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May 1968

Month of 1968 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

May 1968
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This article is about the events in May 1968. For the painting by Joan Miró, see May 1968 (Miró).
See also: May 1968 events in France

The following events occurred in May 1968:

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May 10, 1968: France protests grow and demonstrators barricade the streets (as seen in Bordeaux)
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May 12, 1968: Reggie Dwight of Pinner assumes stage name "Elton John"
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May 22, 1968: USS Scorpion nuclear submarine sank with all 99 of its crew
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May 18, 1968: Nuclear-powered Nimbus-B destroyed before it can hit California
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May 1, 1968 (Wednesday)

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May 2, 1968 (Thursday)

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Staff Sgt. Benavidez
  • Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez of the U.S. Army's 5th Special Forces Group distinguished himself in battle near Loc Ninh in South Vietnam when he rescued 8 survivors of a 12-man Special Forces team that was surrounded by 1,000 enemy troops. Despite being off duty, Benavidez volunteered to travel by helicopter with the rescue team and was wounded four different times in the course of an 8-hour exchange of gunfire, but administered first aid to the other wounded officers, held off attackers by firing back and calling in airstrikes, secured classified documents, and dragged and carried wounded men to safety. It would not be until 1981 that Benavidez would receive the Medal of Honor for his heroism.[4]
  • A newspaper advertisement in The New York Times, paid for by New York City real estate investor Lawrence Wien on behalf of the "Committee for a Reasonable World Trade Center", urged the public to demand that construction of the World Trade Center be limited to two buildings no taller than 900 feet (270 m) rather than the planned 1,350 feet (410 m). An illustration of a jet flying straight toward one of the towers was featured in the ad, inadvertently warning of what would happen more than 33 years later, and the accompanying text commented "Consider the case of the 'Mountain' being built downtown," and after noting "that air traffic patterns will have to change, landing approaches will have to be altered, minimum altitudes in the area will be affected," commented that "If you're concerned about TV reception and safe air travel, write to the Governor today. Before it's too late."[5][6]
  • Regular television broadcasting was introduced to Israel with the debut of Channel 1 of the Israel Broadcasting Authority.[7] The launch date, planned just nine weeks earlier, was set for Israeli Independence Day, which was celebrated annually on 5th day of Iyar of the Hebrew calendar and fell on May 2 in 1968. Live coverage of the independence day military parade in Jerusalem was the first program. The first station-produced entertainment series would be Siach Lochamim, a drama, in 1969.[8]
  • Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights went into effect for member nations of the Council of Europe, with the signatory nations agreeing to prohibit debtor's prisons, to not restrict their populations from traveling inside or outside their country, to prohibit the expulsion of a citizen, and to prohibit the deportation of groups of foreigners on the basis of nationality. Four nations— the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Turkey and Greece—have never ratified the protocol.[9]
  • John Boozer of the Philadelphia Phillies became the first Major League Baseball player since 1944 (and only the second in MLB history) to be ejected from a game for violation of the spitball rule, after coming in briefly as a relief pitcher in a 3 to 0 loss to the host New York Mets.[10] Only three other players (Nels Potter in 1944, Phil Regan later in 1968, and Gaylord Perry in 1982) have been ejected from an MLB game under the spitball rule.[11]
  • The Poor People's March on Washington, its start postponed after the assassination of Martin Luther King, started from Memphis, Tennessee with a group of 8 chartered buses and ended the day at the town of Marks, Mississippi. Because of inadequate supplies for spending the night, half of the group of 600 returned to Memphis.[12]
  • Student protests in France led the administrators of the Paris University at Nanterre to temporarily shut down the educational institution.[13] Instead of quelling the demonstrations, the act led to more protests and the calling of riot police by the university.[14]
  • At the University of Oxford, the Christ Church Picture Gallery, designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, was opened.
  • Born: Eric Holcomb, U.S. politician, Governor of Indiana 2017 to 2025; in Indianapolis[15]
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May 3, 1968 (Friday)

