1969 - March

• March 2
  • In Toulouse, France the first Concorde test flight is conducted.
  • Soviet and Chinese forces clash at a border outpost on the Ussuri River.
• March 3
  • In a Los Angeles court, Sirhan Sirhan admits that he killed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
  • Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 9 (James McDivitt, David Scott, Rusty Schweickart) to test the lunar module.
  • The United States Navy establishes the Navy Fighter Weapons School (also known as Top Gun) at Naval Air Station Miramar.
• March 4 – Jim Morrison is arrested in Florida for indecent exposure during a Doors concert three days earlier.
• March 10
  • In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. (he later retracts his guilty plea).
  • The novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo is published.^{[clarification needed]}
• March 13 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.
• March 17
  • The Longhope life-boat is lost after answering a mayday call during severe storms in the Pentland Firth between Orkney and the northern tip of Scotland; the entire crew of 8 die.^[1]
  • Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel.
• March 18 – Operation Breakfast, the covert bombing of Cambodia by U.S. planes, begins.
• March 19
  • British paratroopers and Marines land on the island of Anguilla, ending its unrecognized independence.
  • A 385 metres (1,263 ft) tall TV mast at Emley Moor, England, collapses due to ice build-up.
• March 20 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono are married at Gibraltar, and proceed to their honeymoon "Bed-In" for peace in Amsterdam.
• March 22 – The landmark art exhibition When Attitudes become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann, opens at the Kunsthalle Bern in Bern, Switzerland.
• March 29 – The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 is held in Madrid, and results in four co-winners, with 18 votes each, from Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France.
• March 30 – The body of former United States General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower is brought by caisson to the United States Capitol to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda; Eisenhower had died two days earlier, after a long illness, in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C.

1968 - March

• March 2 – Baggeridge Colliery closes marking the end of over 300 years of coal mining in the Black Country.^[5]
• March 6 – Un-recognized Rhodesia executes 3 black citizens, the first executions since UDI, prompting international condemnation.
• March 7 – Vietnam War: The First Battle of Saigon ends.
• March 8 – The first student protests spark the 1968 Polish political crisis.
  • Vietnam War: Battle of Lima Site 85, the largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members (12) during the then-secret war later known as the Laotian Civil War.
• March 11 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson mandates that all computers purchased by the federal government support the ASCIIcharacter encoding.^[6]
• March 12
  • Mauritius achieves independence from British rule.
  • U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson barely edges out antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a vote which highlights the deep divisions in the country, and the party, over Vietnam.
• March 13 – The first Rotaract club is chartered in North Charlotte, North Carolina.
• March 14 – Nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground near Skull Valley, Utah.
• March 15 – British Foreign Secretary George Brown resigns.
• March 16
  • Vietnam War – My Lai Massacre: American troops kill scores of civilians. The story will first become public in November 1969 and will help undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam.
  • U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
• March 17 – A demonstration in London's Grosvenor Square against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War leads to violence; 91 people are injured, 200 demonstrators arrested.
• March 18 – Gold standard: The United States Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.
• March 19–March 23 – Afrocentrism, Black Power, Vietnam War: Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. Students stage rallies, protests and a 5-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building, shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War, and demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum.
• March 22 – Daniel Cohn-Bendit ("Danny the Red") and 7 other students occupy the administrative offices of the University of Nanterre, setting in motion a chain of events that lead France to the brink of revolution in May.
• March 24 – Aer Lingus Flight 712 crashes en route from Cork to London near Tuskar Rock, Wexford, killing 61 passengers and crew.
• March 26 – Joan Baez marries activist David Harris in New York.
• March 28 – Brazilian high school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto is shot by the police in a protest for cheaper meals at a restaurant for low-income students. The aftermath of his death is one of the first major events against the military dictatorship.
• March 31 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.

1967 - March

• March 1
  • The city of Hatogaya, Saitama, Japan, is founded.
  • Brazilian police arrest Franz Stangl, ex-commander of Treblinka and Sobibór extermination camps.
  • The Red Guards return to schools in China.
  • The Queen Elizabeth Hall is opened in London.
  • Óscar Gestido is sworn in as President of Uruguay after 15 years of collegiate government.
• March 4
  • The first North Sea gas is pumped ashore at Easington, East Riding of Yorkshire.
  • Queens Park Rangers become the first 3rd Division side to win the English Football League Cup at Wembley Stadium, defeating West Bromwich Albion 3–2.
• March 5 – Mohammad Mosaddegh (or Mosaddeq; Persian: مُحَمَد مُصَدِق‎; IPA: [mohæmˈmæd(-e) mosædˈdeɣ] ( listen)), deposed Iranian prime minister, dies after fourteen years of house arrest.
• March 6 – Mark Twain Tonight starring Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain, premieres on CBS television in the United States.
• March 7 – U.S. labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa begins his 8-year sentence for attempting to bribe a jury.
• March 9 – Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defects to the United States via the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.
• March 11 – The first phase of the Cambodian Civil War begins between the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.
• March 12
  • The Indonesian State Assembly takes all presidential powers from Sukarno and names Suharto as acting president (Suharto resigned in 1998).
  • The Velvet Underground's first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, is released in the United States. It is initially a commercial failure but receives widespread critical and commercial acclaim in later years.
• March 13 – Moise Tshombe, ex-prime minister of Congo, is sentenced to death in absentia.
• March 14
  • The body of U.S. President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.
  • Nine executives of the German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal are charged for breaking German drug laws because of thalidomide.
• March 16 – In the Aspida case in Greece, 15 officers are sentenced to 2–18 years in prison, accused of treason and intentions of staging a coup.
• March 18
  • Torrey Canyon oil spill: The supertanker SS Torrey Canyon runs aground between Land's End and the Scilly Isles off the coast of Britain.
  • The classic Pirates of the Caribbean attraction opens at Disneyland, California.
• March 19 – A referendum in French Somaliland favors the connection to France.
• March 21
  • A military coup takes place in Sierra Leone.
  • Vietnam War: In ongoing campus unrest, Howard University students protesting the Vietnam War, the ROTC program on campus and the draft, confront Gen. Lewis Hershey, then head of the U.S. Selective Service System, and as he attempts to deliver an address, shout him down with cries of "America is the Black man's battleground!"
  • Charles Manson is released from Terminal Island. Telling the authorities that prison had become his home, he requested permission to stay. Upon his release, he relocates to San Francisco where he spends the Summer of Love.^[2]
• March 26
  • In New York City, 10,000 gather for the Central Park be-in.
  • Jim Thompson, co-founder of the Thai Silk Company, disappears from the Cameron Highlands.
• March 28 – Pope Paul VI issues the encyclical Populorum progressio.
• March 29
  • A 13-day TV strike begins in the United States.
  • The first French nuclear submarine, Le Redoutable, is launched.
  • The SEACOM Asian telephone cable is inaugurated.
  • Torrey Canyon oil spill: British Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force aircraft bomb and sink the grounded supertanker SS Torrey Canyon.
• March 31 – U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signs the Consular Treaty.