1968 Fun Facts, Trivia and History

1968 Fun Facts, Trivia and History

Quick Facts from 1968:

• World Changing Events: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis during the garbage workers strike and Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles during his presidential campaign.
• The Top Song was Hey Jude by The Beatles
• Influential Songs include: Born to be Wild and Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf, You Keep Me Hangin’ On by Vanilla Fudge, and Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon) by The Moody Blues
• The Movies to Watch include Funny Girl, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bandolero!, Night of the Living Dead, Planet of the Apes, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Odd Couple, The Love Bug, and Yours Mine and Ours
• The Most Famous Person in America was probably Paul Newman
• Notable books include: The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick and Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past by Erich von Daniken
• Price of a postage stamp in 1968: 6 cents
  Chevrolet Impala sport coupe: $3,468.00
  Panasonic Tape Recorder: $29.95
• The Funny Guy was: Woody Allen
• The Other Funny Guy was Bill Cosby
  The Funny Lady was: Carol Burnett
• The Conversation: Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lém with a pistol shot to head. The execution is captured by photographer Eddie Adams and helped many people question the Vietnam War.

“The Quotes:”
“Book ’em Dano”
– Jack Lord in Hawaii 5-0

“You’ve come a long way, baby”
– Virginia Slims Cigarettes

“I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.”
-Hal 5000, in 2001: A Space Odyssey

“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
– Keir Dullea, in 2001: A Space Odyssey

“Ring around the collar”
– Wisk Laundry Detergent

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara”
– Johnny, in Night Of The Living Dead

“Hello, gorgeous.”
– Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, in Funny Girl

“Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”
– Charlton Heston, in Planet of the Apes

“Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do
I’m half crazy, all for the love of you
It won’t be a stylish marriage
I can’t afford the carriage
But you look sweet upon the street
On a bicycle built for two”
– Hal 9000

The Assassinations:
April 4 – Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated by James Earl Ray.

June 5 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D, NY) was assassinated by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.

The Scandals:
The Heidi Game AFL Championship Game: With the Jets leading 32-29 with only 65 seconds left in the Game, the Raiders quickly scored 14 points to win, 43-32. Meanwhile, millions of American television viewers were unable to see Oakland’s comeback. The NBC television network cut off the live broadcast in favor of a pre-scheduled airing of Heidi, a new made-for-TV version of the classic children’s story.

Since there were no real Movie Ratings set up in October 1968, Night of the Living Dead was released at a Saturday Matinee.

Philadelphia Eagles Fans booed Santa Claus and threw snowballs at him. The real Santa was unable to attend, so Eagles management approached a fan to do the job…

Lin Zhao’s parents learned their daughter was executed in 1968 only after a Chinese Communist Party official asked them to pay the five-cent fee for the bullet used to kill her.

The Doors’ Jim Morrison, at a Miami concert, drunkenly screeched “There are no rules!” and exposed his privates.

Pop Culture Facts:
The Harlem Globetrotters were from Chicago, IL. Founded in 1926, it wasn’t until 1968 they actually played in Harlem, NY.

Best known for developing microprocessors today, Intel was founded.

A college football game between Harvard and Yale ended in a 29-29 tie, but the next day the Harvard Crimson ran the headline “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29”. Since Yale had been so heavily favored that Harvard viewed the tie as a de facto victory.

Aretha Franklin won the first ‘Best Female R&B Vocal Performance’ Grammy Award in 1968 and went on to win the same Grammy Award for the following 7 consecutive years (1968-1975).

21-year-old Chemical Bank employee Francine Gottfried was called “Wallstreet’s Sweater Girl” and known for catching the eye of people (mostly men) on her walk to work each morning for a few weeks in September 1968.

The film Grand Budapest Hotel was shot at 1.37, 1.85, and 2.35:1 ratio, matching the film ratio of the referred time, to inform the viewer where he is in the timeline, which alternates between the 1930s, 1968, and 1985.

The Candy Desk, a tradition of the US Senate since 1968, whereby a senator who sits at a desk near a busy entrance keeps a drawer full of candy for members of the body.

Singer Presents… Elvis (aka The ’68 Comeback Special) aired on NBC.

Snoopy is NASA’s official safety mascot. Every astronaut since 1968 has been given a silver Snoopy pin to bring into space. After returning, the astronauts present the pin as a special recognition to a civilian team member who helped keep them safe.

John Lennon, after taking a large amount of LSD, called an emergency meeting of The Beatles to inform them that he was in fact, Jesus Christ reincarnated.

Some people were upset that Memorial day was changed in 1968 to be the last Monday of May rather than the 30th, saying: “Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day.”

Andy Warhol was fortunate to survive an assassination attempt from Valerie Solanas in 1968. He had been declared dead in the emergency room and had nine damaged organs, and he never fully recovered- he had trouble eating and swallowing for the rest of his life and wore a girdle to hold in his bowels.

Robert P. McCulloch bought the (New) London Bridge for $2.5 million, had it dismantled in England, and shipped it to Lake Havasu AZ as a tourist attraction for his new retirement real estate development.

