January 23 - North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship had violated their territorial waters while spying.
January 30 - Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive begins when Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks in South Vietnam.
January 31 - Viet Cong attack the United States embassy in Saigon.
January 31 - Nauru declares independence from Australia.
February 1 - Vietnam War: The execution of Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan is videotaped and photographed by Eddie Adams. This image helped build opposition to the Vietnam War.
February 1 - Canada's three military services of Canada, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force, are unified into the Canadian Forces.
February 1 - The New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad are merged to form ill-fated Penn Central Transportation.
February 5 - Vietnam War: Battle of Khe Sanh begins.
February 8 - American civil rights movement: The Orangeburg massacre, a mass killing in Orangeburg, South Carolina of black students from South Carolina State University who were protesting segregation at the town's only bowling alley.
April 4 - AEK Athens BC becomes the first Greek team to win the European Basketball Cup.
April 6 - In Richmond, Indiana's downtown district, a double explosion kills 41 and injures 150.
April 7 - Jim Clark, two-time F1 World Champion and winner of the Indianapolis 500, dies in a racing accident during a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim, Germany.
April 8 - BOAC Flight 712 catches fire shortly after take off. As a result of her actions in the accident, Barbara Jane Harrison is awarded a posthumous George Cross, the only GC awarded to a woman in peacetime.
April 10 - Shipwreck of the New Zealand inter-island ferry TEV Wahine outside Wellington harbour.
April 11 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
April 11 - German student leader Rudi Dutschke is shot in Berlin.
April 12 - Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.
April 14 - At the U.S. Academy Awards, a tie for the Academy Award for Best Actress is achieved by Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand.
April 20 - A South African Airways Boeing 707 crashes during takeoff at Windhoek, South-West Africa, killing 122.
April 20 - English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.
April 23 - Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university. see main article Columbia University protests of 1968.
April 24 - Mauritius becomes a member state of the United Nations.
April 29 - The controversial musical Hair opens on Broadway.
May 11 - The Toronto Transit Commission opens the largest expansion of its Bloor-Danforth Line, going to Scarborough in the east, and Etobicoke in the west.
May 22 - The nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
May 24 - FLQ separatists bomb the U.S. consulate in Quebec City.
May 27 - The meeting of the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (National Union of the Students of France) takes place. 30,000 to 50,000 people gather in the Stade Sebastien Charlety.
May 29 - Manchester United win the European Cup, the first English Club to do so.
June 3 - Valerie Solanas, author of SCUM Manifesto, attempts to assassinate Andy Warhol by shooting him three times.
June 5 - U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies the next day.
June 6 - Senator Robert F. Kennedy dies from his wounds after he was shot the previous night.
June 7 - The body of assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy lies in state at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.
June 8 - James Earl Ray is arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.
June 8 - The body of assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
June 9 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
June 23 - 74 are killed and 150 injured in a football stampede towards a closed exit in a Buenos Aires stadium.
July 1 - The CIA's Phoenix Program is officially established.
July 1 - The Nuclear non-proliferation treaty is signed in Washington, London and Moscow by sixty-two countries.
July 1 - Formal separation of the United Auto Workers from the AFL-CIO.
July 10 - Maurice Couve de Murville becomes Prime Minister of France.
July 17 - A revolution occurs in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba'ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.
July 18 - The Intel Corporation is founded in Santa Clara, California
July 22 - Sir John Newsome recommends public schools should take 50% of their intake from the state school system
July 23 - Glenville Shootout: In Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization led by Ahmed Evans and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins that lasted for five days.
July 23 - The first and only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft takes place when a 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers is taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The aircraft was en route from Rome, Italy, to Lod, Israel.
July 26 - Vietnam War: South Vietnamese opposition leader Truong Dinh Dzu is sentenced to five years hard labor for advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war.
August 1 - The coronation is held of Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei.
August 2 - The 1968 Casiguran Earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines killing more than 270 people and wounding 261.
August 8 - Jurō Wada successfully performs Japan's first heart transplant.
August 11 - The last steam passenger train service runs in Britain. A selection of British Rail steam locomotives make the 120-mile journey from Liverpool to Carlisle and returns to Liverpool before having their fires dropped for the last time
August 13 - Alexandros Panagoulis attempts to assassinate the Greek dictator Colonel G. Papadopoulos in Varkiza, Athens.
