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Richard M. Nixon
(1969-1974)
September 23, 1952 - Republican vice-presidential
candidate Richard M. Nixon went on television to deliver what came
to be known as the ``Checkers'' speech as he denied allegations of
improper campaign financing.
July 24, 1959 - During the grand opening ceremony of
the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Vice President Richard
Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev engage in a heated
debate about capitalism and communism in the middle of a model
kitchen set up for the fair. The so-called "kitchen debate" became
one of the most famous episodes of the Cold War.
November 7, 1962 - Richard M. Nixon, who failed in a
bid to become governor of California, held what he called his last
press conference, telling reporters, ''You won't have Nixon to
kick around anymore.''
January 20, 1969 - Richard Nixon is inaugurated as
president of the United States and says, "After a period of
confrontation [in Vietnam], we are entering an era of
negotiation." Eight years after losing to John F. Kennedy in the
1960 election, Nixon had defeated Hubert H. Humphrey for the
presidency.
January 25, 1969 - First fully attended meeting of
the formal Paris peace talks is held. Ambassador Henry Cabot
Lodge, the chief negotiator for the United States, urged an
immediate restoration of a genuine DMZ as the first "practical
move toward peace." Lodge also suggested a mutual withdrawal of
"external" military forces and an early release of prisoners of
war. Tran Buu Kiem and Xuan Thuy, heads of the National Liberation
Front and North Vietnamese delegations respectively, refused
Lodge's proposals and condemned American "aggression."
February 4, 1969 - Al-Fatah-leader
Yasser Arafat elected chairman of the
Executive Committee and commander-in-chief
of PLO.
March 26, 1969 - Group called Women Strike for Peace
demonstrate in Washington, DC, first large antiwar demonstration
since President Richard Nixon's inauguration in January.
April 3, 1969 - Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird
announces that the United States is moving to "Vietnamize" the war
as rapidly as possible (responsibility for the fighting would be
gradually transferred to the South Vietnamese as they became more
combat capable).
April 5, 1969 - Approximately 100,000 antiwar
demonstrators march in New York City to demand that the United
States withdraw from Vietnam. The weekend of antiwar protests
ended with demonstrations and parades in San Francisco, Los
Angeles, Washington, DC, and other cities. The National
Mobilization Committee, the Student Mobilization Committee, and
the Socialist Workers Party were among the groups that helped
organize the demonstrations. At the same time, Quakers held
sit-ins at draft boards and committed other acts of civil
disobedience in more than 30 cities.
April 7, 1969 -The Supreme Court unanimously struck
down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
April 17, 1969 - A jury in Los Angeles convicted
Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
April 17, 1969 - Alexander Dubcek, the communist
leader who launched a broad program of liberal reforms in
Czechoslovakia, is forced to resign as first secretary by the
Soviet forces occupying his country. The staunchly pro-Soviet
Gustav Husak was appointed Czechoslovak leader in his place,
reestablishing an authoritarian communist dictatorship in the
Soviet satellite state; 1968 - trend toward liberalization reached
apex after Dubcek replaced Antonýn Novotný as first secretary of
the party. He introduced a series of far-reaching political and
economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and an end
to state censorship. Dubcek's effort to establish "communism with
a human face" was celebrated across the country and the brief
period of freedom became known as the "Prague Spring."
August 20, 1968 - the Soviet Union answered Dubcek's
reforms with the invasion of Czechoslovakia by 600,000 Warsaw Pact
troops; Dubcek's reforms were repealed, and the leader was
replaced with the staunchly pro-Soviet Gustav Husak, who
reestablished an authoritarian communist regime in the country.
December 1989 - Husak resigned, Dubcek returned to
politics as chairman of the new parliament, which subsequently
elected playwright Vaclav Havel as president of Czechoslovakia.
Havel had come to fame during the Prague Spring, and after the
Soviet crackdown his plays were banned and his passport
confiscated.
April 18, 1969 - President Nixon says he feels the
prospects for peace have "significantly improved" since he took
office. He cited the greater political stability of the Saigon
government and the improvement in the South Vietnamese armed
forces as proof; trying to set the stage for a major announcement
he would make at the Midway conference in June. While conferring
with South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, Nixon announced
that the United States would be pursuing a three-pronged strategy
to end the war ("Vietnamization").
April 23, 1969 - Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to
death for assassinating New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The
sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.
April 28, 1969 - Following the defeat of his
proposals for constitutional reform in a national referendum,
Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.
May 9, 1969 - William Beecher, military
correspondent for the New York Times, publishes a front page
dispatch from Washington, "Raids in Cambodia by U.S. Unprotested,"
which accurately described the first of the secret B-52 bombing
raids in Cambodia. Within hours, Henry Kissinger, presidential
assistant for national security affairs, contacted J. Edgar
Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
asking him to find the governmental sources of Beecher's article.
May 15, 1969 - Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas
resigned amid a controversy over his past legal fees.
May 26, 1969 - The Apollo 10 astronauts returned to
Earth after a successful eight-day dress rehearsal for the first
manned moon landing.
June 8, 1969
- President Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu
meet at Midway Island in the Pacific. At the meeting, Nixon
announced that 25,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn by the end of
August. Nixon and Thieu emphasized that South Vietnamese forces
would replace U.S. forces. Along with this announcement of the
first U.S. troop withdrawal, Nixon discussed what would become
known as "Vietnamization." Under this new policy, Nixon intended
to initiate steps to increase the combat capability of the
Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces so that the South Vietnamese
would eventually be able to assume full responsibility for the
war.
June 9, 1969 - The Senate confirmed Warren Burger to
be chief justice of the United States, succeeding Earl Warren.
June 20, 1969 - Georges Pompidou sworn in as
president of France.
June 23, 1969 - Warren E. Burger was sworn in as
chief justice of the United States.
June 27, 1969 - Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay
bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, clashed with police in
an incident considered to be the birth of the gay rights movement.
Although the police were legally justified in raiding the club,
which was serving liquor without a license among other violations,
New York's gay community had grown weary of the police department
targeting gay clubs, a majority of which had already been closed.
The officers were forced to take shelter inside the establishment,
and two policemen were slightly injured before reinforcements
arrived to disperse the mob. The protest, however, spilled over
into the neighboring streets, and order was not restored until the
deployment of New York's riot police. Impetus for the formation of
the Gay Liberation Front as well as other gay, lesbian, and
bisexual civil rights organizations. It is also regarded by many
as history's first major protest on behalf of equal rights for
homosexuals.
July 1, 1969 - Britain's Prince Charles was invested
as the prince of Wales.
July 7, 1969 - Canada's House of Commons approved
making the French language equal to English throughout the
national government.
July 16, 1969 - Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape
Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon.
July 18, 1969
- A car driven by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) plunged off
a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard;
passenger Mary Jo Kopechne died. The senator did not report the
fatal car accident for 10 hours.
July 20, 1969 - Astronaut Neil Armstrong became the
first man to walk on the moon. 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks
these words to more than a billion people listening at home:
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the
first human to walk on the surface of the moon. Nixon joined
approximately 500 million people around the world in watching
Armstrong and Aldrin as the astronauts left their lunar landing
module and walked on the moon. (The Soviet Union and China,
America’s two biggest rivals in the space race, banned the
broadcast in their respective countries.) After they planted an
American flag on the moon’s surface, the astronauts spoke directly
to President Nixon, who congratulated them on their historic
mission. His phone was linked via satellite through the NASA
control center in Houston, Texas. The American effort to send
astronauts to the moon has its origins in a famous appeal
President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of
Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation should commit
itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of
landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."
December 14,
1972 - The last men to walk on the moon, astronauts
Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of the Apollo 17 mission, left
the lunar surface.
July 25, 1969 - President Richard
Nixon announces that henceforth the United States will expect its
Asian allies to tend to their own military defense. The Nixon
Doctrine, as the president's statement came to be known, clearly
indicated his determination to "Vietnamize" the Vietnam War. The
Nixon Doctrine marked the formal announcement of the president's "Vietnamization"
plan, whereby American troops would be slowly withdrawn from the
conflict in Southeast Asia and be replaced by South Vietnamese
troops. Over the course of his first term in office, Nixon held
true to this doctrine by withdrawing a substantial portion of
America's fighting forces from Vietnam.
August 14, 1969 - British troops arrived in Northern
Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence between Protestants and
Roman Catholics.
August 15, 1969 - The Woodstock Music and Art Fair
opened in upstate New York.
September 1, 1969 - Muammar al-Qaddafi, a
27-year-old Libyan army captain, leads a successful military coup
against King Idris I of Libya (viewed as overly conservative and
indifferent to the movement for greater political unity among Arab
countries). Idris was deposed and Qaddafi was named chairman of
Libya's new governing body, the Revolutionary Command Council.
Qaddafi established a fervently anti-Western dictatorship in
Libya. In 1970 - he removed U.S. and British
military bases and expelled Italian and Jewish Libyans. In
1973 - he took control of foreign-owned oil fields. He
reinstated traditional Islamic laws, such as prohibition of
alcoholic beverages and gambling, but liberated women and launched
social programs that improved the standard of living in Libya. As
part of his stated ambition to unite the Arab world, he sought
closer relations with his Arab neighbors, especially Egypt.
However, when Egypt and then other Arab nations began a peace
process with Israel, Libya became increasingly isolated.
April 1986 - U.S. war planes bombed Tripoli in retaliation
for a bombing of a West German dance hall. Qaddafi was reportedly
injured and his infant daughter killed in the U.S. attack.
September 6, 1969 - South Vietnam's Communist Party
newspaper, Nhan Dan, and Radio Hanoi announce that Ho Chi Minh is
to be succeeded by a committee of leadership consisting of Le Duan,
first secretary of the party; Truong Chin, member of the Politburo
and chairman of the National Assembly; General Vo Nguyen Giap,
defense minister, and Premier Pham Van Dong. Ho, the spiritual
leader of North Vietnam and the Vietnamese communists in the
South, had died on September 2. His passing led many in America to
hope that the time might be right to negotiate an end to the war,
but his death had little long-term impact on the war as he had
long been only a ceremonial figurehead. The new committee carried
on with the war until the Paris Peace Accords were signed in
January 1973 and, after U.S. forces departed, directed North
Vietnamese forces as the fighting renewed in the South until they
were eventually victorious in April 1975.
September 16, 1969 - President Richard Nixon
announces the second round of U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam;
first round of withdrawals was completed in August and totaled
25,000 troops (including two brigades of the 9th Infantry
Division); total of 15 withdrawals in total were announced,
leaving only 27,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by November 1972.
September 24, 1969 - The trial for seven antiwar
activists charged with the responsibility for the violent
demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention
opens in Chicago before Judge Julius Hoffman. The defendants included David Dellinger of the
National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas
Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie
Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party
("Yippies"); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser
known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines. The group was
charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite
a riot. All but Seale were represented by attorneys William
Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass. The trial turned into a circus as the defendants and their
attorneys used the court as a platform to attack Nixon, the war, racisim, and oppression. Their tactics were so disruptive that at
one point, Judge Hoffman ordered Seale gagged and strapped to his
chair. When the trial ended in February 1970, Hoffman found the
defendants and their attorneys guilty of 175 counts of contempt of
court and sentenced them to terms between two to four years.
Although declaring the defendants not guilty of conspiracy, the
jury found all but Froines and Weiner guilty of intent to riot.
The others were each sentenced to five years and fined $5,000.
However, none served time because in 1972, a Court of Appeal
overturned the criminal convictions and eventually most of the
contempt charges were dropped as well.
October 15, 1969 - National Moratorium antiwar
demonstrations are conducted across the United States involving
hundreds of thousands of people. The National Moratorium was an
effort by David Hawk and Sam Brown, two antiwar activists, to
forge a broad-based movement against the Vietnam War. The
organization initially focused its effort on 300 college campuses,
but the idea soon grew and spread beyond the colleges and
universities. Hawk and Brown were assisted by the New Mobilization
Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which was instrumental in
organizing the nation-wide protest. The demonstrations involved a
broad spectrum of the population, including those who had already
participated in antiwar demonstrations and many who had never
before raised their voices against the war. The protest, as a
nationally coordinated antiwar demonstration, was considered
unprecedented; Walter Cronkite called it "historic in its scope.
Never before had so many demonstrated their hope for peace."
October 19, 1969 - Vice President Spiro T. Agnew
referred to anti-Vietnam War protesters ''an effete corps of
impudent snobs.''
November 3, 1969 - Vietnam War: US President Richard
M. Nixon addresses the nation on television and radio, asking the
"silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War
effort and to support his policies.
November 12, 1969 - Seymour Hersh, an independent
investigative journalist, in a cable filed through Dispatch News
Service and picked up by more than 30 newspapers, reveals the
extent of the U.S. Army's charges against 1st Lt. William L.
Calley at My Lai. Hersh wrote: "The Army says he [Calley]
deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians during a
search-and-destroy mission in March 1968, in a Viet Cong
stronghold known as 'Pinkville.'" The incident, which became known
as the My Lai Massacre, took place in March 1968. Between 200 and
500 South Vietnamese civilians were murdered by U.S. soldiers from
Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade of
the Americal Division. During a sweep of the cluster of hamlets
known as My Lai 4, the U.S. soldiers--particularly those from
Calley's first platoon--indiscriminately shot people as they ran
from their huts, and then systematically rounded up the survivors,
allegedly leading them to a ditch where Calley gave the order to
"finish them off."
November 13, 1969 - In Washington, as a prelude to
the second moratorium against the war scheduled for the following
weekend, 45,000 protesters stage a symbolic "March Against Death",
each with a placard bearing the name of a soldier who had died in
Vietnam. The marchers began at Arlington National Cemetery and
continued past the White House, where they called out the names of
the dead. The march lasted for two days and nights. This
demonstration and the moratorium that followed did not produce a
change in official policy--although President Nixon was deeply
angered by the protests, he publicly feigned indifference and they
had no impact on his prosecution of the war.
November 13, 1969 - Vice President Spiro T. Agnew
accused network TV news departments of bias and distortion, and
urged viewers to lodge complaints.
November 14, 1969 -
President Richard
Nixon viewed the liftoff of Apollo 12,
second manned mission to the surface of the
moon,
from Pad A at Cape Canaveral, the first president to attend the
liftoff of a manned space flight.
November 15, 1969 - an estimated 500,000
demonstrators rallied in Washington as part of the largest such
rally to date against the Vietnam War (urgency about a Vietnam
peace and impatience with President Nixon's policy of gradual
withdrawal); organized by the New Mobilization Committee to End
the War in Vietnam ("New Mobe").
November 17, 1969 - Soviet and U.S. negotiators
meet in Helsinki to begin the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
(SALT) to curb the Cold War arms race; Director of the Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency Gerard Smith was put in charge of
the U.S. delegation; National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger
began negotiations with the Soviet ambassador in America;
May 1972 - SALT I agreement signed.
November 19, 1969 - U.S. astronauts Charles Conrad,
Jr. and Alan Bean became the third and fourth humans to walk on
the surface of the Moon after their landing module, Intrepid,
touched down as part of the Apollo 12 mission.
November 20, 1969 - The Nixon administration
announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part
of a total phase-out.
November 21, 1969 - The Senate voted down the
Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth; first rejection
since 1930.
November 26, 1969 - Lottery for Selective Service
draftees bill signed by President Nixon.
December 1, 1969 - The U.S. government held its
first draft lottery since World War II.
December 15, 1969 - President Richard Nixon
announces that 50,000 additional U.S. troops will be pulled out of
South Vietnam by April 15, 1970; third reduction since the June
Midway conference, when Nixon announced his Vietnamization
program.
December 30, 1969 - President Richard Nixon signed
off on what was then the most far-reaching tax reform bill in U.S.
history. The legislation relieved nine million low-income citizens
of the burden of paying taxes; it also slashed tax rates for
individuals by 5 percent.
January 15, 1970 - Muammar al-Qaddafi, the young
Libyan army captain who deposed King Idris in September 1969, is
proclaimed premier of Libya by the so-called General People's
Congress. September 1, 1969 - ardent Arab
nationalist, he plotted with a group of fellow officers, overthrew
the Libyan monarchy; established a fervently anti-Western
dictatorship; removed U.S. and British military bases and expelled
Italian and Jewish Libyans.
January 15, 1970 - Republic of Biafra, a breakaway
state of eastern Nigeria, surrenders to Nigeria after three years
of costly fighting. January 11, 1970 - Nigerian forces captured
the provincial capital of Owerri, one of the last Biafran
strongholds, and Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu was forced to flee to
the Ivory Coast. Four days later, Biafra surrendered to Nigeria.
January 19, 1970 - President Richard Nixon nominated
G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. The nomination was later
defeated because of controversy over Carswell's past racial views.
February 19, 1970 - Chicago Seven (formerly the
Chicago Eight--one defendant, Bobby Seale, was being tried
separately) are acquitted of riot conspiracy charges, but found
guilty of inciting riot; charged with the responsibility for the
violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National
Convention in Chicago; charged with conspiracy to cross state
lines with intent to incite a riot; Judge Julius Hoffman found the
defendants and their attorneys guilty of 175 counts of contempt of
court and sentenced them to terms between two to four years.
Although declaring the defendants not guilty of conspiracy, the
jury found all but Froines and Weiner guilty of intent to riot.
The others were each sentenced to five years and fined $5,000.
1972 - Court of Appeal overturned the criminal
convictions and eventually most of the contempt charges were also
dropped; none served time.
March 5, 1970 - A nuclear non-proliferation treaty
went into effect after 43 nations ratified it.
March 18, 1970 - Prince Norodom Sihanouk is ousted
as Cambodian chief of state in a bloodless coup by pro-western Lt.
Gen. Lon Nol, premier and defense minister, and First Deputy
Premier Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, who proclaim the
establishment of the Khmer Republic. Lon Nol immediately set about
to defeat the communists. Between 1970 and 1975, he and his army,
the Forces Armees Nationale Khmer (FANK), with U.S. support and
military aid, would battle the Khmer Rouge communists for control
of Cambodia.
April 1, 1970 - President Richard Nixon signed a
measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and TV.
April 8, 1970 - The Senate rejected President
Richard Nixon's nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme
Court.
April 11, 1970 - Apollo 13, the third lunar
landing mission, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral,
Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and
Fred W. Haise. The spacecraft's destination was the Fra Mauro
highlands of the moon, where the astronauts were to explore the
Imbrium Basin and conduct geological experiments. April 13 -
Oxygen tank No. 2 had blown up, disabling the normal supply of
oxygen, electricity, light, and water. Lovell reported to mission
control: "Houston, we've had a problem here," and the crew
scrambled to find out what had happened. Several minutes later,
Lovell looked out of the left-hand window and saw that the
spacecraft was venting a gas, which turned out to be the Command
Module's (CM) oxygen. The landing mission was aborted; new mission
objective became to get the Apollo 13 crew home alive.
April 13, 1970 - Explosion aboard the Apollo 13
spacecraft led to one of the most spectacular rescue missions in
US space history; left the crew stranded for four days more than
200,000 miles from Earth. An oxygen leak forced the Apollo 13
astronauts to abandon ship and return in lunar module. Against all
odds, the three astronauts and thousands of others brought the
capsule safely back to Earth. The astronauts were Fred Haise, Jack
Swigert, and Commander Jim Lovell.
April 16, 1970 - Apollo 13 landed safely with a
splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, four days after the spacecraft
aborted its mission while it was four-fifths of the way to the
moon. It was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst.
The astronauts made an extraordinary escape. Upon his return,
astronaut A. J. Lovell, Jr. was the first American astronaut to
travel over 700 hours in space.
April 20, 1970 - President Nixon pledges to withdraw
150,000 more U.S. troops over the next year "based entirely on the
progress" of the "Vietnamization" program.
April 22, 1970 - Earth Day was observed for the
first time; brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a
staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the
grassroots environmental movement and increase ecological
awareness. "The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of
concern for the environment so large that it would shake the
political establishment out of its lethargy," Senator Nelson said,
"and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national
political agenda."
April 30, 1970 - President Richard Nixon announced
the US was sending troops into Cambodia, sparking widespread
protest.
May 4, 1970 - Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on
anti-war protesters at Kent State University. Four students, two
of them women, were killed.
At
least 8 other students were wounded.
The incident occurred in the aftermath of President Richard
Nixon's April 30 announcement that U.S. and South Vietnamese
forces had been ordered to execute an "incursion" into Cambodia to
destroy North Vietnamese bases there. In protest, a wave of
demonstrations and disturbances erupted on college campuses across
the country.
May 6, 1970 - Hundreds of colleges and universities
across the nation shut down as thousands of students join a
nationwide campus protest; 536 campuses were shut down completely,
51 for the rest of the academic year; protests were a reaction to
the shooting of four students at Kent State University by National
Guardsmen during a campus demonstration about President Nixon's
decision to send U.S. and South Vietnamese troops into Cambodia.
Four days later, a student rally at Jackson State College in
Mississippi resulted in the death of two students and 12 wounded
when police opened fire on a women's dormitory.
May 8, 1970 - President Nixon, at a news conference,
defends the U.S. troop movement into Cambodia, saying the
operation would provide six to eight months of time for training
South Vietnamese forces and thus would shorten the war for
Americans. Nixon reaffirmed his promise to withdraw 150,000
American soldiers by the following spring. December 29, 1970
- Congress passed a modified version of the Cooper-Church
Amendment [Senators John Sherman Cooper (R-Kentucky) and Frank
Church (D-Idaho)] barring the introduction of U.S. ground troops
in Laos or Thailand.
May 12, 1970 - The Senate voted unanimously
to confirm Harry A. Blackmun as a Supreme Court justice.
June 3, 1970 - In a televised speech, President
Richard Nixon claims the Allied drive into Cambodia is the "most
successful operation of this long and difficult war," and that he
is now able to resume the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South
Vietnam. Reaffirmed earlier pledges to bring the Cambodian
operation to an end by June 30, with "all our major military
objectives" achieved and reported that 17,000 of the 31,000 U.S.
troops in Cambodia had already returned to South Vietnam. After
June 30, said Nixon, "all American air support" for Allied troops
in fighting in Cambodia would end, with the only remaining
American activity being attacks on enemy troop movements and
supplies threatening U.S. forces in South Vietnam. Nixon promised
that 50,000 of the 150,000 troops, whose withdrawal from Vietnam
he had announced April 20, would "be out by October 15."
June 20, 1970 - British government of Edward Heath
forms, with Margaret Thatcher.
June 22, 1970 - President Richard Nixon signed 26th
amendment, a measure lowering the voting age to 18.
June 24, 1970 - On an amendment offered by Senator
Robert Dole (R-Kansas) to the Foreign Military Sales Act, the
Senate votes 81 to 10 to repeal the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
August 1964 - after North Vietnamese torpedo boats
attacked U.S. destroyers (in what became known as the Tonkin Gulf
incident), President Johnson asked Congress for a resolution
authorizing the president "to take all necessary measures" to
defend Southeast Asia. Subsequently, Congress passed Public Law
88-408, which became known as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving
the president the power to take whatever actions he deemed
necessary, including "the use of armed force"; August 10
- President Johnson signed it into law - became the legal basis
for every presidential action taken by the Johnson administration
during its conduct of the war. Became increasingly controversial
as Johnson used it to increase U.S. commitment to the war in
Vietnam. Repealing the resolution was meant as an attempt to limit
presidential war powers.
June 30, 1970 -Senate votes 58 to 37 in favor of
adopting the Cooper-Church amendment to limit presidential power
in Cambodia. The amendment barred funds to retain U.S. troops in
Cambodia after July 1 or to supply military advisers, mercenaries,
or to conduct "any combat activity in the air above Cambodia in
direct support of Cambodian forces" without congressional
approval. The amendment represented the first limitation ever
passed in the Senate concerning the president's powers as
commander-in-chief during a war situation. July 9 -
The House of Representatives rejected the amendment and it was
eventually dropped from the Foreign Military Sales Act.
July 1970 - Environmental Protection Agency was
established by special executive order to regulate and enforce
national pollution legislation.
July 6, 1970 - California passes first "no fault"
divorce law.
September 1, 1970 - U.S. Senate rejects the
McGovern-Hatfield amendment by a vote of 55-39. This legislation,
proposed by Senators George McGovern of South Dakota and Mark
Hatfield of Oregon, would have set a deadline of December 31,
1971, for complete withdrawal of American troops from South
Vietnam. The Senate also turned down 71-22, a proposal forbidding
the Army from sending draftees to Vietnam. Despite the defeat of
these two measures, the proposed legislation indicated the growing
dissatisfaction with President Nixon's handling of the war. On
this same day, a bipartisan group of 14 senators, including both
the majority and minority leaders, signed a letter to the
president asking him to propose a comprehensive "standstill
cease-fire" in South Vietnam at the ongoing Paris peace talks.
September 22, 1970 - President Richard M. Nixon
signed a bill giving the District of Columbia representation in
the U.S. Congress.
September 28, 1970 - Egyptian Vice President Anwar
el-Sadat was sworn-in as the president of Egypt following the
death of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
October 7, 1970 - In a televised speech, President
Richard Nixon announces a five-point proposal to end the war,
based on a "standstill" cease-fire in place in South Vietnam,
Laos, and Cambodia. He proposed eventual withdrawal of U.S.
forces, unconditional release of prisoners of war, and political
solutions reflecting the will of the South Vietnamese people.
Nixon said that the Communist proposals for the ouster of Nguyen
Van Thieu, Nguyen Cao Ky, and Tran Thiem Van Thieu were "totally
unacceptable" and rejected them. These proposals were well
received at home, but were rejected by the Communists a few days
later.
October 8, 1970 - Communist delegation in Paris
rejects President Richard Nixon's five-point proposal (based on a
"standstill" cease-fire in place in South Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia) as "a maneuver to deceive world opinion" ; North
Vietnamese reiterated their previous and long-standing demand for
an unconditional and total withdrawal of U.S. forces from
Indochina and the overthrow of the "puppet" leaders in Saigon.
October 9, 1970 - Khmer Republic is proclaimed in
Cambodia. In March, a coup led by Cambodian General Lon Nol had
overthrown the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in Phnom
Penh. Between 1970 and 1975, Lon Nol and his army, the Forces
Armees Nationale Khmer (FANK), with U.S. support and military aid,
fought the Communist Khmer Rouge for control of Cambodia. During
those five years of bitter fighting, approximately 10 percent of
Cambodia's 7 million people died. When the U.S. forces departed
South Vietnam in 1973, both the Cambodians and South Vietnamese
found themselves fighting the Communists alone. Without U.S.
support, Lon Nol's forces succumbed to the Khmer Rouge in April
1975. The Khmer Rouge promptly evacuated Phnom Penh and set about
to reorder Cambodian society, which resulted in a killing spree
and the notorious "killing fields." Under the brutal rule of the
Khmer Rouge, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were murdered or
died from exhaustion, hunger, and disease.
October 10, 1970 - During the October Crisis, Quebec
Labor Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped by the Quebec
Liberation Front, a militant separatist group. He was found dead a
week later.
October 10, 1970 - Fiji became independent after
nearly a century of British rule.
October 15, 1970 - Anwar Sadat elected president of
Egypt.
October 24, 1970 - Salvador Allende, an
avowed Marxist, becomes president of Chile after being confirmed
by the Chilean congress. For the next three years, the United
States would exert tremendous pressure to try to destabilize and
unseat the Allende government. Allende's election in 1970 was his
third attempt at the presidency. In 1958, and again in 1964,
Allende had run on a socialist/communist platform. In both
elections, the United States government (as well as U.S.
businesses such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT),
which had significant investments in Chile) worked to defeat
Allende by sending millions of dollars of assistance to his
political opponents. Allende immediately confirmed the worst fears
of U.S. officials when he extended diplomatic recognition to North
Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba, and also began to take action to
nationalize the holdings of U.S. corporations in Chile, notably
ITT and Kennecott Copper. U.S. officials also believed that
Allende was supporting revolutionary activities in Latin America
and viewed him as a significant threat to hemispheric security and
U.S. economic interests in Chile. Yet, Allende posed an
interesting problem. Unlike Castro, he had come to power
peacefully and democratically. Thus, the United States could
hardly launch a Bay-of-Pigs-like attack on the Allende regime.
Undaunted, the administration of President Richard Nixon began to
formulate plans to destabilize the Chilean government and see to
the removal of Allende. These plans came to fruition in 1973 when
a coup by the Chilean military overthrew Allende and assassinated
him.
October 28, 1970 - Senator James William Fulbright,
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, accused the
Nixon administration of conducting an illegal war in Laos without
congressional knowledge or approval.
November 3, 1970 - Salvador Allende was inaugurated
as president of Chile.
November 9, 1970 - Supreme Court refuses to hear a
challenge by the state of Massachusetts regarding the
constitutionality of the Vietnam War. By a 6-3 vote, the justices
rejected the effort of the state to bring a suit in federal court
in defense of Massachusetts residents claiming protection under a
state law that allowed them to refuse military service in an
undeclared war.
November 17, 1970 - The Soviet Union landed an
unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon, the Lunokhod 1.
November 18, 1970 - President Nixon asks Congress
for supplemental appropriations of $155 million for the Cambodian
government of Premier Lon Nol (Cambodian general who had
overthrown the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in March
1970); $85 million of appropriation intended for military
assistance, mainly in the form of ammunition; additional $100
million to provide aid and assistance to Lon Nol to preclude the
fall of Cambodia to the communist Khmer Rouge and their North
Vietnamese allies; April 1975 - Lon Nol's forces
succumbed to the Khmer Rouge (evacuated Phnom Penh and set about
to reorder Cambodian society - resulted in a killing spree and the
notorious "killing fields", hundreds of thousands of Cambodians
died from murder, exhaustion, hunger, and disease).
December 2, 1970 - The Environmental Protection
Agency began operating.
December 21, 1970 - Elvis Presley met with President
Richard M. Nixon in the Oval Office to discuss fighting drugs.
December 28, 1970 - Richard Nixon signed the
Occupational Safety and Health Act; created three federal
agencies: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
within the Department of Labor; the Occupational Safety and Health
Review Commission; and the National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health (NIOSH) within the Department of Health and
Human Services. The OSH Act covers the private, but not the
public, sector. Public sector employees may be protected under
other state or federal laws; April 28, 1971 - OSHA became
effective.
December 30, 1970 - President Nixon signed The
Securities Investor Protection Act of 1970; created Securities
Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), private nonprofit
corporation to insure the securities and cash left with brokerage
firms by investors against loss from financial difficulties or
failure of such firms; first line of defense in the event a
brokerage firm fails owing customers cash and securities that are
missing from customer accounts.
January 18, 1971 - Senator George S. McGovern
(D-South Dakota) begins his antiwar campaign for the 1972
Democratic presidential nomination by vowing to bring home all
U.S. soldiers from Vietnam if he is elected. McGovern won his
party's nomination. With only 55 percent of the electorate
voting--the lowest turnout since 1948--Nixon carried all states
but Massachusetts, taking 97 percent of the electoral votes.
February 2, 1971 - Idi Amin assumed power in Uganda
following a coup that ousted President Milton Obote.
February 14, 1971 - Richard Nixon installs secret
taping system in White House.
