In the summer of 1920, Cynthia Robinson was caught smoking in the cellar behind the preserves. She was thirty-four years old, a grown woman, but her husband still sent her straight to her room like a child. That same year, women finally won the right to vote, and the world started changing. A few years later, a young lieutenant named Elvis Presley walked onto a stage to play a benefit show for the USS Arizona Memorial.
He didn’t know it then, but it would be his last public performance for seven years. He had gotten tired of making movies, tired of the formula, tired of playing the same character over and over. So, in 1968, he decided to come back to live music. He eventually agreed to tape a television special, hoping it would win over a new generation of fans.
The cameras rolled in June, capturing the King in black leather, sweat dripping down his face as he sang “Hound Dog” and “All Shook Up. ” When it aired on December 3rd, it became the most watched program of the year. That single night saved his singing career. But Elvis wasn’t the only one pulling off a comeback.
Back in 1967, a robot named Miss Honeywell was introduced at a trade show as the ultimate in automation, the human-tronic saleswoman of tomorrow. The host told the audience she would make a great assistant to any sales manager. The robot turned to him and answered, “Assistant nothing. I’d make someone a very good wife.
” The crowd laughed, but the joke revealed how the world still saw women. That year, 1967, was about innovation. It brought the first heart transplant, the first global satellite television broadcast, and a man who started his own country called Sealand on an abandoned anti-aircraft platform in the North Sea. No one could deny it was innovative.
And 1968 didn’t let up. Before the year ended, Apollo 8 would become the first space vehicle to carry humans beyond Earth’s orbit, Intel would be founded, and an escaped convict named Ruth Eisemann Schier would become the first woman ever placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Meanwhile, Crosby, Stills, and Nash made their debut, Wacky Races premiered on CBS, and a sweet, wholesome young man won the Heisman Trophy, a man who surely would never do anything untoward. I’d have to stick a pin in your head.
Ooh, yikes. That was Tommy Lee Jones, though no one knew it then. In 1946, Dr. Benjamin Spock published Baby and Child Care.
Over the next five decades, it would outsell every book but the Bible, turning him into the world’s foremost authority on child rearing. He was also an outspoken peace activist, arrested at an anti-war protest in 1967. On January 5th, 1968, he was indicted for conspiring to counsel young men to evade the draft. He admitted signing the statement, saying the war was illegal and that they gave moral and financial support to the young men who believed the same.
A questionable case, but he was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. The conviction would later be reversed. Soul singer Otis Redding had died tragically in a plane crash on December 10th, 1967. But before his death, he had been inspired by the Beatles’ Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and wanted a new sound for himself. That search started with a new song called “The Dock of the Bay,” which he wrote with guitarist Steve Cropper and recorded just three days before he died. It was released January 8th, becoming the first posthumous number one single in American history. On January 13th, the Minnesota North Stars faced off against the Oakland Seals.
During the first period, Bill Masterson passed the puck just before colliding with two Seals defenders. Masterson, who wasn’t wearing a helmet, fell and hit his head on the ice. He began to bleed from his nose, ears, and mouth. He was rushed to the hospital, where he died thirty hours later, the first player ever killed in an NHL game.
Entrepreneurs Bill Darden and Charlie Woodsby opened the first Red Lobster restaurant in Lakeland, Florida on January 18th. It specialized in fresh Florida seafood, with fish coming from as far away as Maine and South Africa. You could get a whole lobster stuffed with hushpuppies plus a choice of potato or coleslaw for a mere $2. 35.
Not bad for a restaurant that would grow into a national chain. On January 30th, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a massive surprise attack on the South Vietnamese Army and their American allies. It was one of the largest campaigns of the war, and despite some early victories, it ended in defeat for the North. But the scale of the battle shocked ordinary Americans, severely weakening their support for the war.
As one reporter noted, it was clear the only rational way out would be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who had lived up to their pledge to defend democracy. That February, a future comedy legend named Steve Martin appeared on The Dating Game. He was a childhood friend of bachelorette Marcia Walker, and the audience was told they hadn’t seen each other in years. When she asked how he’d like to be celebrated, he answered, “I would love to be Arbor Day and be potted.
” His clever quips stole her heart, and the two won a trip to Tijuana, Mexico. Years later, she would reveal the two had set the whole thing up, and that his performance between the sheets was as entertaining and fulfilling as his performances on stage, only without the white suit. The first 911 call was placed from Haleyville, Alabama on February 16th, by Rankin Fite, the speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives. But it wouldn’t really catch on until the Nixon White House endorsed the idea in 1973.
By 1987, half of the US would be on the 911 system. Around the same time, Pink Floyd was struggling. Guitarist and songwriter Syd Barrett had joined the band in 1965 and renamed it. Their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was released in 1967, and they started playing shows in support.
But due to his drug use and deteriorating mental health, Barrett soon couldn’t perform. In December 1967, the group brought in his childhood friend David Gilmour to cover for him at shows. By February 18th, 1968, Gilmour became a permanent member, and the band continued without the man who had given them their name. On February 19th, a gentle soul named Fred Rogers debuted Mr.
Rogers’ Neighborhood on NET, a precursor of PBS. Unlike the hosts of most other children’s shows of the era, Rogers didn’t play a character, because, in his words, “Kids can spot a phony a mile away. ”
In March, the My Lai Massacre happened. US Army soldiers murdered somewhere between 347 and 504 civilians in Son My village in South Vietnam.
Almost all the victims were women, children, and elderly men, and many of the women, including some as young as twelve, were sexually assaulted before being killed. One soldier later admitted, “I had three of them in a line. I am personally responsible for killing between 20 and 25 people. We were shooting them, cutting their throats, scalping them.
A lot of people were doing it. So, I just followed suit. ” It stands as the largest confirmed massacre of civilians by US forces in the 20th century. On April 4th, Martin Luther King was staying in room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
At around 5:55 p. m. , he was talking with musician Ben Branch on his balcony and told him, “Ben, make sure you play Take My Hand, Precious Lord in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.
” Those were his last words. A moment later, a shot rang out, striking King in the right cheek and breaking his jaw before lodging in his right shoulder. He was rushed to the hospital, but despite the best efforts of surgeons, he died at 7:05 p. m.
The rifle that killed him was found at a motel across the street. Two weeks later, the FBI matched the fingerprints on it to James Earl Ray, a convict who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary. Ray would be arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport on June 6th, after which he pled guilty in exchange for a 99-year sentence. King’s family never believed Ray was the assassin.
Just two months later, another tragedy struck. On June 5th, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, then a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary, spoke to supporters at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel. Afterwards, he exited through a kitchen hallway.
A 24-year-old man named Sirhan Sirhan was lying in wait and shot Kennedy multiple times. The senator was taken to a hospital where he died twenty-five hours later. Sirhan was captured on the spot, convicted, and sentenced to death, though his sentence was later commuted to life in prison. The year kept moving.
London Bridge, completed in 1831, had become too unsteady to carry modern traffic by 1962. Rather than let it fall down, the city of London sold it on April 18th. The buyer was Robert P. McCulloch, an American real estate developer who founded Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and believed the bridge would make a good tourist attraction.
It took three years to reassemble it, where it still stands today. On April 23rd, student activists converged on the Columbia University campus to protest the university’s involvement with a weapons research think tank and its plan to build a gym in Morningside Park that would circumvent anti-segregation laws. The protesters took over Hamilton Hall and several other buildings, including the university president’s office. The protest ended on April 30th, when police stormed the buildings with tear gas.
Hair, the American tribal love rock musical, opened on Broadway on April 29th. It followed a group of hippies living in New York City during the Age of Aquarius, centering on a young man who had to decide whether to fight in Vietnam. Famous for its nudity and a finale that invited the audience on stage, it was a massive success, running for 1,750 performances. In 1934, cartoonist Al Capp created the comic strip Li’l Abner.
On May 18th, 1968, the wildly successful strip was brought to life at Dogpatch USA theme park in Arkansas. Visitors could tour the characters’ homes, ride Lil’ Abner’s space rocket for a simulated trip to the stars, or risk their sanity on Earthquake McGoon’s Brain Rattler roller coaster before the park closed in 1993. That same day, Mattel released Hot Wheels. Invented by company co-founder Elliot Handler, the toy cars were developed to appeal to boys the way Barbie, invented by Handler’s wife Ruth, appealed to girls.
Elliot got the idea from the extremely similar Matchbox car line, but while Matchbox cars mimicked real production vehicles, Hot Wheels were exaggerated hot rods with superchargers, hood blowers, and custom flame paint jobs. On June 3rd, writer Valerie Solanas shot pop art icon Andy Warhol in his Manhattan studio. Solanas had previously sought Warhol’s help producing a play she had written. He wasn’t interested, so she decided to shoot him, assuming the crime would bring her fifteen minutes of fame and get the play produced.
When asked why she did it, she said, “Because he’s a piece of garbage. He may die. Good. ” Warhol was clinically dead for over a minute before doctors revived him, later joking to the press, “Before I thought it would be fun to be dead.
Now I know it’s fun to be alive. ”
The Special Olympics were first held July 20th at Chicago’s Soldier Field. The brainchild of physical education teacher Anne McGlone, the event was funded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver and drew thousands of athletes from twenty-six states and three countries. The athletes pledged, “Let me win.
But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt. ” The games were a huge success and led to the establishment of Special Olympics Inc. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Los Angeles school teacher Harriet Glickman wrote to cartoonist Charles Schulz, urging him to encourage racial tolerance by introducing a black character into his Peanuts comic strip. Schulz agreed, and on July 22nd, readers met Franklin, a black child who helped Charlie Brown build a sand castle.
He was the first black character to appear in a major comic strip and would show up in over 100 Peanuts strips between 1968 and 1999. That summer, over 10,000 protesters showed up at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the Chicago police were on edge. Things immediately went wrong on August 22nd when officers shot 17-year-old Dean Johnson. Over the next seven days, riots broke out, blood was shed, and the police engaged in unprecedented brutality.
