In September 1968, the Soviets had already launched and recovered Zond 5, carrying worms, two turtles, and other life forms. The reentry was followed by the American USS McMorris. NASA’s decision to launch a crewed orbit of the Moon before the end of 1968 followed. And now the Soviets were also starting to rush things… On October 25, 1968 (three days after the reentry of Apollo 7), Soyuz 3 launched with Georgi Beregovoi aboard. Docking in LEO with Soyuz 2 failed several times, and he returned. A few weeks later, Zond 6 followed the same path. Upon reentry, it bounced in the atmosphere, then a valve depressurized the cabin while still in space, then an electrical fault ejected the parachute while still in orbit. The probe crashed to the ground, and would have killed any cosmonauts.

Prague. 9:00 a.m. Red Army troops and tanks storm the Central Committee Building of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Dubcek is captured and immediately flown to Moscow. The focal point of the Czechoslovak resistance is Wenceslas Square.

Prague. 4:00 a.m. Red Army troops and tanks surround the Central Committee Building of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Attacked by an enraged crowd, the Soviets open fire, killing one man.

Massive armored forces and 600,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers storm Czechoslovakia unexpectedly, crushing the Prague Spring. Dubcek and key government officials are arrested. 27 Soviet divisions with 6,300 tanks enter the country: despite peaceful resistance, there are 90 dead, 500 wounded, thousands arrested, and 1,526 convicted. On the other side of the Czechoslovakian border, in West Germany, the Americans listen and move. Complaints from Red Army elements are intercepted, demanding orders to halt at the border with West Germany. The 12th Panzer Division of the German Armed Forces in Tauberbischofsheim, along with elements of the U.S. Army, with tanks, armored reconnaissance vehicles, and guns, moves along the autobahn toward Nuremberg and the Czechoslovakian border. Along the way, other U.S. units join up. Over and over again, Czechoslovak cars pass by on the highway, and those inside wave the victory sign, presumably hoping that they would push the Russians out of their country. But NATO forces only reach the border and remain there for several weeks to observe troop movements on the other side.

Boulder, Colorado, United States. George Gamow (sometimes Gammoff; born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov; George Antonovich Gamov) was a Soviet and American polymath, theoretical physicist, and cosmologist. He died of liver cirrhosis: alcohol abuse, which had weakened his health. Physicist Edward Teller remembered him thus: “Gamow was fantastic in his ideas. Some right, some wrong. More often wrong than right. Always interesting. And when his idea wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t just right, it was new.” He was an early proponent and developer of Georges Lemaître’s Big Bang theory. Gamow discovered a theoretical explanation for alpha decay via quantum tunneling, invented the liquid drop model (the first mathematical model of the atomic nucleus), worked on radioactive decay, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis (which he collectively called nucleocosmogenesis), and predicted the existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation and molecular genetics. Gamow was a key figure in the development and understanding of quantum tunneling.

The cause and remedy for all the malfunctions of the Apollo 6 mission, in a joint effort between NASA, universities, and contractors, is found in record time: the next Saturn V can be prepared for launch; it will be Apollo 8, and the debate over whether to do it with people on board or uninhabited will rage for some time.

Intel Corporation is founded in Santa Clara, California, by former Fairchild employees Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.

Doug Engelbart of the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) demonstrates a new way to interact with a computer using a keyboard and mouse. It also includes on-screen graphics, multiple windows, blogs and digital journals, wiki-like collaboration, document sharing, email, instant messaging, hypertext linking, Skype-like video conferencing, and document formatting.

Stanford Research Institute, SRI, develops SHAKEY, a mobile robot equipped with a vision system and tactile sensors

RCA became interested in the LCD phenomenon by inventing the first liquid crystal displays

Aircraft use “High Bypass Jet” engines (example: Boeing 747)

Boeing produces the first Boeing 747

Alfred Y. Cho and John Arthur of Bell Labs invent molecular-beam epitaxy, a technique for depositing layers of single atoms.

Tetra Pak releases first TB Aseptic machine

In 1968, Candido Jacuzzi invented the Jacuzzi as we know it today: patent #3297,025 filed Jan. 10th, 1967.

Gribov and Pontecorvo published a theory based on the hypothesis of the existence of two types of neutrinos. This theory, in the following decades, would help shed new light on experiments on solar neutrinos, which were discovered to switch between different neutrino flavors along the way.

The U.S. federal government purchases 6,000 acres of land from the state of Illinois on which to build FermiLab and its particle accelerator; construction begins on December 1, 1968.

The young Italian Gabriele Veneziano devised a formula that, two years later, would be used by the Japanese-American physicist Yoichiro Nambu to explain several bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics by modeling individual particles as strings rather than points. The key aspect of this theory is that strings, about 100 billion billion times smaller than protons, vibrate in different ways, each becoming the particles that represent the Standard Model. Strings can vibrate consistently only in 10 and 26 dimensions. In 10 dimensions, if the closed string vibrates clockwise, and in 26 dimensions if it vibrates counterclockwise. It is the first time in the history of physics that a quantum theory of gravity exists without infinite results. It is therefore potentially the marbling of wood sought by Einstein. In those 10 and 26 dimensions, “there are enough degrees of freedom” to accommodate all of the physics of the last two thousand years. Relativity is automatically contained in it, and gravity emerges as a requirement of consistency.

Sol Spiegelman (University of Illinois) demonstrates in an experiment that Darwinism at the molecular level: he sees the RNA of a virus evolve, through an accelerated chemical process, into something more efficient in replication, later called Spiegelmans Monster

Death of Padre Pio

The second Soviet UR-500/7K-L1 launch vehicle explodes in a fireball during launch due to the failure of its second stage. Once again, the lunar capsule’s rescue system does its job, and the L1 ejects.

The United Nations passes Resolution 242, a compromise after the Six-Day War. Israel won the war. But it would not have won the peace. The “special relationship” between Israel and the United States was born during this period.

Apollo IV: First flight of Von Braun’s Saturn V (SA-501); this was the success of the “all-up” approach, that is, testing several concepts all at the same time and not one at a time. This concept was deeply contrary to von Braun’s methodical way of working and in fact had been pushed instead by George E. Mueller who had just taken office as Director of Manned Space Flight at NASA. Mueller knew well that there was no time to do everything in the right order: the Soviets were looming.

Charles Misner of the University of Maryland started with an innovative hypothesis: that the Universe was originally chaotic, but that friction and other factors later brought uniformity and homogeneity, leading to the current observed isotropy. In 1977, however, Barrow and Matzner demonstrated that this friction would have generated far too much heat, for which no evidence has been found.

Indonesia’s per capita income rises from $50 to $4,700 a year

India. Joseph Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, decides to defect during a trip to India. She leaves the Soviet embassy and heads straight to the American embassy, where she is greeted with surprise and some suspicion. She arrives at midnight, and by the early hours of the next morning, the CIA has already organized the exfiltration, and she is already on a plane to Europe, before the Soviets can react. It will eventually be revealed that she was indeed Stalin’s daughter.

Britain announces it will withdraw all military personnel east of the Suez Canal. This marks, among other things, the end of British military protection of Australia and the definitive transfer of that role to the United States, which has had a mutual military protection treaty (ANZUS) with Australia and New Zealand since 1951.

Venera 4 enters the Venusian atmosphere and is crushed by it at an altitude of 27 km.

Outer Space Treaty

Ernesto Che Guevara was killed in La Higuera, Bolivia; he had traveled to Bolivia to spark a communist revolution in South America after having unsuccessfully attempted to do so in Congo; in both cases, however, he was unable to establish the desired contact with the peasants and the local population; this only occurred after his death, which transformed him into a martyr ready to be idolized, even in peace demonstrations, even though he had always been a man of war.