Centuries:
19th century -
20th century -
21st century
Decades: 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s - 1960s - 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s
Years: 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 - 1968 - 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973
Events:
- January 2 - Dr. Christian Barnard performs the first successful heart transplant[?].
- January 5 - "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia
- January 23 - North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo[?], claiming the ship violated their territorial waters while spying.
- January 30 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive begin when Viet Cong forces launch series of a surprise attacks in South Vietnam.
- January 31 - Viet Cong attack the United States embassy in Saigon
- January 31 - Nauru declares independence from Australia
- February 1 - Vietnam War: A Viet Cong officer is executed by Nguyen Ngoc Loan[?] a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. The execution was videotaped and photographed and helped sway public opinion against the war.
- February 8 - American civil rights movement: A civil rights protest staged at a white-only bowling alley[?] in Orangeburg, South Carolina is broken-up by highway patrolmen leading to the deaths of three college students.
- February 11 - Peggy Fleming[?] wins Olympics figure skating gold medal, Grenoble, France[?].
- February 11 - Israeli-Jordan border clashes.
- February 11 - Madison Square Garden III closes, Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York.
- February 16 - In Haleyville, Alabama the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system goes into service.
- February 17 - In Springfield, Massachusetts the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame opens.
- February 24 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive is halted - South Vietnam recaptures Hué
- March 7 - Vietnam War: The First Battle of Saigon[?] begins.
- March 12 - Mauritius achieves independence from British Rule.
- March 16 - Vietnam War: My Lai massacre American troops kills scores of women and children.
- March 18 - Gold standard: The United States Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.
- March 31 - American President Lyndon Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.
- April 3 - Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "mountaintop" speech.
- April 4 - Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
- April 20 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau becomes Canada's fifteenth prime minister.
- April 23-April 30 - Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
- May - Uprising in Paris, France, nearly brings down the government
- May 22 - The nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion[?] sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
- June 5 - Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, California.
- August 21 - Warsaw Pact nations invade Czechoslovakia
- August 22-August 30 - Police clash with antiwar protesters in Chicago outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention
- November - Richard M. Nixon defeats Hubert H. Humphrey in the U.S. presidential election
- Booker Prize for Fiction is established by Booker plc.
- 1968 is known as the year of the Prague Spring and also the year of the Paris riots[?].
- The ASCII character code is standardized as ANSI Standard X3.4.
- December 27 - The long-running radio program The Breakfast Club[?] signs off for the last time (ABC radio).
Art, Culture & Fashion
Births:
- January 6 - John Singleton, director and writer
- January 14 - LL Cool J, rapper, actor
- January 24 - Mary Lou Retton, gymnast
- January 28 - Sarah McLachlan, singer
- January 29 - Edward Burns[?], actor
- February 1 - Lisa Marie Presley, actress
- February 8 - Gary Coleman, actor
- February 27 - Matt Stairs, professional baseball player
- March 4 - Patsy Kensit[?], actress
- March 11 - Lisa Loeb[?], singer
- March 29 - Lucy Lawless[?], actress, singer
- March 30 - Céline Dion, singer
- April 3 - Sebastian Bach[?], musician ("Skid Row")
- May 7 - Traci Lords, erotic actress
- May 9 - Marie-José Perec, French athlete
- May 26 - Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark[?]
- May 28 - Kylie Minogue, actress and singer
- October 7 - Toni Braxton[?], singer
- November 12 - Sammy Sosa, baseball player
- November 15 - Jennifer Charles[?], singer
Deaths:
- January 22- Duke Kahanamoku, American swimmer.
- February 4 - Neal Cassady, writer
- February 11 - Howard Lindsay[?], United States playwright.
- February 20 - Anthony Asquith[?], director, writer
- February 22 - Peter Arno[?], cartoonist
- February 27 - Frankie Lymon, singer
- March 27 - Yuri Gagarin, the first human to orbit the earth
- April 1 - Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist
- April 4 - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights activist, minister
- April 7 - Jimmy Clark, racing driver
- June 1 - Helen Keller
- November 26 - Arnold Zweig, German writer (* 1887)
- December 12 - Tallulah Bankhead, American actress
- December 20 - John Steinbeck, American writer
- December 30 - Trygve Lie, the first United Nations Secretary General
Nobel Prizes: