On this day

1861 — Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and four other Southern sena-tors resign. 1903 — Harry Houdini escapes a police station in Amsterdam. 1908 — New York City regulation makes it illegal for a woman to smoke in public. 1950 — New York jury finds former State Deptartment official Alger Hiss guilty of perjury.1967 — U.S. female Figure Skating cham-pionship won by Peggy Fleming.1978 — Bee Gees’ “Saturday Night Fever” album is #1 for 24 weeks.

The Sunday edition of The State Journal-Regis-ter reported that attacks by North Vietnamese Army forces on a U.S. Marine combat base at Khe Sanh had broken out early the day before. It was the beginning of a 77-day siege on the base: the Battle of Khe Sanh.

Estimates of U.S. sol-diers killed or wounded range widely, but it was one of the most deadly battles of the war.

Analysts say the fighting distracted U.S. military leaders from a

buildup of North Viet-namese forces in urban areas of South Vietnam. In a massive coordinated surprise operation 10 days later on Jan. 31, an estimated 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces attacked more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam. It is known as the Tet Offensive.

The growing number of war casualties and the bleak outlook for victo-ry after Tet overshad-owed President Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. On

March 31, he announced to the nation that he was ordering most of the bombing in North Vietnam to stop, that he would enter peace negotia-tions and that he would not seek re-elec-tion to a second term.

n Engineers at NASA cleared the way for Apol-lo 5, an unmanned test flight of an Apollo moon lander, for launch the following day on a Saturn 1B rocket. The flight of Apollo 11, which put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, was more than a year away.

n Sister Helen Reisch, RN, and Sister Rose-mary Velcheck, MT,

Hospital Sisters from St. John’s, prepared for an 18-month mission to Vietnam where they would help provide basic health care for refugees and help raise sanitation standards for those living in the camps.

n On the editori-al page, the boys city basketball tournament, which took place that week, was hailed as a “welcome interlude” to winter. The Lanphier Li-ons were the tournament favorites, the editorial said, but “in intra-city play, ratings and records have often been ignored and the prospect again this year is for some closely-contested games.” The Lions did, in fact, win the title that year.

n Mayor Nelson How-arth appointed Richard

J. Cadagin assistant city attorney.

n The second-ranked University of Houston basketball team ended UCLA’s 47-game win-ning streak before a record-breaking indoor basketball crowd of 52, 693 in the Houston As-trodome.

Houston’s Elvin “Big E” Hayes scored 39 points and the Cougars held Lew Alcindor (later, Ka-reem Abdul-Jabbar) to just 15 points in a 71-69 win over the Bruins. It was Alcindor’s first loss since his high school bas-ketball team was beaten three years earlier.

— Rich Saal

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Brutal battle ofKhe Sanh begins

FLASHBACK SPRINGFIELD — JAN. 21, 1968

Monday, January 21, 2013 THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER PXX

Johnson