". The New York Times. February 28, 1968. Frankie Lymon, the rock 'n' roll singer who popularized "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" was found dead yesterday in the apartment of his grandmother, apparently, of an overdose of narcotics, according to the police.
^"Auroville (India)", in The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena, by J. Gordon Melton (Visible Ink Press, 2007) p18
^"ROMNEY BOWS OUT OF RACE— Lagging Far behind Nixon in N.H. Drive", Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, p1
^"Pearson Wins Vote of Confidence, 138—119", Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, p20
^"U.S. Copter Downed, 22 Die; Find Grave of 100 Cong Victims", Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, p3
^"News Briefs— Foreign", Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, p3
^Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero: A Life in Writing (St. Martin's Press, 2015) p140
^Smith, Jessie Carney; Wynn, Linda T. (2009). Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience.
Visible Ink Press. p. 61.
^"WHY, WHAT WHEN OF RIOTS— Kerner Commission Tells Findings". Chicago Tribune. March 1, 1968. p. 1.
^Stanfield, John H. (2014). "Kerner Commission Report (1968)". In Gallagher, Charles A.; Lippard, Cameron D. (eds.). Race and Racism in the United States: An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic. ABC-CLIO.
^"Lyndon Stuck with McNamara for 12 Minutes— in Elevator". Chicago Tribune. March 1, 1968. p. 5.
The
Royal Canadian Air Force, the
Royal Canadian Navy and the
Canadian Army merged to form the unified
Canadian Armed Forces.[1] The 105,000 members all wore the same type of "dull-green uniform" to replace the distinct sailors, soldiers, and airmen standard issue; naval rank designations were retained, but the insignia for seagoing armed forces officers was similar to those used by those in the army or air force, with a common symbol for a navy captain and an army colonel, or an army captain and a navy lieutenant.[2]
The day after the
Tet Offensive had seen a massive attack on
South Vietnam's capital,
Saigon's police chief, Brigadier General
Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, displayed a captured Viet Cong officer,
Nguyễn Văn Lém, to a group of reporters. As the journalists watched, the chief pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and executed the Viet Cong prisoner with a single shot to the head at point-blank range.[3] Photographer
Eddie Adams captured the moment in an iconic photo.[4] In addition, a crew for the American
NBC television network filmed the event and the footage was broadcast on the Huntley–Brinkley Report the following night.[5]
Two garbage men for the sanitation department of Memphis,
Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death when the compactor within the truck accidentally activated as the truck was driving along Colonial Road near Quince Road to the city dump. The accident was initially blamed on a shovel falling from the truck onto some wires and causing a short circuit.[6] Eleven days later,
sanitation workers went on a strike[7] that would last for more than two months and would bring civil rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr. to the city on April 4.
In the United States, the
Pennsylvania Railroad and the
New York Central Railroad merged to form the "
Penn Central", the service name for the new corporation officially called the "Pennsylvania New York Central Transportation Company". The merger took effect at 12:10 a.m. Eastern time, and, at $4.29 billion, was the biggest in corporate history at the time.[8] The last obstacle to the combination was cleared when the
United States Supreme Court concluded on January 15 that it would not violate antitrust laws.[9]
At the
Columbus Zoo outside of Columbus in
Powell, Ohio, a gorilla was born to
Colo — who had, on December 22, 1956, been the first gorilla born in captivity[10] — marking the first time in recorded history that a second generation of gorillas had been born in a zoo.[11] Colo's offspring, a female, would be named "Emmy".[12]
The
USS Rowan collided with the Soviet merchant ship Kapitan Vislobokov in the
Sea of Japan, roughly 95 miles (153 km) east of the
South Korean port of
Pohang, leaving a 6-foot (1.8 m) wide hole in the Russian vessel's stern, but causing no injuries.[13]
Former U.S. Vice President
Richard M. Nixon announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States.[14][15] Nixon had been the Republican candidate in 1960 but lost to
John F. Kennedy.
