- 1968. What a tumultuous, calamitous, violent year, both in the United States and around the world. A short summation of some of the major events in the year some historians have dubbed “The Year that Everything Went Wrong”:
23 January-USS Pueblo and its crew are captured by North Korea; crew is held and tortured for nearly a year before they are released.
30 January-Tet offensive erupts as the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong attack nearly every provincial capital in South Vietnam.
12 March-Senator Eugene McCarthy decapitates President Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, mobilizing thousands of students who “get clean for Gene”
16 March-Senator Robert Kennedy announces that he will also seek the Democratic presidential nomination
31 March-President Johnson addresses the nation on the Vietnam War, announces a bombing halt and that negotiations will soon begin in Paris; he then stuns the nation and the world by stating that “I will not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Vice President Hubert Humphrey enters the race.
4 April-Dr. Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis. Riots erupt across the nation the next day, which is Good Friday.
21 May-USS Scorpion (SSN-589) disappears while on patrol in the Med; all 99 sailors are lost at sea.
5 June-Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles after winning the California Democratic primary
21 August-Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact armed forces invade Czechoslovakia to crush the emerging democratic movement
28 August-As VP Humphrey is declared the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party at its convention in Chicago, a great riot erupts in the city, with television images of Chicago policemen using excessive force to quell student protestors who chant “the whole world is watching”. Earlier in the evening as Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut had decried Chicago Mayor Richard Daly’s “Gestapo tactics” from the convention podium, news cameras panned to Mayor Daly, who could be seen clearly shouting “fuck you, you kike son of a bitch.”
17 October-African-American sprinters John Carlos and Tommy Smith raise their black-gloved fists in the Black Power salute as the U.S. national anthem is played for their gold and silver medal awards. Not even the Olympics were free of controversy that year.
As the year came to a close, one shining moment reminded all of us here on Earth that we are all part of one human race, inhabiting the only planet known to be able to sustain our species. The Apollo VIII mission was launched on 21 December, with the never-before tried goal of entering lunar orbit and returning safely to Earth. The mission was commanded by Frank Borman, with Jim Lovell as Command Module pilot and William Anders as Lunar module pilot. The mission launched flawlessly, achieved lunar insertion trajectory perfectly, and executed a flawless burn that inserted them into lunar orbit on 24 December, Christmas Eve. On the fourth orbit of the moon, Frank Borman noticed something that no human had ever seen before: an Earthrise. He snapped a black and white photo. Minutes later William Anders got the color camera and snapped the photo that helped to inspire the first Earth Day in 1970. As the astronauts watched something that only they could see, Borman, his voice choking with emotion, said to Mission Control: “Fellas, we’ve just seen an Earthrise and it is truly wonderful!”
Later on the same orbit, the crew made a radio broadcast to Earth, which was listened to by almost a billion people worldwide. The men took turns reading from the first chapter of Genesis, verses 1-10, which are:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
Borman concluded the broadcast with"And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth".
I was 8 years old in 1968, soon to be 9 as the year came to a close. I didn’t understand everything that had happened that year, but I knew it had been a terrible time across the board. The men of Apollo VIII reminded us that we all share this fragile world, and it’s all we have. I was also a firm believer in the Christian faith when I was 8, so the words from Genesis, broadcast from 200,000 miles away, were truly moving for me and for billions of others as well. Time magazine named Borman, Lovell and Anders as its Men of the Year for 1968, and the Earthrise photo taken by Anders was deemed by Life magazine to be one of the 100 most iconic photos of all time. When Apollo VIII returned safely to Earth, Borman received a telegram from an unknown sender who summed up what everyone on Earth felt. The telegram read:
“Thank you Apollo VIII. You saved 1968.”
Earthrise, as seen by the crew of Apollo VIII on 24 December, 1968
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