January 21 - Battle of Khe Sanh – One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins, ending on April 8.
A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs.
January 23 – North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship violated its territorial waters while spying.
January 30 – The Tet Offensive begins as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam.
January 31 - Viet Cong soldiers attack the Embassy of the United States, Saigon.
February 1 - Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém – A Viet Cong officer is summarily executed by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. The event is photographed by Eddie Adams. The photo makes headlines around the world, eventually winning the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and sways U.S. public opinion against the war.
The Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad merge to form Penn Central, the largest ever corporate merger up to this date.
February 8 – A civil rights demonstration on a college campus to protest racial segregation in South Carolina is broken up by highway patrolmen; three African American students are killed, the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American campus.
March 10 – Battle of Lima Site 85, the largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members (12) during the (at this time) secret war later known as the Laotian Civil War.
March 11 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson mandates that all computers purchased by the federal government support the ASCII character encoding.
March 14 - Nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground near Skull Valley, Utah.
March 16 - My Lai Massacre: American troops kill scores of civilians. The story will first become public in November 1969 and will help undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam.
U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
March 18 – Gold standard: The United States Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.
March 19 - Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. Students stage rallies, protests and a 5-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building, shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War, and demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum.
March 31 – In a televised address, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he will not be a candidate for re-election.
April 4 - Martin Luther King Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray. King-assassination riots erupt in major American cities, lasting for several days afterwards.
Apollo program: Apollo-Saturn mission 502 (Apollo 6) is launched, as the second and last uncrewed test-flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle.
April 6 - A shootout between Black Panthers and police in Oakland, California, results in several arrests and deaths, including 17-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.
Richmond, Indiana explosion: A double explosion in downtown Richmond caused by a methane leak kills 41 and injures 150.
April 18 – London Bridge is sold to U.S. entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch for reconstructiion at Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
April 23 – Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
April 26 – The nuclear weapon "Boxcar" is tested at the Nevada Test Site in the biggest detonation of Operation Crosstie.
May 3 – Braniff Flight 352 crashes near Dawson, Texas, United States, killing all 85 people on board.
May 17 – The Catonsville Nine enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take dozens of selective service draft records, and burn them with napalm as a protest against the Vietnam War.
May 18 - Mattel's Hot Wheels toy cars are introduced in the United States.
May 22 – The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
June 3 – Radical feminist Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol at his New York City studio, The Factory; he survives after a 5-hour operation.
June 5 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate, is shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Palestinian-born Sirhan Sirhan is arrested.
June 12 – The horror film Rosemary's Baby premieres in the U.S.
July 17 – Saddam Hussein becomes Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'état.
July 18 – The semiconductor company Intel is founded in what becomes known as the Silicon Valley of California.
July 20 – The first International Special Olympics Summer Games are held at Soldier Field in Chicago, Ill, with about 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities.
July 23 – Black militants led by Fred (Ahmed) Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States.
August 5 – The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. president and Spiro Agnew for vice president.
August 22 – Police clash with anti-Vietnam War protesters in Chicago outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominates Hubert Humphrey for U.S. president and Edmund Muskie for vice president. The riots and subsequent trials are an essential part of the activism of the Youth International Party. "The whole world is watching!"
October 10 - Detroit Tigers win World Series in seven games.
October 11 - NASA launches Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo mission (Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walter Cunningham). Mission goals include the first live television broadcast from orbit and simulating lunar module rendezvous and docking, using the S-IVB rocket stage as a test target.
October 14 – The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will send about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.
October 16 - In Mexico City, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a Black Power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic men's 200 metres.
October 18 – U.S. athlete Bob Beamon breaks the long jump world record by 55 cm / 21 ft 3⁄4 ins at the Olympics in Mexico City. His record stands for 23 years, and remains the second longest jump in history.
October 31 – Citing progress in the Paris peace talks, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.
November 5 - 1968 United States presidential election: Republican candidate Richard Nixon defeats the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
November 17 - NBC cuts off the final 1:05 of an Oakland Raiders–New York Jets football game to broadcast the pre-scheduled Heidi movie. Fans are unable to see Oakland (which had been trailing 32–29) score 2 late touchdowns to win 43–32; as a result, thousands of outraged football fans flood the NBC switchboards to protest.
November 20 – The Farmington Mine disaster in Farmington, West Virginia, kills seventy-eight men.
November 22 - The Beatles White Album is released.
November 24 – 4 men hijack Pan Am Flight 281 from JFK International Airport, New York to Havana, Cuba.
December 9 – Douglas Engelbart publicly demonstrates his pioneering hypertext system, NLS, in San Francisco, together with the computer mouse, at what becomes retrospectively known as "The Mother of All Demos".
December 24 – The crewed U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole, as well as having traveled further away from Earth than any people in history. Anders photographs Earthrise. The crew also give a reading from the Book of Genesis.
Births:
Cuba Gooding
Mary Lou Retton
Gary Coleman
Josh Brolin
Molly Ringwald
Celine Dion
Patricia Arquette
Anthony Michael Hall
Ashley Judd
Tony Hawk
Terry Crews
Gillian Anderson
Will Smith
Hugh Jackman
Tracy Morgan
Deaths:
Nick Adams
Neal Cassady
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Helen Keller
Robert F. Kennedy
Upton Sinclair
Tallulah Bankhead
John Steinbeck