  • Braniff Flight 352 crashed near Dawson, Texas, killing all 85 people on board. The turboprop Lockheed L-188A Electra took off on a scheduled flight from Houston to Dallas at 4:11 p.m. but flew into a severe thunderstorm 90 miles (140 km) from its destination and broke up in midair. There were no survivors.[16][17] Investigations would later reveal that the accident was caused by structural over-stress and failure of the airframe while attempting recovery from loss of control during a steep 180-degree turn executed in an attempt to escape the weather.[18]
  • A group of 500 students at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, protested against the closure of Paris University at Nanterre and the proposed expulsion of some students.[19] Police arrived to disperse the protesters, and "the first riot of mai 68 ensued" and led to riots and university closures across the country.[20]
  • The first heart transplant in the United Kingdom was performed by Dr. Donald Ross and a team of surgeons at the National Heart Hospital in London. The patient, Frederick West, would survive for 46 days until dying from complications of an infection.[21]
  • The United States and North Vietnam agreed that their representatives would meet in Paris on May 10 to begin the first discussions on the format for peace talks to end the Vietnam War.[22]
  • After funding restraints were placed imposed on the Apollo Applications Program, a holding plan was implemented for the remainder of Fiscal Year 1968, to maintain a reasonable balance in program content while avoiding major cuts to work in progress.[23]
  • Died: Leonid Sabaneyev, 86, Russian mathematician and classical composer

May 4, 1968 (Saturday)

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May 5, 1968 (Sunday)

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May 6, 1968 (Monday)

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UNEF poster ("Abolish of classes of society"), from the Council for the preservation of occupations.
  • In Paris, the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (UNEF), France's largest student union, along with the union of university teachers, staged a march to protest against police actions at the Sorbonne. More than 20,000 protesters marched towards the Sorbonne, and the police charged the crowd with batons. When some protesters created barricades and threw paving stones, the police respond with tear gas. Hundreds were arrested.
  • The sudden flooding of a coal mine at Hominy Falls, West Virginia trapped 25 miners underground.[33] Fifteen were rescued after being trapped for five days,[34] but the other 10, who had not been heard from since the accident, were believed to have died.[35] To the surprise of rescue workers, six of the 10 men had survived for nearly a week and a half in the flooded mine after they had built a barricade and rationed what food they had left.[36]
  • The Argentine tanker MV Islas Orcadas exploded, caught fire and sank at Ensenada, Buenos Aires Province. Burning oil set two other tankers, MV Fray Luis Beltran and MV Cutral Co, on fire, sinking them as well.[37] Although initial reports stated that 10 people had been killed and 26 injured,[38] later reports revised the number of deaths to four crewmen on the Islas Orcadas.[39]
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May 7, 1968 (Tuesday)

  • In the People's Republic of China, the first of thousands of May 7 Cadre Schools, intended to "re-educate" party members, government bureaucrats, college students and professors, and other professionals with forced labor alongside peasant workers, was opened in Liuhe, a village in the Qing'an County of Heilongjiang Province. On October 5, Mao Zedong would publish a directive to require all able-bodied persons to perform agricultural labor. At the height of China's Cultural Revolution, millions of Chinese professionals were sent to cadre schools for at least a year. After the death of Lin Biao in 1971, many of the labor camps would be closed, and the remaining schools would be abolished on February 17, 1979.[40]
  • Forward Pass, who had crossed the finish line second in the Kentucky Derby, was declared the winner after a urinalysis by the Kentucky State Racing Commission found traces of the painkiller phenylbutazone in Dancer's Image. The $122,600 first prize and the $5,000 gold cup were ordered returned by Peter Fuller, the owner of Dancer's Image, and transferred to the Calumet Farm.[41]
  • In Paris, students, teachers and young workers gathered at the Arc de Triomphe to demand that criminal charges against arrested students be dropped and that the authorities reopen Nanterre and Sorbonne universities.
  • Born:
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Governor Wallace
  • Died:
    • Lurleen Wallace, 41, Governor of Alabama who was elected because her husband, George C. Wallace, could not serve consecutive terms, died of cancer after 15 months in office. Lieutenant Governor Albert Brewer was sworn in as the new governor the next day.[43]
    • Mike Spence, 31, British racing driver, was killed while test driving a Lotus 56 turbocar in preparation for the Indianapolis 500[44][45]
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May 8, 1968 (Wednesday)

  • The possibility of a coup to overthrow the British government was suggested in a meeting arranged by newspaper publisher Cecil King, and would be recounted eight years later in book by King's editor-in-chief at the Daily Mirror, Hugh Cudlipp. According to Cudlipp's 1976 memoir Walking on Water, King met with British war hero Lord Mountbatten and outlined the problems with the administration of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Cudlipp, who was present at the meeting, reported King's belief that there would be civil disorder and said that King asked Mountbatten "whether he would agree to be titular head of a new administration". Government adviser Solly Zuckerman, according to Cudlipp, told King that the idea was "rank treachery" and added, "I am a public servant and will have nothing to do with it", and that Mountbatten ended the meeting.[46]
  • Communist Party leaders from five of Eastern Europe's nations met in Moscow to discuss a response to the liberal reforms going on in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev expressed his opinion that the situation was "exceptionally dangerous" and that counterrevolutionary party members were taking control of that Communist nation because of the indecisiveness of Czechoslovakia's Party Central Committee. "We must make sure that in the press in our countries", Brezhnev said, "in all our speeches, and in works put out by artistic unions and other organizations, nothing appears that might be construed as even slightly encouraging to the 'new model of socialism' which the anti-socialist elements in the CSSR claim to be creating."[47] Walter Ulbricht (East Germany), Wladyslaw Gomulka (Poland) and Todor Zhivkov (Bulgaria) agreed with Brezhnev's assessment, while János Kádár of Hungary felt that Czechoslovakia's Action Program was a correction of its Party's mistakes rather than a counterrevolution.
  • Jim "Catfish" Hunter of the Oakland A's hurled the ninth perfect game in Major League Baseball history, and the first in an American League game in more than 45 years. Playing at home in a 4–0 win over the Minnesota Twins, Hunter threw 11 strikeouts, including the last two players he faced, Bruce Look and Rich Reese. The feat was witnessed by only 6,298 paying customers.[48] The feat of not allowing an opposing player to reach first base had last been accomplished in the majors by Sandy Koufax on September 9, 1965. For the next 13 years, including the entire 1970s, no more perfect games would be hurled in the American major leagues until May 15, 1981, by Len Barker.
  • Officials at Arlington National Cemetery announced that the burial ground for American veterans would run out of space by 1985, even with a recent 192-acre expansion that had provided space for 60,000 more gravesites. The plan for 17-years in the future was to provide burial only for national heroes after 1985, and to limit interment at Arlington to the placement of cremated remains inside marble vaults.[49]
  • Born: Chris Lighty, American music executive and founder of Violator; in The Bronx (committed suicide, 2012)
  • Died: Laurence M. Klauber, 84, American inventor of 10 patented electrical transmission devices (including the lightning arrester and the repeating fuse apparatus), mathematician (known for Klauber's triangle) and herpetologist and who was, at the time, the world's foremost authority on rattlesnakes as reptile curator at the San Diego Zoo.[50][51]
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May 9, 1968 (Thursday)

May 10, 1968 (Friday)

  • The government of France issued an order prohibiting the state run ORTF from televising the student demonstrations in France, but ORTF radio correspondents were allowed to make live reports. The independent Radio Luxembourg sent its own journalists to France and kept them there despite harassment from the French police.[56] Because of the live broadcasts, news of the rebellion spread from Paris to the rest of France and to media around the world.[57]
  • At nightfall, college and high school students began erecting makeshift barricades to seal off the streets around the Latin Quarter of Paris and to keep the police from entering the area. The action was imitative of the history lessons taught about the barricades erected by the crowds of the Paris Commune in 1871 and by the French Resistance fighters against the German occupation in 1944.[57]
  • J. Edgar Hoover, the U.S. director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), began the secret COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) campaign to disrupt leftist groups in the U.S., particularly those composed of students or of African-Americans. The program's existence would be revealed after the theft, on March 8, 1971, of 1,200 documents from an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and the program would be discontinued soon after.[58]
  • Representatives of the United States and of North Vietnam met at Paris for the first time to discuss peace talks, and agreed that discussions would take place at the International Conference Center of the French Foreign Ministry, located in the former Hotel Majestic. W. Averell Harriman led the American delegation with the assistance of Cyrus Vance, and former North Vietnamese foreign minister Xuan Thuy was assisted by Colonel Ha Van Lau.[59]
  • The 1968 Cannes Film Festival opened.
  • Born:
  • Died: Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky, 70 Soviet Red Army general who commanded occupation troops in the Eastern sector of Germany after World War II and who unsuccessfully conducted the Berlin Blockade of 1948 in an attempt to take control of West Berlin.
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May 11, 1968 (Saturday)

  • The Montreal Canadiens swept the best-of-seven National Hockey League championship and the Stanley Cup, beating the new St. Louis Blues 3 to 2 in Game 4.[61] The playoffs were the first since the 1967 NHL expansion, pitting the champion of the East Division (composed of all six of the NHL's original teams) against the champ from the West Division (made up of the six new teams). Despite being new, the Blues had lost two of the first three games only after the matches had gone into overtime.
  • In England, Manchester City F.C. and Manchester United finished first and second in the regular season of England's The Football League, in a race that ended on the last day of the season. In the penultimate week, City (25–6–10) and United (24–8–9) had identical 56 point records. City beat Newcastle United, 4–3, on the road, but United lost at home, 2–1, to Sunderland.[62][63][64]
  • A crowd of 30,000 students marched to the parliamentary building in Bonn, the capital of West Germany, where members of the Bundestag were going to vote on the "Emergency Laws" (Notstandgesetze) which would authorize the West German executive branch to suspend basic rights during a national crisis. The "Sternmarsch" would be unsuccessful in blocking the enactment of the emergency measure.[65]
  • A fire killed 58 people and injured more than 200 at a wedding pavilion near the Indian city of Vijayawada in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Most of the dead were trampled when the guests rushed toward the few available exits in the pavilion, which was surrounded by a six-foot high fence. The bride and the bridegroom were able to escape.[66]
  • French police stormed the Latin Quarter of Paris in order to clear away the demonstrators in a chaotic end to the "Night of the barricades" that called worldwide attention to the chaos in France.[67][57]
  • The psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft performed at The Fillmore in San Francisco. A recording of the event would be released 23 years later, in 1991.[68]
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May 12, 1968 (Sunday)

  • North Vietnamese soldiers overran the U.S. Special Forces camp at Kham Duc and shot down an American C-130 transport as it was evacuating the area, killing all 156 men on board. All but six of the people on the C-130 were South Vietnamese civilians who were being taken to safety.[69] The disaster remains the worst air crash in Vietnamese history.[70] In all, 500 survivors of Kham Duc were saved before the camp was overrun. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joe M. Jackson would receive the Medal of Honor for his daring rescue of the last three Americans to remain at Kham Duc, saving the USAF Combat Control Team after the last of the civilians had been evacuated.[71]
  • Elections took place in Panama for a new President and for a new National Assembly. Former President Arnulfo Arias received the most votes in a landslide over David Samudio Ávila, the candidate sponsored by outgoing president Marco Aurelio Robles. "Despite the all-out effort by the Robles administration to steal the election", a historian would later write, the victory of Arias "had been made official only after National Guard Commander Bolivar Vallarino insisted on a reasonably honest count of the ballots."[72] Arias, however, would decline to honor the agreements that he had made with the Panamanian National Guard after being inaugurated on October 1, and would be removed from office by the Guard only 10 days later.[73]
  • In the West African nation of Dahomey (now Benin), the ruling military junta annulled the results of the May 5 presidential election because nearly three-quarters of the eligible voters didn't participate.[74] Basile Adjou Moumouni had won the overwhelming majority of the votes cast (241,273 out of 295,667 or 84%). The junta leader, Colonel Alphonse Alley, refused to recognize the result because most of the 1.13 million registered voters had not shown up on election day. The junta picked its own civilian candidate, Dr. Émile Zinsou and scheduled a referendum for July 28 with the choice of yes or no for Zinsou to be elected.
  • Reginald Dwight, who played the piano for the English R&B group Bluesology, chose the stage name that would make him famous. He was on an airplane flight back to London after his final concert with Bluesology in Edinburgh. Following a discussion with his bandmates, Dwight chose to use the first names of saxophonist Elton Dean and lead vocalist John Baldry to coin the pseudonym Elton John.[75][76]
  • The Israeli government declared the 28th of Iyar (which fell on May 31 in 1968) as the national holiday Jerusalem Day, to commemorate the June 7, 1967 (28 Iyar 5727 on the Hebrew Calendar) capture of East Jerusalem.
  • AS Saint-Étienne, which had won the 1967–68 regular season in French soccer football, defeated Girondins de Bordeaux, 2–1, in the championship final of the Coupe de France tournament.
  • Born: Tony Hawk, American skateboarder; in San Diego[77]

May 13, 1968 (Monday)

May 14, 1968 (Tuesday)

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President Boumédiène
  • Algeria's President Houari Boumédiène ordered the nationalization of 14 foreign energy companies operating in the North African nation and assigned their assets to the government monopoly Sonatrach (Société Nationale pour la Recherche, la Production, le Transport, la Transformation, et la Commercialisation des Hydrocarbures) (National Society for the Research, Production, Transport, Refining and Marketing of Hydrocarbons).[83]
  • Workers at the Sud Aviation aircraft factory near Nantes followed the example of France's university students and went on a sit-down strike, becoming "the very first of the French factories to go on strike" and setting a precedent that would soon spread to the Renault automobile factories, then to western France and eventually to the entire nation.[84]
  • In Tokyo, Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Company (now Panasonic) introduced what was, at the time, the world's smallest television set. The tiny device, "so small it can be slipped into a coat pocket", had a 11⁄2 inch (3.8 cm) screen and weighed 11⁄3 pounds (600 grams).[85]
  • The United Kingdom's 37-year-old National Liberal Party, led by M.P. David Renton, voted for its dissolution, and merged into the Conservative Party. In the 1966 election, NLP candidates won just 3 of the 630 seats in the House of Commons.[86]
  • The 56-story tall Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower, the first of six office buildings in the Toronto-Dominion Centre on Wellington Street West, was opened.
  • The Beatles announced the creation of Apple Records, a division of Apple Corps Ltd, at a press conference in New York City.
  • Died: Husband E. Kimmel, 86, retired U.S. Navy Admiral who was blamed for failing to prevent the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941[87][88]

May 15, 1968 (Wednesday)

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May 15, 1968: An F5 tornado near Charles City, Iowa

May 16, 1968 (Thursday)

  • Two weeks after students in France had closed most of the nation's universities with a student strike, employees seized control of the automobile factories owned by the nationalized Renault company, taking control at Boulogne-Billancourt, Rouen, Le Havre, Le Mans and Flins.[93] Employees of Sud-Aviation, the state operated aircraft factory at Nantes, welded the factory gates shut. Workers struck two factories at Lyon, several newspapers in Paris, and shut down Orly, the Paris international airport.[94]
  • An 8.3 magnitude earthquake killed at least 47 people in northern Japan after striking at 9:49 in the morning. Deaths were caused both by collapsed buildings and a tsunami. The heaviest damage was at the city of Aomori, and the quake was the strongest in more than four years.[95]
  • In the U.S., the United Auto Workers was ousted from the AFL–CIO labor union conglomerate. UAW President Walter P. Reuther, a longtime foe of AFL–CIO President George Meany, received a letter of expulsion because the UAW had not paid its $90,000 per month dues for three months.[96]
  • Ronan Point, a 23-storey tower block in Canning Town, east London, UK, partially collapsed after a gas explosion, killing five people. The disaster would highlight an area of design which had not previously been considered and which would lead to changes in legislation in the UK and other countries.[97]
  • ESRO 2B, a satellite built in Europe for the European Space Research Organisation, was launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.[98]
  • Born: Chingmy Yau, Hong Kong film actress; in British Hong Kong

May 17, 1968 (Friday)

May 18, 1968 (Saturday)

May 19, 1968 (Sunday)

May 20, 1968 (Monday)

  • Financed by a group of wealthy exiles from Haiti, a poorly handled attempt was made to overthrow the dictatorship of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, starting with a failed aerial bombardment of the capital, Port-au-Prince. According to one account, a B-25 dropped a single explosive "which blew one more hole in an eroded road", followed by a package of leaflets "which did not scatter because the invaders had not untied the bundle before dropping it".[122][123] An invasion force came ashore and temporarily captured the port city of Cap-Haïtien. One bomb dropped on Port-au-Prince destroyed some private rooms in Duvalier's residence, and "an undetermined number of people were killed".[124] The 35-man invasion force would be defeated the next day.[125]
  • The Children's Television Workshop (CTW), now known as Sesame Workshop (SW), was founded by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The company is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—having been televised internationally since its debut in 1969.[126]
  • The 1968 Giro d'Italia cycle race began in Campione with ten 13-man teams. Eddy Merckx and Vittorio Adorni of the Faema team would finish first and second on June 11 in the race's conclusion in Naples.
  • Born:

May 21, 1968 (Tuesday)

  • A massive rescue operation by ships from four nations saved all 178 passengers and crew of the Norwegian cruise ship Blenheim after the vessel caught fire in the North Sea, midway through its voyage from Newcastle to Oslo. Two fishing trawlers from Denmark, the Gine Wulf and the Taily, arrived first, and the supply ship Smith Lloyd from the Netherlands saved others and towed the ship to a safe port. Ships from West Germany and destroyers and helicopters from the United Kingdom's Royal Navy saved the others.[127]
  • France's President Charles de Gaulle exercised his constitutional power to grant amnesty for the leaders of the students who led the strike against French universities, but the number of French workers on strike increased to 8,000,000 as two million people walked off of their jobs during the day. Banks were closed as panicking depositors sought to withdraw their money, and the stock market in Paris did not open for trading.[128]
  • Born: Julie Vega (stage name for Julie Pearl Apostol Postigo), Filipina child actress who died of illness at the age of 16; in Quezon City (d. 1985)
  • Died: Arturo Basile, 54, Italian symphony orchestra conductor, was killed in a single car accident along with his passenger, opera soprano Marika Galli, while driving near the Italian city of Vercelli. Basile, who had been negotiating with New York's Metropolitan Opera to fill the vacancy left by the May 13 death of Italian opera conductor Franco Patane in a car accident.[129]reportedly swerved off of the road and crashed into a large stone.[130]

May 22, 1968 (Wednesday)

  • The American nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion sank 400 miles from the Azores, killing all 99 of its crew.[131] A search would be abandoned on June 5; the remains of the Scorpion would not be located for another four months.[132] It would later be revealed that at 1844 UTC,[133] eight listening stations had recorded "a major acoustic event" below the sea surface "followed by lesser acoustic events". The U.S. Navy's classified investigative report would be released on October 25, 1993, revealing its conclusion that the Scorpion was probably destroyed by one of its own torpedoes.[134]
  • All 23 people on board Los Angeles Airways Flight 841, a Sikorsky S-61L were killed in the worst helicopter accident in American history as the aircraft crashed onto Minnesota Avenue in Paramount, California. The 20 passengers were being shuttled by the crew of three from Disneyland to the Los Angeles International Airport and were halfway through their 32-mile trip when the helicopter exploded and broke apart at 5:47 in the afternoon. The dead included the mayor of Red Bluff, California[135] and eight members of a family from Canton and Steubenville, Ohio who were on vacation.[136] An 20-month investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board would conclude that one of the five blades on the main rotor came loose from the damper that held it to the spinning rotor head, then became entangled in the rotor, throwing the other blades "entirely out of balance"; "The aircraft, completely uncontrollable, crashed in a near-vertical descent," the NTSB concluded, and added that "It was a one-in-a-million accident, with no precedent."[137]
  • The pro-British United Bermuda Party won 30 of the seats in Bermuda's new, 40-seat House of Assembly, while the Progressive Labour Party, which advocated independence for the British colony, got the remainder. The election was the first under a new one-man, one-vote law. The winners were 26 white and 14 black candidates (7 of whom were UBP members).[138]
  • Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the leader of France's protests, was barred from re-entering the country after completing a tour of Europe to talk with other student protesters. When he tried to cross into Forbach from the border station shared with Saarbrücken, West Germany, "Danny the Red" found that he had been declared an "undesirable" by the Interior Ministry.[139]
  • By 11 votes, the government of Prime Minister Pompidou of France survived a vote on another censure motion, as 233 of the members of the 485 seat National Assembly voted in favor, but fell short of the 244 required.[140]
  • Born: Graham Linehan, Irish comedian and writer; in Dublin
  • Died: USMC Lieutenant David Westphall, 28, was killed along with 16 other United States Marines in a Viet Cong ambush near An Dinh in South Vietnam. His parents, Victor and Jeanne Westphall, would use the life insurance proceeds for their son to build the first memorial to Americans killed in the Vietnam War, and built a white chapel on land that they owned near Angel Fire, New Mexico.[141]

May 23, 1968 (Thursday)

  • For the first time, an enemy aircraft was successfully shot down by a ship-launched surface-to-air missile. The U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser USS Long Beach (CGN-9) was safely out to sea off of the coast of North Vietnam and was 65 nautical miles (almost 75 miles or 120 kilometers) away from its target, a North Vietnamese MiG flying over North Vietnam. The RIM-8 Talos missile was fired from a distance of 65 nautical miles.[142][143][144]
  • The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched the "SOS Biafra" campaign, requesting the Red Cross humanitarian aid societies in 30 nations to work toward getting "massive material and financial support" from national governments to prevent famine and disease in the area that had seceded from Nigeria.[145]
  • Echo 1, the world's first communications satellite, fell out of orbit and burned up upon re-entry to the atmosphere. Launched on August 12, 1960, the 100 foot (30 m) polyethylene terephthalate (Mylar) covered balloon had sustained punctures from its encounters with space dust at high speeds, and dropped to lower orbits over time as it deflated. On its re-entry, it passed over northern California, southern Arizona and Mexico's Jalisco state before burning up over the west coast of South America.[146]
  • Born: John Ortiz, American film actor; in Brooklyn
  • Died: Henry Dumas, 33, African American poet, novelist and short fiction writer, was shot and killed by a New York City Transit Police officer while at the 125th Street Station of the New York City Subway. Dumas, a counselor for Southern Illinois University, was visiting New York when the officer, Peter Blenkowski, shot Dumas three times after an altercation. Blenkowski claimed self-defense.[147][148][149]

May 24, 1968 (Friday)

  • President Charles de Gaulle appeared on national television in France and made a plea to viewers for help in ending the strike by 10,000,000 workers and rioting in French cities. He announced a referendum for June and asked for voters to approve a grant of emergency power to force reforms and to halt the "roll to civil war". "Frenchmen, French women", he said, "you will deliver your verdict by a vote. In case your reply is 'no', it follows that I would no longer assume my functions."[150] In the hours leading up to the speech, thousands of demonstrators, many from outside the city, were converging on the center of Paris, while riot police prepared to contain the violence.[151] One historian would observe later that De Gaulle "did not come over as a man in charge of the situation, but a mere mortal struggling for a way out... for the first time in his career de Gaulle seemed an anachronism."[152]
  • North Vietnam activated a new prisoner-of-war camp at Sơn Tây, 23 miles (37 km) northwest of Hanoi, and began the relocation of 55 of the 356 American POWs. The site, codenamed "Camp Hope", would be the object of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt (on November 21, 1970) by a Special Operations force to rescue the prisoners.[153]

May 25, 1968 (Saturday)

