The following events occurred in December 1968:
December 1, 1968 (Sunday) Rafael Caldera was elected the new President of Venezuela, but would not be declared the winner until more than a week later. Caldera, of the COPEI Party, was one of six candidates on the ballot, and won by only 31,000 votes, defeating ruling party candidate Gonzalo Barrios by a margin of 1,082,941 to 1,051,870."Caldera Venezuela's President— Declared Winner By 31,000 Votes In Slow Count", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 10, 1968, p5 Incumbent President Raul Leoni was barred by the constitution from running for re-election. The night before the election, all six candidates appeared on television at the same time to announce that they would all respect the outcome of the voting."Venezuelans Go to Polls Peacefully", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 2, 1968, p7 Pakistan's President Mohammed Ayub Khan announced major concessions to university and college students who had been rioting for the past three weeks, including the repeal of a 1961 law that allowed the Pakistani government to take away the college degrees of graduates who had been accused of subversive activities. Other reforms announced by Ayub Khan were to lower requirements for academic promotion, and a pledge to release opposition political leaders."Ayub Grants Concessions to Students", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 2, 1968, p3 Israel's Air Force destroyed two important bridges in Jordan that served as railroad and highway links between Amman and the cities of Ma'an and Aqaba, effectively dividing the kingdom's links between North and South Jordan. The destruction of the railroad bridge cut off access for Jordanian Muslims from making the pilgrimage to Mecca."Israel Raiders Hit 2 Bridges Deep in Jordan", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 2, 1968, p1
December 2, 1968 (Monday) All 39 people aboard Wien Consolidated Airlines Flight 55 were killed when their Fairchild F-27 turboprop plane crashed in Alaska during a violent snowstorm. The plane had taken off from Anchorage and was 15 minutes away from its scheduled arrival at the small village of Iliamna."39 Die in Alaskan Crash", Spokane (WA) Spokesman-Review, December 3, 1968, p1 Aviation Safety Network Born: Darryl Kile, American baseball player (d. 2002); in Garden Grove, California Rena Sofer, American TV actress; in Arcadia, California Lucy Liu, American TV and film actress; in Queens
December 3, 1968 (Tuesday)
The 50-minute television special Elvis (sponsored by American sewing machine manufacturer The Singer Company), taped in June with a live audience in Burbank, California, aired on NBC, marking the comeback of Elvis Presley after 7 years during which the legendary musician's career had centered on the movie industry. The eagerly-anticipated return of the "King of Rock and Roll" would prove to be the most watched special broadcast of the 1968 holiday season in the United States. One observer would later note that "the Elvis special was not just a ratings winner; it was also one of the most riveting pieces of television ever broadcast. It was Elvis at his rocking best, interacting with an audience as he never had on film or on programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show", and that "the '1968 Comeback Special' proved that the singer was still the most powerful live entertainer in the world. Millions who had never before listened to Elvis found themselves caught under the singer's spell." At the close of the show, Presley concluded with the premiere of "If I Can Dream", a song inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.. The show was followed by a Brigitte Bardot special. The international Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space, commonly known as the "Rescue Agreement", came into force, seven months after the United Nations had opened it for signature on April 22. The agreement does not apply to human space travelers who are stranded in outer space, only to those who require assistance on Earth and who are within the territorial limits of a participating nation, either on land or at sea, and makes no provision for how rescues are conducted or who bears the cost of a rescue. The Ohio State Buckeyes were granted a share of the survey-based national championship of college football, as the final UPI survey of 35 coaches ranked OSU in first place, ahead of the previous #1, the University of Southern California Trojans. USC had been unbeaten until its final game on November 30, when Notre Dame tied the game, 21 to 21. At the time, United Press International did not take a poll after the bowl games, so the results would be unaffected by the 1969 Rose Bowl, which would pit Big Ten champion Ohio State against Pacific Eight champion USC. Born: Montell Jordan, American singer and producer; in Los Angeles Brendan Fraser, American-Canadian film actor; in Indianapolis
December 4, 1968 (Wednesday) U.S. President-elect Richard M. Nixon asked Earl Warren to delay Warren's retirement from serving as Chief Justice of the United States, and to continue until the end of the U.S. Supreme Court's current term in June. Despite Nixon's conservative stance and Warren's liberal view of the U.S. Constitution, both Nixon and Warren had both been the Republican Party's nominee for Vice President (Nixon successfully in 1952 and 1956, and Warren unsuccessfully in 1948), and both had been selected for national office by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower."Warren Agrees to Stay As Chief Justice Until June at Nixon Request— Two Seek Continuity of Court Work", Philadelphia Inquirer, December 5, 1968, p1 The Israeli Air Force added a new dimension to retaliatory airstrikes on neighboring Jordan, and attacked a division of the Army of Iraq, killing at least six of them and wounding 14. A spokesman for Israel charged that the Iraqi troops, which had been based in northern Jordan since 1967, had fired artillery shells at 12 Israeli settlements for three days."Israeli Planes Bomb Iraqi Units in Jordan", Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1968, p1"ISRAEL BOMBS IRAQIS— Planes Attack Bases in Jordan", Lincoln (NE) Star, December 5, 1968, p1 Died: Archie Mayo, 77, American film director
