Category: US & World events

Some of what happened in the U.S. and around the world in the month of April, 50 years ago.

On April 3, DoD announced that the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War had exceeded 32,629, which had been the toll from the Korean War. As of March 28, 33,641 Americans had been killed.

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, both popular and controversial, was canceled by CBS on April 4. The television network said the producers, Dick Smothers and Tommy Smothers, had failed to submit tapes of shows for CBS and local stations to preview and were “unwilling to accept the criteria for taste established by the network’s program practices department.”

Baseball’s four newest teams all won games on opening day, April 8. The San Diego Padres beat Houston, 3-1; Montreal Expos defeated the New York Mets, 11-10; Kansas City Royals (replacing the Athletics, which had moved to Oakland) beat Minnesota Twins, 4-3; and the Seattle Pilots won, 4-3, over the California Angels. Auspicious start for Seattle, but the Pilots went bankrupt and became the Milwaukee Brewers in 1970.

Cambridge (Mass.) police and Massachusetts State Police, employing billy clubs and pepper spray, evicted about 300 Harvard students and supporters from the Harvard Administration Building occupied by the students earlier on April 9. Police arrested 184 and injured 45. Among those arrested was Chris Wallace, now a Fox News journalist, who used his one phone call to contact the campus radio station and give a first-hand account.

An unarmed U.S. EC-121 reconnaissance plane was shot down on April 15 by a North Korean MiG-21 over the Sea of Japan. All 31 servicemen onboard were killed. The U.S. response was limited to sending Navy warships to the area for 10 days and adding armed escorts to future reconnaissance flights in the region.

Sirhan Sirhan was convicted on April 18 in Los Angeles County Superior Court for the murder of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy the previous year. 

Community members of Berkeley, Calif., seized an empty lot owned by the University of California on April 20 and began to build “People’s Park.”

Bill Clinton, then a 22-year-old Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford and future President of the United States, received an induction notice on April 22, directing him to return to the U.S. to begin military service. The letter had arrived late, and Clinton would get a postponement of his reporting date. He then avoided induction by agreeing to enroll in the Army ROTC program at the University of Arkansas in 1970. He would renege on that commitment.

The number of U.S. troops in South Vietnam reached its peak — 543,842 — on April 30. From the next month on, until the end of the Vietnam war, the number would steadily decline.

Some of what was going on in the U.S. and around the world during March 1969.

The number of Americans killed in action in Vietnam, according to the U.S. Department of Defense,  was 32,376 as of the week that ended on March 1. The total would later in the month surpass the 33,629 U.S. deaths in the Korean War.

NASA launched Apollo 9 on March 3. Astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott, and Rusty Schweickart were to test the lunar module’s ability to undock and redock with the lunar orbiter, deemed crucial to a future effort to land on the moon and return.

March 3 was also the day the Navy established the Navy Fighter Weapons School, known popularly as “Top Gun,” at then-Naval Air Station, Miramar, in San Diego. Top Gun pilots flew the F-4 Phantom.

 

In Memphis, Tenn., James Earl Ray, 41, pleaded guilty on March 10 to the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968. By pleading guilty, Ray avoided a potential death penalty.

The U.S. Senate voted 83-15 on March 13 to ratify the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed the previous July. 

President Nixon issued secret orders on March 15 to extend U.S. military operations to Cambodia. The secret bombing of Cambodia began on March 18 and was revealed by the New York Times in April.

Golda Meir was sworn in on March 17 as the first female Prime Minister of Israel.

Beatle John Lennon and Yoko Ono were married March 20 at Gibraltar.

In his final college game on March 22, Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) scored 37 points to lead UCLA to its third consecutive NCAA basketball championship. The Bruins beat Purdue, 92-72.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in WWII and 34th President of the United States (1953-61), died at Walter Reed Army Hospital, Washington, D.C., on March 28. He was 78 years old.

 

 

The 79th and last original episode of Star Trek, “Turnabout Intruder,” was broadcast on March 28. NBC had announced previously it would not renew the show for a fourth season. This is the scene from that episode in which a woman from Captain Kirk’s past exchanges bodies with him.

The Allman Brothers Band made its debut on March 30 at the Jacksonville Armory, Florida. Here they are at the Fillmore East in September 1970.

Happenings in the US and world during February 1969.

Yasser Arafat was elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) at the Palestinian National Congress in Cairo, Egypt, on February 3. On the same day, Eastern Airlines Flight 7 (Newark-Miami) became the latest airliner to be hijacked and diverted to Havana. Among the passengers were Allen Funt, host of Candid Camera, and members of the show’s film crew. Their presence led some passengers to believe initially it all was part of a show.

A Boeing 747 was flown for the first time on February 9 at Boeing’s airfield in Everett, Washington.

Jennifer Aniston, perhaps best-known as a star of Friends, was born February 11 in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

The final stage of the Tet Offensive, coordinated attacks by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, began on February 22 in multiple provinces.

Hey, it’s a short month.

The trial of Sirhan Sirhan, accused of the murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy the previous June, began in Los Angeles on January 7.