Voter turnout for US Presidential Elections has been below 60% since 1968, until 2020. The highest voter turnout for a US presidential election was in 1876, with 81.8% of males over 21 voting. Republican Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio ended up winning despite Democratic Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York earning a majority of the popular vote.

In what was the most-watched television broadcast at the time, the crew of Apollo 8 read in turn from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon. The founder of American Atheists responded by suing the United States government, alleging violations of the First Amendment.

Cost of a Superbowl ad in 1968: $54,000

Civil Rights:
Harriet Glickman wrote to Charles Shulz, creator of Peanuts, about the racial strife gripping the United States following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Their correspondence convinced him to create the character of Franklin.

In 1968, Major League Baseball delayed its opening day for three days to honor the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress when she was chosen to represent New York’s 12th district. When Chisholm became the first black candidate to seek her party’s nomination for President of the United States in 1972, her campaign slogan was “Unbought and Unbossed.”

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the two African-American athletes who gave the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics, were also shoeless (socks only) during the protest. This was to represent black poverty. Peter Norman, the third man on the iconic black power salute photo from the 1968 Olympics, was treated as an outcast when he returned to Australia and wasn’t given a formal apology until 6 years after his death. Both Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at Norman’s funeral.

The last 3rd Party Candidate to win a state in the US presidential election was George Wallace (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998), who ran on a pro-segregation platform in 1968.

Hundreds of Anti-Lynching Bills were introduced from 1882 to 1968. The Senate would not pass them. In 2005 the Senate formally apologized for stopping these bills.

In addition to profanity and depictions of sex in film, the Hays Code of 1930 to 1968 also forbade depictions of interracial relationships.

Vietnam War:
On April 23, 1968, students protesting the Vietnam War took over Columbia Univ. in NYC, occupying buildings for a week.

African-American Dan Bullock altered his birth certificate so that he could join the Marines in 1968. Six months later he became the youngest service member to die in combat in Vietnam. He was 15.

My Lai Massacre: a company of American soldiers killed over 500 civilians of My Lai on March 16, 1968. The incident was covered up for over a year and only one man was convicted, William Calley, of the 14 charged. Given a life sentence of house arrest in 1971, he was paroled in 1974.

Vietcong AP Photojournalist Eddie Adams took a photograph of an officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the head at point-blank range and earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1969. Although it changed the viewpoint of the war in many American’s eyes, the victim was, in fact, a Vietcong ‘revenge squad’ leader, having killed dozens of (unarmed) civilians that very same day.

Cold War:
The United States lost an H-Bomb (serial number 78252) in a crash off the Thule, Greenland US Airbase.

The USS Pueblo (AGER-2), an American vessel was captured by North Korea. The crew was abused, and to show the world, they gave the middle finger in propaganda photographs, claiming it was a “Hawaiian good luck sign”.

The USS Scorpion (SSN-589), a nuclear submarine that sank in deep water in 1968 is still resting at the bottom of the sea a few hundred miles southwest of the Azores, Portugal. Its nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons have never been recovered.

Hot Wheels were introduced in 1968.

Roy Jacuzzi invented the first self-contained, fully integrated whirlpool bath, and named it the Jacuzzi®.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood debuted on NET (now PBS)

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri was dedicated.

Semiconductor company Intel was founded.

On February 16, 1968, Alabama Senator Rankin Fite made the first 911 call in the United States in Haleyville, Alabama. It was a test, not a real emergency.

Broadway Show – Plaza Suite (Play) Opened on February 14, 1968, and Closed: October 3, 1970

Broadway Show – Hair (Musical) Opened on April 29, 1968, and Closed: July 1, 1972

Broadway Show – Promises, Promises (Musical) Opened on December 1, 1968, and Closed: January 1, 1972

1968 Billboard Number One Songs
December 30, 1967 – January 19, 1968:
Hello Goodbye – The Beatles

January 20 – February 2:
Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) – John Fred & His Playboy Band

February 3 – February 9:
Green Tambourine – The Lemon Pipers

February 10 – March 15:
Love Is Blue – Paul Mauriat

March 16 – April 12:
(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay – Otis Redding

April 13 – May 17:
Honey – Bobby Goldsboro

May 18 – May 31:
Tighten Up – Archie Bell & the Drells

June 1 – June 21:
Mrs. Robinson – Simon & Garfunkel

June 22 – July 19:
This Guy’s In Love With You – Herb Alpert

July 20 – August 2:
Grazing In The Grass – Hugh Masekela

August 3 – August 16:
Hello, I Love You – The Doors

August 17 – September 20:
People Got To Be Free – The Rascals

September 21 – September 27:
Harper Valley P.T.A – Jeannie C. Riley

September 28 – November 29:
Hey Jude – The Beatles

November 30 – December 13:
Love Child – Diana Ross & The Supremes

December 14, 1968 – January 31, 1969:
I Heard It Through The Grapevine – Marvin Gaye