In
Bangui, the capital of the
Central African Republic (CAR), President
Jean-Bedel Bokassa, President
Joseph Mobutu of the Congo, and President
Francois Tombalbaye of Chad agreed to form the Union of Central African States (UEAC, the Union des etats de l'Afrique centrale). Ten months after setting up the alliance, Bokassa would announce the CAR's withdrawal.[21]
British musicians Ian Anderson, Jeffrey Hammond and John Evan, who had played under various billings such as "Navy Blue", "Ian Anderson's Bag o'Nails" and "Bag o'Blues", appeared in concert for the first time under the name that they would become their trademark,
Jethro Tull. Their
talent agent, Dave Robson, had suggested that they borrow the name of an 18th Century agriculturalist and inventor, the Viscount
Jethro Tull (1674–1741), who had invented the horse-drawn
seed drill that revolutionized agriculture. Robson's reasoning was that the name "had a nice grubby farmer sound to it".[22]
The United States 1st Cavalry Division was able to take back the city of
Quang Tri from the
Viet Cong two days after the provincial capital had been taken during the
Tet Offensive.[25]
Deputy U.S. Secretary of Defense
Paul H. Nitze inaugurated a program to curtail the growing use of
marijuana among U.S. troops fighting in the Vietnam War.[26]
U.S. and North Korean officials met for the first time at Panmunjom regarding the recent seizure of the USS Pueblo by North Korean forces.[27]
Denmark held a royal wedding at
Copenhagen, as
Princess Benedikte, second in line to the throne as the daughter of
King Frederik IX and the younger sister of
Crown Princess Margrethe, married Richard zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. The wedding was limited to 200 family guests and no diplomatic representatives were present.[28]
Following many unpopular decisions including devaluation of the pound Harold Wilson's Labour Party slumped in the polls against the Conservatives.[30]
Born:
Vlade Divac, Serbian basketball player and executive who played in Yugoslavia for six seasons, followed by 17 seasons in the NBA; in
Prijepolje,
Serbian SR,
Yugoslavia
Martin Luther King Jr., returned to the
Ebenezer Baptist Church where he had been pastor, and delivered what would prove to be his final sermon there. Made two months before his
assassination on April 4, his sermon was titled "The Drum Major Instinct", about the human desire for recognition of one's good works. Citing Mark 10:35, King would go on to say that one's ambition should be a life of service, and added, "I just want to leave a committed life behind." A recording of the sermon would be played at King's funeral.[31]
Porsche automobiles came in first, second and third place in the
24 Hours of Daytona motor event. The winning car, the new
Porsche 907, was so far ahead of the second place team, that "five unnecessary driver changers were made in the last two hours, so each member of the Porsche team could share the honor of the triumph"; when the 24 hours came to an end, the three Porsches "swept across the finish line abreast, taking the checkered flag of victory together".[32]
Eleven students from the
Jesuit University of Guadalajara died in a sudden snowstorm that overwhelmed their party of 29 who were attempting to climb the 17,343-foot (5,286 m)
Iztaccihuatl volcano. The hikers had gotten as far as the 14,100-foot (4,300 m) level when they were trapped by the weather.[33]
The
SR.N4 (
Saunders-Roe Nautical 4), the world's largest
hovercraft, was launched. It would enter commercial service on August 1, and would run for 22 years, ceasing on October 1, 2000.[34]
Nine residents, all
transients, of the Hotel Roosevelt on
Boston's
skid row died in a fire, and another 15 were injured.[35]
The sinking of the British fishing trawler Ross Cleveland killed 18 of the 19 crew aboard. The ship capsized in a storm off of the coast of
Isafjordur at
Iceland. The only survivor was the ship's cook, who managed to escape before the ship was seen to go down. The Ross Cleveland was the third fishing vessel from the English port of
Hull to have been lost in Iceland within less than a month. The St Romanus had disappeared with 20 crew on January 11, and the Kingston Peridot had vanished with a crew of 20 on January 26.[37][38]
Greece passed legislation to end a practice that had been given the name "baby marketing", with parents legally selling their infants to brokers who would then resell them to purchasers in the United States and the Netherlands. According to the law's proponents, "A boy, purchased on the Greek market for around $US400 could fetch from $3,000 to $5,000 in America. Girls were said to sell for about half that figure." In 1966, the number of babies "exported" from Greece was claimed to be 1,000 per year. Under the new law, no Greek child, being adopted by a foreigner, would be allowed to leave the country until a social worker filed a report and a court gave its approval.[39]
Saturn VOrbital Workshop (OWS) study teams were examining a range of concepts in two distinct categories, OWS B and OWS C. OWS B would be a relatively simple, generic evolution from the
Saturn I OWS being developed for the first
Apollo Applications Project (AAP) missions. It would retain the basic elements of the Saturn I OWS but would incorporate the
Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM)
solar astronomy payload as an integral part of the OWS. Other modifications to improve overall effectiveness would be incorporated where this could be achieved with small increments of funds or time. OWS C would be a more advanced concept in the evolution toward a flexible operational system for sustained operations in
Earth orbit. It would provide living and working quarters for a crew of nine and would be operable for two or more years.[41]
Rashid Karami resigned as
Prime Minister of Lebanon along with his entire cabinet as the Middle East nation prepared for elections. Karami would be replaced on February 8 by senior statesman
Abdallah El-Yafi in order to form a caretaker government to supervise the voting process.[42]
"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it" became one of the most famous quotes arising out of the
Vietnam War, as a news story by Associated Press war correspondent
Peter Arnett was published worldwide about the death and destruction caused by American forces during the retaking of the
South Vietnamese coastal city of
