April 1968

April 1, 1968 (Monday)

• The 249th and final original episode of The Andy Griffith Show was aired on CBS, two days after Andy Griffith's retirement was revealed to the general public. The final episode was a pilot for Mayberry R.F.D., with the focus on Ken Berry in his fourth appearance as "Sam Jones". Griffith would make a final appearance as Andy Taylor in the series premiere of Mayberry R.F.D.
• American bombers halted further aerial bombardment of those portions of North Vietnam that were north of the 20th parallel, an area which included Hanoi and Haiphong. Missions would continue for the remainder of the country, between the 17th parallel and 20th parallel.
• An earthquake of 7.5 magnitude took place in Japan, its epicenter located in Hyūga-nada Sea, off the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, and was followed by a tsunami. The quake struck at 9:44 a.m. local time and reportedly killed one person and injured 22 others.
• The Abukuma Express Line was opened in Japan.
• Born:
• *Andreas Schnaas, German horror film director known for the Violent Shit film series; in Hamburg
• *Julia Boutros, Lebanese pop music star; in Beirut
• Died: Lev Davidovich Landau, 60, Soviet physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, died from injuries sustained in a car accident six years earlier

  April 2, 1968 (Tuesday)

• Two days after U.S. President Lyndon Johnson announced his interest in beginning peace talks to end the Vietnam War, North Vietnam's official government radio station responded that "The North Vietnamese government declares its readiness to send its representatives to make contact with U.S. representatives to decide with the U.S. side the unconditional cessation of bombing and all other war acts... so that talks could begin."
• In Italy, RAI broadcast the first episode of the miniseries La famiglia Benvenuti, by Alfredo Giannetti, with Enrico Maria Salerno and Valeria Valeri, about the life of the Italian middle class. The show, innovative at that time, was received well by the public and critics alike, and the child actor Giusva Fioravanti became a star.
• Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin firebombed two department stores in Frankfurt-am-Main in West Germany, attacking the Kaufhaus Schneider store and the Kaufhol store in the early morning hours after the stores had closed. They were arrested two days later, but would be released in 1969 and form the Baader-Meinhof Gang with Ulrike Meinhof.
• In the United States, NBC broadcast a television special in which British singer Petula Clark appeared with Harry Belafonte as her guest. An innocent, affectionate gesture between the two during a song had prompted concern from the show's sponsor due to the difference in their races.
• At a meeting in Fort Lamy, the capital of Chad, President François Tombalbaye hosted President Alphonse Massamba-Débat of the Republic of the Congo and President Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic as the three nations created the Union of Central African States.
• Our Lady of Zeitoun, a Marian apparition, was first witnessed. The apparition of the Virgin Mary was seen on the roof of the Church of Saint Mary, a Coptic Christian church in the Zeitoun section of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, and would continue to return for several months.
• The Batallón de Paracaidistas Nº1, popularly known as "Pelantarú", was created as the first Special forces unit in Chile.
• Stanley Kubrick's classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.
• Born: Hasan Nuhanović, Bosniak anti-genocide activist; in Zvornik, SFR Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia

  April 3, 1968 (Wednesday)

• American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final speech, later known as "I've Been to the Mountaintop", in the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee in what was later described as "in many respects, a summary of the cause to which King had dedicated his life" and "An eerie prescience of his death". Commenting about a prior stabbing and about threats to his life, he asked "What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now... But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop."
• On the same day, at the request of Mayor Henry Loeb of Memphis, U.S. District Judge Bailey Brown issued a temporary restraining order to prohibit King's plan to lead a march of 6,000 men through Memphis on April 8. King announced that he would ignore the order, telling the press "We are not going to be stopped by Mace or injunctions or any other method that the city plans to use." King's attorneys appeared in court the next morning for a hearing to set aside the injunction.
• Following discussions at the Manned Space Flight Management Council meeting at Kennedy Space Center on March 21–24, Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight George E. Mueller and Manned Spacecraft Center Director Robert R. Gilruth concluded between April 3 and 15 that, with the stringent funding restraints facing the Apollo Applications Program, the most practical near-term program was a Saturn IB Orbital Workshop designed to simplify operational modes and techniques in Earth orbit.
• The first round of the 22nd annual draft of the National Basketball Association was held. Wes Unseld was the first choice, picked by the Baltimore Bullets.
• Born: Jamie Hewlett, British artist, songwriter, and co-creator of Tank Girl and the virtual band Gorillaz; in Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales

  April 4, 1968 (Thursday)

• American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he stood on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King and his associate, Ralph Abernathy, had been staying at Room 306 of the motel. James Earl Ray had rented a room at a boarding house that had a view of the motel. At 6:01 in the evening, King was preparing to go to dinner with his associates and was walking back into the room to get his overcoat. At that moment, Ray allegedly fired a single shot from a.30-06 rifle, and the bullet struck King in the neck. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital and pronounced dead at 7:05. The powerful figure, described as a weapon of non-violence, died at the age of 39.
• On the same day, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy went ahead with a rally in Indianapolis, where he gave a short but powerful speech that is sometimes credited with having limited the rioting that would be seen in many other American cities immediately following the assassination.
• NASA launched the uncrewed Apollo 6 from Cape Kennedy at 7:00 a.m. as the second test flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle. The rocket propelled a 28-ton CSM and a mock-up of the 17-ton Apollo Lunar Module into earth orbit, but the premature shutdown of two second stage engines and the overcompensation of other engines put the vehicles into an altitude "110 miles too high" and consumed most of the fuel that would have been necessary to propel the craft out of Earth orbit and to the Moon. "If the Apollo 6 had carried men," an AP report noted, "a mission to the moon would have been aborted." The craft re-entered the atmosphere almost 10 hours after its launch; the recovered it in the Pacific Ocean.
• Jozef Lenárt, who had been Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia since 1963, resigned along with his cabinet in the wake of the reforms of the Prague Spring. The Central Committee of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party asked Lenart to step down at an evening meeting, where its members took an unprecedented vote by secret ballot. The Central Committee appointed Deputy Prime Minister Oldrich Cernik to succeed Lenart.
• The Reverend Terence Cooke was installed as the new Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York in an investiture ceremony that began at 1:00 p.m. at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan.
• The Broadway musical The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N opened at the Alvin Theatre in New York City. Mayor John Lindsay and other audience members learned of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination at the intermission, causing many of them to leave the theater. The show would run for only 28 performances before closing.
• Died: Erno Crisa, 54, Italian character actor

  April 5, 1968 (Friday)

• In protest against the lack of an aerial display to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force four days earlier, and as a gesture against the British government, Flight Lieutenant Alan Pollock of No. 1 Squadron RAF flew a jet fighter under the top span of Tower Bridge, making an unauthorized display flight in a Hawker Hunter and marking the first jet flight under the bridge. Pollock was arrested upon his return to base, and was subsequently retired from the RAF for health reasons.
• Rioting broke out in Chicago after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on the previous day, leading to 11 deaths and more than 2,000 arrests. Violence was reported in 41 cities in the U.S., with fatalities in Chicago, Washington, Detroit, New York, Minneapolis, Memphis, and Tallahassee. By Sunday, there would be 85 cities hit by violence, 30 people killed, and at least 2,000 injured.
• At the instigation of Governor Spiro Agnew, Maryland National Guard troops were activated in anticipation of rioting in Baltimore and suburban Washington, D.C. On April 14, Agnew declared the state of emergency in Baltimore over and stood down the National Guard.
• The United States returned Iwo Jima and the other Bonin Islands to Japanese sovereignty, 23 years after the Battle of Iwo Jima that claimed 6,800 American and 19,000 Japanese lives.
• Born:
• *Diamond D, American rapper, record producer and member of hip hop group D.I.T.C.; in The Bronx
• *Paula Cole, American singer and songwriter; in Rockport, Massachusetts
• *Stewart Lee, English stand-up comedian; in Wellington, Shropshire