August 20 - 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to end the "Prague Spring" of political liberalization.
August 21 - Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring; on the same day, Nicolae Ceauşescu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet maneuver, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.
August 21 - James Anderson, Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.
August 24 - France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.
August 26 - The Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago, Illinois.
August 28 - Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention.
August 31 - Garfield Sobers becomes the first cricketer to hit 6 sixes in one over.
September 15 - The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.
September 27 - The stage musical Hair opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, where it played 1,998 performances until its closure was forced by the roof's collapsing in July 1973.
September 30 - The Boeing 747 is rolled out and shown to the public for the first time at the Boeing Everett Factory.
October 1 - The Guyanese government takes over the British Guiana Broadcasting Service (BGBS).
October 2 - A peaceful student demonstration in Mexico City ends in the Tlatelolco massacre.
October 5 - Police baton civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland
October 11 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard.
October 12 - Equatorial Guinea becomes independent from Spain
October 14 - Vietnam War: 27 soldiers are arrested at the Presidio in San Francisco for their peaceful protest of stockade conditions and the Vietnam War.
October 14 - Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will be sending about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.
October 14 - First live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft Apollo 7.
October 14 - A 6.8 earthquake destroys the Australian town of Meckering, and also ruptures all major roads and railways nearby.
October 14 - Jim Hines of the USA becomes the first man ever to break the ten second barrier in the 100 metres Olympic final at Mexico City with a time of 9.95 sec. He would be the only man to do so until 1983.
October 14 - The rebuilt Euston railway station in London is opened.
October 16 - United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off of the USA's team for performing a Black Power salute during a medal ceremony.
October 16 - Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney Riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.
October 18 - The U.S. Olympic Committee suspends two black athletes for giving a "black power" salute during a victory ceremony at the Mexico City games.
October 18 - Bob Beamon sets a world record of 8.90m in the long jump at the Mexico City games. This becomes the longest unbroken track and field record in history, standing for 23 years, and is later named by Sports Illustrated magazine as one of the five greatest sporting moments of the 20th century.
October 20 - Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
October 22 - Apollo program: Apollo 7 safely splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth 163 times.
October 31 - Vietnam War October surprise: Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.
November 1 - The Motion Picture Association of America's film rating system is officially introduced, originating with the ratings G, M, R, and X.
November 5 - United States presidential election, 1968: Republican Richard Nixon wins the American presidency, in what turned out to be a decades-long realignment election.
November 11 - Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated. The goal was to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam.
November 11 - A second republic is declared in the Maldives.
November 17 - Alexandros Panagoulis is condemned to death for attempting to assassinate Greek dictator George Papadopoulos.
November 20 - Vietnam War: Eleven men comprising a Long Range Patrol team from F Company, 58th Infantry, 101st Airborne are surrounded and nearly wiped out by North Vietnamese army regulars from the 4th and 5th Regiment. The seven wounded survivors are rescued after several hours by an impromptu force made of other men from their unit.
November 26 - Vietnam War: United States Air Force helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire and is later awarded the Medal of Honor.
December 9 - NLS (a system for which hypertext and the computer mouse were developed) is publicly demonstrated for the first time in San Francisco.
December 10 - Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", occurs in Tokyo.
December 13 - Brazilian president Artur da Costa e Silva decrees the AI-5 (or the fifth Institutional Act), which lasts until 1978 and marks the beginning of the hard times of Brazilian military dictatorship.
December 20 - The Zodiac Killer kills Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, California.
December 21 - Apollo program: Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At 2h:50m:37s Mission elapsed time (MES), the crew performs the first ever manned Trans Lunar Injection and become the first humans to leave Earth's gravity.
December 23 - The United States won the release of 82 sailors by issuing a written apology to North Korea for spying on the Communist country.
December 24 - The crew of the USS Pueblo is released by North Korea after being held for 11 months on suspicion of spying.
December 24 - Apollo Program: The crew of Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed 10 lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures that became the famous Christmas Eve Broadcast, one of the most watched programs in history.
December 25 - Apollo program: Apollo 8 performs the very first successful Trans Earth Injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.
December 25 - 42 Dalits are burned alive in Kilavenmani village, Tamil Nadu, India, a retaliation for a campaign for higher wages by Dalit labourers.
December 27 - Apollo Program: Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital manned mission to the Moon.
