Weekly timeline for 1968: A year of change and tumult
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.
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