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Prague Spring
Early January | Czechoslovakia. Alexander Dubček became Communist Party first secretary on January 5. The reforms that followed loosened censorship and opened a public debate about how much freedom was possible under a one-party system.
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USS Pueblo (AGER-2)
January 23 | Korea. North Korea seized the U.S. Navy intelligence ship USS Pueblo. The surviving crew went home after eleven months in captivity, while the ship remained in North Korea.
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Tet Offensive
Late January | Vietnam. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched coordinated attacks across South Vietnam during the Lunar New Year. They failed to hold most of their gains, but the scale of the offensive undermined American assurances that the war was nearing a favorable end.
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Orangeburg Massacre
February 8 | United States. South Carolina highway patrol officers fired on students at South Carolina State College following protests over a segregated bowling alley. Three young men died and more than two dozen people were wounded.
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1968 Polish political crisis
March | Poland. Protests against censorship spread after authorities banned a Warsaw production of Adam Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve. The party’s antisemitic campaign then drove thousands of Polish Jews to leave the country.
More about 1968 Polish political crisis6
Independence of Mauritius
March 12 | Mauritius. Mauritius gained independence from Britain, with Seewoosagur Ramgoolam as prime minister. It entered the Commonwealth and kept a parliamentary system.
More about Independence of Mauritius7
My Lai massacre
March 16 | Vietnam. U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians in and around My Lai. The killings happened in 1968, and news reports brought them to broad public attention the following year.
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Lyndon B. Johnson
Born
March 31 | Johnson withdraws from the race. The U.S. president announced a partial halt to bombing in North Vietnam and said he would neither seek nor accept his party’s nomination for another term. The address changed the terms of the war debate and the race for the White House.
More about Lyndon B. Johnson9
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
April 4 | United States. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers. Grief and unrest spread across the country as the workers continued their strike.
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Civil Rights Act of 1968
April 11 | United States. Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Its fair housing provisions barred discrimination in covered housing transactions on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin.
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Rudi Dutschke
April 11 | Dutschke is shot in West Berlin. The shooting of the West German student activist triggered protests against the Springer publishing group. Demonstrators blamed its newspapers for stoking hostility toward the student movement.
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May 68
May | France. Student demonstrations in Paris spread into a nationwide strike that drew millions of workers. The government negotiated with unions and called elections, where Charles de Gaulle’s allies won a large parliamentary majority.
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Zenkyōtō
Spring and summer | Campus protests in Japan. Student organizers at Nihon University created a campus-wide alliance after a struggle over student rights and a scandal over university finances. At the University of Tokyo, medical students’ grievances over training and employment fed separate protests that spread across campus.
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Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
June 5–6 | United States. Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary and died the next day. His death came eleven weeks before the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago.
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Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
July 1 | International. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opened for signature in London, Moscow, and Washington. It set out commitments on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, peaceful nuclear cooperation, and pursuing disarmament.
More about Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons16
Hong Kong flu
July through December | The 1968 influenza pandemic. Health authorities reported an influenza outbreak in Hong Kong in July. The H3N2 pandemic spread across Asia, reached the United States by September, and was widespread there by December.
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Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
August 20–21 | Czechoslovakia. Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces entered Czechoslovakia overnight. The invasion ended the opening for reform that had marked the Prague Spring, though many Czechoslovaks resisted in public.
More about Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia18
1968 Democratic National Convention
August 26–29 | United States. Democrats nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey in Chicago while police clashed with antiwar demonstrators outside. Television carried the confrontation to a national audience.
More about 1968 Democratic National Convention19
Biafran airlift
September | Nigeria. The International Committee of the Red Cross established an airlift into Biafra as famine spread during Nigeria’s civil war. Church relief organizations also flew supplies into the breakaway territory.
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Tlatelolco massacre
October 2 | Mexico. Mexican security forces killed demonstrators and bystanders at a student rally in Mexico City’s Plaza de las Tres Culturas. The killings came ten days before the city opened the Olympics. The death toll remains disputed.
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1968 Peruvian coup d'état
October 3 | Peru. General Juan Velasco Alvarado overthrew President Fernando Belaúnde Terry. The new military government seized the assets of the International Petroleum Company within days and began reshaping the country’s economy.
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