AugustAugust 1: London is flooded with troops and police in the aftermath of yesterday’s outrage, with security particularly high around Buckingham Palace and Parliament. Home Secretary James Callaghan announces an inquiry into how the attack was able to take place.
August 2: Commissioning of the Argentine super battleship
Argentina in Buenos Aires. Nationalist Prime Minister Diego Sebastian de Rodriguez hails it as the most powerful ship in South America and, along with Argentina’s future aircraft carriers, new jet bombers, domestically produced tanks and her long range missile programme, are indications of het status as a true great power. Foreign observers note that he avoids the question of Argentina’s nuclear weapons in his expansive and rousing speech.
August 3: A paralysed boy is miraculously healed by a passing stranger at a travelling carnival in Oklahoma.
August 4: Australian Prime Minister Sir Edward Rogers announces to Parliament in Canberra that the Royal Australian Navy will order two new guided missile battlecruisers, the RAAF will procure 300 new long range air to surface missiles to equip their strike bombers defence and the Australian Army will form two new specialist regiments.
August 5: A coup attempt by elements of the Iraqi Army is ruthlessly put down by the Arab Legion.
August 6: Newcastle police detectives arrest Mary Bell, 11, and her neighbour, Norma Bell, 13, for the murder of a local three year old boy. The announcement is met by shock and outrage across the country, with some calling for the Office of the Witchfinder General to investigate.
August 7: Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York wins the Republican nomination for President, narrowly beating Governor Ronald Reagan of California by 1249 delegates to 1053, with Senator Thurston Ballard Morton of Kentucky selected unanimously as his running mate; President Kennedy's late re-entry into the race, although always perceived as possible, has turned the election from a winnable one to a long shot in the view of many Republicans. Rockefeller's victory is not welcomed by the increasingly strong conservative wing of the party.
August 8: A Soviet probe of the Saturnine moon of Iapetus apparently crashed after detecting signs and images of some sort of strange plant life.
August 9: The citizens of Vienna are horrified as the giant image of Count Dracula engages the infamous werewolf Lukos Bane in single combat in the night sky above the city.
August 10:
The Middle East Journal, the area’s most popular English language newspaper, features a story on the Green Revolution and Agricultural Renaissance of Iraq, detailing how rainfall and fertility in Muthanna and Najaf Provinces now exceeds estimated conditions during the Mesopotamian Golden Age, over five and a half thousand years ago.
August 11: A gang of British master criminals steal $5 million in gold bullion from an armoured lorry in a daring raid in Turin, basing their plan upon a paralysation of city traffic in the manner of the infamous December 1956 Milan traffic jam, which allows them to make a spectacular escape in a trio of enchanted Austin Minis.
August 12: The US Army begins testing of a new, wrist mounted personal information device.
August 13: Famed halfling cook Michael Bunce becomes the first British chef to be awarded a coveted fifth Michelin star for his London restaurant Albion.
August 14: The Irish Office commissions a White Paper on Irish economic development in the concern that Ireland is lagging behind the other Home Countries in its performance; recent investments in Western Ireland are being held up as the general standard to be emulated.
August 15: An earthquake off the coast of Celebes sets off a tsunami that kills over 500 people.
August 16: The United States conducts test launch of three prototype strategic long range ballistic missiles in a single day, all of them equipped with the new Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle warheads. The USN Solaris is launched from USS
Theodore Roosevelt off the coast of Florida to a target range north of Ascension Island, the USAF Peacemaker from Vandenburg Air Force Base to Manus Island and the US Army Hercules from Fort Sill to Kwajelein.
August 17: The
Wiener Zeitung carries a front page expose on covert KGB support of Czech and Slovak separatist organisations.
August 18: Vietnam: Six US and South Vietnamese divisions launch Operation
Elmtree, a concentrated offensive against Viet Cong positions and operational zones in Darlac and Quang Duc Provinces, supported by extremely heavy airpower, artillery and dragonfire.
August 19: The
Wholesome Poultry Act enters US law, establishing strict minimum standards for the inspection and quality of poultry.
August 20: USS
Sea Devil fires a Mark 45 ASTOR atomic torpedo at an unidentified underwater contact in the Central Pacific, thinking that it was Godzilla, the Pacific Monster; subsequent investigations of the sonar record lead to the belief that the creature was a large kraken.
August 21: After meeting at a writer’s conference in London, noted New Zealand poet John Lennon spends a day with English music teacher and writer Paul McCartney in Hyde Park, beginning a long friendship and artistic collaboration. The event will later be commemorated in a charming film,
A Day in the Life.
August 22: Pope Paul VI becomes the first Pontiff to visit South America, landing in Bogota, Colombia.Papal visit to Colombia
August 23: First test flight of a Soviet atomic airship powered by a lead cooled reactor over Siberia. The footage of the flight is played repeatedly by Soviet Central Television, with German rebroadcasts dubbing it
Der Blei Zeppelin.
August 24: President John F. Kennedy is unanimously nominated as the Democratic candidate for the 1968 Presidential election.
August 25: General Abrams gives an expansive briefing on Saigon on the progress of the Vietnam War, declaring that the enemy has suffered at least 125,000 killed in the first half of 1968 and demonstrating how a combination of air strikes and ground interdiction have succeeded in reducing traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail by 70%. He states that this current counteroffensive stage will continue for up to 6 months, followed by a 12 month period of defensive consolidation, concluding with a confident statement: “The time when the enemy could win is long past and the period of deep war is now over.”
August 26: Eleven communist insurgents are executed in Rhodesian after being found guilty of treachery and rebellion. The ongoing Bush War along the northern and western border has recently seen a decrease in intensiry following the elimination of rebel base areas in the Congo by Commonwealth forces.
August 27: A special team of American doctors dispatched from the Centre for Disease Control to Hong Kong successfully cure severe cases of the Hong Kong Flu with an advanced new medicine.
August 28: Assassination of the United States Ambassador to Guatemala in a machine gun attack in Guatemala City.
August 29: Crown Prince Harald of Norway marries Princess Alexandra of Kent in Oslo.
August 30: The United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Network computer system becomes operational, connecting sixteen 'nodes' of advanced computing engines across universities and major corporations.
August 31: West Indian Test cricketer Garfield Sobers hits 6 sixes in an over for Nottinghamshire against Glamorgan, with the final hit seen flying out of the ground and bouncing into Swansea Bay.
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