Ben Tre. At least 1,000 civilians had died and 45 percent of Ben Tre's buildings were destroyed in the bombardment by American airplanes and shelling by U.S Navy ships, a measure taken as a last resort after 2,500 Viet Cong had taken control of the city. The quote (often restated as "We had to destroy the village in order to save it") was attributed by Arnett to "a U.S. major"; later in the story, Arnett referred to his interview with U.S. Air Force Major Chester L. Brown, who had directed the bombing.[46] The phrase, however, was actually coined by the reporter; Arnett asked the question, "So you had to destroy the village in order to save it?" and then attributed the words to Major Brown.[47]
All 102 people aboard an Indian Air Force plane, many of them members of
The Garhwal Rifles, were lost when the Antonov An-12 disappeared in the
Himalayan mountains while flying to
Chandigarh from
Leh.[48] No trace of the plane would be found for 33 years until an Italian mountaineering expedition's discovery of several Garhwal Rifle badges in 2001. In 2003, glacial movement at the 17,323-foot (5,280 m) level of one of the Chandrabhaga Peaks of the Dhaka Glacier would lead to the disinterment of several aircraft parts and the body of one of the servicemen, Bali Ram.[49] Three more bodies would be found in 2007.[50] On August 31, 2013, another soldier's remains would be recovered, although most of the servicemen remain entombed under the ice.[51][52]
Nine people were killed and 69 others injured in a fire and subsequent explosions at
a meat-packing plant in Chicago. The blast, which occurred at 4:27 in the afternoon, happened when a gasoline tanker truck was traveling through an alley behind the Mickelberry's Food Products plant at 801 West 49th Place, and struck a pipe on the plant's outside wall. The tank ruptured, sending a pool of gasoline into the plant's basement, where it reached a furnace and ignited. Five people were killed immediately, and four more died of their burn injuries.[53]
Shortly after midnight, the
Battle of Khe Sanh and the
Vietnam War took a new turn as the
North Vietnamese Army attacked with
tanks and other armored vehicles for the first time.[54] The
304th Division of the
North Vietnamese Army overran the U.S. Army Special Forces camp at
Lang Vei with 11 Soviet
PT-76 tanks.[55] In all, 316 defenders of the camp would be killed; all but seven of them were Montagnards fighting for South Vietnam and members of the Royal Laotian Army.[56]
Died:Nick Adams, 36, American television actor best known for starring in the TV series
The Rebel; apparently of a drug overdose. The inquest could not agree whether his death was suicide or an accident, but murder has also been suggested.[57]
The
Orangeburg massacre took place in
Orangeburg, South Carolina, when officers of the
South Carolina Highway Patrol fired into a crowd of African-American students on the
South Carolina State College campus.[58][59][60] Three students — Harry Ezekial Smith, 19;
Samuel Hammond Jr., 18; and Delano Middleton, 17 — were killed, another 27 were wounded. Middleton, a high school student, had been visiting friends on the campus, and was shot four times.[61] On Monday, the college's NAACP chapter had organized a move to desegregate the
All-Star Bowling Lanes near the campus; a brawl broke out the next day when more African-American students showed up at the bowling alley, and the day after, tensions were high as SCSC students made plans to picket the Orangeburg City Hall. The triggering incident was when a group of students was building a bonfire at the edge of the campus near the highway patrolmen's command post; someone threw a piece of wood and, whether intended or accidentally, it struck a patrolman. When other officers saw the man fall down, they began firing into the crowd.[62] This was the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American campus.
The
Netherlands inaugurated its very first subway transit system, the
Rotterdam Metro, with the opening of one of the world's smallest
subway systems. For its first 14 years of existence, the city's Metro, ceremonially opened by
Crown Princess Beatrix, had only 3.7 miles (6.0 km) of track. However, it was successful in easing the city's traffic jams; a reporter noted that during rush hour, "Instead of taking 90 minutes by car,
Rotterdam's commuters can now do the trip from one end of the town to the other in 12 minutes by subway."[65]
The Soviet government newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, whose audience was the young Communist Party members who belonged to the Party's youth wing, the Komsomol, published an unusually frank admission that the Soviet Union lagged behind the capitalist Western nations in almost every aspect of economic development. Noting that a 1961 prediction by former party leader
Nikita Khrushchev— that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States in its standard of living by 1970— was not going to happen and was not even close to occurring, the newspaper survey presented statistics that Soviet citizens had 6.75% as many automobiles, one-fourth the number of radios, less than half as much new clothing and half as much meat and dairy products as Americans. The survey noted, however, that the Soviets were ahead in the number of physicians, the amount spent per student on education, and the amount of housing construction.[66]
Twenty-one people in
Ceylon were killed while riding from the capital city of Colombo, after the bus that they were in fell 150 feet (46 m) off a cliff.[67]
The
Boeing 737 "CityJet", a twin-engine jet aircraft, was used to fly commercial airline passengers for the first time, as the West German carrier
Lufthansa inaugurated its CityJet service, using the smaller 737–100 series of airplanes for short "feeder" flights within the German borders. The first flight was made out of
Hamburg.[68]
The fourth, and current version of New York City's
Madison Square Garden arena was opened to the public at Eighth Avenue and 34th Street, fifteen blocks away from the
previous Madison Square Garden at Eighth Avenue and 49th Street. The new arena was inaugurated with a show, featuring
Bob Hope and
Bing Crosby, billed as "The Night of the Century".[70] Earlier in the day, the older arena hosted its final
New York Rangers hockey game, a 3–3 tie with the
Detroit Red Wings.[71]
Born:
Mo Willems, award-winning American children's book author known for the Pigeon series, the Knuffle Bunny series, and the Elephant and Piggie series of books; as Maurice Charles Williams in
Des Plaines, Illinois
Two weeks after the
Tet Offensive in the
Vietnam War, U.S. Army General
William C. Westmoreland asked President Johnson to commit an additional 10,500 troops to the War.[72] President Johnson was advised to grant Westmoreland's request by U.S. Ambassador to Saigon
Ellsworth Bunker, Assistant U.S. Commander in South Vietnam
Creighton Abrams, Head of Pacification Robert Kromer,[73] Secretary of Defence
Robert McNamara, Secretary of State
Dean Rusk, CIA Director
Richard Helms, General
Earle Wheeler, Former U.S. Ambassador to Saigon
Maxwell Taylor and Presidential Advisor
Walt Rostow.[74] The U.S. Department of Defense publicly announced the commitment of new troops the following day.[75] The President's thinking behind the decision can be heard in a recorded telephone conversation with Secretary of Defence
Robert McNamara.[76]
Satellite photography showed that the spy ship
USS Pueblo (recently captured by North Korea in International Waters) had been moved from the North Korean port of Wonsan to a more secure naval base.[79]
Around three hundred unarmed civilians in the
South Vietnam city of
Hue were murdered and buried in a mass grave by invading members of the invading
North Vietnamese army.[80]
The second-tallest man-made structure in the world, the 2,060-foot (630 m) tall
KXJB Tower at
Galesburg, North Dakota, near
Fargo, was accidentally knocked down by a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter that was on a training flight from
Grand Forks Air Force Base. All four men on the helicopter were killed after the aircraft struck a supporting
guy-wire and then the television tower itself. Fargo's CBS affiliate, KXJB Channel 4 (now KRDK-TV), went off the air. The tower had been second in height only to the world's tallest man-made structure, the nearby
KTHI tower, which was 2,068 feet (630 m) tall.[81]
U.S. Army General
Earle G. Wheeler, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called a
press conference after rumors circulated that he had told a closed congressional committee hearing that he would not rule out using nuclear weapons in the
Vietnam War. Asked about the prospect of a nuclear strike to prevent the fall of the critical
Khe Sanh Combat Base, General Wheeler did not completely reject using atomic bombs, and said, "I do not think they will be required to defend Khe Sanh but I refuse to speculate any further."[82]
Born:Gloria Trevi, Mexican pop singer; as Gloria de los Ángeles Treviño in
Monterrey
Died:Little Walter (Marion Walter Jacobs), 38, American blues musician; of coronary thrombosis thought to have been brought about by injuries sustained in a fight the previous evening.[86]
An arsonist killed 12 people inside a bar at the Randolph Hotel at 107 West Reed Street in
Moberly, Missouri. William Edward Coleman, angry after having been banned from buying drinks at the Randolph Tavern, was identified as the man walked in with a five-gallon bucket filled with gasoline, splashed it throughout the tavern, then set fire to it at about 3:00 in the afternoon. The four women and eight men who were killed had rushed to the back of the bar in the mistaken belief that they were heading to an exit.[87][88] Coleman would be convicted of the murder of one of the victims on September 25, 1969 and sentenced to death,[89] which would become a sentence of life imprisonment after the 1972 decision invalidating existing capital punishment laws.
With cameras rolling, North Vietnam released three American prisoners of war, the first of nine, to the custody of peace activists
Daniel Berrigan and
Howard Zinn.[90] As part of the propaganda event, the POWs each "expressed their thanks to their captors for the humane and lenient treatment" that they had received, and "expressed remorse over the war". All but one of the nine met the order of release approved by the senior ranking officers (SROs) in each POW camp ("sick and injured first, then enlisted personnel, and the remaining officers by order of shoot-down"). The exception would be a Navy seaman who was given permission by his superiors to accept release because he had memorized the names of all his fellow prisoners of war.[91]
The
Selective Service System of the United States revised its rules for deferments and exemptions from the draft, allowing the induction of most
graduate students who were pursuing a
master's degree, a decision that affected 600,000 men.[92] Students in medical school, dental school, or other health field remained exempt, as did those in a theological seminary who planned on "going into ministry".[93]
The world's first
9-1-1 emergency call was placed in
Haleyville, Alabama, by Alabama Speaker of the House
Rankin Fite, from the Haleyville City Hall; the call was routed by the operator to the city's police station, where it was referred to U.S. Representative Tom Bevill.[94] The United Kingdom had introduced the 9-9-9 emergency call in 1968.[95][96]
The NBC television network announced that Star Trek, tentatively set for cancellation, would be renewed for a third season. With the decision having been made following a well-publicized letter writing campaign, a voiceover at the close of
that evening's episode informed the viewers and asked that no further mail be sent.[97][98]
The crash of a Taiwanese
Civil Air Transport airlines Boeing 727 killed 21 of the 63 people on board when the plane attempted an emergency landing while flying from
Hong Kong to
Taipei.[99] At the time, C.A.T. was largely owned and secretly operated by the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency.[99]
At the Winter Olympics in
Grenoble in
France, skier
Jean-Claude Killy won the
Men's slalom to take his third gold medal of the Games. Two other competitors had faster runs, but
Haakon Mjoen of Norway missed one of 69 gates on the second of two runs, and
Karl Schranz of Austria, who had done exceptionally in his first slalom run, suddenly halted on the second attempt after complaining "that a French policeman had gotten in his way".[100] Killy's sweep of
alpine skiing's
"triple crown" (gold medals in the slalom, giant slalom and downhill races) has been accomplished only one other competitor,
Toni Sailer of
Austria in 1956.[101]
Legislative elections began in
Papua New Guinea, at the time administered by Australia as the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. There were 1.2 million people eligible to vote for representatives in the 94-member House of Assembly, and rival tribes called a truce so that people could cast their votes.[104]
Kailash Nath Katju, 80, Indian politician who had served as Law Minister, Home Minister and Defence Minister for Prime Minister Nehru. He was also executive in three states of India, as Governor of
Odisha (1947–1948) and
West Bengal (1948–1951), then later as Chief Minister for
Madhya Pradesh (1957–1962).
