Appendix # 4: Teacher Resource
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968/reference/timeline.html
A partial list of events of National and International Interest for 1968
January 23. On January 23, 1968 North Korean patrol boats captured the USS Pueblo, a U.S. intelligence gathering vessel and its 83 crew men for violating the country's twelve mile territorial waters limit.
On January 31, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive at Nha Trang. Seventy thousand North Vietnamese took the battle from the jungle to the cities. The offensive carried on for weeks and became a major turning point for the American attitude toward the war.
February 2, 1968, Richard Nixon announced his presidential candidacy.
February 18, 1968, the State Department announced the highest U.S. casualty toll of the Vietnam War. The previous week 543 Americans were killed in action and 2,547 were wounded.
February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite reports to the nation about his recent trip to Vietnam. Cronkite's report is highly critical of U.S. officials and directly contradicts the official statements on the progress of the war.
March 16, 1968, Robert Kennedy, former Attorney General and brother to President John F. Kennedy, announced that he would run for the presidency of the United States.
March 31, 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he will not seek re-election to the office of the president.
April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King jr. is shot and killed at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. His death sets off riots across the country.
April 23, 1968, students at Columbia University in New York occupy five buildings in protest of the university's participation in the Institute for Defense Analysis. Seven days later police, by the request of the university, storm the buildings sand violently remove the students and their supporters.
May 6, 1968, "Bloody Monday" marks one of the most violent days of the Parisian student revolt. Five thousand students march through the Latin Quarter. Rioters set up barricades and the police attack with gas grenades.
May 13, 1968, Actions taken by the students at the Sorbonne inspires sympathetic strikes across the country and as many a nine million workers strike
June 4/5, 1968, Robert Kennedy is shot by Sirhan Sirhan as he leaves the stage after addressing a large crowd of supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in San Francisco. He dies the next morning June 6, 1968.
July 17, 1968, Saddam Hussein becomes the Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'etat.
July 22, 1968, Two rival groups of male adolescent students fought each other in the Ciudadela neighborhood Mexico City. The following day the city government responded by sending policemen to arrest the perpetrators. The students were attacked so ferociously that protests were lodged.
August 20, 21, 1968, Prague Spring, the period of Czechoslovak liberalization comes to an end when 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks.
September 6, 1968, Swaziland becomes independent
October 2, 1968, A student demonstration ends in a massacre at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, Mexico.
October 12, 1968 Ten days after the Tlatelolco massacre the XIX Olympic Games begin in Mexico City, Mexico.
November 5, 1968, Richard M. Nixon was elected president of the United States defeating Vice President Huber H. Humphrey.
December 24, 1968 U.S. space craft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the moon.
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