February 25, 1971 - Both houses of Congress
initiated legislation to forbid U.S. military support of any South
Vietnamese invasion of North Vietnam without congressional
approval. This legislation was a result of the controversy that
arose after the invasion of Laos by South Vietnamese forces in
Operation Lam Son 719. February 8 - South
Vietnamese forces had launched a major cross-border operation into
Laos to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail and destroy the North
Vietnamese supply dumps in the area. Although the only direct U.S.
support permitted was long-range cross-border artillery fire from
firebases in South Vietnam, fixed-wind air strikes, and 2,600
helicopters to airlift Saigon troops and supplies, President
Richard Nixon's critics condemned the invasion. Foreign Relations
Committee chairman Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas)
declared the Laotian invasion illegal under the terms of the
repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed the
president only the mandate to end the war.
March 26. 1971 - East Pakistan proclaimed its
independence, taking the name Bangladesh.
April 7, 1971 - President Nixon orders Lt. Calley
(Mi Lai) free.
April 10, 1971 - U.S. table tennis team begins a
weeklong visit to the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the
invitation of China's communist government. The well-publicized
trip was part of the PRC's attempt to build closer diplomatic
relations with the United States, and was the beginning of what
some pundits in the United States referred to as "ping-pong
diplomacy." Chinese table tennis team also toured America, causing
a short-lived craze for table tennis.
April 14, 1971 - President Nixon ends
blockade against People's Republic of China.
April 19, 1971 - Soviet Union launched Salyut 1 (DOS
1) on a Proton rocket. Although primitive, having only a single
main module, it was the first space station ever in Earth orbit.
Its first crew launched in Soyuz 10 but was unable to board the
space station due to a failure in the docking mechanism. The
second crew arrived in Soyuz 11 and remained on board for 23
productive days. Unfortunately, a pressure-equalization valve in
the Soyuz 11 reentry capsule opened prematurely when the crew
returned to Earth, killing all three. October 1971 -
Salyut 1 reentered Earth's atmosphere.
April 20, 1971 - The United States Supreme Court
upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in
schools (as a means to "dismantle the dual school systems" of the
South; did not apply to Northern-style segregation, based on
neighborhood patterns). Justice Department lawyers had argued that
Southern school systems should be allowed to assign students to
schools in their own neighborhoods even if this resulted in
slowing the pace of desegregation in the South. Southern lawyers
had contended that the Northern areas were permitted to have
neighborhood schools and that it would be discriminatory of the
South were not allowed the same "privilege." "Desegregation plans
cannot be limited to the walk-in school," the Court declared. It
held that busing was proper unless "the time or distance is so
great as to risk either the health of the children or
significantly impinge on the educational process." Young children
may be improper subjects for busing when the distances are long,
the Court concluded.
June 26, 1971 - The U.S. Justice Department issued a
warrant for Daniel Ellsberg, accusing him of releasing the
Pentagon Papers.
June 30, 1971 - The 26th Amendment to the
Constitution, lowering the minimum voting age to 18, was ratified
as Ohio became the 38th state to approve it.
January 31, 1971 - Apollo 14, piloted by astronauts
Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, and Stuart A. Roosa, is
successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a manned
mission to the moon; February 5 - after suffering
some initial problems in docking the lunar and command modules,
Shepard and Mitchell descended to the lunar surface on the third
U.S. moon landing; Shepard and Mitchell remained on the lunar
surface for nearly 34 hours, conducting simple scientific
experiments, such as hitting golf balls into space with Shepard's
golf club, and collecting 96 pounds of lunar samples;
February 9 - Apollo 14 safely returned to Earth.
March 29, 1971 - Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. was
convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My
Lai massacre (spent three years under house arrest).
May 3, 1971 - Anti-war protesters calling themselves
the Mayday Tribe began four days of demonstrations in Washington,
DC, aimed at shutting down the nation's capital; demonstrators
numbered 12,000 to 15,000; At the height of the disturbances, tear
gas fumes filled the air over some of the city's most famous
monuments, streets and grassy flowered parks. Garbage cans, trash,
abandoned automobiles and other obstacles littered some chief
arteries. The entire force of 5,100 metropolitan police, acting
under Administration instructions to be "firm," was on duty
yesterday. They were backed up by 1,500 National Guardsmen and 500
park police. In addition, 10,000 Federal troops were in reserve or
deployed to support the police.
June 13, 1971 - The New York Times began publishing
portions of the 47-volume Pentagon Papers, top-secret Department
of Defense study of America's involvement in the Vietnam War
(officially called The History of the U.S. Decision Making Process
on Vietnam). The papers indicated that the American government had
been lying to the people for years about the Vietnam War and the
papers seriously damaged the credibility of America's Cold War
foreign policy. 1971 - Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense
Department employee who had turned completely against the war,
began to smuggle portions of the papers out of the Pentagon. These
papers made their way to the New York Times. Some of the most
dramatic examples were documents indicating that the Kennedy
administration had openly encouraged and participated in the
overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963;
that the CIA believed that the "domino theory" did not actually
apply to Asia; and that the heavy American bombing of North
Vietnam, contrary to U.S. government pronouncements about its
success, was having absolutely no impact on the communists' will
to continue the fight. publication of the documents precipitated a
crucial legal battle over "the people's right to know," and led to
an extraordinary session of the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the
issue. Although the documents were from the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations, President Richard Nixon opposed their
publication, both to protect the sources in highly classified
appendices, and to prevent further erosion of public support for
the war. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that the Times had
the right to publish the material.
July 1, 1971 - The US Post Office became the US
Postal Service.
July 6, 1971 - White House Plumbers unit formed to
plug news leaks.
July 15, 1971 - President Richard Nixon announced he
would visit the People's Republic of China to seek a
''normalization of relations.'' He hoped to use the promise of
closer relations with the United States to convince the Chinese to
put increased pressure on North Vietnam--a Chinese ally--to reach
an acceptable peace settlement in the war. Other factors
encouraging the visit included the constant demands of U.S.
businesses for diplomatic relations with China so that its markets
would open to American trade and investment; Nixon's need for a
dramatic act to revive his sagging popularity with the American
people; and Kissinger's hope that closer relations with China
would make the Soviet Union more receptive to U.S. diplomatic
initiatives.
July 30, 1971 - Apollo 15 astronauts, David R. Scott
and James B. Irwin, landed on the moon.
July 31, 1971 - They drove a car
on the Moon.
August 2, 1971 - The Nixon administration officially
acknowledges that the CIA is maintaining a force of 30,000
'irregulars' fighting the Communist Pathet Lao in Laos. The CIA
trained and equipped this force of mountain tribesman, mostly from
the Hmong tribe, to fight a secret war against the Communists and
to sever the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam. According to a
once top-secret report released this date by the U.S. Defense and
State Departments, U.S. financial involvement in Laos had totaled
$284,200,000 in 1970.
August 15, 1971 - President Richard Nixon announced
a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents as well as the end of
America's twenty-five-year-old policy of converting foreign money
into gold. The economy was suffering - strain of providing
both butter--namely the raft of Great Society programs--and the
guns used to wage the Cold War; inflation and unemployment were on
the rise, government was racking up a hefty national debt and
trade deficit = no new prosperity, as Nixon had proclaimed.
September 3, 1971 - Burglars broke into the Beverly
Hills, CA office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, psychiatrist for Daniel
Ellsberg, to photograph files pertinent to Ellsberg's mental
state, to discredit him; found nothing related to Ellsberg.
September 8, 1971 -John F. Kennedy Center for
Performing Arts opened in Washington, DC.
October 12, 1971 - The U.S. House of Representatives
passed the Equal Rights Amendment (354-23).
October 21, 1971 - President Richard M. Nixon
nominated Lewis F. Powell and William H. Rehnquist to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
October 25, 1971 - The United Nations General
Assembly voted 76 to 35, with 17 abstentions, to seat Communist
China while expelling the Taiwan-based Nationalist Government.
This automatically gave Peking the seats assigned to China in the
General Assembly, the Security Council and other United Nations
organs.
