Year retrospective · 1960s

1968

1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1968th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 968th year of the 2nd millennium, the 68th year of the 20th century, and the 9th year of the 1960s decade.

Recorded events

10

top entries

Notable births

30

Notable deaths

30

Decade

1960s

Timeline

Defining events of 1968

  1. 1968 The TEV Wahine, a New Zealand ferry, sinks in Wellington harbour due to a fierce storm – the strongest winds ever in Wellington. Out of the 734 people on board, fifty-three died.

    Wellington–Lyttelton ferry, New Zealand

    TEV Wahine was a twin-screw, turbo-electric, roll-on/roll-off passenger ferry. Ordered in 1964, the vessel was built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, in Govan, Glasgow, Scotland for the Union Steam Ship Company's Wellington-Lyttelton Steamer Express Service in New Zealand.

  2. 1968 US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

    President of the United States from 1963 to 1969

    Lyndon Baines Johnson, also known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. Johnson was vice president under John F. Kennedy from 1961 until Kennedy's assassination in 1963, when he assumed the presidency.

  3. 1968 A failed assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke, leader of the German student movement, leaves Dutschke suffering from brain damage.

    German student activist (1940–1979)

    Alfred Willi Rudolf Dutschke was a German sociologist and political activist who, until severely injured by an assassin in 1968, was a leading charismatic figure within the Socialist Students Union (SDS) in West Germany, and that country's broader "extra-parliamentary opposition" (APO).

  4. 1968 English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech.

    British politician (1912–1998)

    John Enoch Powell was a British politician, scholar and writer. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton South West for the Conservative Party from 1950 to February 1974 and the MP for South Down for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from October 1974 to 1987. He was Minister of Health from 1960 to 1963 in the second Macmillan ministry and was Shadow Secretary of State for Defence from 1965 to 1968 in the Shadow Cabinet of Edward Heath.

  5. 1968 South African Airways Flight 228 crashes near J.G. Strijdom Airport in South West Africa (now Hosea Kutako International Airport in Namibia), killing 123 people.

    1968 aviation accident

    South African Airways Flight 228 was a scheduled flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, to London, England. The Boeing 707-300C operating the flight, which was only six weeks old, flew into the ground soon after take-off after a scheduled stopover in Windhoek, South West Africa on 20 April 1968. Five passengers survived, while 123 people died.

  6. 1968 Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

    1955–1975 war in Southeast Asia

    The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US.

  7. 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech; he was assassinated the next day.
  8. 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
  9. 1968 Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 6.
  10. 1968 In the downtown district of Richmond, Indiana, a double explosion kills 41 and injures 150.

Arrivals

Born in 1968

Ashley Judd 1968– American actress (born 1968)
Mswati III 1968– King of Eswatini since 1986
Julia Morris 1968– Australian comedian
Dana Milbank 1968– American journalist (born 1968)
Jack de Gier 1968– Dutch footballer and manager
Karl Wendlinger 1968– Austrian racing driver (born 1968)
Molly Ringwald 1968– American actress and writer (born 1968)
Tommy Tallarico 1968– American video game composer (born 1968)
Shawn Graham 1968– Premier of New Brunswick from 2006 to 2010
Jeri Ryan 1968– American actress (born 1968)
Kazuhiro Sasaki 1968– Japanese baseball player (born 1968)
Jayson Williams 1968– American basketball player (born 1968)

Farewells

Died in 1968

Rudolph Dirks American cartoonist
Walter Tewksbury American track and field athlete
George Gamow American theoretical physicist (1904–1968)
Richard Sagrits Estonian painter
Tallulah Bankhead American actress (1902–1968)
Antonio Barrette Premier of Quebec in 1960
John Steinbeck American writer and novelist (1902–1968)
Vittorio Pozzo Italian football manager (1886–1968)
Howard Florey Australian pathologist (1898–1968)
Tore Ørjasæter Norwegian educator and poet (1886–1968)
Nick Adams American actor, screenwriter (1931–1968)
J. L. B. Smith South African ichthyologist

On the charts

Culture of 1968

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