December 5, 1968 (Thursday) The Czechoslovak government announced the dismissal of Peter Colotka, who had been the Deputy Premier responsible for censorship of the news media, and whose liberal policies had given reporters and publishers room to criticize the government. Communist Party First Secretary Alexander Dubček, who had been forced by the Soviet Union to retract many of the reforms of the Prague Spring, told a crowd in the city of Most that the government would take steps to make the Czechoslovak press "an instrument which will help to implement the policy of the Party" in order to prevent upheaval."Czech Press Loses Champion", Pittsburgh Press, December 6, 1968, p18 Six months later, Colotka would be appointed as the Premier of the Slovak SR section of Czechoslovakia. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission outlawed "give-ups", the sharing of commissions between brokers earned from the sale of publicly listed sharesLyle D. Broemeling and Hiroki Tsurumi, Econometrics and Structural Change (CRC Press, 1986) p20 and relaxed its rules for a minimum commission rate by permitting discounted rates for large transactions. The result would be a decrease of business on regional stock exchanges outside of the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange, both located in New York City. Born: Margaret Cho, American comedian and actress; in San Francisco
December 6, 1968 (Friday) Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, the leader of the Bengali Muslims in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) called on his followers to initiate a total shutdown of work in protest of the crackdown by Pakistani police on protesters. The hartal — a complete refusal by workers, students and shopkeepers to work — happened two days later, and a "Repression Resistance Day" would be observed throughout East Pakistan on December 10. The escalating protests would lead to "Mass Upsurge Day" on January 24. "Recalling Mass Upsurge Day" , by Anwar A. Khan, Dhaka Courier, January 25, 2018 The Rolling Stones released the album Beggars Banquet, which contains their hit single "Sympathy for the Devil".
December 7, 1968 (Saturday) In one of the worst peacetime disasters for the United States Coast Guard, 17 crewmen of the were killed when the buoy tending ship was sheared in half by the Taiwanese freighter Helena. Both ships were near White Castle, Louisiana, when the collision occurred and the ship sank in of water. Although three bodies were recovered by divers, a release from the U.S. Coast Guard would recount in 2017, "river sediment buried the cutter so quickly that continued recovery and salvage operations proved impossible. Fourteen Coast Guardsmen remain entombed in the sunken cutter buried on the bottom of the Mississippi River." An aid to navigation structure and light now marks the site of the sinking. The French government chartered the Centre universitaire expérimental de Vincennes, an experimental university, in Vincennes, an eastern suburb of Paris, as a campus of the University of Paris system. It would later become the independent Université Paris-VIII at Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and is commonly referred to as "Paris-8" or "Vincennes". NASA launched the second Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO-2), nicknamed Stargazer, into orbit from Cape Kennedy. Four days later, it would send its first images back to the Goddard Space Flight Center, with its telescope cluster aiming first at two stars in the Carina constellation, Beta Carinae (Miaplacidus) and Iota Carinae (Aspidiske).
December 8, 1968 (Sunday) Project Schooner, one of the 27 nuclear American tests conducted as part of Project Plowshare, took place at the Nevada Test Site and became noteworthy for the amount of radioactive contamination that it generated around the world. Although Schooner was an underground blast at the depth of , radionuclides such as strontium-90, barium-140, tungsten-181 and cesium-134 went into the atmosphere and traveled over the North Pole into the Soviet Union within a week."Long-Range Atmospheric Transport of Radioactive Products from Nuclear Explosions Conducted in the USA, USSR, France, and China after 1963", by Alexei Ryaboshapko, et al., in Atmospheric Nuclear Tests: Environmental and Human Consequences (Springer, 2013) p86 Graham Nash made the decision to leave his role as a vocalist with the British pop group The Hollies and to team up with David Crosby and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield to form the classic group Crosby, Stills & Nash.Dave Zimmer, Crosby, Stills & Nash: The Biography (Da Capo Press, 2008) Born: Mike "Moose" Mussina, American baseball pitcher; in Williamsport, Pennsylvania; Arif Işık, Turkish carpet dealer and space traveler (fictional character); in Istanbul, Turkey
December 9, 1968 (Monday)
Douglas Engelbart of Stanford University publicly demonstrated his pioneering hypertext system, "NLS", together with the computer mouse,"Humble mouse turns 40 and loses its touch", The Guardian, November 30, 2008 at what would become retrospectively known as "The Mother of All Demos"."Dec. 9, 1968: The Mother of All Demos", by Dylan Tweney, Wired magazine, December 12, 2010 "The Demo" , Stanford University Library Held as part of the Fall Joint Computer Conference at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium, Engelbart's demonstration was part of his presentation "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect"."Doug's Great Demo: 1968" Born: Kurt Angle, American collegiate wrestling champion who won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics and subsequently began a professional wrestling career with the WWF and WWE; in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania