The Year it All Changed
2 min read
NASA Apollo Space Missions
The year was 1968 and America, as American’s knew it, was about to change. My personal opinion is that 1968 was the year it all changed. Historians use terms and events to break up American history, such as: Colonial Period, Times of our Founding Fathers, Jackson Era, Civil War, and Industrial Revolution. I am now coining a term to refer to the time period starting with 1968, and henceforth shall be known as–Flourishing Years.
So much happened in 1968! To keep everything organized, I will put it in genres. Freedom Acts, Heinous Acts, Technology Expansion, and Current Events.
Freedom Acts:
- After the Tet Offensive, America become highly involved in the Vietnam War
- Civil Rights Movements (for African-Americans and women) sweep the nation
- LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968
Heinous Acts:
- Assassinations: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, John Gordon Mein
- Many acts of Vietnam War and Civil Rights protest leave innocent dead
- Hijacking of Pan-Am Flight 281
- 300 Million Yen Affair
Technology Expansion:
- Nuclear weapon “Boxcar” successful, making it the largest detonation of Operation Crossfire
- Space exploration explodes, multiple Apollo Missions
- Mandate that all government purchased computers use ASCII encoding
Current Events: (Events that still matter in recent news)
- Birth of Intel semiconductors
- Saddam Hussein overthrows existing government in Iraq
- CBS’s 60 Minutes debuts, still on the air
These small items, in addition to a much larger list on Wikipedia.org, offer a glimpse into the future. As civil rights (same sex marriage) continue to be a hot topic, computer technology is still on the rise, and our nation is still dabbling in war, it shows that not much has changed, but just slowly improved.
Actually, the year it all changed was one year earlier, in 1967. That was the year I was born.