"1968 - THE YEAR THAT SHAPED A GENERATION"
So said Time-Life Magazine in their singular commemorative issue, the only such issue which, rather than focusing on an event or person or group or place, honored a YEAR. And it was OUR year, the year we graduated from Rincon High School, to set sail on a journey through life, which has, for most of us, now covered more than half a century.
Of course, most of us were focused on getting through school, competing in our last year of high school sports and other extracurricular activities, taking college entrance exams and applying to college, or just deciding on what we were going to do after graduation.
Yet 1968 was filled with events that, to this day, still reverberate with importance. Besides our high school graduation, here is just a short list of historic events from 1968:
January 23 - The USS Pueblo is captured by North Korea
January 30 - North Vietnam launches the Tet offensive against South Vietnam and the United States
March 31 - President Lyndon Johnson shocks the nation by announcing he will not seek re-election
April 4 - The Reverend Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee
April 29 - The musical HAiR and the "age of Aquarius" opens on Broadway to outrage and acclaim
June 5 - Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated after winning the California Democratic primary
September 30 - Boeing introduces the 747 jumbo jet (initially flight-tested in Tucson AZ, most are still flying today)
October 16 - Tommie Smith and John Carlos protest racial discrimination in the US at the Summer Olympics
November 5 - Richard Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey in the US Presidential election
November 22 - The Beatles' White Album is released
November 22 - The Star Trek series portrays the first interracial kiss between actors in US network television history
December 24 - Apollo 8 becomes the first manned spacecraft to leave earth orbit and circle the moon
