For those of us baby boomers and beyond who lived through the year 1968, its worth taking note of what occurred in society 40 years ago. Writer Richard Nilsen of the Arizona Republic points out that younger people tend to view this period of time as a wonderous period when everything was defined by the momentous events in pop culture. Indeed the late Sixties were heady times for every aspect of the arts. The Beatles had recently released Sgt. Pepper (and redefined themselves and the music industry in the process), new sexual freedoms were sweeping the screen through films like Blow-Up and Darling, and on stage nudity was all the rage with Hair. Nilsen points out, however, that this was also a traumatic era with earth-shaking consequences that went far beyond its pop culture implications - and it all came to a head in 1968. In one year alone, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, the Vietnam War reached its peak, there were the infamous riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago following LBJ's shocking decision not to seek re-election, Mao continued to murder millions of his own people during his horrendous "Cultural Revolution", Richard Nixon came back from political exile to improbably win not only the GOP nomination but also the presidency, race riots tore the fabric of America and the Soviets crushed the burdgeoning democracy in Czechoslovakia through a brutal military invasion. Nilsen points out that many seem to remember the greatest trauma being the cancellation of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It's worth reading through this fascinating article to remind us that the times we live in today are nowhere near as traumatic as they were 40 years ago.- Lee Pfeiffer To the read the article, click here