New word: brain dead – death defined by the cessation of electrical activity in the brain.

Summer of love, a peace march in New York City on April 15 where 300,000 participants, including paediatrician and activist Benjamin Spock and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., protested against the Vietnam War.

First heart transplant carried out in Cape Town, South Africa. 55 yr.-old Louis Washkansky received the heart of 25-yr old Denise Darvall, who was killed in a car crash. The operation was successful but Waskansky died 18 days later of pneumonia.

The war that awakened the entire world to the tragic problems of modern Africa began in May 1967, when Nigeria’s eastern region, home of the Igbo people, broke away as the Republic of Biafra. The ensuing conflict between Biafran revolutionaries, led by Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, and Nigerian forces, commanded by Yakubu Gowon, reduced the new state to ruin. Nigeria blockaded Biafra, and soon images of starving children were flooding the international news media, producing horror and revulsion.

Relief agencies tried to airlift supplies to the besieged state, but without official support they were largely unsuccessful. Biafra starved – and for political reasons: Biafran independence, the world’s most powerful governments agreed, could spur ethnic groups all over Africa to secede. Great Britain, Egypt, the Soviet Union (and tacitly, the U.S.) armed Nigeria while Portugal, South Africa and France feebly backed Biafra. By the time the Rebels surrendered in 1970, more than a million Biafrans had died, the great bulk of which were civilians who died of starvation.

Six Day War

In 1967, the simmering Arab-Israeli hostilities exploded into brief, climatic war when Israel , assailed by Palestinian guerillas, launched a massive punitive strike against Egypt, the Arab world’s leading state. Although the Six Day War was a result of Egyptian provocation, conflict was a fact of Middle Eastern life since 1947, when Palestine was partitioned to make room for a Jewish state. After a decisive military victory in 1967, Israel annexed (took over) substantial Arab territory, ensuring continued violence right to the end of the century.

After the partition, thousands of Palestinians had fled Israel into neighbouring Arab states, many of them forming guerrilla groups to attack the new country. In May 1967, Israel responded to escalating violence by massing troops on the Syrian border. Egyptian president Gamal Abdal Nasser reacted aggressively. He ordered United Nations cease-fire troops to leave the contested Egyptian-Israeli border, blockaded the Red Sea Strait of Tiran, a crucial Israeli shipping lane and entered into a military pact with Jordan, Israel's aggressive eastern neighbour. Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Algeria promised to "wipe Israel off the map" if it retaliated.

Fearing an invasion, Israel launched a surprise attack. On June 5 it destroyed the Egyptian air force, the strongest Arab fighting unit, and then continued to trounce Egyptian ground forces and occupy the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. Jordan entered the war as well, but was also vanquished. Israel captured all Jordanian territory west of the Jordan River -- the West Bank. Then Israel drove Syria out of the Golan Heights. The UN brokered a cease-fire on June 11, ending the immediate conflict. But the stage had been set for future violence.