1968 was a turbulent year in the world and especially in the United States. In January the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, attacking American bases throughout the south and bringing the American's role in the country into an increasingly negative light. The Americans also launched their own offensive in Vietnam, a month long attack that would become known as the Battle of Hue and as one of the few urban battles of the Vietnam War. Throughout the year, even the victories in Vietnam seemed increasingly inconsequential, generating such phrases as "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it" and emboldening the anti-war movement domestically.
Internationally, Alexander Dubcek was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a part of the Eastern Bloc at the time, and began his "socialism with a face" reforms by relaxing censorship, lowering trade restrictions, and allowing a political role for other parties. In August this would end as Soviet tanks rolled into the country, 'restoring order' in what would later be termed the Prague Spring.
1968 was also a year of despair in America as two renowned peace activists were assassinated only two months apart. In April, Martin Luther King, Jr., winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and human rights activist was assassinated at a motel in Memphis while protesting for black Memphis sanitation workers. Two months later Robert F. Kennedy, brother of John F. Kennedy, former Attorney General, and the presumed Democratic nominee for President in the 1968 election, was assassinated after winning the key California primary. Kennedy had been running on a platform in part made of anti-war planks and his death left the nomination to the sitting vice president, the pro-war Hubert Humphrey. This led to the famous protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention where protesters clashed with police in front of television cameras chanting "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!"
Despite—or perhaps because of—these protests the Republican candidate Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States in November of that year. With his election died the hopes of an American withdrawal from Vietnam and marked the end of Johnson's Great Society programs.
The space race too was in full swing. Though originally planned to be a testing mission for the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), the Apollo 8 mission profile was altered to become a lunar orbital mission in the hopes of beating the Soviets to this landmark achievement. Launched on December 21, the capsule entered the orbit of the moon three days later on Christmas Eve 1968. It was here, 384 thousand kilometers from the Earth, that one of history's most famous photographs was taken: first in black and white before the right film could be found by the crew, then in full color.
After a year of war and death, anger and broken hopes, that one picture to many summed up the whole of humanity. People saw a message straight out of the sixties—one planet and one people who couldn't manage to set aside their petty problems for greater aspirations. Since then the image has become the most widely reprinted photograph ever and has appeared in various publications including on the Spring 1969 cover of the Whole Earth Catalog. The original horizontal orientation of the photo (with the moon the right of the frame and the Earth rising to the left) was rotated to the vertical orientation we are more familiar with today. Though many other Earthrise photos have been taken by various space missions, none have become as famous as the first nor as iconic of their era.