What happened onMay 8, 1968Wednesday Week 19

Today is September11, 2026 Friday.

May 8 is a Wednesday again in 1974.

About May 8

May 8 Events On this day through the years

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May 8FamousBirthdays

In loving memoryFamous DeathsMay 8

The World in 1968 the year Earth got its portrait taken

Mexico City sits about 7,350 feet up, where the air is thin. Sprinters and jumpers flew, and Bob Beamon's long jump at the Games stood as the world record for 23 years. Distance runners struggled to breathe.

Life back then

Going to the movies changed that autumn. Hollywood dropped the old production code and began sorting films by letter instead, so the new film rating system told parents at the ticket window whether children could come in. A seat cost about a dollar thirty. A big picture opened at one theater in a city and stayed for months, so people drove across town and stood in line for it. Missing it meant waiting years for a television showing, because there was no other way to see a film again.

The year in 8 events

• ⚔️Jan 30 The Tet Offensive begins across South Vietnam and changes how the war is seen at home.
• 🕯️Apr 4 The American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is shot and killed in Memphis.
• 🚩May 13 A huge march fills Paris and a one day general strike stops France. Millions more workers walk out in the weeks that follow.
• 🕯️Jun 5 Robert F. Kennedy is shot in Los Angeles after winning the California primary. He dies the next day.
• 🏛️Aug 20 Soviet troops and their allies move into Czechoslovakia and end the Prague Spring reforms.
• 🕯️Oct 2 Soldiers open fire on a student rally in Mexico City, ten days before the Olympics are due to open.
• ✊Oct 16 The American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise gloved fists on the medal stand at those Games.
• 🌍Dec 24 The crew of Apollo 8 circles the Moon and photographs Earth rising over its horizon.

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