Donald Wolfit, 65, British stage, film and television actor
The emirs of
Abu Dhabi and
Dubai met at the village of as-Sameeh and announced their decision to make a federation of their two emirates, in what would be the first step in creating the
United Arab Emirates. At the close of their announcement,
Emir Zayed of Abu Dhabi and
Emir Rashid of Dubai invited the rulers of the five other kingdoms within the British protectorate (known then as the "
Trucial States") to join them in a union. On February 27, the rulers of the seven other Trucial States, as well as those of the emirates of
Bahrain and
Qatar, would sign a pledge to form a "Federation of Arab Emirates".[105] By the time that the area was granted on December 2, 1971, however, the UAE would consist of six of the seven states (Abu Dhabi and Dubai, as well as
Ajman,
Fujairah,
Kalba and
Sharjah), but not Bahrain or Qatar. The seventh state,
Ras al-Khaimah, would join two months later.[106]
The leaders of
China's Communist Party, its State Council, its Central Military Committee and the Central Cultural Revolution Panel announced the "Notice of February 18", directing financial institutions to freeze the bank deposits of on any persons accused of being part of ten categories of undesirables ("traitors, spies, capitalist roaders in the communist party, landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rightists who have not been well reformed, counterrevolutionary bourgeois and counterrevolutionary intellectuals").[107]
The first
snowboarding contest was held, a couple of years after the creation of the sport in which skiers ride a laminated wooden board in the same manner as a surfboard. The competition took place at the
Muskegon State Park outside
Muskegon, Michigan at a slope called Blockhouse Hill.[108]
Misterogers' Neighborhood (later called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood), described at the time by one critic as "probably the finest children's television series ever made",[109] debuted nationwide in the U.S. on
National Educational Television at 5:30 in the afternoon. While Presbyterian minister and child psychologist
Fred Rogers had been on the air on
Pittsburgh's
WQED-TV since 1963, and had expanded by 1966 to some other educational stations in
Chicago and along the east coast, it had run out of funding until the Sears Roebuck Foundation and the Ford Foundation made grants for new productions; the show had gone off the air in 1967, but was shown in reruns on stations after parents of preschoolers and young children demanded its return.[109] It would then continue as a staple of
Public Broadcasting System programming after NET's assets were acquired by PBS and would continue until Rogers's retirement on August 31, 2001.
The
International Court of Justice, commonly known as the "World Court", settled the dispute between
India and
Pakistan over the
Rann of Kutch salt marshes on the border between the two nations. The three member arbitration panel awarded 90% of the Rann to India and 10% to Pakistan.[110] With the exception of granting Pakistan the northern part of Rann, the panel restored the area to the areas occupied before the 1965 war between the two nations.[111]
A vote, in Canada's House of Commons, to raise income taxes by five percent, failed 82 to 84. Led by Robert Stanfield, opposition members of the Progressive Conservative Party called on Liberal Prime Minister
Lester B. Pearson and his coalition government to resign and to call new elections. Pearson— whose Liberal Party was looking for his successor in the wake of his announced retirement— declined to step down.[112]
The
Florida Education Association, a labor union for most of the schoolteachers in
Florida, called the first statewide teachers' walkout in American history, forcing the closure of the schools in 51 of Florida's 67 counties.[113][114] The unprecedented statewide walkout would continue for a month, and would inspire similar teacher strikes elsewhere in the United States.
Fifteen of the 20 crew on the Panamanian cargo ship Capitaine Frangos were killed when the ship sank after colliding with an unidentified ship at the entrance to the
Dardanelles in
Turkey.[115]
For the second time in its history, the Indian state of
West Bengal was put under
President's rule under Article 356 of the
Constitution of India, after the collapse of its coalition government and the resignation of Chief Minister
P. C. Ghosh. The state would remain under national control for a little more than a year, until February 25, 1969, when a new government would be formed under the leadership of
Ajoy Mukherjee.[116]
The first batch of
TDD units (also referred to as TTYs), designed to allow the deaf to communicate over the telephone by transmitting writing, was distributed by
American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) after the conclusion of litigation over a patent dispute.[118]
The British Trans-Arctic Expedition, led by English explorer
Wally Herbert with a team of three other men (
Roy Koerner, Allan Gill, and Kenneth Hedges) and 34
huskies, departed from
Point Barrow in
Alaska on what Herbert called "the one pioneer journey" left for mankind on the Earth's surface, a trip across the top of the world.[121] After being stranded during the Arctic winter of 1968–69 (and supplied by air-drops from the
Royal Canadian Air Force, the group would travel northward on the
156th meridian west and reach the
North Pole on April 5, 1969, then continue to the other side of the globe, southward along the
24th meridian east to the island of
Vesle Tavleøya in
Norway, arriving on May 29, 1969 following a journey of 3,620 miles (5,830 km).[122] The journey would come to a safe end on June 11, with a helicopter transporting the four men to a homebound ship.[123]
University students in
Egypt's two largest cities,
Cairo and
Alexandria, began an uprising in support of an ongoing workers strike, marking the first mass student arrest in Egypt since 1953. In the week that followed, 635 people would be arrested in Cairo, and 77 civilians and 146 policemen would be injured, with two workers being killed.[124]
Surveyor 7 was turned off permanently, six weeks after it had landed on the
Moon. The lunar probe had functioned poorly after being reactivated on February 12 and "there would not be another
NASA transmission from the lunar surface until the first landing by an Apollo crew" on July 20, 1969.[125]
British Home Secretary
James Callaghan announced his government's decision to introduce the
Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 in response to the arrival of 7,000 Asian refugees who had been expelled from
Kenya and who, as members of a British Commonwealth nation, had British passports.[127] The law would pass both Houses of Parliament on February 27[128] and would receive royal assent on March 1, limiting the immigration of people with British passports into the United Kingdom to those who had a "substantial connection" with Britain.[129][130]
The first signs of what would be called the "
Prague Spring" began in
Czechoslovakia when Communist Party First Secretary
Alexander Dubček announced, in the presence of visiting Soviet party chief
Leonid Brezhnev, that steps would be taken to create "the widest possible democratization of the entire socio-political system."[131]
The newly incorporated
Hyundai Motor Company of South Korea, represented by its president,
Chung Ju-yung, signed an agreement with the
Ford Motor Company of the United States for a joint venture in which Ford Motor would supply Hyundai with the technology and equipment to construct a plant in
Ulsan, in return for a percentage of the profits.[132]
The first victim of a Scottish
serial killer, nicknamed "
Bible John" by the media, was found in
Glasgow. Patricia Docker, a 25-year-old nurse, had been raped and strangled after having last been seen at a Glasgow dance hall.[133]
Died:Fannie Hurst, 82, American novelist and short story writer
The
Archbishop Makarios III (Michael Mouskos) was
re-elected as
President of Cyprus by an overwhelming majority (95.45%) of
Greek Cypriot voters.[135] Makarios received 220,911 of the 231,438 valid ballots; his opponent,
Takis Evdokas, who was an advocate for enosis (the annexation of Cyprus by
Greece) got 8,577 votes for 3.71%, while another 1,950 ballots were declared invalid. Under the island nation's constitution, Greek Cypriots voted for the President and Turkish Cypriots voted for the Vice President.[136]
Zap Comix, the first successful title of the
underground comix genre, an alternative to standard
comic books, published its first issue. The book was drawn and written by 24-year old San Francisco cartoonist
Robert Crumb, and his wife Dana sold the initial copies in the
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood along with two other people. The next day, a small distribution company, Third World Distribution, would purchase 500 copies for distribution in outlets throughout the Bay Area.[137]
Major
Jan Šejna of the
Czechoslovak Army fled
Czechoslovakia after falling out of favor with President
Antonin Novotny, who was planning to use the military to regain his position as Communist Party First Secretary. Šejna would eventually defect to the United States, becoming the highest-ranking military officer of a
Warsaw Pact nation to flee to the
NATO alliance.[138]
The
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia adopted the first draft of an "Action Program" for allowing more freedom of the press within the Eastern European nation "and, in the longer run, the federalization of Czechoslovakia" with greater autonomy for the
Slovak minority in the eastern part of the nation in federation with the
Czech people in the west.[145]
Twenty-two female patients, all but one of them over 60 years old, were killed and 14 injured when a fire swept through their ward at the
Shelton Hospital, a mental institution located outside the English city of
Shrewsbury.[146][147] The ward, housing the most severely disturbed patients, was the only one that was locked from the outside.[148]
"Report from Vietnam by
Walter Cronkite", a 30-minute installment of a
CBS News special, aired at 10:30 in the evening Eastern time. At the close of the program, the host of the CBS Evening News told an audience of nine million viewers, "It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate... it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then 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. This is Walter Cronkite. Good night."[149] Although U.S. President Johnson is said to have remarked to advisers the next day that "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war!" (or in some accounts, "I've lost the American people."), historian W. Joseph Campbell would note after research that "Under scrutiny, the 'Cronkite moment' dissolves as illusory— a chimera, a media-driven myth."[150]
U.S. President Johnson visited
Dallas for the first time since he had been sworn in as President at
Dallas Love Field on November 22, 1963. Johnson spoke to about 10,000 delegates of National Rural Electric Cooperative convention and told them that he believed that the Vietnam War had reached "a turning point".[151]
The township of
Auroville was founded in
India's union territory of
Pondicherry by
Hindu spiritual leader
Mirra Alfassa, and named for her mentor,
Sri Aurobindo. In the inaugural ceremony, "about 5,000 people from some 125 nations gathered at a banyan tree in the future city", each bringing some dirt from their homelands to be placed in an urn. Forty years later, Auroville (which originally was conceived as home to 50,000 people) had 1,700 residents from 35 nations.[153]
Michigan Governor
George Romney became the first major presidential candidate to withdraw from the 1968 campaign. Romney had declared his intention to seek the nomination of the Republican Party, but concluded that he was well behind former U.S. Vice President
Richard M. Nixon in raising funds for the New Hampshire primary.[154]
Several changes took place within the
First Gorton Ministry of the new Australian government, including the renaming of
Charles Barnes' department as the Minister for External Territories. Future Prime Minister
Malcolm Fraser joined the Cabinet as Minister for Education and Science, as did
Ken Anderson as Minister for Supply.
