Happy New Year to all loyal OBs! Although this Old remembers isolated events in the late 1950s and early 1960s, fifty years ago -- 1968 -- is the first time I remember following world events over the course of a whole year. And what an incredible year that was. The Vietnam War and the Cold War with the Soviet Union were in high gear, it was a presidential election year, and the political and cultural divides -- differences that make ours now seem like small potatoes in comparison -- were splitting the country wide open. There was a real sense that year that things were spiraling out of control.
We think the North Korean regime acts crazy now, but January 1968 North Korean patrol boats and planes actually attacked and captured the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence-gathering ship that was sailing in international waters off the east coast of North Korea. The ship received no help from U.S. naval forces in the area. Two sailors were killed in the attack and the crew members were taken as hostages for the next 11 months. Ship commander Lloyd Bucher was highly criticized for not fighting back and was the subject of a naval court of inquiry after he and the crew were released in December of that year.
At the end of January, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam and suffered massive losses. However, they won a psychological victory because many folks in the U.S. began to doubt the military high command's assurances that the war was on the verge of being won. Every week on the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite would announce the numbers of U.S. soldiers killed, wounded and missing in the war. It was routine that year for at least 400 to 500 troops to be killed and several thousand wounded each week.
March -- antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy challenged Pres. Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination. In a complete stunner in the first primary in New Hampshire, McCarthy came within a few hundred votes of defeating LBJ. Robert Kennedy, Pres. John F. Kennedy's younger brother and U.S. senator from New York, then announced he was challenging LBJ for the nomination. At the end of that month, I was watching the night LBJ gave a nationally televised address about Vietnam. During that speech, he shocked the nation by making a surprise announcement that he wasn't going to run for another term, throwing the Democratic race wide open.
In April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while standing outside on a second floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis (which is now a fabulous museum). As a result, massive riots broke out in major cities across the country, killing dozens of people. Later in April, student antiwar protesters shut down Columbia University. In May in France, thousands of students and workers clashed with police and French president de Gaulle had to call out the military to preserve order in the country.
I awoke early one Saturday that June to hear the radio on in my parents’ bedroom. That surprised me, because Saturday was the one day they usually slept in. When I went into their bedroom to see what was going on, they told me that Robert Kennedy had been shot multiple times at the famous Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He died that afternoon. It turned out he was killed by a radical Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan. We and millions of others across the country watched on TV the next week as his coffin was carried by train to Washington D.C. after his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery near his assassinated brother.
That summer, the Republicans nominated Richard Nixon as their presidential candidate. In those days, the parties' presidential nominee usually wasn't picked until the party conventions. I stayed up late to watch each state delegation cast its ballots. Nixon edged out Nelson Rockefeller and a former TV and B-movie actor from California named Ronald Reagan.
The sh*t really hit the fan in August 1968. In the middle of the month, Soviet troops and tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the Czech government that was trying to liberalize Communist oppression in the country. There was open fighting in the streets of Prague. For a week or so, everyone wondered whether this was going to plunge us into another world war.
That month the Democrats also held their convention in Chicago to nominate Vice President Hubert Humphrey as their presidential candidate. For several days, there was open fighting in Lincoln Park and the streets of Chicago as police fought with and beat up hundreds of antiwar protesters. I remember sitting in my dad's pickup truck in our pastor's driveway one hot August night then, listening to my dad say to our pastor "I never thought I would ever see something like that in the United States." Crap, I thought -- things really are coming apart.
In October, right before the Summer Olympics started in Mexico City, police killed hundreds of student protesters there. There was a lot of talk about cancelling the Games, but they went on anyway. U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos caused an international controversy by lowering their heads and raising their black-gloved fists while standing on the podium at their medal award ceremony. Later, in response to Smith and Carlos, heavyweight boxer George Foreman danced around the ring with an American flag celebrating his victorious gold medal boxing match. Bob Beamon also amazed the world by unbelievably breaking the long jump world record in one fell swoop (jump) by almost two feet.
That fall President Kennedy's widow and America's sweetheart Jackie Kennedy shocked the nation and the world when, out of the blue, she married Greek shipping billionaire Aristotle Onassis.
In November in the presidential election, Richard Nixon -- who ran on a law-and-order platform -- edged out Humphrey by about 500,000 votes out of over 70 million votes cast. Nixon had claimed he had secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, ran as a third-party candidate, won 5 southern states, and almost 14% of the vote. Wallace later renounced his position and embraced black support before he was permanently injured in an attempted assassination in 1972.
Even the music hits added to the sense of chaos: "Revolution" and "Hey Jude" by the Beatles, "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, "All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix, and "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon & Garfunkel. Showing how different the culture was then, parents and teachers in our Texas town were shocked when a popular song called "Judy in Disguise" by John Fred & His Playboys used the word "bra" in the song’s lyrics.
Finally in December, in the first really good news of the year, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders inspired the world when they circled the moon in their spacecraft on Christmas Eve and read the first verses of the Book of Genesis while televising the earth rising over the moon. The next summer U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would become the first men to land on the moon.
Oh yeah, last but not least in world history, that fall DKR and the 'Horns began running the Wishbone, steamrolling the opposition, and starting their legendary 30 game win streak.
Happy New Year Longhorns, young and old!
We think the North Korean regime acts crazy now, but January 1968 North Korean patrol boats and planes actually attacked and captured the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence-gathering ship that was sailing in international waters off the east coast of North Korea. The ship received no help from U.S. naval forces in the area. Two sailors were killed in the attack and the crew members were taken as hostages for the next 11 months. Ship commander Lloyd Bucher was highly criticized for not fighting back and was the subject of a naval court of inquiry after he and the crew were released in December of that year.
At the end of January, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam and suffered massive losses. However, they won a psychological victory because many folks in the U.S. began to doubt the military high command's assurances that the war was on the verge of being won. Every week on the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite would announce the numbers of U.S. soldiers killed, wounded and missing in the war. It was routine that year for at least 400 to 500 troops to be killed and several thousand wounded each week.
March -- antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy challenged Pres. Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination. In a complete stunner in the first primary in New Hampshire, McCarthy came within a few hundred votes of defeating LBJ. Robert Kennedy, Pres. John F. Kennedy's younger brother and U.S. senator from New York, then announced he was challenging LBJ for the nomination. At the end of that month, I was watching the night LBJ gave a nationally televised address about Vietnam. During that speech, he shocked the nation by making a surprise announcement that he wasn't going to run for another term, throwing the Democratic race wide open.
In April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while standing outside on a second floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis (which is now a fabulous museum). As a result, massive riots broke out in major cities across the country, killing dozens of people. Later in April, student antiwar protesters shut down Columbia University. In May in France, thousands of students and workers clashed with police and French president de Gaulle had to call out the military to preserve order in the country.
I awoke early one Saturday that June to hear the radio on in my parents’ bedroom. That surprised me, because Saturday was the one day they usually slept in. When I went into their bedroom to see what was going on, they told me that Robert Kennedy had been shot multiple times at the famous Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He died that afternoon. It turned out he was killed by a radical Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan. We and millions of others across the country watched on TV the next week as his coffin was carried by train to Washington D.C. after his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery near his assassinated brother.
That summer, the Republicans nominated Richard Nixon as their presidential candidate. In those days, the parties' presidential nominee usually wasn't picked until the party conventions. I stayed up late to watch each state delegation cast its ballots. Nixon edged out Nelson Rockefeller and a former TV and B-movie actor from California named Ronald Reagan.
The sh*t really hit the fan in August 1968. In the middle of the month, Soviet troops and tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to crush the Czech government that was trying to liberalize Communist oppression in the country. There was open fighting in the streets of Prague. For a week or so, everyone wondered whether this was going to plunge us into another world war.
That month the Democrats also held their convention in Chicago to nominate Vice President Hubert Humphrey as their presidential candidate. For several days, there was open fighting in Lincoln Park and the streets of Chicago as police fought with and beat up hundreds of antiwar protesters. I remember sitting in my dad's pickup truck in our pastor's driveway one hot August night then, listening to my dad say to our pastor "I never thought I would ever see something like that in the United States." Crap, I thought -- things really are coming apart.
In October, right before the Summer Olympics started in Mexico City, police killed hundreds of student protesters there. There was a lot of talk about cancelling the Games, but they went on anyway. U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos caused an international controversy by lowering their heads and raising their black-gloved fists while standing on the podium at their medal award ceremony. Later, in response to Smith and Carlos, heavyweight boxer George Foreman danced around the ring with an American flag celebrating his victorious gold medal boxing match. Bob Beamon also amazed the world by unbelievably breaking the long jump world record in one fell swoop (jump) by almost two feet.
That fall President Kennedy's widow and America's sweetheart Jackie Kennedy shocked the nation and the world when, out of the blue, she married Greek shipping billionaire Aristotle Onassis.
In November in the presidential election, Richard Nixon -- who ran on a law-and-order platform -- edged out Humphrey by about 500,000 votes out of over 70 million votes cast. Nixon had claimed he had secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, ran as a third-party candidate, won 5 southern states, and almost 14% of the vote. Wallace later renounced his position and embraced black support before he was permanently injured in an attempted assassination in 1972.
Even the music hits added to the sense of chaos: "Revolution" and "Hey Jude" by the Beatles, "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, "All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix, and "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon & Garfunkel. Showing how different the culture was then, parents and teachers in our Texas town were shocked when a popular song called "Judy in Disguise" by John Fred & His Playboys used the word "bra" in the song’s lyrics.
Finally in December, in the first really good news of the year, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders inspired the world when they circled the moon in their spacecraft on Christmas Eve and read the first verses of the Book of Genesis while televising the earth rising over the moon. The next summer U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would become the first men to land on the moon.
Oh yeah, last but not least in world history, that fall DKR and the 'Horns began running the Wishbone, steamrolling the opposition, and starting their legendary 30 game win streak.
Happy New Year Longhorns, young and old!
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