January Edition of a 1968 in Review 50 Years

50 Years Ago in Photos: A Look Back at 1968

A one-half-century ago, much of the world appeared to exist in a land of crunch. Protests erupted in France, Czechoslovakia. Federal republic of germany, Mexico, Brazil, the United states of america, and many other places. Some of these protests ended peacefully; many were put down harshly. Two of the biggest catalysts for protest were the U.Southward. interest in the Vietnam War and the ongoing lack of civil rights in the U.S. and elsewhere. Two of America'south most prominent leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated within months of each other. But some lessons were being learned and some progress was being made—this was likewise the twelvemonth that NASA offset sent astronauts around the moon and back, and the twelvemonth President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. It's fitting that I post this retrospective today, since information technology is the day I was built-in—Jan 10, 1968. Then, a 50th birthday present from me to yous today: a wait back at 1968.

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U.S. National Guard troops cake off Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, as Civil Rights marchers wearing placards reading, "I AM A MAN" pass by on March 29, 1968. It was the third consecutive march held past the group in equally many days. #

Bettmann / Getty

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The Supremes, with Diana Ross, front, Cindy Birdsong, and Mary Wilson dance with their artillery in the air as they perform at the annual "Bal peel" party in Munich, West Germany, on January 21, 1968. The American trio was backed by the West German Rolf Hans Mueller big band and was celebrated with thundering adulation. #

Frings / AP

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The flag of South Vietnam flies atop a tower of the main fortified structure in the old citadel as a jeep crosses a bridge over a moat in Hue during the Tet Offensive in February of 1968. #

AP

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South Vietnamese Full general Nguyen Ngoc Loan, principal of the national police, fires his pistol, executing suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem (also known as Bay Lop) on a Saigon street on February ane, 1968, early in the Tet Offensive. Lem was suspected of commanding a death team which had targeted South Vietnamese law officers that day. The fame of this photo led to a life of infamy for Nguyen Ngoc Loan, who quietly moved to the United States in 1975 and opened a pizza shop in Virginia. #

Eddie Adams / AP

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A U.S Marine with several days of beard growth sits in a helicopter on July eighteen, 1968, after being picked up from a landing zone near Con Thein on the southern edge of the demilitarized zone in Due south Vietnam. His unit had but been relieved of duty after patrolling the region around the DMZ. #

Stone / AP

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A speaker addresses a mass rally in support of democracy organized past the youth of Prague at the Old Boondocks Square in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on May 18, 1968. During a period called the "Prague Spring," Alexander Dubček, the newly-elected leader of the Warsaw Pact nation, enacted numerous reforms loosening state control and expanding individual rights, which both encouraged citizens and angered the Soviet Union. #

Bettmann / Getty

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By belatedly summer, talks between the Soviets and Czech leaders were not going the way the Kremlin wanted, and so more than 2,000 tanks and thousands more than Warsaw Pact troops invaded and occupied the state in Baronial. This column of Soviet tanks was lined upwardly in a street in Prague, Czechoslovakia, most the Old Town Square, on August 28, 1968, after Czech leaders had returned from negotiations with the Russians. #

Diether Endlicher / AP

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Prague residents surround Soviet tanks in front of the Czechoslovak Radio station building in primal Prague during the first day of a Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968. Within a year, Dubček was removed from role, his reforms were undone, and a more Soviet-controlled government was installed. #

Libor Hajsky / Reuters

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American figure skater Peggy Fleming practices on an outside rink on February 1968 in Grenoble, in the French Alps, during the 1968 Winter Olympic Games. Fleming took the gilded medal in women'southward figure skating. #

AFP / Getty

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Fashion in 1968. Left: A male person model wears a silk bailiwick of jersey print pajama leisure suit, sandals, and a necklace at a fashion testify in New York on Jan 9. The bear witness was entitled "Clothing for the Emancipated Homo." Middle: A sculpted silver necklace designed by Pierre Cardin features a diamond worth $sixty,000. The necklace is congenital into the halter that is part of a long black crepe evening gown presented in his spring collection in Paris, France, in February. Right: A cocktail clothes of printed pure silk with a full skirt, a cosmos by the Fontana Sisters style house of Rome, to be presented at the upcoming Italian jump-summertime ready-to-wear way bear witness that opened in Florence on November 6, 1968. #

AP, AP, Mario Torrisi / AP

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One of the last pictures to be taken of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., every bit he spoke to a mass rally in Memphis on April tertiary, maxim he would not halt his plans for a massive demonstration scheduled for April 8 in spite of a federal injunction. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Civil-rights leader Andrew Young (left) and others stand on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel pointing in the direction of an assaulter after the bump-off of ceremonious-rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who is lying at their anxiety, in Memphis, Tennessee, on Apr four, 1968. #

Joseph Louw / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty

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This aerial view shows clouds of fume rise from burning buildings in northeast Washington, D.C., on Apr v, 1968. The fires resulted from rioting and demonstrations after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. #

AP

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Firemen battle a blaze on 125th Street in Harlem, New York, on April 4, 1968, afterward a furniture store and other buildings were gear up on fire after it was learned that civil-rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. #

AP

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President Johnson called federal troops into the nation's capital to restore peace after a mean solar day of arson, looting, and violence on April 5, 1968. Here, a trooper stands guard in the street equally some other (left) patrols a completely demolished building. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., walks on the arm of Dr. Ralph Abernathy, her husband'due south successor equally head of the Southern Christian Leadership conference, leading about 10,000 people in a memorial march to the slain Dr. King. The Rex children, Yolanda, Martin III, and Dexter are at left with Harry Belafonte. Reverend Andrew Young marches side by side to Dr. Abernathy. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Original caption: Dr. Timothy Leary holds a conference in New York City on February 21, 1968. The LSD advocate said he is tuning in with peaceniks and "Yippies" and hopes to have a million immature people in Chicago during the Democratic Party'due south convention in August. He said he hopes they will disrupt the convention through "Flower Guerrilla" warfare. At left is Abbie Hoffman, who said he is an organizer and at correct is Jerry Rubin, peace move worker. #

AP

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1968 was truly a twelvemonth of protest effectually the world. Here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, country police cavalry charge students attending a memorial mass for Edson Luis de Lima Souto, a pupil killed by police, at Candelaria Church on April four, 1968. Edson had been part of an earlier protestation over loftier prices in a restaurant in downtown Rio, and was shot past police who were trying to remove students from premises. #

Agencia JB / AP

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Violent clashes between policeman and students have place during the May 1968 protests in Paris, France. [Editor's notation: This photo replaces a previous image in this position that had been mislabeled by the source.] #

Jacques Haillot / Apis / Sygma via Getty

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A massive anti-Vietnam war demonstration in London on March 18, 1968. Hundreds were arrested as they demonstrated exterior the United States embassy. #

Corbis via Getty

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Demonstrators march on Washington, D.C., during the Poor Peoples' Campaign Solidarity Day on June nineteen, 1968. #

Charles Tasnadi / AP

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The Beatles pose together on February 28, 1968. From left are Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison. This was the twelvemonth they released the White Album. #

AP

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American role player Gary Lockwood on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey, written and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The groundbreaking pic premiered in Apr of 1968, and earned the Academy Accolade for Best Visual Effects. #

Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty

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A propaganda image from People's republic of china'due south Cultural Revolution. In 1968, Communist china was in a stage of their Cultural Revolution where Chairman Mao Zedong'due south cult of personality was still being elevated, and intellectuals and disloyal citizens were existence forced into labor camps or exiled to remote farming regions. Original explanation: Members of the Sichuan Province Revolving Committee unite with civilians and soldiers to work in the fields on Baronial 26, 1968. #

API / Gamma-Rapho via Getty

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Federal Nigerian troops walk along a road near Ikot Expene, Nigeria, to the frontier with Biafra, a few miles abroad, on October 13, 1968. On the roadside, 2 emaciated Nigerian boys slowly die from starvation and malnutrition. Biafra was a breakaway country within Nigeria that fought a war for independence from 1967 to 1970, ending later on years of fighting and a crippling blockade by Nigeria resulted in the deaths of between 500,000 and 2 million Biafran civilians by starvation. #

Dennis Lee Royle / AP

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A street scene from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Grant St. at 5th Ave. on August 24, 1968. See the same scene today in Google Street View. #

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Original caption: A Feminine Outset. Mexico City: Mexico'due south Norma Enriqueta Basilio, the starting time woman in the history of the modern Olympic Games to low-cal the Olympic Fire, runs up the 90 steps with the Olympic Torch during the opening ceremonies here on Oct 12, 1968. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200-meter run at the 1968 Olympic Games, engage in a victory stand protest against unfair treatment of blacks in the Us. With heads lowered and blackness-gloved fists raised in the black ability salute, they refused to recognize the American flag and national anthem. Australian Peter Norman is the silvery medalist. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Senator Robert F. Kennedy is surrounded by hundreds of people as he leans down to shake hands during a presidential campaign appearance at a street corner in primal Philadelphia on Apr ii, 1968. Kennedy had declared his candidacy for the presidency of the United States only weeks before, on March sixteen. #

AP

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Senator Robert Kennedy lies sprawled, semi-conscious in his ain claret subsequently being shot in the head and neck while busboy Juan Romero tries to comfort him in kitchen in the Administrator Hotel in Los Angeles, California, on June 5, 1968. A Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan, who was angry with Kennedy over his support for Israel, shot Kennedy 3 times. Sirhan remains in prison to this solar day, last denied parole in 2016. #

Neb Eppridge / The LIFE Picture Drove / Getty

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Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr., walks past the casket containing the torso of the assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy in St. Patrick'due south Cathedral in New York City on June 7, 1968. #

Bettmann / Getty

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A large crowd lines railroad tracks as the funeral train of Robert F. Kennedy passes on its way to Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Youths gear up to lath buses for Chicago in August of 1968. Peace activists and anti-war groups organized to travel to Chicago to demonstrate exterior the 1968 Democratic National Convention. #

AP

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Police and demonstrators clash near the Conrad Hilton Hotel on Chicago's Michigan Avenue August 28, 1968, during the Democratic National Convention. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Mike Wallace, a CBS newsman, is hustled off the Democratic National Convention floor in the aftermath of a row between delegates and security officers during the nominating session on Baronial 28, 1968 in Chicago. He was taken up a ramp to a 2d-flooring room. #

AP

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Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his running mate, Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, with their wives shown at the final session Autonomous Convention in Chicago following their nominations for president and vice president, on Baronial 29, 1968. #

AP

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Members of the Black Panthers gather in forepart of entrance to the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland, California, on July 15, 1968, to protest the trial of Huey Newton, 26, the founder of the Blackness Panthers. Newton went on trial for the slaying of an Oakland policeman and for wounding another officer on October 28. #

Ernest K. Bennett / AP

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Original caption: Miami policemen, one holding the homo's arm and the other with an arm lock on his cervix, drag away a Negro youth during a clash between police and rioters in that city'due south predominantly Negro Liberty Urban center commune on August viii, 1968. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Helicopters fly low during Operation Pegasus in Vietnam on April v, 1968. They were taking office in the performance to save the Khe Sanh marine base, which had been under siege for the previous three months. #

Dang Van Phuoc / AP

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Prove of the My Lai Massacre. A photograph of Vietnamese women and children in My Lai earlier they were killed by U.S. soldiers in the massacre on March 16, 1968. According to court testimony, they were killed seconds after the photo was taken. The woman on the correct is adjusting her blouse buttons considering of a sexual set on that happened earlier the massacre. Image taken from Volume III, Book six, of the Report of the Department of the Regular army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident, photographed by United States Army lensman Ronald Fifty. Haeberle. #

Ronald L. Haeberle / U.Southward. Ground forces

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A U.S. Marine keeps his head depression equally he drags a wounded buddy from the ruins of the Citadel's outer wall during the Battle of Hue in Vietnam on Feb 16, 1968. #

Bettmann / Getty

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U.s.a. President Lyndon B. Johnson listens to a tape recording from his son-in-law Captain Charles Robb at the White House on July 31, 1968. Robb was a U.S. Marine Corps company commander in Vietnam at the time. Robb was later awarded the Bronze Star and, after returning home, became governor of Virginia in 1982, and after a senator for the aforementioned state. #

Jack Kightlinger / AP

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Original caption: Several hundred hippies gathered at "Hippie Hill" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for a happening at which several bands played rock 'north' roll music. Most of the hippies sabbatum and listened, but some just couldn't continue from dancing to the rhythms. #

Bettmann / Getty

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Mexican army soldiers crouch with weapons ready in Mexico City'southward Tlatelolco commune, in this October 2, 1968 photo. The truth behind the stunning set on on a peaceful commonwealth protest known as the Tlatelolco Massacre, in which some 300 people are believed to take been killed, remains largely subconscious past government and military secrecy. #

AP

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Soldiers cut a student'south pilus subsequently he was arrested during the first hour and a half of shooting in the Tlatelolco area in United mexican states Urban center on October 3, 1968. Another educatee stands against the wall. #

AP

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SRI's Bill English, the engineer who built the first computer mouse epitome, prepares for the December 9, 1968 "mother of all demos." The demonstration is hailed as one of the almost significant technological presentations in history, showcasing technologies that have get what we now know as modernistic calculating. He gave the commencement public demonstration of a reckoner mouse, a graphical user interface, windowed computing, hypertext, give-and-take processing, video conferencing, and much more. #

SRI International

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Richard M. Nixon is mobbed by wildly cheering supporters every bit he arrives at the Hilton Plaza Hotel, his Miami Beach headquarters. #

Bettmann / CORBIS / Getty

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French Foreign Government minister Michel Debre and U.S. President Lyndon Johnson watch television coverage of the flight of the Saturn one B Rocket launching from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on on October 11, 1968, in the White House Office in Washington, D.C. #

Charles Gorry / AP

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A heavy beard covers the face of astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., Apollo 7 commander, as he looks out the rendezvous window in front of the commander'due south station on the ninth day of the Apollo 7 mission on Oct 20, 1968. Apollo 7 was the offset Apollo mission to carry a crew, and it made 163 orbits around the Earth in x days, setting the stage for Apollo 8, which was heading to the moon. #

JSC / NASA

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Apollo eight, the kickoff manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts—Commander Frank Borman, Control Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders—held a alive circulate from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the earth and moon every bit seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, "The vast loneliness is monumental and it makes you lot realize simply what y'all have back there on Earth." They ended the circulate with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis. #

NASA

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