Canada's Prime Minister Pearson won a vote of confidence in the
House of Commons of Canada by a margin of 138 to 119, bringing an end to the crisis that had begun nine days earlier when his tax proposal failed.[155]
All but one of the 23 servicemen on board a U.S. Marines helicopter were killed when the
CH-46 Sea Knight was struck by ground fire and crashed about 11 miles (18 km) northeast of the
Khe Sanh Combat Base.[156]
The
Kerner Commission (officially, The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders) released its report on the riots of the previous summer and highlighted racial discrimination in the United States as a primary cause.[159] The 426-page report became a national bestseller, with two million copies purchased, and summarized the problem with the ominous warning, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."[160][161]
The
Apollo Applications Program (AAP) had first been presented as a separate Research and Development program in NASA's FY 1968 budget request, submitted to Congress in
January 1967. As originally conceived, AAP was designed to take full advantage of the United States' investment in
Apollo-developed hardware, facilities, staffing and expertise. However, in making adjustments to considerably lower funding, the program had by now been pared down to the minimum level for maintaining a reasonable
human spaceflight program in the early part of the next decade and preserving any basic capability for future U.S. crewed operations in space.[41]
U.S. President Johnson made an unscheduled appearance at
the Pentagon for the farewell ceremony for outgoing
Secretary of DefenseRobert S. McNamara. Johnson became the first president to be trapped in an
elevator when he, the Secretary and 11 other people were caught between the second and third floor when the elevator became stuck. It took another 12 minutes before maintenance men could release them. Johnson joked, "I never knew it took so long to get to the top in the Pentagon," while McNamara said, "This is what's wrong with there being 29 days in February."[162]
For the fourth time in the 20th century, a
supernova was observed from Earth. The explosion was detected from within the spiral galaxy
NGC 6946[163] at least 22 million years after it had occurred. Swiss astronomer
Paul Wild and Canadian astronomer David Dunlap, working independently of each other, both detected the supernova, now designated as SN1968B. Other supernovae had been seen by Earth astronomers in 1917, 1939, and 1948, and more would be observed in later years (1969, 1980, 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2017).
The
Brussels Convention of 1968, subtitled "on the mutual recognition of companies and bodies corporate within the EEC", was signed in the Belgian capital by the representatives of the six (
European Economic Community) members (France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg).[164]
In the continuing reforms of the
Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the Writers’ Union published the first copy of the magazine Literární listy not to require the approval of government censors.[167]
^Hariman, Robert;
Lucaites, John Louis (2015). "Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner, Saigon, 1968". In Hill, Jason; Schwartz, Vanessa R. (eds.). Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News.
Bloomsbury. p. 92.
^"Garbage Truck Kills 2 Crewmen". The Commercial Appeal (Memphis TN). February 2, 1968. p. 1.
^"CITY'S GARBAGE COLLECTORS STRIKE— — 200 Workers Out of 1300 Still on Job". Memphis Press-Scimitar. February 12, 1968. p. 1.
^"Denmark, Kingdom of", in Heads of States and Governments: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Over 2,300 Leaders, 1945 through 1992, by Harris M. Lentz (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1994) p1294
^"Chad", in Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic, by Richard Bradshaw (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) p159
^"Guardsmen Seal Off College Campuses After 3 Killed In Orangeburg Shooting", The Index-Journal (Greenwood SC), February 9, 1968, p1
^"Three Slain in Negro Rioting; Order Curfew— Emergency Declared by S. C. Governor", Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1968, p16
^Shuler, Jack (2012), Blood & Bone: Truth and Reconciliation in a Southern Town, Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, p. 21
^"Orangeburg (South Carolina) Massacre of 1968", by John G. Hall, in Encyclopedia of American Race Riots (Greenwood, 2007) p492
^"Orangeburg State College Police Riot (1968)", in Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement, ed. by Christopher M. Richardson and Ralph E. Luker (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) p357
^"Wallace Announces Race for Presidency", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 8, 1968, p1
^David Hofstede, Planet of the Apes: An Unofficial Companion (ECW Press, 2001) p14
^"Black Environmental Liberation Theology", by Dianne D. Glave, in To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005) p193
^Micheal Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (McFarland, 2017) p708
^John Roberts, Safeguarding the Nation: The Story of the Modern Royal Navy (Seaforth Publishing, 2009) p83
^Kristan Stoddart, Losing an Empire and Finding a Role: Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1964–70 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) p119
^Tony Glover, and Scott Dirks, Blues with a Feeling: The Little Walter Story (Routledge, 2002)
^"Gasoline Hurled and Ignited; 12 Persons Die in Tavern Fire", Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1968, p1
^"12 Killed in Moberly Tavern Inferno; Bill Coleman Charged With Murders", Moberly (MO) Monitor-Index, February 17, 1968, p1
^"Missouri's High Court Upholds Death Sentence", Springfield (MO) News-Leader, December 15, 1970, p10
^"North Vietnam Frees Three U.S. Pilots", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 16, 1968, p1
^"The American POW experience", by Glenn Robbins, in New Perspectives on the Vietnam War: Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation, ed. by Andrew Wiest, et al (Routledge, 2009) p179
^"CUT DRAFT DEFERMENTS— Graduate Students Hit Hard by Change", Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1968, p1
^Francisco Jiménez, Taking Hold: From Migrant Childhood to Columbia University (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) p93
^"Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame— History and Inductee Listing", in The Sports Hall of Fame Encyclopedia: Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, Soccer, by David Blevins (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) p1145
^"Naismith's Son Among Dignitaries As Basketball Hall of Fame Opens", Hartford (CT) Courant, February 18, 1968, p4C
^"Papuans Quit Jungle for Day to Cast Votes", Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1968, p5
^Husain M. Albaharna, The Legal Status of the Arabian Gulf States: A Study of Their Treaty Relations and Their International Problems (Manchester University Press, 1968) p7
^Matteo Legrenzi, The GCC and the International Relations of the Gulf: Diplomacy, Security and Economic Coordination in a Changing Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2015) p14
^"China", by Wei Wang, in Can Banks Still Keep a Secret?, ed. by Sandra Booysen and Dora Neo (Cambridge University Press, 2017) p164
^Lowell Hart, The Snowboard Book: A Guide for All Boarders (W. W. Norton & Company, 1997) p10
^
ab"TV Today: Misterogers Rated High by Experts", by Clay Gowran, Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1968, p1-C11
^"Rann of Kutch", in Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements: N to S, ed. by Edmund Jan Osmańczyk (Taylor & Francis, 2003) p1894
^Lesley G. Terris, Mediation of International Conflicts: A Rational Model (Taylor & Francis, 2016) p152
^"DEFEAT TAX HIKE IN CANADA— Rivals Call on Pearson to Resign", Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1968, p1
^"Florida Teacher Walkout Paralyzes School System", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 19, 1968, p2A
^"Teacher Walkouts Shut Florida Schools", Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1968, p26
^"15 missing as ship sinks". The Times. No. 57180. London. 29 February 1968. col G, p. 5.
