ST. PAUL -- The Beatles were on the radio and Rowan & Martin's "Laugh-In" was on the TV, the year was 1968. You can check out "The 1968 Exhibit" right now at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.

Curator Brian Horrigan says our country was deep into the Vietnam war 50 years ago with the start of the Tet Offensive.

February 1968 was the worst single month of the entire Vietnam war for American deaths.  So it was really a wrenching time for us in 1968.

Horrigan says it was also a time of shock violence.

The United States was going through this wave of shocking violent incidents, including the high profile assassination on April 4th of Martin Luther King, then just two months later of Bobby Kennedy who was running for president.

In November of 1968, Richard Nixon beat Minnesota's own Hubert Humphrey in the presidential election, after earlier in the year President Lyndon Johnson announced he wouldn't seek re-election.

While we look forward to this year's Winter Olympics, the 1968 games in France gave us an American sweetheart.

This week 50 years ago the United States was competing in the Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.  On February 10th Peggy Flemming one the gold medal in Women's Figure Skating.  The only gold medal won by the United States at that Olympics.

Back then, both the Winter and Summer Olympics were held in the same year. The summer games were in Mexico City.

Other highlights of 1968, NASA launched Apollo 7 the first manned Apollo mission, and Mattel introduced Hot Wheels cars. 1968 was the year we were introduced to the TV shows "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood", "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" and "60 Minutes".

The Top Five songs of 1968 were: "Hey Jude" by the Beatles, "Love Is Blue" by Paul Mauriat, "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro, (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding, and "People Got to Be Free" by The Rascals.

"The 1968 Exhibit" will be available for you to see through January of next year.

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