October 27, 1971 - Republic of Congo changed its
name to the Republic of Zaire.
November 12, 1971 - Arches National Park was
established in Moab, Utah.
November 12, 1971 - President Richard Nixon sets
February 1, 1972, as the deadline for the withdrawal of an
additional 45,000 U.S. troops, after which total U.S. force
strength in South Vietnam was 139,000; American casualties had
dropped to less than 10 a week.
November 23, 1971 - The People's Republic of China
was seated in the United Nations Security Council.
November 24, 1971 - A hijacker calling himself D.B.
Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 into a
raging thunderstorm over Washington State. He had $200,000 in
ransom money in his possession. Cooper commandeered the aircraft
shortly after takeoff, showing a flight attendant something that
looked like a bomb and informing the crew that he wanted $200,000,
four parachutes, and "no funny stuff." The plane landed at
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where authorities met
Cooper's demands and evacuated most of the passengers. Cooper then
demanded that the plane fly toward Mexico at a low altitude and
ordered the remaining crew into the cockpit. At 8:13 p.m., as the
plane flew over the Lewis River in southwest Washington, the
plane's pressure gauge recorded Cooper's jump from the aircraft.
Wearing only wraparound sunglasses, a thin suit, and a raincoat,
Cooper parachuted into a thunderstorm with winds in excess of 100
mph and temperatures well below zero at the 10,000-foot altitude
where he began his fall. The storm prevented an immediate capture,
and most authorities assumed he was killed during his apparently
suicidal jump. No trace of Cooper was found during a massive
search. In 1980, an eight-year-old boy uncovered a stack of nearly
$5,880 of the ransom money in the sands along the north bank of
the Columbia River, five miles from Vancouver, Washington. The
fate of Cooper remains a mystery.
December 9, 1971 - First time since the Paris peace
talks began in May 1968, both sides refuse to set another meeting
date for continuation of the negotiations; came during the 138th
session of the peace talks; January 1972 - both
sides returned to the official talks; real negotiations were being
conducted between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the lead North
Vietnamese negotiator, in a private villa outside Paris;
January 1973 - resulted in a peace agreement (after the
massive 1972 North Vietnamese Easter Offensive had been blunted
and Nixon had ordered the "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi and
Haiphong to convince North Vietnam to rejoin the peace
negotiations).
December 16, 1971 - Two weeks after the Indian
invasion of East Pakistan in support of the independence movement
there (proclaimed in March,
estimated one million Bengalis--the largest
ethnic group in Bangladesh--were killed by the Pakistani forces
during the next several months, while over 10 million more took
refuge in India), 90,000 Pakistani troops surrender
to the Indian forces. East Pakistan was subsequently declared the
independent nation of Bangladesh. 1974 - Pakistan
agreed to recognize the independence of Bangladesh.
December 21, 1971 - The U.N. Security Council chose
Kurt Waldheim to succeed U Thant as secretary-general.
December 31,
1971 - President Richard Nixon signed the National Air
Quality Control Act, called for a 90 percent reduction in
automobile emissions by 1975; tightened air-pollution controls and
fines in other industries
January 5, 1972
- President Richard Nixon signed a bill authorizing $5.5
million in funding to develop a space shuttle; represented a giant
leap forward in the technology of space travel; designed to
function more like a cost-efficient "reusable" airplane than a
one-use-only rocket-launched capsules; afforded NASA pilots and
scientists more time in space with which to conduct space-related
research; 1981 - NASA launched Columbia, the first
space shuttle.
January 7, 1972 - Lewis F. Powell Jr. and William H.
Rehnquist were sworn in as the 99th and 100th members of the
Supreme Court.
January 13, 1972 - President Nixon announces
that 70,000 U.S. troops will leave South Vietnam over the next
three months, reducing U.S. troop strength there by May 1 to
69,000 troops.
January 17, 1972 - President Richard Nixon warns
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu in a private letter
that his refusal to sign any negotiated peace agreement would
render it impossible for the United States to continue assistance
to South Vietnam; Thieu refused to sign the Accords, but Nixon
promised to come to the aid of South Vietnam if the communists
violated the terms of the peace treaty, and Thieu agreed to sign.
(March 1975 - after Nixon was forced from office, no
U.S. aid came when the North Vietnamese launched a general
offensive; South Vietnam fell in 55 days).
January 24, 1972 - The Supreme Court struck down
laws that denied welfare benefits to people who had resided in a
state for less than a year.
January 25, 1972 - President Nixon reveals that his
National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger has held 12 secret peace
negotiating sessions between August 4, 1969, and August 16, 1971
in Paris with Le Duc Tho, a member of Hanoi's Politburo, and/or
with Xuan Thuy, Hanoi's chief delegate to the formal Paris peace
talks; disclosed the text of an eight-point peace proposal
presented privately to the North Vietnamese on October 11, 1971.
January 30, 1972 - In Londonderry, Northern Ireland,
13 unarmed civil rights demonstrators are shot dead by British
Army paratroopers in an event that becomes known as "Bloody
Sunday." The protesters, all Northern Catholics, were marching in
protest of the British policy of internment of suspected Irish
nationalists. British authorities had ordered the march banned,
and sent troops to confront the demonstrators when it went ahead.
The soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters,
killing 13 and wounding 17. April 1972 - the British government
released a report exonerating British troops from any illegal
actions during the Londonderry protest. Irish indignation over
Britain's Northern Ireland policies grew, and Britain increased
its military presence in the North while removing any vestige of
Northern self-rule. On July 21, 1972, the IRA exploded 20 bombs
simultaneously in Belfast, killing British military personnel and
a number of civilians. Britain responded by instituting a new
court system composed of trial without jury for terrorism suspects
and conviction rates topped over 90 percent.
February 17,
1972 - President Nixon departed on his historic trip
to China, a week's stay on the mainland, included two conferences
with Chairman Mao Tse-tung and meetings with Premier Chou En-lai;
first American President to visit China, first to visit a
Communist nation when he went to Rumania in 1969, irst to pay an
official visit to the Soviet Union when he flies to Moscow in May.
(President Franklin D. Roosevelt attended the Yalta Conference in
the Crimea in 1945 but did not go to Moscow.).
February 18, 1972 - The California Supreme Court struck
down the state's death penalty.
February 21, 1972 - Richard M. Nixon arrived in
China for an eight-day official visit. He was the first US
president to visit the People's Republic of China since its
inception in 1949.
February 27, 1972 - President Richard M. Nixon and
Chinese Premier Chou En-lai issued the Shanghai Communique at the
conclusion of Nixon's historic visit to China;
summarized the areas of agreement and disagreement: differences
concerning events in Asia were apparent (PRC restated its support
for North Vietnam, while the United States steadfastly supported
South Vietnam. On Korea, the Chinese stressed the need for
"unification," while the United States pressed for a "relaxation"
of diplomatic tensions between North and South Korea); need for
peaceful coexistence between the East and West, would encourage
greater contact through increased trade and travel by each
nation's citizens; relations between the United States and the PRC
began to warm. By the end of the administration of Jimmy Carter
(1977-1981), the United States had-in one of the most surprising
twists of the Cold War--severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan
and formally extended diplomatic recognition of the PRC.
March 22, 1972 - Congress sent the proposed Equal
Rights Amendment to the Constitution to the states for
ratification (first proposed by the National Woman's political
party in 1923). Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment
(84-to-8), thus completing Congressional action on the amendment,
which would prohibit discrimination based on sex by any law or
action of any government. Ratification by 37 more states, the
three-quarters required by the Constitution was required
(signature of the President is not required). It fell short of the
three-fourths approval needed.
March 23, 1972 - At sentencing of Liddy and
McCord U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica read a letter from
McCord charging that the White House had conducted an extensive
"cover-up" to conceal its connection with the break-in
April 10, 1972 - The United States, Soviet Union and
some 70 nations signed an agreement banning biological warfare.