  • The world's 17th human heart transplant was performed at the Medical College of Virginia by Dr. David M. Hume and Dr. Richard Lower, but the hospital initially refused to disclose the name of the recipient or the donor, and an armed guard was kept on the floor where the patient was recovering.[154] Reporters soon learned from other sources that the recipient was a white man, Joseph G. Klett, and that the heart came from an African-American, Bruce O. Tucker, who had suffered a traumatic brain injury the day before the surgery and whose body was unclaimed;[155] and then found the reason for the secrecy. William Tucker, the donor's brother, brought a lawsuit on behalf of the family on grounds that the heart had been removed without consent and that Bruce was technically alive when he was taken off of life support.[156] The suit, Tucker v. Lower would be "the first case to present the question of the 'definition of death' in the context of organ transplantation".[157] Four years to the day after Tucker's death, a Virginia jury would become "the first anywhere to accept the new medical concept of brain death, the idea that a man is no longer living if his brain is dead."[158]
  • Mary Bell committed the first of two murders by strangling a four-year-old boy named Martin Brown in an upstairs bedroom of a derelict house located at 85 St. Margaret's Road. Brown's body was then discovered by three children later in the day. He was lying on his back with his arms stretched above his head. Aside from specks of blood and foam around his mouth, no signs of violence were visible upon his body. A local workman named John Hall soon arrived on the scene; he attempted to perform CPR, however Brown was already dead.[159]
  • The incorporation of a new city with 30,000 residents, Sterling Heights, Michigan, was approved by voters in the Sterling Township of Macomb County. The election result was 3,492 in favor and 2,614 against, with the city to come into existence on July 1.[160][161]
  • In France, negotiations began between the Pompidou government, trade unions, and the Organisation patronale, leading to the Grenelle agreements.[162]
  • Died: Charles K. Feldman, 63, American screen agent who formed the Famous Artists Corporation, and who later became a successful film producer, including The Seven Year Itch and the screen adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire.

May 26, 1968 (Sunday)

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Princess Margrethe with Prince Frederik

May 27, 1968 (Monday)

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1st Lt. Bush

May 28, 1968 (Tuesday)

May 29, 1968 (Wednesday)

May 30, 1968 (Thursday)

  • France's Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou suggested that President Charles de Gaulle dissolve the National Assembly, call a new election, and then resign. President de Gaulle refused to resign, but called an election for June 23, and threatened to declare a state of emergency. Opposition parties agreed to the call for an election.[182]
  • The 1968 Indianapolis 500 was run on this day, which was the Memorial Day holiday.[183] Bobby Unser, driving a turbocharged Offenhauser-powered car, won the race with a record speed of 152.882 miles per hour and Dan Gurney finished second.[184] By the time of the finish, all but 11 of the 33 cars had been put out of the race by mishaps.
  • French politician Charles Pasqua organized a counter-demonstration of support for President de Gaulle, with at least over 300,000 Gaullist supporters (and perhaps as many as one million) marching down the Champs-Élysées in Paris.[185]
  • West Germany enacted the controversial "Emergency Laws" (Notstandgesetze) a day after the third reading of the legislation, authorizing its government the power to revoke civil liberties during a national crisis.[186]
  • Born: Zacarias Moussaoui, French-born terrorist who received pilot training in 2001, but was arrested 26 days before he could become one of the participants in the September 11 attacks; in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques département

May 31, 1968 (Friday)

  • Camille Chamoun, who had served as President of Lebanon from 1952 to 1958, was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt by a gunman who fired four bullets at point-blank range.[187]
  • The Queen's Birthday Honours for orders and decorations of the Commonwealth realms were announced in the London Gazette. Recipients included football manager Matt Busby and inventor Barnes Wallis (knighthoods), historian C. V. Wedgwood (DBE) and Stewart Maclennan, director of the National Art Gallery of New Zealand (OBE).[188]
  • Died: Preben Uglebjerg, 37, Danish film actor, was killed in an auto accident.Olsen, Jakob Steen (December 21, 2017). "Den populære stjernes dødsulykke er stadig en uløst gåde ("The popular star's fatal accident is still an unsolved mystery")". Berlingske Tidende. Berlingske Hus. Retrieved June 30, 2018.

References

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