^Ramashray Roy, The Uncertain Verdict: A Study of the 1969 Elections in Four Indian States (University of California Press, 1975) p33
^"The Third World in 1968", by Arif Dirlik, in 1968: The World Transformed, ed. by Carole Fink, et al. (Cambridge University Press, 1998) p307
^David Harland, NASA's Moon Program: Paving the Way for Apollo 11 (Springer, 2010) p390
^Manfred Kohler, The Role of Languages and Language Policies in Belgian State and Politics with Emphasis on the Flemish-Walloon Conflict: Reason for a State to fail or Driving Force behind Federalism and Conciliation (Diplomica Verlag, 2009) p72
^"Asians Pour into London from Kenya", Chicago Tribune, February 25, 1968, p3
^Michael Zander, The Law-Making Process (Bloomsbury, 2015)
^Frank Reeves, British Racial Discourse: A Study of British Political Discourse About Race and Race-related Matters (Cambridge University Press, 1983) pp206-207
^"2 Million Face Loss of British Rights", Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1968, p3-16
^"Alexander Dubček", in Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century, ed. by Frank N. Magill (Routledge, 1999) p969
^A. J. Jacobs, The New Domestic Automakers in the United States and Canada: History, Impacts, and Prospects (Lexington Books, 2015) p183
^"Makarios Wins Reelection By 20–1 Vote Margin", Tampa Tribune, February 26, 1968, p4-A
^Chrysostomos Pericleous, Cyprus Referendum: A Divided Island and the Challenge of the Annan Plan (I.B.Tauris, 2009) p101
^"Zap Comix", by Robert Beerbohm, in Icons of the American Comic Book: From Captain America to Wonder Woman, ed. by Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith (ABC-CLIO, 2013) p844
^Galia Golan, Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia: The Dubcek Era 1968–1969 (Cambridge University Press, 1973) p183
^Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 (Yale University Press, 1985) p269
^"Another State In India Falls to Central Rule", Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, February 26, 1968, p5
^Rychlik, Jan (2010). "The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion as Seen from Prague". In Stolarik, M. Mark (ed.). The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968: Forty Years Later.
Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. p. 36.
^"Mental Hospital Fire Deaths Rise To 22". Indianapolis Star. February 27, 1968. p. 40.
^"Locked ward 'had duty nurse'". The Guardian. Manchester. February 27, 1968. p. 3.
^Jake Blood, The Tet Effect: Intelligence and the Public Perception of War (Routledge, 2005) p46
^W. Joseph Campbell, Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism (University of California Press, 2016) p115
^"LBJ: Blood, Sweat, Tears in Viet", Chicago Tribune, February 28, 1968, p1
^"Frankie Lymon Dies in Apartment". The New York Times. February 28, 1968. Frankie Lymon, the rock 'n' roll singer who popularized "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" was found dead yesterday in the apartment of his grandmother, apparently, of an overdose of narcotics, according to the police.
^"Auroville (India)", in The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena, by J. Gordon Melton (Visible Ink Press, 2007) p18
^"ROMNEY BOWS OUT OF RACE— Lagging Far behind Nixon in N.H. Drive", Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, p1
^"Pearson Wins Vote of Confidence, 138—119", Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, p20
^"U.S. Copter Downed, 22 Die; Find Grave of 100 Cong Victims", Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, p3
^"News Briefs— Foreign", Chicago Tribune, February 29, 1968, p3
^Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero: A Life in Writing (St. Martin's Press, 2015) p140
^Smith, Jessie Carney; Wynn, Linda T. (2009). Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience.
Visible Ink Press. p. 61.
^"WHY, WHAT WHEN OF RIOTS— Kerner Commission Tells Findings". Chicago Tribune. March 1, 1968. p. 1.
^Stanfield, John H. (2014). "Kerner Commission Report (1968)". In Gallagher, Charles A.; Lippard, Cameron D. (eds.). Race and Racism in the United States: An Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic. ABC-CLIO.
^"Lyndon Stuck with McNamara for 12 Minutes— in Elevator". Chicago Tribune. March 1, 1968. p. 5.