1968: Weeks 50-52

Posted on December 20, 2008
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Weekly timeline for 1968: A year of change and tumult

stones.jpgDecember 9: The Rolling Stones release “Beggar’s Banquet.”

December 10: Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk writer, dies in Bangkok, Thailand from accidental electrocution. He had just finished his seventh journal “The Other side of the Mountain.”

December 10: Carol Reed’s “Oliver!” starring Ron Moody and Oliver Reed, opens.

December 12: Robert Aldrich’s “The Killing of Sister George” opens.

December 12: Tallulah Bankhead dies at age 66.

December 18: “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” based on the novel by Ian Fleming, and starring Dick Van Dyke, opens.

December 19: Norman Thomas, founder of the ACLU and Socialist Party leader (1926-55), dies at age 84.

December 20: Author John Steinbeck dies from a bad heart in New York City at age 66.

December 20: Two teenagers, David Farraday and Betty Lou Jensen, are shot to death in a parked car on Lake Herman Road outside Vallejo, California. The murder is attributed to the Zodiac killer.

December 21: David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash premiere together in California.

December 21: Apollo 8, with astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders, is launched on the first mission to orbit the Moon.

December 23: 82 crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo are released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.

December 24: Disney’s “The Love Bug” opens.

earthrise.jpgDecember 24: The three Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve television broadcast. The first pictures of an Earth-rise over the Moon are seen as the crew of orbits the moon.

December 26: “Monterey Pop” is released.

December 28: The Beatles’ “White Album” hits No. 1 for 9 weeks.

Sources:

The Whole World Was Watching: An oral history of 1968. A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group
Timelines of History
Timeline 1968
Rock Timeline
Wikipedia Music Timeline
Frank Eugene Smitha’s Macrohistory and World Report

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