April 16, 1972 - Apollo 16, the fifth of six U.S.
lunar landing missions, is successfully launched on its
238,000-mile journey to the moon; April 20 -
astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke descended to the
lunar surface (Decartes Highlands, remained on the moon for nearly
three days, collected more than 200 pounds of rock ); April
27 - three astronauts returned to Earth, safely splashing
down in the Pacific Ocean.
April 17, 1972 - First major antiwar protest of 1972
is held. The demonstration, held at the University of Maryland,
was organized to protest the Reserve Officers Training Corps
(ROTC). Hundreds of students were arrested and 800 National
Guardsmen were ordered onto the campus. Significant protests
continued across the country in reaction to the increased bombing
of North Vietnam, which had been initiated in response to the new
communist offensive in South Vietnam.
April 26, 1972 - President Nixon announces that
another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam in May
and June, reducing authorized troop strength to 49,000.
May 8, 1972 - President Richard Nixon announces that
he has ordered the mining of major North Vietnamese ports, as well
as other measures, to prevent the flow of arms and material to the
communist forces that had invaded South Vietnam in March. Nixon's
action was in response to the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue
Offensive. Led to a wave of antiwar demonstrations at home, which
resulted in violent clashes with police and 1,800 arrests on
college campuses and in cities from Boston to San Jose,
California.
May 15, 1972 - During an outdoor rally in Laurel,
Maryland, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and a
presidential candidate, is shot by 21-year-old Arthur Bremer.
Three others were wounded, and Wallace was permanently paralyzed
from the waist down. The next day, while fighting for his life in
a hospital, he won major primary victories in Michigan and
Maryland. However, Wallace remained in the hospital for several
months, bringing his third presidential campaign to an irrevocable
end.
May 27, 1972 - Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and
U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, sign the
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements. At the time,
these agreements were the most far-reaching attempts to control
nuclear weapons ever. addressed two major issues. First, they
limited the number of antiballistic missile (ABM) sites each
country could have to two. (ABMs were missiles designed to destroy
incoming missiles.) Second, the number of intercontinental
ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles was
frozen at existing levels. August 1972, the U.S. Senate approved
the agreements by an overwhelming vote. SALT-I, as it came to be
known, was the foundation for all arms limitations talks that
followed.
June 17, 1972 - Five burglars inside Democratic
national headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex (Frank
Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzales, Eugenio Martinez,
James McCord). In their possession were burglary tools, cameras
and film, and three pen-size tear gas guns. The intruders were
wearing surgical gloves and carrying walkie-talkies, cameras, and
almost $2,300 in sequential $100 bills. A subsequent search of
their rooms at the Watergate turned up an additional $4,200,
burglary tools, and electronic bugging equipment. Three of the men
were Cuban exiles, one was a Cuban American, and the fifth was
James W. McCord, Jr., a former CIA agent - charged with felonious
burglary and possession of implements of crime. June 18
- revealed that James McCord was the salaried security coordinator
for President Richard Nixon's reelection committee; June 19,
1972 - E. Howard Hunt, Jr., a former White House
aide, was linked to the five suspects.
June 23, 1972 - President Richard Nixon and White
House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman discussed a plan to use the CIA
to obstruct the FBI's Watergate investigation; told the president
to put pressure on the head of the FBI to "stay the hell out of
this [Watergate burglary investigation] business." In essence,
Haldeman was telling Nixon to obstruct justice, which is one of
the articles Congress threatened to impeach Nixon for in 1974. The
tapes of the hour-and-a-half conversation between Nixon and
Haldeman were considered the "smoking gun" which proved Nixon’s
role in obstructing justice during the Watergate investigation.
June 23, 1972 - President Richard Nixon signs into
law the Higher Education Act, which includes the groundbreaking
Title IX legislation. Title IX barred discrimination in higher
education programs, including funding for sports and other
extracurricular activities. As a result, women’s participation in
team sports, particularly in collegiate athletics, surged with the
passage of this act.
June 25, 1972 - Juan Peron elected president of
Argentina.
June 28, 1972 - President Nixon announces that no
more draftees will be sent to Vietnam unless they volunteer for
such duty. He also announced that a force of 10,000 troops would
be withdrawn by September 1, which would leave a total of 39,000
in Vietnam.
June 29, 1972 - In Furman v. Georgia, the U.S.
Supreme Court rules by a vote of 5-4 that capital punishment, as
it is currently employed on the state and federal level, is
unconstitutional. The majority held that, in violation of the
Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, the death penalty qualified
as "cruel and unusual punishment," primarily because states
employed execution in "arbitrary and capricious ways," especially
in regard to race. It was the first time that the nation's highest
court had ruled against capital punishment. However, because the
Supreme Court suggested new legislation that could make death
sentences constitutional again, such as the development of
standardized guidelines for juries that decide sentences, it was
not an outright victory for opponents of the death penalty.
July 1972
- G. Gordon Liddy, finance counsel for the Committee for the
Re-election of the President (CREEP), was also implicated as an
accomplice.
July 12, 1972 - George McGovern won the Democratic
presidential nomination at the party's convention in Miami Beach.
July 31, 1972 - Democratic vice-presidential
candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the ticket with George
McGovern following disclosures that Eagleton had once undergone
psychiatric treatment.
August 1972 -
President Nixon announced that a White House investigation of the
Watergate break-in had concluded that administration officials
were not involved in the Watergate break-in. In September, Liddy,
Hunt, McCord, and the four Cubans were indicted by a federal grand
jury on eight counts of breaking into and illegally bugging the
Democratic National Committee headquarters.In September and
October, reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of The
Washington Post uncovered evidence of illegal political espionage
carried out by the White House and the Committee for the
Re-election of the President, including the existence of a secret
fund kept for the purpose and the existence of political spies
hired by the committee
August 1, 1972 - Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
publish first Washington Post article exposing Watergate scandal.
August 16, 1972 - King Hassan II of Morocco
nearly perishes when the airliner carrying him back to Rabat was
fired on by his own air force. The aircraft braved the brief
attack by the Royal Moroccan Air Force, and several members of the
force were later court-martialed for their grievous error.
1961 - Hassan, the former chief of staff of the Moroccan
army, ascended to his country's throne upon the death of his
father, King Muhammad V. 1965 - 1965, political
unrest and economic difficulties in Morocco led Hassan to declare
a state of emergency and assume full executive and legislative
control. 1970 - declared a second state of
emergency. 1971 - restored token powers to the
parliament after a coup threatened his rule, though ultimate
authority over his country's affairs remained in his hands. As
king, Hassan pursued a neutralist foreign policy, receiving aid
from both the West and communist nations. Unlike other Arab
leaders, Hassan also undertook a moderate policy in regard to
Israel and guaranteed the safety of the sizable Jewish population
in Morocco.
August 23, 1972 - The Republican National
Convention, meeting in Miami Beach, Fla., nominated Vice President
Spiro T. Agnew for a second term.
September 1972 - Liddy,
Hunt, McCord, and the four Cubans were indicted by a federal grand
jury on eight counts of breaking into and illegally bugging the
Democratic National Committee headquarters. September and October
- reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post
uncovered evidence of illegal political espionage carried out by
the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the
President, including the existence of a secret fund kept for the
purpose and the existence of political spies hired by the
committee
September 5, 1972 - Five Palestinian
terrorists in track suits from the Black September organization
(extremist Palestinian group formed in 1971) climbed over a
six-and-a-half-foot fence to gain access to the Olympic Village
during the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany (11th day of
the XX Olympiad); stormed the Israeli quarters in the Olympic
Village; killed two team members, took nine others hostage. Their
demands: the release of 234 Arab and German prisoners held in
Israel and West Germany (including Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas
Baader, founders of the Marxist terrorist group known as the Red
Army Faction), and safe passage with their hostages to Cairo.
September 6, 1972 - attempt by West German police to
rescue nine Israeli Olympic team members held hostage at
Fýrstenfeldbruck air base near Munich ended in disaster; all nine
Israeli hostages were killed, as were five terrorists and one
German policeman. Three terrorists were wounded and captured
alive.
September 26, 1972 - Richard M. Nixon met with
Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage, Alaska, the first-ever meeting of a
U.S. President and a Japanese monarch.
September 28, 1972 - Japan and Communist China
agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations.
October 3, 1972 - The USA and USSR signed final SALT
accords limiting submarine-carried and land-based missiles.
October 18, 1972 - Congress passed the Water
Pollution Control Act.
October 25, 1972 - The first women to become FBI
agents completed training: Susan L. Roley and Joanne E. Pierce.
October 25, 1972 - White House orders a suspension
of bombing above the 20th parallel as a signal of U.S. approval of
recent North Vietnamese concessions at the secret peace talks in
Paris; South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu broadcast a
denunciation of the cease-fire treaty (did not address the 160,000
North Vietnamese troops that were currently in South Vietnam),
called all peace proposals discussed by Kissinger and Hanoi in
Paris unacceptable, urged his troops to wipe out Communist
presence in the South "quickly and mercilessly."
October 26, 1972 - National security adviser Henry
Kissinger declared ''peace is at hand'' in Vietnam.
October 30, 1972 - President Nixon approved
legislation that increased Social Security spending for the
elderly by an impressive $5.3 billion; Social Security Act also
increased annual sums paid out to beneficiaries and expanded the
Medicare rolls to include disabled citizens under age sixty-five.
November 7, 1972 - President Richard M. Nixon was
re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern; only 55
percent of the electorate voted, the lowest turnout since 1948;
Nixon carried all states but Massachusetts, took 97 percent of the
electoral votes;
McGovern's position on Vietnam was tantamount to total
capitulation in Southeast Asia (had said during the campaign, "If
I were President, it would take me twenty-four hours and the
stroke of a pen to terminate all military operations in Southeast
Asia").
November 14, 1972 - One week after his
re-election, President Richard Nixon extends to South Vietnamese
President Nguyen Van Thieu his "absolute assurance" that the
United States will "take swift and severe retaliatory action" if
Hanoi violates the pending cease-fire once it is in place; Thieu
responded with a list of 69 amendments that he wanted added to
the peace agreement being worked out in Paris (Kissinger
protested that the changes were "preposterous" and might destroy
chances for the treaty); peace talks became deadlocked and were
not resumed until after Nixon ordered the December bombing of
North Vietnam.
November 27, 1972 - Pierre Trudeau forms Canadian
government.
November 30, 1972 - White House announces no full
withdrawal until final truce agreement signed (level of U.S.
presence had fallen to 27,000 men); agreement would not affect the
54,000 U.S. servicemen in Thailand or the 60,000 aboard 7th Fleet
ships off the Vietnamese coast; January 1973 - Paris
Peace Accords signed; March 1973 - all U.S. forces
were withdrawn from South Vietnam.
December 16, 1972 - Henry Kissinger announces at a
news conference in Washington that the North Vietnamese have
walked out of the ongoing private negotiations in Paris; central
disagreement was over the question of who would rule South Vietnam
after any negotiated cease-fire.
December 18, 1972 - President Richard Nixon
announces the beginning of a massive bombing campaign (Operation
Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area)
to break the stalemate at the Paris peace talks; most concentrated
air offensive of the war; American bombers pounded North Vietnam
until December 29 - 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1,000
fighter-bomber sorties were flown; dropped roughly 20,000 tons of
bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and
Haiphong; deemed a success because in its wake, the North
Vietnamese returned to the negotiating table, where the Paris
Peace Accords were signed less than a month later.
December 30, 1972 - President Nixon had ordered a
halt to the bombing of North Vietnam above the 20th Parallel and
that Henry A. Kissinger would resume negotiations for a Vietnam
settlement with Le Duc Tho in Paris on January 8; announcement of
the renewed efforts to seek a negotiated settlement ended nearly
two weeks of heavy bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.
January 1973 - Five of the Watergate burglars
pleaded guilty, and two others, Liddy and McCord, were convicted.
At their sentencing on March 23, U.S. District Court Judge John J.
Sirica read a letter from McCord charging that the White House had
conducted an extensive "cover-up" to conceal its connection with
the break-in. In April, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and
two top White House advisers, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman,
resigned, and White House counsel John Dean was fired.
January 8,
1973 - National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and
Hanoi's Le Duc Tho resume peace negotiations in Paris.
January 11, 1973 - Richard Nixon brought an end to
the wage and price control program that he initiated during the
summer of 1971 (included temporary freezes on wages and rents, end
of the government's twenty-five-year-old policy of converting
foreign money into gold); did little to cure the economy's various
ailments - by end of program, the national debt, inflation and
unemployment rates were all steadily on the rise.
January 15, 1973
- President Richard Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S.
offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace
negotiations.
January 22, 1973 - The Supreme
Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision - women, as part of
their constitutional right to privacy, can terminate a pregnancy
during its first two trimesters. Only during the last trimester,
when the fetus can survive outside the womb, would states be
permitted to regulate abortion of a healthy pregnancy. The Supreme
Court overruled all state laws that prohibit or restrict a woman's
right to obtain an abortion during her first three months of
pregnancy. The vote was 7 to 2 (three of the four Justices Mr.
Nixon has appointed to the Supreme Court voted with the majority,
with only Mr. Rehnquist dissenting; majority rejected the idea
that a fetus becomes a "person" upon conception and is thus
entitled to the due process and equal protection guarantees of the
Constitution. This view was pressed by opponents of liberalized
abortion, including the Roman Catholic Church). Court drafted a
new set of national guidelines that will result in broadly
liberalized anti-abortion laws in 46 states but will not abolish
restrictions altogether. Majority specified the following: 1) For
the first three months of pregnancy the decision to have an
abortion lies with the woman and her doctor; and the state's
interest in her welfare is not "compelling" enough to warrant any
interference; 2) For the next six months of pregnancy a state may
"regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably
related to maternal health," such as licensing and regulating the
persons and facilities involved; 3) For the last 10 weeks of
pregnancy, the period during which the fetus is judged to be
capable of surviving if born, any state may prohibit abortions if
it wishes, except where they may be necessary to preserve the life
or health of the mother.
January 23,
1973 - President Nixon announced
Paris Peace Accords, agreement had been reached to end the Vietnam
War (ending the longest war in American history); Henry A.
Kissinger and North Vietnam's chief negotiator, Le Duc Tho, had
initialed an agreement in Paris today "to end the war and bring
peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia"; terms stated: 1)
cease-fire would begin at 8 a.m., January 28, Saigon time, 2) all
American prisoners of war would be released, 3) remaining
23,700-man American force in South Vietnam would be withdrawn
within 60 days, 4) National Council of Reconciliation and Concord,
with representatives from both South Vietnamese sides (Saigon and
the National Liberation Front) to oversee negotiations and
organize elections for a new government.
January 27, 1973
- United States, South Vietnam, Viet Cong, and North
Vietnam formally sign "An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring
Peace in Vietnam" in Paris (Vietnam peace accords); official end
to America's participation in its most unpopular foreign war;
accords did little to solve the turmoil in Vietnam or to heal the
terrible domestic divisions in the United States brought on by its
involvement in this Cold War battleground; cease-fire almost
immediately collapsed, with recriminations and accusations flying
from both sides; 1975 - North Vietnamese launched a
massive military offensive, crushed the South Vietnamese forces,
reunified Vietnam under communist rule.
February 7, 1973 - The U.S. Senate voted to form an
investigative committee to look into the Watergate break-in;
February 8, 1973 - Senate leaders named seven
members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate
scandal.
February 12, 1973 - Release of U.S. POWs begins
in Hanoi as part of the Paris peace settlement. The return of U.S.
POWs began when North Vietnam released 142 of 591 U.S. prisoners
at Hanoi's Gia Lam Airport. Part of what was called Operation
Homecoming, the first 20 POWs arrived to a hero's welcome at
Travis Air Force Base in California on February 14. Operation
March 29, 1973 - Homecoming when the last of 591
U.S. prisoners |
