The year 1968 was not all roses for America. We found ourselves in a seemingly endless stalemate in Vietnam, where the death toll approached 40,000 U.S. troops. Growing opposition to the war caused the incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, to decline to run for re-election. Assassins’ bullets cut down civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Riots tore through Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other great American cities. The economy was plagued by rising inflation. The Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia.
But on Christmas Eve, from a most unexpected place, America and the free world received a bit of good cheer. It came in the form of a broadcast to the largest global television audience to date.
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