The protests came to a head on the 28th, when network television broadcast a standoff between police and protesters, during which the latter chanted, “The whole world is watching. ”
Music kept evolving. After the blues rock band The Yardbirds broke up in July of 1968, guitarist Jimmy Page decided to rebuild the lineup. A friend suggested he approach singer Robert Plant of the Band of Joy.
Plant agreed to join, suggesting that his drummer, John Bonham, be recruited as well. Page then added his old friend John Paul Jones on bass. They played their first show as the New Yardbirds on September 7th, but after their initial tour ended, they changed their name to Led Zeppelin. Three years later, in 1971, they unveiled “Stairway to Heaven” before a crowd at Ulster Hall in Belfast.
The debut didn’t go well, and according to John Paul Jones, the audience was bored to tears. Nonetheless, the song appeared on their fourth album and went on to be considered by many the single greatest rock song of all time. Richard Nixon was a lot of things, but funny wasn’t necessarily one of them. That’s why Americans were shocked to see the presidential hopeful turn up on an episode of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In in September.
The appearance was arranged by Laugh-In writer Paul Keyes, a friend of Nixon who felt showing up on the show would soften his image. Nixon’s part lasted about five seconds, just him looking into the camera and delivering a catchphrase: “Sock it to me. ”
On September 30th, the first 747 rolled off the assembly line at a specially built factory in Everett, Washington and was unveiled to the press. It was the world’s largest passenger jet at the time, with four engines and room for 366 passengers.
Formally registered as N7470, it was nicknamed City of Everett. On October 7th, the Motion Picture Association of America announced a new rating system for films: G for anyone, M for mature audiences, R for children under 16 with an adult, and X for no one under 16. The US was the last major Western nation to adopt such a system. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy became afraid for the lives of her children and wanted to leave the US.
To that end, on October 20th, she married her long-time friend, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who was wealthy enough to provide her with the life and security she sought. Their wedding took place on his private Greek island, Skorpios, and the press took to calling her Jackie O. In the summer of ’68, George Foreman fought in the heavyweight event of the Olympic Games in Mexico City. In the final match on October 26th, he faced the Soviet Union’s Jonas Čepulis, an experienced amateur boxer with over 220 fights on his record.
Nonetheless, Foreman pummeled him so badly the referee had to stop the fight in the second round. Foreman won the gold medal by TKO and would later describe it as the achievement he was most proud of in his career. On November 5th, Shirley Chisholm was elected to Congress as a representative for the 12th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. She had previously served in the New York State Assembly and was known as a staunch supporter of both the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements.
When asked if she planned to be quiet in Congress, she answered, “Absolutely not. For 44 years of my life, I have been forced to remain silent because of my skin color. ” She was the first African-American woman ever elected to Congress. Before he was Michael Corleone, Al Pacino was a struggling actor.
He got a break when he was cast in an episode of the progressive police procedural N. Y. P. D.
Pacino delivered a powerful performance as a white southerner who refuses to help a black cop find the man who shot him. It’s later revealed his character was one of the perpetrators of a church bombing that killed a young black girl. Star Trek aired Plato’s Stepchildren on November 22nd. The episode is now best remembered for a scene in which Captain Kirk, played by white actor William Shatner, kissed Lieutenant Uhura, played by black actress Nichelle Nichols.
Executives were terrified the kiss would anger TV viewers in the Southern US, but it received little reaction from the public. It was the first scripted kiss between a black person and a white person to air on American TV. On December 9th, a computer demonstration by engineer Douglas Engelbart introduced the world to the mouse, the word processor, graphics, hypertext, and windows. It was the first time all those elements were part of a single system, earning the event the name The Mother of All Demos.
On December 10th, four employees of Tokyo’s Nippon Trust Bank were transporting roughly 300 million yen when their path was blocked by a police officer. The officer told them he suspected an explosive in their car and inspected the underside of the vehicle, at which point smoke and sparks started shooting out. He yelled that an explosion was imminent, and the four men ran from the car. The officer then jumped in and sped off with the money.
Turns out the smoke and sparks were from a flare he had dropped. The phony officer was never caught. Two days before Christmas, high school students Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday went on their first date. They parked on Lake Herman Road in Benicia, California.
Around 11:00 p. m. , a vehicle pulled up and someone got out and started firing shots at their car. The couple tried to escape through the passenger door, but Faraday was shot in the head.
The stranger then shot Jensen five times, and drove away, leaving two teenagers dead. The double homicide would later be identified as the first confirmed attack of the Zodiac Killer. On December 24th, Apollo 8, the first crewed space vehicle to orbit the moon, was photographing the lunar surface. Astronaut William Anders suddenly noticed the Earth rising above the moon’s horizon.
“Oh my god, look at that picture over there. There’s the Earth coming up. Wow, that’s pretty. ” He quickly asked pilot Jim Lovell for color film and snapped the now-famous Earthrise photo, later described as the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.
And that’s how 1968 ended. Hair was knocking ’em dead on Broadway, Elvis was knocking ’em dead with his live shows, and the Zodiac Killer was just plain knocking ’em dead. Meanwhile, “Stairway to Heaven” remained hidden in the future, and the world watched, waiting to see what 1969 would bring.
