HISTORY TIMELINE

 

 

1965

 

Jan 2  Martin Luther King Jr. begins a drive to register black voters in the US South.

Jan 3  A new chancellor is appointed for the University of California at Berkeley. It is announced that political activity will be allowed on campus. Students are to be allowed to hold rallies and speak from the steps of the administration building, Sproul Hall. 

Jan 4  In his State of the Union address,  President Johnson proclaims his Great Society. Also he announces plans to promote birth control abroad, using "our knowledge to help deal with the explosion in world population and the growing scarcity in world resources."

Jan 14  The prime ministers of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years, a sign of improving relations.

Jan 16  A federal grand jury in Mississippi indicted 18 men for violating the civil rights of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, murdered in Mississippi in 1964. 

Jan 20  In Spain, Generalissimo Francisco Franco meets with Jews to discuss legitimizing their communities. 

Feb 6  A Viet Cong raid on a base in Pleiku, South Vietnam, kills 8 Americans. This is done by Vietnamese believing that they are continuing a fight that began with French colonialism and that they are fighting murderous foreign intruders and a minority of Vietnamese who supported the French.

Feb 8  President Johnson orders more bombing in North Vietnam.

Feb 15  Canada acquires a new flag.

Feb 21 In New York, Malcolm X is assassinated in front of 400 people. His assassins will be described as members of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. 

Mar 7  Selma, Alabama, is a city of 29,500 people – 14,400 whites and 15,100 blacks. Its voting rolls are 99 percent white and 1 percent black. With clubs and tear gas, state troopers attack a march for voting rights led by Martin Luther King. It is broadcast on television.

Mar 8  In Vietnam, 3,500 US Marines arrive – the first ground force units from a foreign power since the war between the Vietnamese and the French. 

Mar 9  From California to Washington D.C., people demonstrate against the police action in Selma.  Michigan's Governor George Romney leads a protest parade of 10,000. Demonstrators block rush-hour traffic in downtown Chicago's Loop. In Selma a second attempt to march is stopped. Later, three of the marchers on their way from a restaurant to a black church pass through one of the poorer white neighborhoods. A white Unitarian-Universalist minister, James Reeb, is clubbed to the ground and goes into a coma during a delayed journey to a hospital in nearby Birmingham.   

Mar 9  In the National Review, Russell Kirk writes that if applied in South Africa, one-man/one-vote "would bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization." He describes whites as having "rescued South Africa", and "Bantu political domination would be domination by witch doctors (still numerous and powerful) and reckless demagogues."

Mar 11 James Reeb dies. President Johnson sends flowers and a jet plane to return Mrs. Reeb to Boston.  More demonstrations erupt across the country.

Mar 12  President Johnson instructs his aides to draft a voting rights bill.

Mar 13  In Selma, civil rights demonstrators, including ministers and nuns, try to break through a police blockade. In the White House President Johnson meets with and scolds Alabama's slightly contrite governor, George Wallace. "The Negro," says Johnson, "is going to win his right to participate in his own government." He tell Wallace: "Consider history's verdict. You ought to be thinking of where you will stand in 1995, not 1965."

Mar 14  In Selma, local lawmen arrest four men suspected of connection with Reeb's death. 

Mar 16  In Montgomery, Alabama, police attack 600 SNCC marchers.

Mar 17  President Johnson's voting rights proposal reaches Congress.

Mar 18  A federal judge rules that Martin Luther King and the SCLC have a right to march, as originally intended, from Selma to the state capitol, Montgomery, to petition the state government. 

Mar 21  Martin Luther King leads 3,200 marchers from Selma to Montgomery.

Mar 21-23  Police in Casablanca, Morocco, attack students and workers campaigning against King Hassan II. The number killed is to be estimated at 1,500, according to the BBC more than thirty years later. 

Mar 24-25  At the University of Michigan the first teach-in is held against the US war in Vietnam.

Mar 25  In Alabama, Klansmen shoot to death Viola Liuzzo, of Michigan, as she is driving marchers from Montgomery back to Selma.

Mar 26  President Johnson appears on television and announces the arrest of four Klansmen suspects in Liuzzo's death.

Apr 7  In a speech at John Hopkins University, President Johnson says that we fight in Vietnam "to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny." He describes "the first reality" in Vietnam as North Vietnam having "attacked the independent nation of South Vietnam."

Apr 28  Civil war has erupted between the followers of deposed President Juan Bosch and the military junta that ousted him. President Johnson sends 42,000 Marines to protect US citizens and prevent an alleged Communist takeover.  

May 12 West Germany and Israel establish diplomatic relations.

May 13  Several Arab nations break diplomatic ties with West Germany.

May 15  Professors from across the country stage a national teach-in in Washington DC. Television networks and major newspapers cover the event, and radio stations broadcast the proceedings to 122 campuses.

May 21-23  In the U.C. Berkeley campus, the Vietnam Day Committee runs an anti-war teach-in. Speakers include Dr. Benjamin Spock; socialist leader Norman Thomas; novelist Norman Mailer; the  journalist I.F. Stone and Professor Staughton Lynd of Yale. Bertrand Russell sends a taped message.

Jun 7 King Hassan II suspends Morocco's constitution and assumes all legislative and executive powers. He has sufficient backing from his military to accomplish this.

Jun 18  Nguyen Cao Ky takes power in South Vietnam as Prime Minister. Nguyen Van Thieu is the official chief of state. It's the 10th government in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 20 months. Much of Vietnam and the world sees the United States as the stable power ruling in Vietnam. The Johnson administration is looking forward to the regimes in Saigon being truly independent and Vietnamese, but the administration is already claiming it is, and it's fooling mostly Americans who want to believe their government.

Jun 19  In Algeria, President Ben Bella's old friend in the military, Houari Boumedienne, has grown disappointed with Ben Bella's dogmatism and authoritarianism. He leads a bloodless coup, ousting Ben Bella from power.

Jun 22  Japan and South Korea renew ties with a Treaty of Basic Relations, signed in Tokyo.

Jul 2   President Johnson announces that he has ordered an increase in US military forces in Vietnam to 125,000. To accomplish this, the monthly draft call is raised from 17,000 to 35,000.

Jul 30  President Johnson signs the Social Security Act into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

Aug 1  In Britain, advertising cigarettes on television is banned. 

 

Aug 5  In Vietnam, newsman Morley Safer covers US Marines setting afire Vietnamese homes in the village of Cam Ne. His story is broadcast on CBS Evening News. Johnson is angry and believes that Safer must be a Communist. He orders a security check, and, when learning that Safer is Canadian, he says, "Well, I knew he wasn't an American."

Aug 6  Chiang Kai-shek's plan to take back the mainland has been launched. Mainland forces sank two of his naval vessels assigned to transport troops on a recon mission. Two hundred of his troops are lost.

Aug 6  President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law.

Aug 9  Singapore separates from the Federation of Malaysia, becoming a sovereign nation. Lee Kuan Yew is its prime minister. 

Aug 11-17  In the community of Watts in Los Angeles a riot begins following a policeman pulling over a driver he suspects is intoxicated. Police send in squads to protect their fellow police, who act with ferocity. On the third day of the riots in Watts, 1,500 National Guardsmen arrived. The number is insufficient, so 13,000 more arrive. During the seven days of rioting, 34 people were killed, 1,100 people injured, 4,000 people arrested, and there is an estimated $100 million worth of damage. 

Aug 20  In Hanceville, Alabama, an Episcopal seminarian, Jonathan Daniels, on his way with some teenage blacks to buy a soda at a store known to sell to blacks, is met at the door by a deputy sheriff with a shotgun who aims his gun and threatens to "blow their brains out." Daniels steps in front of the others and is shot to death. An all white jury will acquit the deputy of the charge against him: manslaughter.  

Sep 28  Fidel Castro announces that anyone can leave for the United States.

Oct 1 In Indonesia, Sukarno's military has fragmented into left-wing and right-wing camps, one camp close to Indonesia's Communist Party, the other anti-Communist. Acting on a report that a coup is to be launched against President Sukarno, a group of leftist soldiers stage a pre-emptive coup. They kill three anti-communist generals, and a fourth escapes. Sukarno has not been warned of the move to support him and feels endangered. 

Oct 6  Sukarno meets with his cabinet and issues a statement denouncing the coup. Alongside Sukarno and guaranteeing his safety is Major-General Suharto, Indonesia's future dictator. The head of Indonesia's Communist Party is flying in an army plane to various places, meeting with party leaders and instructing them to let the military settle things among themselves. He tells them that to avoid creating suspicion they should not organize demonstrations or go underground.

Oct 15  An anti-Communist Jakarta newspaper has accused Chinese intelligence agents of having plotted and financed the leftist coup. Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia are being attacked. More than 5,000 members of Moslem organizations demonstrate, shouting "Crush the Communists'' and "Hang Aidit."

Oct 15  Anti-war marches take place in various locations around the country. In Berkeley, a march intending to pass into Oakland to an army base leaves campus, fills Telegraph Avenue from curb to curb and stretches one mile from Ashby Avenue back to the campus. It is stopped at the Oakland border by a line of Oakland police.

Oct 16  In Berkeley a second march takes place. The Oakland police let members of a motorcycle gang, the Hell's Angels, through their line. The march leaders order the marchers to sit down. A Hell's Angel shouts "Go back to Russia you f***ng communists." One kicks a marcher. The Berkeley police club the Hell's Angels back to Oakland. They club and arrest the Hell's Angel leader, Sonny Barger. 

Oct 24  Muslim vigilante groups are massacring anyone believed to be a Communist. This includes people who belong to labor unions. President Sukarno complains that left-wing organizations are the "victims of false slander." He orders the army to "shoot to kill" to stop the massacres, but he is ignored.

Oct 29  In Paris, an internationally celebrated Moroccan leftist in exile, Mehdi Ben Barka, disappears, never to be seen again.

Oct 30  A counter-demonstration by supporters of President Johnson's war in Vietnam takes place in Washington DC. They are estimated at 25,000 and are led by five Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. Rather than entertain the possibility that the war is a mistake, they appear to be associating support for Johnson's war with patriotism and love of country.

Oct 31  The John Birch Society has an article published in the Palm Beach Post that asks, "What's Wrong with the Civil Rights Movement?" It claims that nothing is wrong except that "the American Negro" is better off than negroes elsewhere thanks to whites, and it claims that the Civil Rights Movement "has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists, patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years."

Nov 6  Cuba and the United States agree on an American airlift of 3,000 to 4,000 emigrants from Cuba to the United States each month.

Nov 11  Britain has declared that it will not grant independence for its colony of Southern Rhodesia until majority rule is created there. The majority of the people there are black. The leader of the white government there, Ian Smith, declares independence.

Nov 22  In Indonesia, vigilantes with enemy-lists continue invading villages across Indonesia. Ethnic Chinese continue to be associated with Communism and are targeted. The army has captured Aidit and he is executed. Soon the US ambassador to Indonesia, Andrew Gilchrist, will total the slaughter victims at 400,000. Sweden's ambassador will describe this as a "very serious under-estimate."

Nov 24 In a bloodless coup in the Republic of the Congo, Lieutenant-General Mobutu seizes power from Joseph Kasavubu and declares himself president.

Nov 26  Mobutu cancels elections set for next spring, saying he will rule as president for the coming five years.

Dec 17  The British government begins an oil embargo against Rhodesia. The United States joins the effort.

Dec 21  Soviet scientists condemn Trofim Lysenko, the Stalinist biologist, for pseudo science.

Dec 30  Ferdinand Marcos has won an election and takes office as President of the Philippines.

1966

 

Jan 1  In the Central African Republic a military coup ousts its first president, David Dacko, who had established a one-party state and enjoyed the support of France. Dacko is replaced by Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa and imprisoned.

Jan 2  According to the New York Times, President Johnson's greatest personal disappointment for the year just ended is the failure of the United States to convince Hanoi and Beijing of the sincerity of its desire for peace in Vietnam.

Jan 4  Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) has been a single-party state since independence in 1960. In response to student, labor, civil service unrest and a general strike, a military coup ousts its first president, Maurice Yaméogo. In agreement with demonstrators, General Sangoué Lamizana takes power as head of a "provisional military government."

Jan 7 In Hanoi, a high-level delegation from the Soviet Union expresses unity with North Vietnam and its wishes for an early Communist triumph over the United States forces in the South.

Jan 8  In Vietnam, the US launches its largest operation yet – Operation Crimp – with 8,000 troops and tanks. The purpose is to clear away the Viet Cong and capture their base near the district of Chu Chi, just north of Saigon. The area is razed and no Viet Cong base found.

Jan 9  In Nigeria, ethnic and regional differences mixed with unhappiness over recent elections has created unrest. There is rioting, looting and the burning alive of political rivals.

Jan 10  In the US, a duly elected young black, Julian Bond, is denied his seat in Georgia's legislature because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Jan 10  In the Soviet Union, the Pakistani-Indian peace negotiations to resolve the Kashmir dispute have ended in an agreement. Pakistan and India sign a treaty. Signing for India is Prime Minister Shastri.

Jan 11 Prime Minister Shastri of India dies of a heart attack.

Jan 11 A journalist, Clyde Petit, has interviewed a couple hundred US servicemen in Vietnam. He passes along a statement from an officer that reads: "If there is a god, and he is very kind to us, and given a million men and five years and a miracle in making the South Vietnamese people like us, we stand an outside chance of a stalemate."

Jan 15 The Federal Prime Minister of Nigeria is kidnapped and two of the country's regional prime ministers are killed in a military coup.

Jan 16  Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi announces that he has accepted an invitation by the Council of Ministers to head a provisional federal military government for the purpose of maintaining law and order.

Jan 22 Ghana's President-for-Life, Kwame Nkrumah, officially opens his great dam on the Volta River.

Jan 24  In India, Indira Gandhi is sworn in as prime minister.

Jan 31  Responding to its displeasure with Ian Smith in Southern Rhodesia, Britain ceases all trade with what Smith calls Rhodesia.

Feb 6  Fidel Castro faults China for trying to spread hostility toward the Soviet Union among Cuban soldiers.

Feb 23  In Syria a group of army officers take power in Syria. The coup leaders describe their move as a "rectification" of Ba'ath Party principles.

Feb 24  Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana is visiting China. Nkrumah is allowing only a single political party. In Ghana, the army and police overthrew his rule. It is an internally driven operation -- with support from the United States, via the CIA. The new regime cites Nkrumah's abuse of individual rights and liberties, corruption, dictatorial practices and the country's deteriorating Marxist-oriented economy.

Mar 2 Kwame Nkrumah arrives in Guinea and is granted political asylum.

Mar 4  John Lennon is annoyed and says, "We [Beatles] are more popular than Jesus." Some believe he is bragging and moving to boycott Beatles music.

Mar 11 In Indonesia, Sukarno signs an order that transfers his presidential powers to General Suharto, while keeping his title as president.

Mar 22 General Motors President James M. Roche appears before a US Senate subcommittee and apologizes to consumer advocate Ralph Nader for the company's campaign of intimidation and harassment against him.

Mar 27 In South Vietnam, 20,000 Buddhists march in demonstrations against Saigon regime policies.

Mar 29 A Gallup poll for the past week has 54 percent approving President Johnson's handling of the Vietnam war and 31 percent opposed.

Apr 21 US Senator J William Fulbright, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is critical of President Johnson's efforts in Vietnam. He makes his "Arrogance of Power" speech at John Hopkins University and says that "Unlike the Republic of South Korea, South Vietnam has an army which [is] without notable success and a weak, dictatorial government which does not command the loyalty of the South Vietnamese People."

Apr 21  President Sukarno admonished his ministers not to view him "as a puppet."

Apr 29  US troops in Vietnam total 250,000.

May 4  Fiat signs a contract with the Soviet government to build a car factory in the Soviet Union.

May 6  The California Senate releases a report that describes the U.C. Berkeley campus as a haven for Communists.

May 12 In California, Ronald Reagan is running for republican nomination for governor. He has been listening to people complaining about wasteful government programs and "welfare chiselers," rising taxes, government regulation, arrogant bureaucrats and the unruly students at Berkeley. Reagan calls for the dismissal of those who contributed to the "degradation" of the university. He demands a legislative investigation of Communism and sexual misconduct at UC Berkeley, and he blames turmoil on the Berkeley campus on "a small group of beatniks, radicals, and filthy speech advocates."

May 13  In Berkeley, students are hard at work studying. It is spring and sometime around now I pass a little house a couple blocks from campus where a party has spilled onto the front lawn. Berkeley is still a friendly place and with few outsiders to detract from it being a student community, where people trust each other. I'm welcomed to the party where people are dancing, eating cheese and sipping wine. Maybe it was a birthday party. But the friendliness is about to change. Pot smoking is just beginning. Front doors have not yet closed. People are talking to each other at parties. Telegraph Avenue is still overwhelmingly filled with students going to and from campus. Outsiders have not yet flocked to Berkeley in significant numbers in response to media news and Berkeley's notoriety. People along Telegraph Avenue are still open, friendly and easy to meet. There is a sense of community. But this is about to change.

May 16  In China, an angry Mao Zedong has emerged from a semi-retirement and is still a venerated figure. He charges that a "bureaucratic class" is oppressing the workers and peasants. He has seen what he believes are counterrevolutionary expressions in art. His wife, Jiang Qing, has spoken of "poisonous weeds." Mao delivers a report to the Communist Party's Central Committee charging that "representatives of the bourgeoisie" have infiltrated the Communist Party at all levels. "Persons like Khrushchev, for example," says Mao "are still nestling beside us."

May 21-27 This week the American Council on Education names U.C. Berkeley the "best-balanced distinguished university in the country." Harvard is named as second.

May 24  The Nigerian government forbids all political activity in the country, a prohibition to last until 1969.

May 26  Guyana achieves independence from the United Kingdom.

Jun 1 Mao sides with a student rebellion at Beijing University. His wife, Jiang Qing, distributes armbands to the students and declares that they are a new vanguard of the revolution.

Jun 2  In the Republic of the Congo, four former cabinet ministers have been accused of plotting to assassinate President Mobutu. They are executed.

Jun 6  Civil rights activist James Meredith is shot while on his "March against Fear" from Memphis Tennessee, heading to Jackson, Mississippi. The march will continue, joined by an angry young activist Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others.

Jun 13  The US Supreme Court, in Miranda v Arizona, rules that police must inform criminal suspects of their right to consult with an attorney and of their right against self-incrimination prior to questioning by police.

Jun 14 The Vatican abolishes the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (index of banned books).

June 18  In China, a decree postpones university entrance exams for six months in order to refashion the education system. Middle schools and universities throughout the country are closed as students devote their time to Red Guard activities.

Jun 19  The Senate Internal Security subcommittee charges that Communists have played a key role in organizing campus demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.

Jun 28  In Argentina, Peronist gains in local elections and worker unrest concern the military. Another of Argentina's military coups deposes president Arturo Umberto Illia. The new military junta appoints General Juan Carlos Ongania as its leader.

June 29  US planes begin bombing Hanoi and Haiphong.

Jun-Jul ? Jacqueline Kennedy beats the chest of a friend from the days of the Kennedy administration, Robert S. McNamara, still Secretary of Defense, and asks him to "do something to stop the slaughter" in Vietnam.

Jul 4  North Vietnam declares general mobilization.

Jul 14  Richard Speck murders eight student nurses in their Chicago dormitory.

Jul 18-23  Days of violence in Cleveland's predominantly black neighborhoods include arson destroying several blocks of homes and businesses. There are 275 arrests. Four people are killed and 30 critically injured. The Ohio National Guard reestablishes order.

Jul 28  Stokely Carmichael delivers a "black power" speech – a lecture to other blacks. Previously an integrationist allied with Dr. King's movement, Carmichael has turned separatist. He attacks whites helping the civil rights movement as "nothing but treacherous enemies." He says that what the "white press" has been calling riots are "rebellions not riots."

Jul 28 President Johnson announces that to meet" mounting aggression" in Vietnam he is increasing "our fighting strength from 75,000 to 125,000 men almost immediately." A month ago a Gallup poll showed disapproval of his handling of the war at 44 percent and approval at only 38 percent. Now his approval rating will leap back into the lead with 43 percent against 38 percent disapproving.

Jul 29  A power struggle continues in Nigeria. Another military coup, by northern officers, puts Lieutenant-General Yakubu Gowon in power. Thousands of the Igbo tribe flee from massacres in the north. The previous coup leader, Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, and his host, Lieutenant-Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, are stripped, flogged, beaten and then machine-gunned to death.

Aug 1  At the University of Texas at Austin, a sniper, Charles Whitman, kills thirteen.

Aug 1  Mao Zedong supports the Red Guards in a speech to the 11th plenum of the eighth CCP Congress.

Aug 5  Martin Luther King Jr. leads a march into Cicero, Illinois, where whites live next to a black community to their south and fear integration. The march finds hostility from bystanders, and King is struck by a rock.

Aug 5 In Beijing, Bian Zhongyun, principal of a Girls' Middle School, is beaten to death by "Red Guard" students.

Aug 6  University students in West Germany begin to take interest in political activism.

Aug 6  In Bolivia, the popular Rene Barrientos takes office as president. He is helped by his fluency in Quechua and his oratory. He describes himself as a staunch Christian and appears to some as a revolutionary and to others as a law-and-order conservative.

Aug 9  In Lansing, Michigan, 200 or 300 black youths have rampaged for the second night. Governor George Romney denounces advocates of "black power" and threatens action.

Aug15  Syrian and Israeli troops clash for three hours on their border at the Sea of Galilee, otherwise known as Lake Genesaret.

Aug 21 Seven men are sentenced to death in Egypt for anti-Nasser agitation.

Aug 30  Following riots in French Somaliland, France promised the colony independence.

Aug 31  In China, Red Guards are traveling around the country, using free transportation and accusing local authorities of bourgeois transgressions. The Red Guards have begun a campaign to destroy "old ideals, old culture, old customs and old habits." Street names are to be changed, books burned and temples razed.

Sep 3  In China, Lin Biao rides the Maoist bandwagon and urges students to criticize those party officials who have been influenced by the ideas of Nikita Khrushchev. 

Sep 6  In Cape Town, South Africa, Prime Minister Verwoerd is stabbed to death by Dimitri Tsafendas, who will be certified insane. Tsafendas, whose father was Greek and mother black, was classified as white but is said to have been shunned because of his dark skin.

Sep 9  In his campaign for Governor of California, Ronald Reagan lashes out at appeasement of campus malcontents by the California university system president, Clark Kerr, and appeasement by his opponent, Governor Pat Brown. He calls for keeping the university "isolated from political influence."

Sep 30  Botswana acquires independence from British rule. 

Oct 27 Southwest Africa, a League of Nations mandate territory taken from the Germans after World War I, is ruled by South Africa. The United Nations calls on South Africa to withdraw from the territory.

Nov 7 The Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko opens a six-week tour in the United States.

Nov 7 At Harvard University, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara receives courteous treatment until he is set upon by around 800 organized by the Harvard chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society. Twenty-five of them get under his car to prevent him from getting away. The crowd jeers, screams and calls him a fascist and a murderer.

Nov 7 In California the campaign for governor ends. Reagan has heard Governor Pat Brown ridicule him for being an actor. Reagan has been campaigning against students who want to rebel rather than just study, against high taxes, wasteful welfare spending, air and water pollution and Governor Brown believing in "throwing money" at problems.

Nov 8  Ronald Reagan is elected Governor of California. In Massachusetts, Edward Brooke became the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.

Nov 13  The American Civil Liberties Union appeals to the nation's college and university presidents to block efforts by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to obtain membership lists of campus organizations critical of American policy in Vietnam.

Dec 7  The Caribbean Island of Barbados achieves complete independence from Britain.

Dec 16  The U.N. Security Council approves an oil embargo against Rhodesia.

Dec 31 There are now 385,000 US troops in Vietnam. There, 5,008 US military personnel died in action 1966, an average of more than 13 per day. Another 1,045 died from "non-hostile" occurrences. 

1967

 

Jan 13 In Togo, Lieutenant-General Gnassingbe Eyadema seizes power in a bloodless coup. Political parties are dissolved. Eyadema will rule as "president" unchallenged until he dies in 2005.

Jan 14  In San Francisco's Golden Gate Park approximately 30,000 take part in a "be-in." Among the participants are Allen Ginsberg, credited with creating the term "flower power," and Timothy Leary, fired Harvard professor and LSD guru, who calls on people to "Turn on, Tune in and Drop out."

Jan 16  California's governor, Ronald Reagan, meets with FBI agents for information on Berkeley campus radicals.

Jan 20  Governor Reagan and the state's Board of Regents fire Clark Kerr, president of California's university system. Reagan thinks Kerr has been too soft on student protesters.

Jan 20  Evangelist Billy Graham describes some of the Crusaders for Christ at the Berkeley campus as "a bit zealous" but says he prefers that to "cold, frigid" efforts.

Jan 27  A fire erupts during a launch pad test, killing US astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward Higgins White and Roger Chaffee.

Jan 27  The US, Soviet Union and Britain sign an Outer Space Treaty. The treaty prohibits use of space, the moon or other celestial bodies as a military base or for any purpose not peaceful.

Feb 7  In Britain, the British National Front was founded. Its purpose is to oppose immigration, multiculturalism and to replace internationalism, including the United Nations and NATO, with bilateral agreements.

Feb 15  In Vietnam, thirteen US helicopters were shot down in one day.

Feb 18  China sends three divisions to Tibet.

Feb 24  The Soviet Union forbids its East European satellites to form diplomatic relations with West Germany.

Feb 27  The Caribbean Island of Dominica acquires independence from Britain and remains within the Commonwealth.

Mar 1  China's Red Guards have been having disputes over which of them best represents Chairman Mao's thinking. Now they are returning to school. 

Mar 6  President Johnson announces his plan for a lottery for conscription into the military: "the draft."

Mar 9   While in India, Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliuyeva, defected to the US through its embassy.

Mar 12   Indonesia's State Assembly removes all powers from Sukarno and names General Suharto acting president.

Mar 13  Soul singers Otis Redding and Sam & Dave arrive in London to begin their 4-week tour of Europe to rave audiences. The Beatles send their private limos to pick them up. Their use of the word "soul", say Sam & Dave, who helped popularize the word, is not about race, it is about freedom.

 

Mar 21-23  In Sierra Leone four days have passed since its first parliamentary elections since independence. The head of the army, Brigadier-General David Lansana, seizes power. Multi-party democracy in Sierra Leone ends. Two days later, senior military officers overthrow Lansana and create a "National Reformation Council." Democracy is not restored.

Mar 22  Regarding Vietnam, Republican House Minority Leader, Gerald R Ford, alongside Republican Senator Dirksen, says that President Johnson "does not have sufficient resolution."

Mar 29  France launches its first nuclear submarine.

Apr 4  Martin Luther King Jr. denounces the war in Vietnam. An angry President Johnson will call him "that goddam nigger preacher."

Apr 5  Grayline bus service begins tours of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, its tourist riders to stare at so-called hippies who live there. 

Apr 14  In San Francisco thousands protest President Johnson's policy in Vietnam by marching from the Ferry building to Kezar Stadium which they fill to capacity. A Vietnam veteran, David Duncan, gives the gathering's keynote speech. 

Apr 17 Long hair has been growing in popularity among Greek youth, and rightist military leaders dislike it. The Rolling Stones perform in Athens and receive a tumultuous welcome, but they feel bad vibrations from the police and are happy to return to their departing airliner.   

Apr 21 Ultra-conservative generals in Greece fear the results of the elections scheduled for May. A coup led by Colonel George Papapoulos takes power. Papadopoulos is to appoint himself prime minister and regent to the crown. Moderate and leftist politicians will be arrested. Long hair and Western music will be banned along with the music of composer Mikis Theodorakis of "Zorba" fame.

Apr 25  Britain grants internal self-government to Swaziland.

Apr 28 Boxing champion Muhammad Ali has refused induction into the Army and is stripped of his boxing title.

Apr 28  General William Westmoreland tells the US Congress that the United States will "prevail in Vietnam." His analysis of the war is that the struggle in Vietnam did not have origins within Vietnam – as with French colonialism. Westmoreland sees the problem as South Vietnam (a creation rising from French colonialism) as having been "marked as a target for the Communist stratagem called 'War of National Liberation.'" He says he sees "no evidence that this is an internal insurrection."

May 1 In Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a member of the family that has ruled since 1937, becomes president. He remains director of the National Guard, giving him absolute political and military control.

May 8  Boxer Muhammad Ali is indicted for refusing induction into the US Army.

May 8  Twenty-six Black Panthers, led by Bobby Seale, visit California's state legislature concerning gun legislation. They are openly armed, arrested and charged with disturbing the peace.   

May 16  Egyptians have been interested in erasing the disgrace of their defeat by Israeli forces back in 1956. Egypt's president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, sends his tanks forward on Egyptian territory in the Sinai desert,  closer to Israel. He asks the United Nations to withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the Sinai.

 

May 24  The UN forces have left the Sinai. Egypt has erected a blockade at the Strait of Tiran against Israel's access to shipping in the Red Sea. Egypt moves 9,000 men, 200 tanks and guns to positions at the edge of the Gaza Strip, near Rafah. A speech by Nasser gives his military officers confidence in victory.

May 25  The Israeli military chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, suffers a nervous breakdown from which he will soon recover.

May 26  Israel's foreign minister, Abba Eban, leaves Washington after a one-day visit. President Johnson is friendly toward Eban and complains of his need of Congressional approval if he is to help Israel with the weaponry that it wants. In recent days Johnson has been bombarded by telegrams from Jews requesting help for Israel, but he is upset over widespread hostility among Jews in the US toward his policies regarding Vietnam, and he is angry with Israel for its failure to publicly support the US in Vietnam and to press Israel's friends in the US to back his policies in Vietnam. "Israel gets more than it's willing to give," he comments, "It's a one way street." 

May 27 Nasser postpones his military attack planned for the 28th. He is afraid of  US intervention and does not know whether he will have military support from the Soviet Union. Nasser's pilots are disappointed. One of them complains that they should "trust that Allah will aid us."

May 30 Jordan signs a pact with Egypt, stipulating that Jordan's forces are to be placed under Egyptian military command. Iraq joins the pact.

Jun 2  Students in West Germany have been protesting every week. Today Benno Ohnesorg, protesting with others a visit by the Shah of Iran, is shot dead by overzealous police. Protesting youth acquire a martyr.

Jun 2  Rioting and looting erupted in the Roxbury section of Boston. Nearly 100 are arrested.

Jun 2  Nasser's strategy is now to let Israel strike first. He claims that he cannot risk alienating world opinion by attacking first. He assures his military commanders that they could manage a first strike from Israel and says that it will come by June 5 at the latest.

Jun 5  Egypt's air force is on alert and expecting air attacks at dawn. When the attack doesn't come the pilots relax and have breakfast, away from their planes. Israeli aircraft, employing the tactical element called "the unexpected," show up at nine in the morning, having avoided Egyptian radar by approaching from an unexpected direction. Within 100 minutes Egypt no longer has an air force. Egypt's 13 airbases, 23 radar stations, anti-aircraft sites and 107 aircraft are destroyed. The Israelis lost nine planes. In the United States, Secretary of State Dean Rusk is relieved that the Israelis have not been driven to the beaches, but he is angry with them for having struck first.

Jun 9  Israel turns around an attack by Egypt's ally, Syria. Israel attacks the Syrians on the Golan Heights – high ground from which the Syrians had been shelling Israel. 

Jun 10  Egypt has launched its tanks against Israel, but, with Israel ruling the skies and Egyptian troops suffering poor communications, Egypt's ground war fails.

Jun 11 In Egypt the fiction has arisen that British and American intervention is the cause of the poor performance of Egypt's military. From Cairo, a radio broadcast of "Voice of the Arabs" tells the Egyptian people that the United States is "the hostile force behind Israel ... the enemy of all peoples, the killer of life, the shedder of blood that is preventing you from liquidating Israel." The Soviet Union plays to Arab sentiment. It verbally attacks the US and severs relations with Israel.

Jun 12  The US Supreme Court declares all state laws prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional.

Jun 16-17 The Monterey International Pop Festival opens in California and is attended by over 200,000. Featured are Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Otis Redding and many others.

Jun 17 Communist China has successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.

Jun 19  On television, Paul McCartney of the Beatles repeats his admission that he has taken LSD.

Jun  21 Summer begins. A song is in the air called California Dreaming. "If you are going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair." The lyrics also speak of "a love-in there." School is out. Tens of thousands of young people are headed to San Francisco for what will be called a "summer of love."

Jun 26  A "race riot" begins on the east side of Buffalo, New York, where fourteen people are shot. The Buffalo riots will last five days.

Jun 28 The California State legislature passes a law, the Mulford Act, prohibiting the carrying of firearms in any public place, effectively outlawing Black Panther safety patrols in Oakland.

Jul 4  Britain's parliament decriminalizes homosexuality.

Jul 4  In the United States the Freedom of Information Act becomes official. To withhold information, government agencies must show its need to be classified.

Jul 6  The Biafra region of Nigeria claims succession. Civil war erupts that is to last two years and claim approximately 600,000 lives.

Jul 13  Black "rioting" begins in Newark, New Jersey.

Jul 15  Black "rioting" erupts in Detroit.

Jul 17 Black "rioting" erupts in Cairo, Illinois.

Jul 20  Black "rioting" erupts in Memphis, Tennessee.

Jul 26  The Black power celebrity, H. Rap Brown, is arrested for inciting a riot in Maryland.

Jul 27  President Johnson appoints the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of the violence. The report was released in early 1968. It will conclude that the rioting of 1967 was the result of black frustration over a lack of economic opportunity.

Jul 30  A week of looting and burning in Detroit is quelled by the arrival of 4,700 paratroops dispatched by President Lyndon Johnson.

Jul 30  Four people are killed during a "race riot" in Milwaukee.

Jul 30  General William Westmoreland claims both that he is winning the war in Vietnam and needs more troops.

Aug 1  Blacks riot in Washington D.C.

Aug 1  Israel acts on a threat made to Jordan at the beginning of the Six-Day War. Because Jordan did not stay out of the war, Israel took control of the entire city of Jerusalem.

Aug 3  President Johnson announces plans to send 45,000 more troops to Vietnam.

Aug 7 China agrees to give North Vietnam aid in the form of a grant.

Aug 7  In East Jerusalem a general strike by Arabs protests Israel's annexation.

 

Aug 13  In US theaters the movie Bonnie and Clyde opens.

Sep 4  During an interview for television, Michigan's governor, George Romney, says he was brainwashed by US officials during his 1965 visit to Vietnam. It is to be seen as the end of his chances for the Republican presidential nomination for 1968.

Sep 23  The Soviet Union has been under moral pressure from North Vietnam to help their struggle for national liberation. It signs an agreement with Hanoi to send more aid.

Oct  Former US Vice President, Richard Nixon, writes an article for Foreign Affairs magazine and says "Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations."

Oct 2  Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black justice of the US Supreme Court.

Oct 6  The "summer of love" in San Francisco has turned into a nightmare. The "Diggers," recognized by their activism as leaders of "hippie" community in San Francisco, parade with a coffin in the Haight-Ashbury district to mark the "Death of Hip."  Haight-Ashbury cultural radicals have been moving north into rural Mendocino County, where until recently young men with long hair had been beaten up. Mendocino County is about to be transformed.

Oct 9  In Bolivia, Che Guevara and fellow guerrillas have failed to win over rural farmers. Guevara and three comrades are captured and executed.  

Oct 17  In New York the musical Hair premiers Off-Broadway.

Oct 17  President Johnson's draft has mobilized those who are threatened by it. In Oakland, California, young men subject to the draft join anti-war protesters from the Berkeley campus and overturn cars, block intersections and temporarily close down the Oakland city center. Anti-war demonstrations also take place outside draft boards in various cities.

Oct 17  The US Army sends one of its battalions into a trap, killing sixty-one of them. This is not supposed to be happening, and the army will describe it to news people as a victory. (See They Marched into Sunlight by David Maraness.)

Oct 18  At the university in Madison, Wisconsin, hundreds of students protest recruiting by Dow Chemical, the maker of napalm and Agent Orange. Madison police turn violent. Dozens of students are beaten bloody and 19 police officers are treated for minor injuries at local hospitals. The violence by police politicizes thousands of previously apathetic students.

Oct 20  In Meridian, Mississippi, seven men are convicted of violating the civil rights of the three civil rights workers murdered in 1964.

Oct 26  John McCain bails from his damaged plane and falls into Hanoi’s Truc Bach Lake. He is viewed as a heinous criminal, beaten, bayoneted in the foot and groin and taken away for imprisonment and more primitivity and torture.  

Oct 26  The Government eliminates draft deferments for those who violate draft laws, including burning draft cards or interfering with military recruitment for the war.

Oct 26  In Iran, his imperial majesty, the King of Kings, the Shadow of God and Light of the Aryans, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, has his official coronation.

Oct 27  Richard Nixon claims that the US must pursue the war in Vietnam to a "successful" conclusion or risk a Third World War.

Oct 28  While going for food at four in the morning, Huey Newton is pulled over and hassled by sarcastic Oakland policemen. A shootout results in the death of one of the officers, John Frey. Newton is taken to the police station, spit at and threatened with "an accidental shooting."

Nov 2  President Johnson holds a secret meeting with a group of the nation's most prestigious leaders ("the Wise Men") and asks them to suggest ways to unite the American people behind the war effort. They conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.

Nov 7  President Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

Nov 9  A five-choice Vietnam war referendum at University of California showed today 55 per cent of the students casting ballots favored immediate withdrawal of US troops.

Nov 13  In Oakland, a county grand jury indicts Huey Newton on charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder and kidnapping.

Nov 13  In Cleveland, Ohio, Carl Stokes is elected mayor – the first African-American mayor of a major US city.

Nov 17  President Johnson tells the nation that in Vietnam "we are making progress." He says, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking."

Nov 21 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the air quality act, allotting $428 million for the fight against pollution.

Nov 21 General Westmoreland tells news reporters:  "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."

Nov 30  South Yemen becomes independent from Britain.

Dec 5  In the city of New York, 1,000 antiwar protesters try to close a draft center, resulting in the arrest of 585, including Allen Ginsberg and Dr. Benjamin Spock.

Dec 8-10  From Moscow, Leonid Brezhnev flies to Prague, invited by the Czech Communist Party's first secretary and the country's president, Antonin Novotny, who wants Brezhnev's help in resolving a political crisis. Brezhnev is dismayed by the extent of dislike for Novotny among his fellow Communists. It is your business (eto vasha dyelo) he tells the Czechs and flies back home.

Dec 10  Otis Redding joins the many music stars who die in airplanes. He and six others die when their plane crashes into Lake Monona in Wisconsin.

Dec 31  Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Dick Gregory and friends pronounce themselves "Yippies" members of the Youth International Party. These are young men who know about street theater attracting media attention. Rubin believes that pot smoking is going to end the war in Vietnam.

Dec 31  Some 474,300 US soldiers are now in Vietnam.

1968

 

Jan 5  In Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party's Central Committee votes out Antonin Novotny as First Secretary and replaces him with Alexander Dubcek. Novotny remains the country's president, but it is the beginning of what will be known as the Prague Spring – a reference to the blossoming of reform.

Jan 31 General Giap of North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive, with minimum and maximum goals of success. The Viet Cong emerges from hiding to do most of the fighting. The offensive involves simultaneous attacks in the larger cities and against major US military bases.

Feb 1  US forces launch a counter-attack against Giap's offensive. The Viet Cong suffers heavy losses. 

Feb 2  President Johnson describes the Tet Offensive "a complete failure." The offensive is to continue for two more months.

Feb 4  Addressing his Atlanta congregation about the US in Vietnam, Martin Luther King Jr. says, "And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King predicts this response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

Feb 8  Communist forces kill 21 US Marines at Khe Sanh.

Feb 24  US Marines occupy the Imperial Palace in the heart of the city of Hue. The Marines lost 142 killed and 857 wounded. The US Army's loss is 74 killed and 507 wounded. Saigon's forces lost 384 killed and 1,830 wounded. Communist forces dead are estimated at over 5,000.

Feb 27 Television news anchorman Walter Cronkite has just returned from Saigon and tells his viewers that "the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."

Feb 28  In the US, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the behest of General Westmoreland, asks President Johnson for an additional 206,000 soldiers and mobilization of reserve units.

Mar 1  President Johnson's popularity drops below 30 percent and endorsement for war policies falls to 26 percent.

Mar 8-11  In Warsaw, Poland, university students are protesting against policies of the Communist regime. The government arrests ten students and sentences them to prison on charges of hooliganism and insulting the police. Tens of thousands of Poles clash with policemen in front of Communist party headquarters and at the statue of the national poet, Adam Mickiewicz.

Mar 12  In Poland three government officials are fired and Jewish Zionists and some other Jews are accused of having organized the disturbances.

Mar 12  President Johnson barely wins the New Hampshire Democratic primary against a critic of the war, Senator Eugene McCarthy.

Mar 15  In Czechoslovakia, those who have been censoring printed materials ask permission to end their censorship.

Mar 15  Student defiance of the Communist regime in Poland enters its second week. A boycott of classes spreads from the city of Krakow to Warsaw. 

Mar 16  Robert F. Kennedy, now a US Senator from New York, announces his candidacy for the presidency. Polls indicate Kennedy is more popular than the President.

Mar 16  A US Army company enters the hamlet of My Lai and finding no Viet Cong soldiers they vent their frustration on people in the hamlet, killing everyone in sight – an estimated 300. A helicopter lands, and pilot Hugh Thompson, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta put themselves in the line of fire between the troops and fleeing civilians and begin evacuating the wounded civilians.

Mar 18  The US Congress repeals the requirement for gold as the backing of US currency.

Mar 18  In Paris, youths set off bombs in the offices of Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bank of America and Trans World Airlines. They believe these companies are involved in the war in Vietnam. 

Mar 19  Wladyslaw Gomulka, the Polish Communist party leader, seeks to moderate the anti-Zionist campaign that has spread across the country in the past week. 

Mar 22  Antonin Novotny resigns as President of Czechoslovakia.

Mar 22  In Paris, police arrest five young persons concerning the recent bombings. A group of about 150 gather at the University of Paris to protest the arrests, and they begin what they call the Movement of March 22.

Mar 25-26  In Washington D.C. the wise men gather again, including Clark Clifford, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and General Omar Bradley. Their non-unanimous recommendation is withdrawal from Vietnam. 

Mar 26  Communist East Germany's leading ideologist, Kurt Hager, denounces Czechoslovakia's Communist Party reformers.

Mar 28  A report of the My Lai incident by the participating Army company leaders describes 69 Viet Cong killed and mentions no civilian casualties.

Mar 31  President Johnson announces: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

Mar 31  In Poland the government closes eight departments at Warsaw University, expels 34 students and suspends 11.

Apr 1  Alexander Dubcek affirms his determination to make Communism in Czechoslovakia democratic.

Apr 4  In Memphis, Tennessee, in the motel where he and his associates were staying, Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by a rifle shot.

Apr 11  President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The act prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, physical handicap or family status.

Apr 23-30  In New York City, protesting the war in Vietnam, students at Columbia University take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

May 4  At the University of Paris – the Sorbonne – police are called in to end student rioting. 500 are arrested.

May 6  In the Latin Quarter in Paris pitched battles are fought between radicals and police.

May 11  Thousands of students fight again in the streets in the Latin Quarter. They erect more than 60 barricades.

May 13  French labor unions, students and teachers begin a 24-hour general strike. Labor unions turn their factory yards into fairgrounds in support of the student uprising. The celebrated intellectual Jean Paul Sartre and 121 other intellectuals sign a statement asserting "the right to disobedience," and Sartre speaks approvingly of student barricades.

May 15  Two thousand workers occupy the aircraft construction plant of Sud-Aviation at Nantes, and they are holding the plant manager and his principal aides prisoner.

May 17  Gold prices soar in London to $41.37 per ounce.

May 19  Military maneuvers by Warsaw Pact forces along the Czechoslovak border is making Czechs nervous. I have passed from East Berlin to Prague, and in Prague I walked in a demonstration which had banners reading "it is our business", a message meant for the Russians. Demonstrators who learn I am an American complain about being depicted in the US as anti-Communist. 

May 20  In France millions more workers occupy factories, mines and offices.

May 21  In Prague I hope to get permission from a sitting group of hard-looking Polish officials who don't want to let student trouble makers pass into their country. I don't dare tell them I'm from Berkeley. Instead I tell them I'm a fisherman from California. Maybe it is my visa for the Soviet Union that gets me permission to enter Poland.  

May 23  In southwestern France, dissident farmers have formed command squads to disrupt highway traffic to  protest government agriculture policies.

May 23  In Belgium, students occupy the Free University of Brussels and say they will remain until their demands are met for changes in curriculum, teaching methods, examinations and the structure of the university.

May 25  In Paris, a student demonstration that started peacefully the day before turns into the most violent and widespread battle with the police since the student revolt began more than two weeks ago.

May 26  France's striking workers gain a 35 per cent increase in minimum wages.

May 26  The American writer, Eric Hoffer writes of nations such as Turkey, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Algeria and Indonesia having driven out "thousands, even millions of people." He wonders about Arabs displaced by Israel's warring having created eternal refugees and complains that "everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab." Hoffer appears to dislike what he describes as Arnold Toynbee calling "the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis."

May 27  In Warsaw I've been staying with students in a large university dormitory. Students who fill a small room tell me how unhappy they are with the Communist regime in power. Two Cubans among them walk with me around Warsaw and tell me how much they like Castro and fault the Polish students for not appreciating socialism. The Polish student who brought me in to stay at the dormitory as his guest is questioned by a government agent.

May 28  Paris has been hosting peace talks between Washington and Hanoi. The US has reduced its bombing in North Vietnam to encourage Hanoi to end its struggle.  A frustrated President Johnson calls on the negotiations "to move from fantasy and propaganda to the realistic and constructive work of bringing peace."

May 29  Hanoi's spokesman at the peace talks accuses Johnson of using "hypocritical, false, lying words" in charging Hanoi with obstructing the talks.

May 30  President de Gaulle dissolves France's National Assembly and warns France that if necessary he will take measures to prevent a Communist "dictatorship."  France's middle class rallies. In Paris, hundreds of thousands march in support of de Gaulle.

May 30  Gen. William C. Westmoreland reports to President Johnson that the forces of the enemy in Vietnam are "deteriorating in strength and quality."

Jun 3  I am in Moscow. My ballpoint pen has stopped working. I walk around the city looking for a shop that sells ballpoint pens. I found none. I tried to buy a pen from a couple of secretaries, with no luck. At the train depot, while waiting to depart for Siberia, I find a ballpoint pen cartridge with other items for sale under glass. I bought it and on the trip east will write with just a cartridge.

Jun 5  Robert Kennedy wins the California primary and appears to be on his way to becoming the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

Jun 6  On the Trans-Siberian railway, a Russian passenger politely approaches and tells me that Robert Kennedy has been shot and killed.

Jun 10  General Chreighton Abrams replaces William Westmoreland as US military commander in Vietnam. Westmoreland pursued a strategy of "search and destroy" to defeat an elusive enemy. Abrams is open to the idea that force can be counterproductive and he will look more also to winning hearts and minds.

Jun 23  In parliamentary elections in France the relatively conservative Gaullist party triumphs, increasing its seats in parliament from 200 to 297. With its allies the Gaullist party will hold 385 of the 487 seats in the Assembly. The Socialists drop from 118 seats to 57. Communist Party seats decrease from 73 to 34.

Aug 8  Richard Nixon is chosen as the Republican Party's presidential candidate. He promises "an honorable end to the war in Vietnam."

Aug 1 In Japan, the many nearby family-owned shops make the country charming for me and a consumer's paradise compared to the Soviet Union.

Aug 20-21  Warsaw Pact forces with tanks and aircraft enter Czechoslovakia. Alexander Dubcek urges people not to resist.  Dubcek and other reformers are taken to Moscow on a Soviet military transport aircraft.   

Aug 22-30  In Chicago, police riot against antiwar demonstrators, and the Democratic National Convention nominates Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, as its candidate for president. 

Aug 27 In Moscow, comrade Brezhnev has scolded Alexander Dubcek concerning what he considers unfair,"rightist" criticisms in Czechoslovak publications. Now, Dubcek and others are returned to Prague and Dubcek retains his position as the First Secretary of Czechoslovakia's Communist Party.

Sep 9  Arthur Ashe defeats Tom Okker of the Netherlands to win the US Open.

Sep 27 Antonio Salazar, 79, conservative dictator of Portugal since 1932, has suffered a stroke and is replaced by another authoritarian conservative, Marcello Caetano.

