July 1968

[July 1], 1968 (Monday)

• An American airplane and its crew of 214 U.S. Army soldiers was forced to land at an airfield in the Soviet Union after being intercepted in Soviet airspace by two MiG-17 jet fighters. Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253A, a Douglas DC-8 chartered by the Army had been en route to South Vietnam when it was ordered to land, and was escorted to an airfield at Burevestnik in the Kurile Islands. The Americans would be detained for two days. After the United States apologized to the Soviet Union for allowing its aircraft to stray into Soviet airspace, the American DC-8 was allowed to leave on July 3 and arrived at the Yokota Air Base in Japan four hours later.
• Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 714 was hijacked to Cuba by a passenger as it approached Miami after taking off from Chicago. The Boeing 727 carried 92 people, including the gunman, who ordered the pilot to fly to Havana. Cuban officials refused to allow the Boeing 727 to take off from the Havana Airport because of concerns that the runway was not long enough for a fully loaded 727 to depart, so the passengers and crew were taken by bus the next day to Varadero, where they boarded a Douglas DC-7 operated by an American "refugee airlift service".
• The Phoenix Program, a U.S. initiative intended to identify and "neutralize" the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, was launched by the American CIA.
• Japan's new postal code system was launched at Tokyo's Central Post Office. Initially, the code consisted of five digits; starting in 1998, it became a seven-digit code.
• The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed in Washington, Moscow and London and opened for signature by the other nations of the world.
• In the United States, the Chicago Great Western Railway was merged with the Chicago and North Western Railway.

  [July 2], 1968 (Tuesday)

• Frank Milton, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of London's Bow Street Magistrates' Court, ordered that accused American assassin James Earl Ray be extradited back to the United States to face charges for the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Extradition had been sought both by the state of Tennessee, for King's April 4 murder, and by Missouri for Ray's escape from prison in 1967. Milton told Ray directly that the ruling would not take effect until July 17 and that Ray had a right to apply for a writ of habeas corpus.
• The 18th Berlin International Film Festival ended. The Golden Bear prize was awarded to the Swedish film Ole dole doff?, directed by Jan Troell.
• Born: Ron Goldman, American murder victim, restaurant waiter and friend of actress Nicole Brown Simpson; in Chicago, Illinois
• Died:
• *Cardinal Francis Brennan, 74, Roman Catholic cardinal and Dean of the Roman Rota. An obituary would note that he "rose from a coal town in Pennsylvania to the highest post ever held by an American in the Vatican."
• *Sir Hans Heysen, 90, German-born Australian painter

  [July 3], 1968 (Wednesday)

• At the direction of CCP Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee issued the "July 3 Public Notice", described as "an important turning point of the Cultural Revolution" and "the first clear indication that Mao and the central leadership had finally decided to put an end to nationwide violence and chaos." The order came in the wake of the massacre of thousands of rebels in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region by the armies of the Guangxi political commissar, General Wei Guoqing; one historian estimated that as many as 80,000 people were killed in Guangxi during the period before and after the July 3 notice.
• At the end of a two day, closed-door meeting of the Soviet Communist Party Politburo regarding the crisis of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko told the 11 full members that "It is now quite clear that we cannot avoid an armed intervention."
• Six people and eight racehorses were killed in a cargo plane crash at London Heathrow Airport. The chartered BKS Air Transport plane, an Airspeed Ambassador, was arriving from France where it was transporting the group from William Hill's farm in Deauville, when metal fatigue caused it to lose control while landing. The plane struck two empty BEA airliners after touching down.

  [July 4], 1968 (Thursday)

• British yachtsman Alec Rose completed his solo trip around the world after 354 days, as his ketch, Lively Lady, sailed into Portsmouth harbour and was welcomed by 200,000 cheering spectators after an escort by a flotilla of 300 boats. Rose, a 59-year-old vegetable dealer, had spent 320 of his 354 days alone at sea, "longer than any man known in history." Rose had set off from Portsmouth on July 16, 1967, gotten repairs to his vessel from the people of Bluff, New Zealand during February, and rounded the dangerous waters off Cape Horn on April 2 before returning to Portsmouth almost a year after he had left.
• Died:
• *Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke, 79, Nazi General, commander of paratroopers during World War II, convicted war criminal, and right-wing advocate after the war.
• *Gustaf Larson, 80, Swedish automotive engineer and the co-founder of Volvo

  [July 5], 1968 (Friday)

• Two members of a USO-sponsored pop music band were killed, and two others wounded, when they were ambushed while being transported to perform a concert for a group of U.S. Army members at the coastal resort of Vung Tau. Phil Pill, 19, was a keyboard player and Curt Willis, 17, a drummer, for the group "Brandi Perry and the Bubble Machine". Wounded were 20-year-old Paula Levine, who had auditioned after concluding that "she could make a bigger mark as a pop singer by going to Vietnam than by any other route" and Jack Bone, 18, played bass.
• Rod Laver beat fellow Australian Tony Roche in three straight sets to win the Wimbledon Men's Singles tennis competition. Laver collected £2000 in prize money, compared to the £750 awarded to the women's singles champion.
• Alec Rose was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom in recognition of his achievement in sailing around the world single-handed.

  [July 6], 1968 (Saturday)

• The FBI sent a memorandum to its field offices outlining 11 approved COINTELPRO practices for disrupting American anti-government organizations collectively described as the "New Left". The ideas ranged from sending anonymous information and misinformation to the local press and the families of organization leaders, to instigating personal conflicts among group leaders, to more extreme measures such as to "create the impression that leaders are 'informants for the Bureau or other law enforcement agencies" and to "have members arrested on marijuana charges."
• Billie Jean King of the United States defeated Australian Judy Tegart 9–7, 7–5, to win the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles tennis competition. She became the first tennis player to win three singles crowns in a row.
• Born: John Dickerson, American journalist and a reporter for CBS News; in Washington, D.C.

  [July 7], 1968 (Sunday)

• The Communist Party USA nominated a presidential candidate for the first time since Earl Browder ran in 1940, choosing 38-year-old Charlene Mitchell as the first African-American woman to run for President of the United States, concluding its four day convention at the Diplomat Hotel in Harlem. Her running mate, Michael Zagarell was a 23-year-old white man from Brooklyn, younger than the constitutionally required age of 35. The Mitchell and Zagarell ticket, on the ballot only in New York, would receive only 1,077 of the 73,199,999 votes cast in the election in November.
• Elections were held for Japan's House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet, Japan's parliament. As in the lower house, the Liberal Democratic Party won a plurality of the vote, sufficient for 137 of the 250 seats. The Japan Socialist Party was in second place, with 65 seats.
• A crash killed 26 people, and seriously injured 11 others near the town of Natagaima in Colombia, when the bus they were riding struck a bridge abutment and then plunged over a cliff. The bus was on the way from Neiva to Bogotá.
• The Yardbirds played their final concert, as the British R&B group finished its run at the Luton College of Technology in Bedfordshire.
• Died: Edgar Monsanto Queeny, 70, American business executive, chemist and conservationist who built the Monsanto Corporation from a small manufacturer of pesticides into the fifth largest chemical company in the world.

  [July 8], 1968 (Monday)

• A powerful solar flare knocked out short wave radio communications on all sunlit portions of the earth, starting at 1803 UTC. The flare was the result of a powerful explosion on the surface of the Sun almost minutes earlier, four days after the Earth had reached its aphelion on July 4.
• Thirty-one Egyptian civilians were killed and 58 wounded when artillery shells landed in the El Arbaeen section of the city of Suez during a battle between Israeli and Egyptian forces on opposite sides of the Suez Canal. Israel said that the battle began after Israel Defense Forces at Port Tewfik were struck by Egyptian artillery.
• With reconnaissance photographs as evidence, the CIA reported to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson that, with American bombing of North Vietnam having been suspended, Haiphong, North Vietnam's largest port, was receiving military cargo from the Soviet Union and from Communist China at unprecedented levels.
• The U.S. Navy's last flight of the P-5 Marlin flying boat began when an unidentified pilot lifted off from San Diego Bay to fly the aircraft to the Smithsonian Institution.
• Born:
• *Michael Weatherly, American TV actor known for NCIS and for Bull; in New York City
• *Billy Crudup, American stage and film actor; in Manhasset, New York