Adrian Joseph Cronauer was a radio personality and U.S. Air
Force Sergeant, whose experiences as an innovative disc
jockey on American Forces Network during the Vietnam War
inspired the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam starring Robin
Williams (below) as Cronauer.

 
     SANDY KOZEL                                    

On May 4, 1970, in Kent, Ohio, 28 National Guardsmen fired their weapons at a group of anti-war demonstrators on the Kent State University campus, killing four students, wounding eight, and permanently paralyzing another. The tragedy was a watershed
moment for a nation divided by the conflict in Vietnam, and
further galvanized the anti-war movement. 

Muhammad Ali, the reigning world heavyweight boxing champion, entered the combative ring of politics and culture by refusing to
serve in the United States military at the height of the Vietnam
War on this day in history, April 28, 1967.

"I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong," Ali famously said the
year before, the exact quote the source of some dispute, in a
battle that made it all the way to the United States Supreme
Court. The Vietnam War was at its heights at the time.
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Ali was convicted and given five years in prison for refusing induction in to the United States draft as mandated by the Selective Service Act.

Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who
served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial 
was dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by
thousands of veterans of the conflict.

The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite
wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died
in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was
common in other memorials.

The designer of the memorial was Maya Lin, a Yale University architecture student who entered a nationwide competition to
create a design for the monument.         
        
        
        
        
        
       
Designer and sculptor Maya Ying Lin (64)