In 1968, Americans watched a war lose public support, mourned two assassinated leaders and elected a new president. Then, on Christmas Eve, they watched three astronauts broadcast from orbit around the moon. Here are seven moments that made it a year people still talk about.

1. Richard Nixon won a divided election. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced in March that he would not seek another term. By August, police and antiwar protesters were clashing outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In November, Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey and third-party candidate George Wallace.
2. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. King was killed in Memphis on April 4, cutting short the work of the country’s most prominent civil rights leader. Kennedy died on June 6 after being shot in Los Angeles, just hours after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. The killings shook the country less than two months apart.
3. The Tet Offensive shook confidence in the Vietnam War. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched coordinated attacks across South Vietnam in late January. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces repelled the offensive, but its scale undermined assurances that victory was near. CBS anchor Walter Cronkite later told viewers the war appeared headed for a stalemate.
4. Two American sprinters raised their fists at the Olympics. At the Mexico City Games, gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos bowed their heads and each raised a black-gloved fist during the national anthem. Their protest against racial inequality drew fierce criticism at the time and became one of the most recognizable images in Olympic history.
5. The Miss America protest gave rise to the “bra-burning” myth. Demonstrators in Atlantic City tossed bras, makeup and high heels into a “Freedom Trash Can.” The bras weren’t burned, but the label stuck. A separate Miss Black America pageant challenged the exclusion of Black contestants from the national competition.
6. Star Trek put Kirk and Uhura’s kiss on national television. William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols shared a scene that became one of American television’s best-known early interracial kisses. It was a landmark moment in a year when science fiction was also breaking ground on the big screen with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
7. Apollo 8 took humans around the moon for the first time. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve and broadcast to viewers back on Earth. Anders also took the famous Earthrise photograph, capturing the blue Earth above the gray lunar horizon. After a year dominated by grim images, this was one Americans could marvel at together.