Significance in 1968
By Connor Salmon
Vietnam war
The year 1968 saw major developments in the Vietnam War. The military operations started with an attack on a US base by the Vietnam People's Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong on January 1, ending a truce declared by the Pope and agreed upon by all sides. At the end of January, the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive. Although militarily the operation was a failure for the Vietnamese communists, for them it was a propaganda victory, as on the home front the American public were shocked by the images they were seeing on their televisions.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated
- Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupt in major American cities for several days afterward.
Robert Kennedy is assasinated in California
Robert F.Kennedy served as campaign adviser and attorney generalfor his brother John F.Kennedy.After his brother's assassination,Kennedy was elected to the U.S.Senate from New York.As a liberal Democrat strongly committed to civil rights and aiding the poor,he assumed important place in national politics.Viewed as his brother's political heir,Kennedy decided to run for president in March 1968 after Senator Eugene McCarthy's upset primary election victory in New Hampshire.After winning the important California primary on June 4,1968,Kennedy was assassinated shortly after midnight by Sirhan Sirhan,a young Jordanian Arab outraged by Kennedy's pro-Israeli sentiments.
Back ground
Born on November 20,1925,in Brook line, Massachusetts into a large,politically powerful Irish Catholic family,Robert Francis Kennedy attended Harvard College until 1944,when he entered the navy.He later graduated from Harvard in 1948 and earned his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School in 1951.
Richard Nixon
Nixon was born California in 1913. Attending Whittier College,Nixon was a debater and actor and also achieved success in student politics as freshman and senior class president.After college,Nixon attended Duke University Law School,where he was elected president of the bar association.Rebuffed by elite Eastern law firms,he settled down to practice law in Whittier.
How he got elected
Nixon accused his Democratic opponent Jerry Voorhis,a hardworking five-term Congressman,of communist ties.
The Difficult Years
For eight years,Nixon served in the relative unimportant. of the vice president's office.In 1960,he ran for president and lost to John F. Kennedy in a very close race.
Zodiac Killer
Zodiac Killer is the nickname given to an unidentified serial killer who operated in northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. The killer originated the name "Zodiac" in an August 7, 1969 letter to the local Bay Area press, which was just one in a series of taunting letters. These letters included fourcryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been definitively solved.