Items29The creator’s order
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Prague SpringEarly 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.0 - 2
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.0 - 3
Tet OffensiveLate 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.0 - 4
Orangeburg MassacreFebruary 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.0 - 5
1968 Polish political crisisMarch | 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.0 - 6
Independence of MauritiusMarch 12 | Mauritius. Mauritius gained independence from Britain, with Seewoosagur Ramgoolam as prime minister. It entered the Commonwealth and kept a parliamentary system.0 - 7
My Lai massacreMarch 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.0 - 8
Lyndon B. JohnsonBorn Aug 27, 1908March 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.0 - 9
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.0 - 10
Civil Rights Act of 1968April 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.0
