Weekend America

The Beatles album "Magical Mystery Tour" goes #1 on the pop charts and stays #1 for eight weeks.

The Tet Offensive begins, with attacks on U.S. and South Vietnamese targets all across the nation.

Peggy Fleming wins the U.S. female figure skating championships.

The Grateful Dead play Eagle’s Auditorium in Seattle, Wash.

Highest-rated TV shows for the month: The Andy Griffith Show, The Lucy Show and Gomer Pyle, USMC

Communist forces attack at least eight cities all across South Vietnam as the Tet Offensive continues.

Peggy Fleming wins the Olympic figure skating gold medal, Grenoble, France.

The Johnson administration abolishes most draft deferments, including young men in college and graduate school in some circumstances. Exceptions are still made for medical and dental students.

U.S. and South Vietnamese troops retake the city of Hue in central Vietnam, which fell to the North Vietnamese Army during the Tet Offensive. The victory marks the end of the Tet Offensive.

The Beatles’ "Hey Jude," "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong and Otis Redding’s "(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay" all top the pop music charts in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

Daniel Craig, the current James Bond, is born in Chester, England.

"Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" wins four Grammys for The Beatles.

U.S. troops enter the village of My Lai in Vietnam and massacre unarmed civilians. The number of dead range from 347 to 504. The incident sparked widespread outrage around the world and reduced U.S. support at home for the Vietnam War.

The Rev. Walter Fauntroy becomes the first congressional delegate from the District of Columbia. However, he is not allowed to vote on any legislation.

A new Gallup poll indicates 52 percent disapprove of President Johnson’s performance, and a record low 63 percent disapprove of his Vietnam policy.

Bill Graham opens the Fillmore East in what once was an abandoned movie theater in New York City. The venue would soon become an icon of the pop music scene. Also, The 58th and final new episode of "The Monkees" airs on NBC.

Eighteen-year-old Bobby Hutton, the youngest member of the Black Panther Party, is shot to death in a firefight with Oakland police. Eldridge Cleaver was with him and was wounded.

Yippies hold a ‘Yip-out’ in New York City’s Central Park, collecting canned goods for the Poor People’s Campaign.

James Earl Ray, sought as the sniper slayer of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey announces he will seek the Democratic nomination for the White House.

The Beatles’ new record company, Apple Corps, opens offices in London. The musical "Hair" debuts at the Biltmore Theatre in New York City.

Hundreds are injured when students and Marxist agitators battle police in the streets of Paris.

The Youngbloods, Country Joe & The Fish, The Electric Flag, The Grateful Dead and Big Brother & The Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin perform at the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival in Santa Clara, Calif.

The Gateway Arch is dedicated in St. Louis, Mo., and The Rolling Stones release "Jumping Jack Flash."

Participants of the Poor People's Campaign — the last movement organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., before he was assassinated — began a mass protest in a "shanty town" on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

GOP candidate Richard Nixon pitches his political message to the "silent majority" — socially conservative Americans who oppose the mass demonstrations sweeping the nation.

Simon & Garfunkel’s "Mrs. Robinson" hits #1 on the pop music charts. Blind and deaf author Helen Keller dies.

James Earl Ray, assassin of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is captured at London’s Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd.

The horror film "Rosemary’s Baby" premieres in the United States to critical acclaim.

"Rolling Stone" features Bob Dylan on its cover, and Jann Wenner lauds the artist’s latest collection of songs. Those demo tapes, recorded by Dylan in the basement of the famed "Big Pink" house in upstate New York, would become the most heavily bootlegged songs in history.

"Tip-Toe Thru’ The Tulips With Me" by Tiny Tim peaks at #17 on the pop music charts.

The Beatles continued recording their only double LP, simply titled "The Beatles" but known to fans as the "White Album."

Billy Jean King wins her third singles title at Wimbledon. Between 1961 and 1979, King claimed 20 titles on the grass courst: six singles, ten doubles and four mixed doubles.

Andy Griffith is featured on the cover of "TV Guide" for the eighth time since 1961, making him the one star to be featured on the guide more than any other actor.

