Man, 1968 was not boring. Holy hell. Year MacArthur Park was released. 1968 was an election year in the U.S. LBJ's last year. Nixon was elected in November. These are some of the "highlights" of 1968.
-Prague Spring
-Battle of Khe Sanh (Vietnam War)
-North Korea seizes USS Pueblo
-Tet Offensive began.
-VC attacked U.S. embassy in Saigon [Ah, the undersigned remembers it well. My brother was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. They shelled that, too. A mortar left a crater in the middle of the basketball court, my brother wrote to us. He slept with a desk barricaded next to the window.]
*Hey, everything so far happened in January. Off to a nice start, huh?*
*1968 is going to be the year MLK was assassinated; RFK was assassinated; the year there were riots at the DNC. 1968 was a bitch of a year. Not boring. I was only 13 y.o. I have thought back on 1968 when I was an adult. It must have seemed to adults then that the world was coming apart. I don't know how they got through it. I don't know how my parents got through it. I think that must have been the year my parents started taking valium. 1968 would have been a good year to start taking valium.*
-Feb 1, that famous photograph of the VC officer being executed, shot in the head by a South Vietnamese officer.
-Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. I remember the Grenoble Olympics. Jean Claude Killy.
-Civil Rights protests Feb. 8, 3 dead; Civil Rights protests Feb. 13.
-March 12, LBJ barely beats Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire.
-March 16, My Lai massacre. Same day RFK entered the presidential race.
-March 19-23: Howard University Civil Rights protests; sit-ins; Black Power movement.
-March 28, Brazilian student shot dead. Beginning of protests there against military dictatorship.
*Unrest all over the fucking world in 1968*
-Ah, the Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany.
-? "In a television special broadcast in the United States on NBC, white British singer Petula Clark touches black American singer Harry Belafonte affectionately on the arm."? [The undersigned missed that special. The undersigned never knew that that was a thing.]
-April 3: MLK "I've been to the mountaintop" speech.
-April 4: MLK assassinated.
-April 6: La, la, la. [I know that tune]
-Leftist student protests in Berlin
-LBJ signs Civil Rights Act
-Enoch Powell...anti-immigration...race relations, Britain.
-April 23-30: Columbia University student protests.
-May 13: Paris student riots.
-May 13: "Manchester City wins the 1967–68 Football League First Division by 2 clear points, over club rivals Manchester United."
-May 22: USS Scorpion sinks.
-May 29: "Manchester United wins the European Cup Final, becoming the first English team to do so." We never gave a shit about Europe. Oh, which reminds me, Uefa, fuck you.
-Student protests in Belgrade.
-Oh, Andy Warhol shot. June 3.
-June 5: RFK shot.
-Rosemary's Baby.
-anti-dictatorship protests in Brazil.
Okay, that's through June. Half of 1968 is enough of 1968.
-Prague Spring
-Battle of Khe Sanh (Vietnam War)
-North Korea seizes USS Pueblo
-Tet Offensive began.
-VC attacked U.S. embassy in Saigon [Ah, the undersigned remembers it well. My brother was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. They shelled that, too. A mortar left a crater in the middle of the basketball court, my brother wrote to us. He slept with a desk barricaded next to the window.]
*Hey, everything so far happened in January. Off to a nice start, huh?*
*1968 is going to be the year MLK was assassinated; RFK was assassinated; the year there were riots at the DNC. 1968 was a bitch of a year. Not boring. I was only 13 y.o. I have thought back on 1968 when I was an adult. It must have seemed to adults then that the world was coming apart. I don't know how they got through it. I don't know how my parents got through it. I think that must have been the year my parents started taking valium. 1968 would have been a good year to start taking valium.*
-Feb 1, that famous photograph of the VC officer being executed, shot in the head by a South Vietnamese officer.
-Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. I remember the Grenoble Olympics. Jean Claude Killy.
-Civil Rights protests Feb. 8, 3 dead; Civil Rights protests Feb. 13.
-March 12, LBJ barely beats Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire.
-March 16, My Lai massacre. Same day RFK entered the presidential race.
-March 19-23: Howard University Civil Rights protests; sit-ins; Black Power movement.
-March 28, Brazilian student shot dead. Beginning of protests there against military dictatorship.
*Unrest all over the fucking world in 1968*
-Ah, the Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany.
-? "In a television special broadcast in the United States on NBC, white British singer Petula Clark touches black American singer Harry Belafonte affectionately on the arm."? [The undersigned missed that special. The undersigned never knew that that was a thing.]
-April 3: MLK "I've been to the mountaintop" speech.
-April 4: MLK assassinated.
-April 6: La, la, la. [I know that tune]
-Leftist student protests in Berlin
-LBJ signs Civil Rights Act
-Enoch Powell...anti-immigration...race relations, Britain.
-April 23-30: Columbia University student protests.
-May 13: Paris student riots.
-May 13: "Manchester City wins the 1967–68 Football League First Division by 2 clear points, over club rivals Manchester United."
-May 22: USS Scorpion sinks.
-May 29: "Manchester United wins the European Cup Final, becoming the first English team to do so." We never gave a shit about Europe. Oh, which reminds me, Uefa, fuck you.
-Student protests in Belgrade.
-Oh, Andy Warhol shot. June 3.
-June 5: RFK shot.
-Rosemary's Baby.
-anti-dictatorship protests in Brazil.
Okay, that's through June. Half of 1968 is enough of 1968.
