August 1968

[August 1], 1968 (Thursday)

• A court in Caracas sentenced former Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez to "four years, one month and 15 days imprisonment" after he was found guilty of embezzlement of government funds between 1948 and 1958. Since the time "corresponded exactly" to the amount of time Jimenez had been held in an American jail in Miami since 1964, the court gave Perez credit for time served and released him immediately, on the condition that he leave Venezuela. Perez then went into exile in Spain, staying at a luxury residential hotel in Madrid.
• The National Football League made its first test of the "pressure point", allowing the kicking of a point after touchdown in the 23 preseason exhibition games between NFL and American Football League teams. Running or passing the ball, good for two points in AFL games, was worth one point. Sid Blanks of the AFL's Houston Oilers tried and failed to score the pressure point after the lone touchdown in a 9–3 win over the visiting Washington Redskins, in what was also the first professional football game in a domed stadium. Tom Matte of the Baltimore Colts would score the first pressure point two days later in a 14–12 win over the Oakland Raiders.
• The Federal National Mortgage Association, nicknamed "Fannie Mae" since its creation in 1938 as a United States government means of providing security to mortgage lenders, was made a publicly traded private corporation, and many of its functions of providing insurance against default for purchasers of Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration were assumed with the creation of the Government National Mortgage Association.
• Three weeks after his 22nd birthday, Hassanal Bolkiah was crowned as the 29th Sultan of Brunei in a coronation ceremony that took place ten months after his assumption of the throne following the abdication of his father on October 5, 1967.
• The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program was established as an alternative to federal disaster relief by providing a means for homeowners in flood-prone areas to pay premiums in order to purchase insurance against flooding.
• The first issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump was published in Japan for the first time. Since its debut, the magazine has sold over 7.5billion copies, making it the best-selling comic/manga magazine in history.
• After NASA limited Saturn V rocket production to the model of Vehicle 515, Marshall Space Flight Center terminated production of engine hardware for the Apollo and Apollo Applications programs. The action affected 38 engines made by the same company, with 27 Rocketdyne H-1, eight Rocketdyne F-1, and three Rocketdyne J-2 rocket engines.

  [August 2], 1968 (Friday)

• Ahmed Sékou Touré, President of Guinea, spoke at the city of Kankan and announced his plans for a West African version of China's Cultural Revolution, with plans "to attack fetishism, charlatanism, religious fanaticism, any irrational attitude, any form of mystification, and any form of exploitation". In order to further instruction in his concept of Socialist Cultural Theory, Touré ordered the creation of Centres d'Education Revolutionnaire to educate the next generation of leaders, and ordered citizens to join Pouvoir Revolutionnaire Locales to force change in towns and villages, as well as monopolizing all media.
• A suicidal pilot stole a Cessna-180 airplane from an airstrip at Jean, Nevada, then flew to Las Vegas and crashed into the top of what was, at the time, the tallest building in the metropolitan area, the 30-story tall Landmark Hotel and Casino in Paradise. The wreckage then fell onto the adjacent Las Vegas Convention Center. The pilot was killed, but nobody on the ground was injured.
• The five-story tall Ruby Towers apartment building, located in the Santa Cruz district of Manila, collapsed during a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the Philippines island of Luzon at 4:21 in the morning, killing 204 people. The quake, with an epicenter at the city of Casiguran, away, killed 10 people in rural areas outside Manila.
• Colonel Abdallah Salih Sabah al-Awlaqi, the commander of the national security forces of the relatively new People's Republic of Southern Yemen, defected along with 200 of his soldiers to the older Yemen Arab Republic in North Yemen, taking with him most of South Yemen's fleet of armored cars.
• Eighty-two of the 95 people on board Alitalia Airlines Flight 660 survived despite the DC-8's crash into a tree-covered hillside as it was approaching Milan following a flight from Rome.
• Sirhan Sirhan pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering Senator Robert F. Kennedy in June.
• Born:
• *Maximum Capacity, American professional wrestler who weighed ; in Newark, New Jersey
• *Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada ; in Peace River, Alberta
• Died: Melitón Manzanas, 59, Spanish police superintendent and director of the Brigada Político-Social secret police force in San Sebastián, was assassinated by the Basque separatist group, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, at his home in Irún.

  [August 3], 1968 (Saturday)

• The Bratislava Declaration was signed by the leaders of the Communist parties of host nation Czechoslovakia, and neighboring Communist-ruled regimes in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland. Officially, the meeting in Czechoslovakia was called the "Declaration of Six Communist and Labor Parties of the Socialist Countries". Specifically, the parties agreed to the Brezhnev doctrine that the Communist nations should agree on common policies and to "firmly and resolutely set their unbreakable solidarity and their high degree of vigilance against each and every effort by imperialism and also by all other anti-communist forces to weaken the leading role of the working class and the communist parties" and pledging that "They will never allow anyone to drive a wedge between socialist States or to undermine the foundations of the socialist social system." The six nations agreed to work together for "the interests of all fraternal countries and parties, the cause of the unbreakable friendship of the peoples of our countries, and the interests of peace, democracy, national independence, and socialism." The last Soviet Army troops departed from Czechoslovakia on the same day, more than a month after the end of Warsaw Pact military exercises on June 30. Troops would return 17 days later in an invasion of Czechoslovakia.
• During the meeting, five conservative members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party Politburo signed and had delivered a "letter of invitation" that Brezhnev would refer to as the pretext for invasion, but which would not be revealed until almost 24 years later. Vasil Bilak, Alois Indra, Drahomir Kolder, Oldrich Svestka and signed the letter, typewritten and written in Russian, that "The very essence of socialism in our country is in danger," and added "In such complex conditions we are addressing you, Soviet Communists... with a plea to provide support and help with all the means available. Take our declaration as an urgent request for your intervention and general help." On July 16, 1992, after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, Russian president Boris Yeltsin would deliver the original letter to Czechoslovakia's president Vaclav Havel, who would disclose it the next day.
• Born: Rod Beck, American baseball relief pitcher and 1994 award winner; in Burbank, California
• Died: Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, 71, Soviet Army commander and World War II hero

  [August 4], 1968 (Sunday)

• North Central Airlines Flight 261 was approaching Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport on a flight from Chicago when a private plane collided with it. The pilot of the North Central Convair CV-580 turboprop, Captain Ted Baum, was able to land safely in spite of being struck in the side by a Cessna 150. All three people on the Cessna were killed.
• North Vietnam rejected yet another United States offer to begin the process to end the Vietnam War when United States negotiator Cyrus Vance met with North Vietnamese delegate Lau in Paris. The formula for mutual de-escalation the North Vietnamese rejected was originally put forward by the Soviet Ambassador to Paris Valerian Zorin.
• In Brazzaville, Alphonse Massamba-Débat, the civilian President of the Republic of the Congo, was forced to cede most of his power to a 40-member National Revolutionary Council led by a rebellious Army officer, Captain Marien Ngouabi. Massamba-Débat would continue for another month as a figurehead, before being forced into exile.
• Born:
• *Lee Mack, English actor and comedian, star of the BBC One sitcom Not Going Out since 2006; in Southport, Lancashire
• *Olga Neuwirth, Austrian classical music composer; in Graz
• Died: Alexander Gettler, 84, American forensic scientist who became an expert on toxicology analysis

  [August 5], 1968 (Monday)

• Three weeks after the coup d'état that installed him as Iraq's new president, General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr announced a general amnesty for his nation's Kurdish population, including people who had deserted from the Iraqi army or from police forces, and said that the surrender of their weapons would not be required. The announcement came the day after al-Bakr and the Revolutionary Command Council said that the RCC would implement provisions of a 12-point plan to provide for cultural autonomy and rights to use Kurdish.
• The Republican National Convention opened in Miami Beach, Florida.
• Born:
• *Marine Le Pen, French presidential candidate and runner-up in 2017 and leader of the right-wing Front national; in Neuilly-sur-Seine
• *Colin McRae, Scottish rally auto racer and 1995 world champion; in Lanark
• *Terri Clark, Canadian country music artist known for Girls Lie Too; in Montreal
• Died: Luther Perkins, 40, American country music guitarist for Johnny Cash; two days after being injured in a fire at his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Perkins had fallen asleep while smoking a cigarette.