Iron Butterfly’s "In-a-gadda-da-vida" becomes the first heavy metal song to hit the Billboard pop charts, entering at #117.

A race riot breaks out in Gary, Indiana — just one of many that broke out across the United States in the summer of 1968 following the assassinations of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy.

Also in July 1968: The United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and 58 other nations sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India refused to sign. Saddam Hussein takes over internal security in Iraq.

Dr. Michael E. DeBakey of Houston performs the first simultaneous multi-organ transplant, removing two kidneys, one lung and the heart from one donor and transferring them into four patients.

Race riots spread to Miami, Chicago and Little Rock, Ark.

The Rascals’ third #1 hit and its biggest-selling single, ‘People Got to Be Free,’ reaches the top of the charts, where it remains for five weeks.

France becomes the fifth thermonuclear power in the world after successfully detonating a hydrogen bomb over an atoll in the South Pacific. The nation would go on to conduct 210 tests of its nuclear weapons before ending them in 1996.

"Private Eye" magazine reports a John Lennon and Yoko Ono album will have a picture of them nude on cover of their first album, "Two Virgins."

The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy enters active service. Named for the 35th president of the United States, the carrier was the last to be powered by coventional fuel.

Six months after being canceled as a live-action show, "Batman and Robin" return to TV as animated characters on CBS, as part of "The Batman-Superman Hour."

The Zond 5 spacecraft, carrying a biological payload of turtles, wine flies, meal worms, plants, seeds, bacteria, spashes down safely in the Indian Ocean after orbiting the moon. The Zond series was intended to be the Soviet Union’s answer to the U.S. Apollo program, but was scrapped.

Janis Joplin announces she’s leaving her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, to go solo. The Beatles’ "Hey Jude" single goes reaches the top of the pop charts and stays #1 for nine weeks.

In what is regarded by many as the official start of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, Catholics protesting discrimination by Protestant pro-British authorities clash with police.

At least 500 Vietnam veterans joining a protest march in San Francisco calling for an end to the war — the first of growing number of marches by war veterans.

At the Olympic Summer Games in Mexico City, Mexico, two African-American athletes — Tommie Smith (gold) and John Carlos (bronze) — sparked controversy by raising their black-gloved fists as a symbol of Black Power. As punishment, the International Olympic Committee banned them from the Olympic Games for life.

Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas, quoted in the "Rolling Stone" interview: "There’s so much talk about the Drug Generation and songs about drugs. That’s stupid. They aren’t songs about drugs — they’re about life."

President Johnson orders an end to air and naval bombardment of North Vietnam after a deal is reached with Hanoi: no more attacks on South Vietnamese cities and the resumption of peace talks in Paris.

A rare Midwest earthquake centered in Illinois rattles a 580,000-square-mile area of the central United States, and is felt in 23 states.

The Star Trek episode "The Tholian Web" airs during the series’ third season on CBS. Considered a classic, the episode cannot save Star Trek’s sagging ratings. The last episode of the the series, "The Turnabout Intruder," airs June 3, 1969.

The flip side of the famed John Lennon and Yoko Ono nude photograph, showing them turned away from the camera with their backside exposed, is featured on the cover of "Rolling Stone" magazine.

New York band The Velvet Undergroud play the Whisky A Go Go nightclub on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, an area quickly becoming a destination for up-and-coming bands and the epicenter of the "West Coast sound."

The Orbiting Astronomical Observatory-2 was launched into orbit. The telescope scanned in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, and is considered to be the first-ever true observatory orbiting the Earth.

Marvin Gaye’s version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" tops the R&B and pop charts for the first of seven weeks, almost exactly a year after Gladys Knight and the Pips’ version of the song topped the R&&B charts for six weeks.

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the moon, launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida. While in lunar orbit, the crew made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read from the book of Genesis — one of the most-watched TV programs ever.

More than 100,000 attend the Miami Pop Festival. Act include Fleetwood Mac, Steppenwolf, Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Iron Butterfly and The Grateful Dead.