On the Thursday before Super Bowl III, New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath told the Miami Touchdown Club, “The Jets will win Sunday. I guarantee it.” On that Sunday, January 12, the Jets, champions of the American Football League, defeated the NFL Champion Baltimore Colts, 16-7. They were the first AFL team to win the championship. (You won’t be able to watch the video on this site, but, if you click “Super Bowl III: Jets vs. Colts Highlights” at upper left, you can see it on YouTube.)

The publishers of The Saturday Evening Post announced January 10 that it would cease publication in February after almost 148 years.

The first Led Zeppelin album, Led Zeppelin, was released in the United States on January 12.

An explosion onboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, at sea near Hawaii, on January 14 killed 27 sailors and injured 314.

Richard M. Nixon was sworn in as the 37th President of the United States and our commander-in-chief on January 20.

On the third of nine consecutive days of heavy rainfall in Southern California, nine people were killed in their homes in mudslides north of Los Angeles January 25. Overall, the deaths of 95 people (most due to weather-related traffic accidents) were attributed to the effects of the weather and damage amounted to nearly $1 billion in today’s dollars.

Navy and Army — of course the US Naval Academy and US Military Academy — meet on the gridiron for the 119th time today in Philadelphia. Fifty years ago, the game took place on November 30, also in Philadelphia.

Led by fullback Charlie Jarvis, who scored all three Army touchdowns, the Cadets (6-3) beat the Midshipmen (2-7), 21-14. The game also featured Army’s first African-American player, end Gary Steele.

The 1968 victory put Army ahead in the series 33-30-6. Going into today’s game, Navy leads the series 60-51-7.

Things in the “real world”we may have missed, and found out about only later.

Elvis Presley made his comeback appearance on television on December 3. The show included a performance in an intimate, informal setting, with Elvis being joined by a couple of his original band members and surrounded by a small number of fans. It was the highest rated holiday season TV special that year and later became known as the “Comeback Special.”

Seventeen crew members of the US Coast Guard Cutter White Alder were killed on December 7, when their buoy tending ship was sheared in half by a Taiwanese freighter off the shore of Louisiana.

Graham Nash of the British group, The Hollies, decided December 8 to join Stephen Stills and David Crosby of Buffalo Springfield to form Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Fans of the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team, watching the final home game on December 15 in a season with only two wins, were so upset that they booed, and then threw snowballs at Santa Claus, earning the city a reputation as having the most boorish sports supporters in the nation. Frank Olivo, the man recruited to portray Jolly St. Nick and to walk around the field during halftime of the game against the Minnesota Vikings, would laugh years later about being pelted by snowballs. The incident became a part of the franchise’s history.

Apollo 8 became the first manned space vehicle to break out of Earth’s orbit on December 21, and the three American astronauts on board— Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders — went further from Earth than anyone in history.

North Korea released the 82 members of the USS Pueblo on December 22, after 11 months of captivity that had started when the American ship was seized by North Korea on the previous January 23rd. The handover of the men, along with the body of Seaman Duane Hodges (who had been killed when the Pueblo had been fired upon), took place at the border at Panmunjom. The Pueblo itself was kept by the North Koreans and would later be put on display as a tourist attraction. The freed crewmen were flown to Naval Air Station, Miramar, near San Diego, on Christmas Eve for a reunion with their families.

On Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders flew past the Moon, became the first people to see its far side,. After making minor course corrections, they fired the engines of the craft to begin mankind’s first lunar orbit. Over the remainder of the day, the men circled the Moon 10 times, each trip around taking about two hours, took photos of potential landing sites, and made two television transmissions to earth. Apollo 8 left Moon orbit and began its trip back to Earth on Christmas Day, returning successfully on December 27.

Army Major James Rowe, who had been held for more than five years as a prisoner by the Viet Cong, managed to escape his captors on December 31 after finding an opportunity to overpower and disarm his guard. Major Rowe, a Green Beret, had been a Special Forces adviser to a South Vietnamese Army unit when he was captured on October 29, 1963. Since then, he had been held in South Vietnam in the Mekong River delta.

The bombardment of North Vietnam by US forces ended on November 1. Airplanes stopped flying attack missions, ships stopped firing shells, and ground units near the border halted artillery fire.

The Motion Picture Association of America’s new movie rating system — G, M, R, X — went into effect on November 1. “M” for mature later became PG (parental guidance advised).

As mentioned in a separate post, the elections on November 5 put Republican Richard Nixon in the White House. Because of the closeness of the popular vote, influenced by the presence of third-party candidate of George Wallace, Democrat Hubert Humphrey did not concede until the morning of November 6.

Yale University announced on November 14 that it would begin to admit women to the class to enter in fall 2019, the first time in its then 267-year history.

In what later became known as the “Heidi Game,” NBC abruptly ended its November 17 telecast of the Oakland Raiders – New York Jets football game to show its scheduled Sunday night movie, Heidi. The televised portion of the game ended with Oakland trailing 29-32 with 65 seconds left. (The Raiders went on to score two touchdowns to win 43-32.) Many complaints ensued. Heidi ended up the highest rated program of the week.

An explosion on November 20 and subsequent carbon monoxide poisoning in a Mannington, West Va., mine killed 78 miners.

The last open gesture of defiance to the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia ended on November 21, when tens of thousands of students in Prague ended a 76-hour sit-in. The new Soviet-sponsored leadership in the nation decided not to crack down on the sit-in, but to let it takes it course. Student leaders agreed to a deadline, at which time, according to the New York Times, students “slowly and sadly took down the signs proclaiming the ‘occupation strike’ from the facade and doors of Prague University’s Philosophy and Law buildings.”

The Beatles released what was unofficially called the “White album” on November 22. That same day’s telecast of Star Trek contained the first interracial kiss — between Captain James Kirk (William Shatner) and Lieutenant Uhuru (Nicole Nichols) — on American television. No special mention of it was made at the time in media.

Pan Am flight 281, from New York City to San Juan, Puerto Rico, was hijacked by four of its 78 passengers on November 24. It landed in Havana, Cuba, and later reached its destination.

 

Election day in 1968 was Tuesday, November 5. At OCS, we were able to vote using absentee ballots. I chose not to vote.

It wasn’t the inconvenience or extra bother. It was the candidates. I didn’t want either one to be President.

That was back when I was a bit of a lefty. Not particularly radical, mind you. Just “progressive” back when that term had little meaning, I think.

As a Republican, Nixon was not going to get my vote. Humphrey, I saw as complicit in what I considered at the time as a misbegotten war in Vietnam. I wouldn’t have voted for President Lyndon Johnson either, if he had chosen to stay in the race.

The election was quite close in popular vote — Nixon winning by less than a percentage point over Humphrey and neither exceeding 44 percent. George Wallace, former governor of Alabama, also ran, representing the American Independent Party, and he received 13.5 percent of the national vote, winning five southern states.

Here’s some of what was going on in the outside world while we started off at NAVOCS.

Night of the Living Dead had its premiere in Pittsburgh, Penn., on October 1.  Romeo and Juliet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Olivia Hussey, debuted in the US on October 8. Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen and containing what many people consider “the most famous car chase in American cinematic history,” was first shown on October 17. Here’s video of the part of the chase inside San Francisco.

Presidential candidate George Wallace (American Independent Party) introduced his running mate for Vice President, retired Air Force General Curtis LeMay, on October 3.

“Operation Sealords,” in which American and South Vietnamese forces sought to disrupt enemy supply lines in the Mekong Delta, began on October 8.

On October 10, the Detroit Tigers defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-1, to win the World Series in the seventh game. The Tigers came back from a 3-1 deficit in games and won the last three games to take the title.

“The first major firearms control act passed by Congress in 30 years,” previously approved in the Senate, was passed by the House on October 10.

Apollo 7, the first American space flight with three astronauts, launched on October 11. First mission to have all crew members with the common cold, it returned to earth on October 22.

Opening ceremonies of the XIX Olympic Games took place in Mexico City, Mexico, on October 12. While known as the Summer Olympics, the games were the second in succession to take place in the fall. On October 14, American sprinter Jim Hines became the first person to run 100 meters under 10 seconds, setting a world record of 9.95 seconds. Two days later, on the 16th, Americans Tommy Smith and John Carlos held up black-gloved fists during the playing of the National Anthem following the 400-meter race. American Bob Beamon, on October 18, broke the world record in the long jump by nearly two feet. His jump of 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches, stood as the record for 23 years and is still the second-longest jump in history. American Dick Fosbury introduced the “Fosbury flop” technique of high-jumping to the world on October 20 as he won a gold medal and set an Olympic record of 7 feet, 4 1/2 inches.

Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of assassinated US President John F. Kennedy, married Aristotle Onassis on the Greek island of Skorpios on October 20.

Led Zeppelin, formerly The New Yardbirds, gave their first live concert with their new name and new band members on October 25 in England.

On the last day of the month, and five days before the US elections, President Lyndon Johnson announced a stop to “all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam.”

Except for us beginning active duty, nothing of major significance had occurred on September 28, 1968. For much of the 18 weeks we were in OCS, we had little access to outside information. Weekend and holiday liberties and leaves were pretty much the only times our heads came up to look around. As usual with that incredible year, there was still a lot going on that September.

The Paris “peace talks” were underway. In Vietnam itself, Army Maj. Gen. Keith Ware and seven others were killed September 13 when their helicopter was shot down. Those eight were among 538 US troops killed in September 1968.

On September 14, Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McClain won his 30th game that season, first to do so since 1934 and last.

Presidential candidate Richard Nixon appeared on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In on September 16 and awkwardly uttered the famous words, “Sock it to me?” Here’s the six-second clip.

Iconic TV shows that debuted that September: Adam-12, 60 Minutes, The Mod Squad, and Hawaii Five-O.

On the Monday after we reported for duty, Boeing introduced its new 747.