Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

The World Beyond Tennis in 1968 and 1978

In 1968, the first year professional players were allowed in the United States Open, people were singing along to “Hey Jude” and watching “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and “Bonanza.” The nation was divided by racial unrest and the Vietnam War.

Ten years later, when the Open moved to Flushing, the war had ended, the Beatles were no longer together and fans were just getting to know the humor of Robin Williams in “Mork and Mindy.”

Here’s a look at 1968 and 1978.

1968

On Jan. 30, during the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces began a series of coordinated attacks in South Vietnam. The military campaign led to the heaviest fighting of the Vietnam War and marked a turning point at home and abroad. While the offensive gave the United States military renewed optimism, it marked a downward shift in public support as the United States death toll had risen to more than 500 fatalities per week.

On Feb. 27, Walter Cronkite of CBS ended his newscast by sharing his thoughts on the war. “For it seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate,” he said. “To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.”

Image
Marines rest along a battered wall in February 1968 during the Tet Offensive.

Credit...Associated Press

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis to support the strike of more than 1,300 city sanitation workers who were protesting their poor working conditions. “I’ve seen the promised land,” Dr. King said to an overflow crowd at the Mason Temple of the Church of God in Christ on April 3. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”

The next day, King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel by James Earl Ray. Riots broke out in more than 100 cities across the United States.

Image
On the balcony of the Lorraine Motel a day before the assassination are, from left, Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.Credit...Charles Kelly/Associated Press

Senator Robert F. Kennedy was on his way to becoming the Democratic presidential candidate when he was fatally shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5.

Kennedy was walking through the hotel kitchen after giving his California primary victory speech when shots rang out. Photographs show Kennedy on the ground in a pool of his own blood, with Juan Romero, a 17-year-old busboy, kneeling beside him.

Six people were wounded, and Kennedy died the next day. Sirhan Sirhan was later convicted of killing Kennedy.

Image
Paying respects at the coffin of Robert F. Kennedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.Credit...Associated Press

The American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos had won the gold and bronze medal respectively on Oct. 16 in the 200-meter sprint at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

On the medal podium next to the silver medalist, Peter Norman of Australia, Smith and Carlos bowed their heads and each raised a black-gloved fist in the air. All three medalists wore buttons from the Olympic Project for Human Rights on their jackets.

After debate within the United States Olympic Committee and pressure from the International Olympic Committee, both Smith and Carlos were suspended from the Olympic team and their credentials were revoked.

Image
The United States athletes Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos, right, during the playing of the national anthem at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. At far left is the silver medalist, Peter Norman of Australia.Credit...Associated Press

After serving eight years as vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon lost his presidential campaign in 1960 to John F. Kennedy.

In 1968, he ran for the presidency again, and defeated former vice president Hubert Humphrey on Nov. 5 by fewer than 500,000 votes. Drawing on the division of the nation, Nixon used his victory to say the great objective of his administration at the outset was “to bring the American people together.”

Image
Richard Nixon in August 1968 in front of delegates at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.Credit...United Press International

The three-person crew of Apollo 8 achieved many firsts at the end of December. The astronauts James Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman became the first to see the moon’s far side, the first to successfully orbit the moon and the first astronauts to capture images of Earth from deep space.

The crew sent live imagery of their journey back to Earth as they spent 20 hours orbiting the moon. They safely landed on Earth right on time, splashing down in the Pacific on Dec. 27. It would be another year until humans — Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin — would walk on the moon.

Image
William Anders, a member of the three-man Apollo 8 crew, got a look out the window in December.Credit...NASA, via Associated Press

1978

NASA’s astronaut class of 1978 included six women.

Women had previously been excluded because all astronaut applicants were required to have military jet test pilot experience. That was eliminated in time for the class of 1978.

Together, Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Kathryn Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Margaret Rhea Seddon and Shannon Lucid logged 7,287 hours in space. “We didn’t want to become the ‘girl astronauts,’ distinct and separate from the guys,” Sullivan said of her comrades.

Image
Six women were chosen for NASA’s astronaut class of 1978: from left, Shannon Lucid, Margaret Rhea Seddon, Kathryn Sullivan, Judith Resnik, Anna Fisher and Sally Ride.Credit...NASA

On July 25, Lesley Brown gave birth to the world’s first “test-tube baby,” conceived through in vitro fertilization.

Louise Brown, was 5 pounds 2 ounces when she was born in the small English town of Oldham. Robert Edwards, a scientist, and Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologist, pioneered the groundbreaking procedure. Dr. Edwards had been researching in vitro fertilization for nine years, the same amount of time Lesley Brown and John Brown had been trying to have a child.

The use of I.V.F. grew slowly at first, but now more than 8 million babies worldwide have been born using the procedure.

Image
Dr. Robert Edwards holds Louise Brown, the world’s first I.V.F. baby. At right is Dr. Patrick Steptoe.Credit...Associated Press

In the span of three months in 1978, the Catholic Church was led by not one, not two, but three popes in quick succession.

Pope Paul VI died on Aug. 6 after holding the papacy for 15 years. Twenty days later, the cardinals chose 65-year-old John Paul I as pontiff. John Paul I held the papacy for just 33 days. He died on Sept. 28. His death led to questions about his health when selected as pope and even speculation of foul play.

The conclave then elected 58-year-old Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II on Oct. 16. Pope John Paul II held the papacy until he died on April 2, 2005.

Image
Pope John Paul II at Castel Gandolfo shortly after his election in October.Credit...Massimo Capodanno/European Pressphoto Agency

The outline for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel — the Camp David Accords — was achieved in September when President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel met at Camp David, Md., for 13 days. The negotiations were facilitated by President Jimmy Carter. Begin and Sadat were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the same year.

A peace treaty was signed in Washington the following March, to establish peace and “normal and friendly relations” between the two nations.

Image
President Jimmy Carter applauds as Menachem Begin of Israel, rear, and Anwar Sadat embrace in the White House after the Camp David agreement.Credit...United Press International

On Nov. 18, more than 900 Americans living in Guyana — part of a religious group called the People’s Temple under the leadership of the Rev. Jim Jones — died in a mass murder-suicide after drinking a cyanide-laced Flavor Aid.

Before the massacre, Congressman Leo Ryan of California visited Jonestown with journalists and constituents after some had expressed worry that their relatives, members of the People’s Temple, were being held against their will. As Mr. Ryan was leaving with a group of defectors, he and four others were shot and killed by Jones’s gunmen.

When word of the deaths reached Jones, he urged his members to drink the poison. There were few survivors, except for an elderly woman named Hyacinth Thrash who slept through the entire massacre, and those who escaped into the jungle.

Image
The aftermath of the mass suicide in Guyana.
Credit...Associated Press

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT