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Huey Newton found guilty of manslaughter
Huey Newton, the Black Panther Party Minister of Defense, who had been charged with first-degree murder, assault, and kidnapping for his confrontation with an Oakland police officer in October 1967, is found guilty of voluntary manslaughter. -
LBJ state of Union address
Lyndon Baines Johnson delivers his State of the Union Address, stating that in Vietnam "the enemy has been defeated in battle after battle" and that "our patience and our perseverance will match our power." -
Massacre at Orangeburg State College
In Orangeburg, South Carolina, highway patrolmen fire into a crowd of African American students protesting segregation at a local bowling alley. Three young men are killed. -
My Lai Massacre
U.S. soldiers massacre more than 500 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai. An elaborate cover-up suppresses the news for more than a year. -
King Assassination
Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The news sparks massive riots in more than 100 American cities. -
Talks to End the War in Vietnam Begin in Paris
U.S. and North Vietnamese negotiators meet in Paris for the opening session of talks intended to end the conflict in Vietnam. The talks stall for five months, as neither Hanoi nor Washington is willing to make concessions that would allow full negotiations to begin. -
Arrest of suspected KIng assassin James Earl Ray
A little more than two months after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., suspected assassin and white supremacist James Earl Ray is captured at London's Heathrow Airport. Ray is extradited and charged. After eventually pleading guilty, he is sentenced to 99 years in prison. -
Saddam Hussein grabs Power in Iraq
The Arab Socialist Baath Party stages a coup in Iraq. Although initially bloodless, the so-called "White Revolution" becomes increasingly ruthless as a young and ambitious Saddam Hussein consolidates his power and silences his opposition. -
France Explodes Hydrogen Bomb
France--since 1960 a member of the "club" of nations with nuclear weapons--explodes its first thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb over an atoll in Polynesia, a 2.6-megaton blast. -
Huey Newton found guilty of manslaughter
Huey Newton, the Black Panther Party Minister of Defense, who had been charged with first-degree murder, assault, and kidnapping for his confrontation with an Oakland police officer in October 1967, is found guilty of voluntary manslaughter. -
Gun Control Act signed
President Johnson signs into law the Gun Control Act of 1968. The Act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contains the most significant restrictions on firearms since the National Firearms Act in 1934. -
Jet hijacked to Cuba
Three Cuban men hijack Pan Am flight 281 out of New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on a scheduled route to Puerto Rico and divert it to Havana--one of 15 Cuba-bound hijackings in 1968. -
Zodiac Killer's first attacks
Two high school students are shot to death while parked on a "lovers' lane" in Benicia, California--the first victims of a serial murderer who came to be known as the "Zodiac Killer."