Sep 29  In Greece, the military junta, in power since April, 1967, maintains press censorship and martial law.  The junta leader, Papadopoulos, warns those he has released from prison that he hopes that they "will not make another false step and force me to put them away again." His regime holds a referendum on its new constitution, claiming that it is a step democracy. The yes vote is tallied at 95.2 percent.

Sep 30  The 900th US aircraft is shot down over North Vietnam

Oct 2  Student unrest has plagued Mexico City since summer. Discontented students want those responsible for police brutality dismissed from the government, and they want to exploit world attention on the city from the coming Olympic games. The government of Luis Echeverría uses the army and police, tanks and armored cars to crush the student demonstration. Ammunition is fired at the demonstrators, which also strikes people who are not a part of the demonstration. The government will describe 4 dead and 20 wounded. Most sources will report between 200 and 300 deaths. A study will conclude that the demonstrators were unarmed. In 2006 Echeverría will be charged with genocide and placed under house arrest.

Oct 11  In Panama a military coup overthrows the democratically-elected government of President Arnulfo Arias.

Oct 12-27 The Olympic Games are held in Mexico City. On the victory stand, during the playing of the US national anthem, sprinters Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos raise their fists to show support for black power and unity and both are suspended from the US Olympic team.

Oct 31  Citing progress in the Paris peace talks, President Johnson announces that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.

Nov 2  Presidential candidate Nixon is afraid that President Johnson is plotting a peace deal with North Vietnam will help the Democratic Party's candidate Hubert Humphrey win the election. Nixon promises Saigon's President Nguyen Van Thieu a better deal for South Vietnam under a Nixon presidency and urges him to reject any peace settlement that Johnson is pursuing with his bombing halt. Johnson will be furious and call it treason. It's not an exaggeration: The Logan Act of 1799 forbids citizens, including presidential candidates, from interfering with negotiations between the United States and foreign governments.

Nov 5  The left-of-center in the United States has fragmented. The AFL-CIO is deeply into Cold War rhetoric, hardline regarding dealing with communism, including supporting President Johnson's war in Vietnam. There are those for patience and working for peace with the Soviet Union and critical of Johnson's policies regarding Vietnam. And there are those blue-collar workers who dislike the civil rights movement and are supporting George Wallace. The Democratic Party suffers from fragmentation. In today's presidential election, Richard Nixon won the presidency with 43.4 percent of the vote. Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat, takes 42.7 percent. George Wallace, with Curtis Lemay as his running mate, receives 13.5 percent of the popular vote and wins in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. 

Dec 3 Elvis Presley's singing career has been in decline. His last single was in 1962. His movie box office has also been in decline, and there are fears that he is considered not cool. Presley likes Nixon, perhaps irrelevant as today he stages a comeback on a NBC television show. Presley visited Nixon in 1970 and gave him a hug and a Colt 45 semi-automatic pistol.

1969

 

Jan 18 -19  Yippies and others hold a counter-inaugural parade, and at midnight they hold a mock swearing-in ceremony. The character representing the president wears a pig mask, followed by a play assassination. They have an inaugural ball, with a poetry reading, a light show and rock bands. Many in the United States, including liberals, ignore it or dismiss it as an infantile disorder. A writer for New York's hippest newspaper, the Village Voice, describes the "bash" as "more depressing, deluded, exploitative, and trapped in the past than any straight event I attended during my time in Washington."

Jan 20  Richard Nixon enters the presidency convinced "that a clear-cut victory in Vietnam [is] no longer possible." ( Kissinger, Diplomacy, 1994, p. 676.) In his inaugural address Nixon proclaims that Americans "cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another." And he says, "the greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America."

Jan 25  In Paris, peace talks resumed, attended by representatives from the US, the Saigon regime, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. President Nixon favors a negotiated settlement of the war, believing that a unilateral US withdrawal would be a disaster. He wants the war to end but without the appearance of a US capitulation.

Jan 27  In Baghdad, nine Jews are executed for spying. Baghdad Radio invites Iraqis to "come and enjoy the feast." An estimated 500,000 men, women and children parade and dance past the hanging bodies and chant "Death to Israel" and "Death to all traitors."

Jan 28  A "Third World" strike has been dwindling on the US Berkeley campus. Governor Reagan arranges to have police intervene to protect students from disruption.

Jan 29  Near Santa Barbara an offshore oil well begins what in the coming eleven days will be the release of 200,000 gallons of oil that will spread over 800 square miles of ocean and 35 miles of coastline. The people of this affluent part of California are outraged.

Feb 4  Al-Fatah leader Yasser Arafat takes over as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Feb 5  Turmoil has increased as off-campus anarchists have attacked a police line and the police have retaliated in forays that strike at students merely walking off campus. War between students and the police has erupted. Governor Reagan declares "a state of extreme emergency" on the Berkeley campus and surrounding area. 

Feb 25  In Vietnam, Navy Lt. Bob Kerry takes part in a raid on the village of Thanh Phong. More than a dozen women, children and old men are killed. Kerry is to receive a Bronze Star for the raid and would later express regret over his actions.

Feb 27  Governor Reagan orders the National Guard to control the Berkeley campus.

Mar 15   Violence erupts between China and the Soviet Union over a disputed island on the Ussuri River.

Mar 17  Moscow calls China a threat to world peace.

Mar 17  Golda Meir becomes Israel's fourth prime minister.

Mar 20  John Lennon, Beatle, marries Yoko Ono, artist.

Mar 18  US B52s begin carpet bombing in Eastern Cambodia, ordered by President Nixon, who wants to destroy sanctuaries for the North Vietnamese that could make remaining US forces vulnerable to attack when withdrawals of US forces begin.

Mar 21 The FBI is targeting the Black Panther Party in its program of investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States – a program labeled COINTELPRO. Alex Rackley, a 24-year-old member of the New York chapter of the Black Panthers, was suspected of being an informant and taken to the Panther headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut. There he was tortured and held for two days. On March 21 he was fatally shot and his body dumped in the Coginchaug River.  

Mar 28  Former President Eisenhower dies of heart failure.

Mar 29  In Stockholm, Czechoslovakia beats the Soviet Union in ice-hockey. Celebrations in Prague turn into demonstrations against the Soviet Union. Czechs attack Soviet occupation troops and ransack the Soviet airline office.

Apr 7  A legal search for betting paraphernalia in the home of Robert Eli Stanley has turned up a movie and projector. Stanley has been prosecuted for possessing obscene material. In Stanley v Georgia, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene materials on the grounds of a constitutional right to privacy.

Apr 8  The first artificial heart is implanted into a human.

Apr 9  At Harvard University, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) occupy University Hall and are evicted by police. Thirty-seven are injured and 200 arrested.

Apr 17  In Paris, North Vietnam's representative rejects the US proposal for mutual troop withdrawals.

Apr 17  The "Prague Spring" has ended. Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek is forced to resign as First Secretary of Czechoslovakia's Communist Party. Soon he will be made ambassador to Turkey. 

Apr 19  On this Saturday at Cornell University, armed black students forcibly eject parents and university employees from Willard Straight Hall and occupy the hall. Their complaint: the university lacks "a program relevant to black students."

Apr 21  Cornell's faculty votes 726 to 281 for the application of campus rules that would punish those blacks who broke the rules. A spokesman for the blacks, Tom Jones, speaks of a showdown with the university and announces on a local radio station that seven faculty members and administrators will be "dealt with." 

April 24  Leading faculty members at Cornell accuse the university administration of "selling out to terrorists." Some professors refuse to teach until they have written assurance from the university president, James A. Perkins, that the campus is disarmed.

Apr 24  In China, the three-week long Communist Party Congress ends. It is the second such congress since 1949. Sixty percent of former Party members have been replaced. Lin Biao has been named Mao's successor, and he has denounced his old comrade Liu Shaoqi, who is in prison.  He describes Liu Shaoqi as a "traitor and a scab."

Apr 24  More bombing by B-52's occurs in eastern Cambodia.

May 1  The Soviet Union celebrates without the display military power of previous May Day celebrations.

May 10-20  The US launches an offensive in South Vietnam against Hill 937 (Hamburger Hill). The hill is bombed into a wasteland. When finally occupying the hill, the 101st Airborne Division finds that the North Vietnamese have withdrawn. Seventy US soldiers have died and 372 have been wounded.   

May 15  At dawn, a chain-link fence is quickly erected around a one-third acre of university-owned property called People's Park – ordered by the university's Board of Regents. Rioting begins as a crowd of about 3,000, many of them non-students, march from a noon rally on campus intent on "taking back" the park. Governor Reagan is involved with the Regents regarding Berkeley and calls for a tough response against trouble. The Country Sheriffs carry shotguns. A few "street people" on roof troops throw stones down onto the police. By the end of the day one young man on a roof-top, James Rector, has been shot and is near death. Another is blinded. At least 128 persons are treated in local hospitals for head trauma from clubbing, shotgun wounds and other injuries inflicted by law enforcement. Hundreds have been taken to a nearby prison at Santa Rita. Anti-police warfare results in minor injuries for nineteen policemen. None is hospitalized.

May 21 James Rector has died of his wounds. People gather on campus listening to speakers regarding Rector. It is considered an illegal assembly and National Guard troops withdrawn bayonets force the crowd to disperse. Rioting erupts. Helicopters fly over the campus dropping CS gas. Gas carries into Cowell Hospital on the edge of the campus and over most of the rest of campus. Classes are closed and the campus vacated. Some who are late in leaving run through clouds of gas and past club wielding police with gas masks. The entire city of Berkeley is put under military control, including a curfew. Downtown Berkeley is lined with rows of barbed wire. City Councilman Ron Dellums, a Democrat and future chairman of the Congressional Armed Services Committee, rises as a spokesperson for the outraged. 

May 30  Berkeley citizens, numbering approximately 30,000 (out of a total of 100,000), have secured a Berkeley city permit and march without incident past barricaded People's Park to protest recent events. Young girls slide flowers down the muzzles of bayoneted National Guard rifles, and a small airplane flies overhead trailing a banner that reads, "Let a thousand parks bloom." 

May 31 John Lennon and Yoko Ono record "Give Peace a Chance."

Jun 1  A black professor at Cornell University, Thomas Sowell, accuses the university of "paternalism" toward black students and quits, joining a few other disgusted professors.

Jun 5-6  In Connecticut, in two successive nights in two square miles of Hartford's north end, hundreds of black youths hurl stones, break store windows and loot. The police establish a curfew and the rioting ends.

Jun 8  President Nixon begins his "Vietnamization" plan. He tells President Thieu of South Vietnam that 25,000 US troops will leave Vietnam by August.

Jun 11 China complains of Soviet troops crossing into its territory, in Sinkiang province, killing a herder, kidnapping another and concentrating armored troops on the border.

Jul 4  Linda Kasabian has left her home in New Hampshire, looking for God. She joins a group living on a ranch in the Los Angeles area. She describes the leader of the group, Charles Manson, as a beautiful person. Another young woman on the ranch, Susan Atkins, who enjoys getting high with the others, believes Manson is Jesus Christ. 

 

Jul 9  US Ambassador to Indonesia, Frank Galbraith, notes that possibly 85 to 90 percent of the population in West Papua (Irian) "are in sympathy with the Free Papua cause." He observes that recent Indonesian military operations in West Papua has "stimulated fears and rumors of intended genocide."

Jul 18 A car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy runs off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island and submerged in water. His passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, drowns.

Jul 20  Mankind, represented by astronaut Neil Armstrong, steps onto the moon.

Jul 25  Stokely Carmichael, black power advocate and former prime minister of the Black Panther Party, meets Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver in exile in Algiers. He says that his differences with other Black Panther Party leaders is unresolved.    

Jul 28  President Nixon and Henry Kissinger visit Indonesia. Kissinger characterizes President Suharto as  "moderate." He has advised President Nixon that it would be best that they "not raise this issue" of West Papua and that "we should avoid any US identification" with what Indonesia is doing there." 

Aug 8  Charles Manson wants to bring about a race war by having members of his group kill wealthy people and cast suspicion on blacks. He believes that in their music the Beatles have been warning of a coming holocaust, which he calls Helter Skelter. Manson's first target is the house where Terry Melcher once lived. Melcher failed to help Manson in his music career. Manson sends some followers to the house, with Susan Atkins assuming an aggressive role. Among the five people his followers kill is the pregnant wife of movie producer Roman Polanski: Sharon Tate.

Aug 10  Manson's second Helter Skelter operation kills Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

Aug 15-18  What begins as a profit venture becomes a free concert, to be known as Woodstock, in upstate New York. 

Sep 1  King Idris of Libya is in Turkey for medical treatment. Military officers led by Captain Muammar al-Gaddafi take power. Gaddafi is a socialist and will proclaim Libya to be ruled by the people. He will accept a ceremonial rank of colonel and assume no formal office. He will take the title "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution."

Sep 2 The president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, dies.

Sep 10  Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, sends President Nixon a memo stating that if Vietnamization takes too long, public restlessness might increase. The note expresses concern about Hanoi continuing its course of "waiting us out."

Sep 11  President Nixon wants to encourage the North Vietnamese to settle the war to his liking. He resumed bombing in North Vietnam.  

Oct 4  In West Hollywood, Diane Linkletter jumps from her sixth-story home to her death. Her famous father, Art Linkletter, will blame drugs and Timothy Leary. Drugs but no LSD will be found in her system.   

Oct 8  In the US, a small faction within the Students for a Democratic Society have split off from the others. They believe that a war should begin immediately against the capitalist system. They are called the "Weathermen," from a Bob Dylan song about "which way the wind blows." In Chicago they gather to begin "bringing the war home." Only 300 of the 10,000 they expected show up. They rampage through downtown Chicago, smashing windows. They also blew up a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. Six of them are shot and seventy arrested.

Oct 9-10  In Chicago two smaller violent confrontations occurred. The capitalist system has withstood the shock. The "Days of Rage" are over. The Weathermen go into hiding and are determined to continue fighting.

Oct 15  President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke of Somalia is assassinated by a policeman.

Oct 21  In Somalia, a Soviet Union oriented Marxist general, Mohamed Siad Barre, takes power in a military coup. He throws the former prime minister in prison. He is to start large-scale public works programs, begin an urban and rural literacy campaign and is to rule dictatorially until 1991. 

Oct 21  Jack Kerouac, author of "On the Road" has recently described himself not as a beatnik but as a Catholic. He has painted a portrait of the Pope. On this day he dies from alcoholism – internal bleeding from cirrhosis of the liver. He was 47. 

Nov 3  In a televised speech, President Nixon describes the "Nixon Doctrine." He states that the US henceforth expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense.  He opposes withdrawal of US forces, sayling: '"Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam without question would promote recklessness in the councils of those great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world conquest. This would spark violence wherever our commitments help maintain the peace--in the Middle East, in Berlin, eventually even in the Western Hemisphere."

Nov 6  A black-power movement is said to be spreading through the English-speaking Caribbean, putting pressure on political leaders in former British colonies as well as in the US Virgin Islands.

Nov 6  In jail for auto theft, Susan Atkins begins bragging about the Tate murders. The law is about to learn what was behind the Tate murders.

Nov 12  The US Army admits that a massacre of civilians took place at My Lai and announces that an investigation of the incident is underway.  

Nov 12  In the Soviet Union, Alexander Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Writers' Union.

Nov 13  The nation remains divided concerning the US fighting and dying in Vietnam. Regarding President Nixon's speech on Nov 3, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew speaks of a "small and unelected elite" of television producers, "their minds... made up in advance," having attempted to undermine the President's plea for national unity, as if the president could get national unity by pleading for it if only the "Eastern Liberal Elite" didn't intervene. 

Nov 15  In Washington D.C. a quarter of a million people stage a peaceful protest against the Vietnam War.

Nov 20  The Nixon administration announces a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT.

Nov 20  A group of 80 American Indian college students occupy Alcatraz Island in the name of all tribes.

Dec 6  A free concert "Woodstock of the West" is held at Altamont Speedway, about 50 miles east of Oakland and Berkeley. The Rolling Stones and some other big names are featured. The Hell's Angels are hired for security. Fans are  beaten. A Hell's Angel stomps and stabs Meredith Hunter to death. 

Dec 16  The British House of Commons votes 343 to 185 to abolish the death penalty.

Dec 26  Timothy Leary is sentenced to 10 years in prison for possession of marijuana.