May 1968

[May 1], 1968 (Wednesday)

• In Dallas, at its first meeting since its creation through a merger, the United Methodist Church removed its rule that Methodist ministers could not drink alcohol nor smoke tobacco.
• CARIFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade Association, was formally created as an agreement between Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago.
• RAF Strike Command was created within the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force by the consolidation of RAF Bomber Command and RAF Fighter Command.
• Born: Oliver Bierhoff, German soccer football striker and national team member who scored the first "golden goal" in international play; in Karlsruhe
• Died: Jack Adams, 73, Canadian ice hockey player, Detroit Red Wings head coach, and Hockey Hall of Fame inductee. The National Hockey League's award for the coach of the year is named in his honor.

  [May 2], 1968 (Thursday)

• 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.
• 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 rather than the planned. 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."
• Regular television broadcasting was introduced to Israel with the debut of Channel 1 of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. 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.
• 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.
• John Boozer of the Philadelphia Phillies became the first Major League Baseball player since 1944 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. Only three other players have been ejected from an MLB game under the spitball rule.
• 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.
• Student protests in France led the administrators of the Paris University at Nanterre to temporarily shut down the educational institution. Instead of quelling the demonstrations, the act led to more protests and the calling of riot police by the university.
• 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

  [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 from its destination and broke up in midair. There were no survivors. 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.
• 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. Police arrived to disperse the protesters, and "the first riot of mai 68 ensued" and led to riots and university closures across the country.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Died: Leonid Sabaneyev, 86, Russian mathematician and classical composer

  [May 4], 1968 (Saturday)

• The 94th Kentucky Derby was won by Dancer's Image. Despite the thoroughbred's history of pain in his ankles, jockey Bobby Ussery rode to victory and finished 1½ lengths ahead of Forward Pass. Three days later, Dancer's Image would be disqualified after failing a drug test and Forward Pass would be declared the winner.
• The Pittsburgh Pipers won the first championship of the American Basketball Association by defeating the New Orleans Buccaneers, 122–113, in the seventh and deciding game of the finals. A crowd of 11,457 watched at Pittsburgh Civic Arena.

  [May 5], 1968 (Sunday)

• Four journalists— three from Australia and one from England— were murdered in Saigon by Viet Cong guerrillas after their mini-jeep drove into a trap in the city's Cholon sector. Killed in an execution were Reuters reporters Ron Lamary of England and Bruce Pigott; Michael Birch of the Australian Associated Press; and John Cantwell, Australian correspondent for Time magazine. A fifth journalist, freelancer Frank Palmos of Australia, pretended to be dead and would survive to tell what happened.
• The May Offensive was launched after midnight by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, initiating a second phase of January's Tet Offensive, with an attack on 119 targets throughout South Vietnam, including the capital, Saigon.
• A Grumman Gulfstream II became the first executive jet to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
• Died: Albert Dekker, 62, American character actor on stage, film and television, was found hanged in his apartment in Hollywood

  [May 6], 1968 (Monday)

• May 68: In Paris, the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, 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. Fifteen were rescued after being trapped for five days, but the other 10, who had not been heard from since the accident, were believed to have died. 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.
• 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. Although initial reports stated that 10 people had been killed and 26 injured, later reports revised the number of deaths to four crewmen on the Islas Orcadas.

  [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.
• 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.
• May 68: 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:
• *Eagle-Eye Cherry, Swedish singer and stage performer; in Stockholm
• *Traci Lords, American actress and singer; in Steubenville, Ohio
• 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.
• *Mike Spence, 31, British racing driver, was killed while test driving a Lotus 56 turbocar in preparation for the Indianapolis 500