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 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.

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 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."

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 8, 1970 - The Senate rejected President Richard Nixon's nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court.

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 30, 1970 - President Richard Nixon announced the US was sending troops into Cambodia, sparking widespread protest.

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.

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 27, 1972 - Pierre Trudeau forms Canadian government.

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.

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 were released and returned to the United States.

February 27, 1973 - Members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, SD, the site of the 1890 massacre of 300 Sioux men, women and children by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. May 8 - AIM leaders and their supporters surrendered after officials promised to investigate their complaints. Russell Means and Dennis Banks were arrested. September 16, 1973 -  charges against them were dismissed by a federal judge because of the U.S. government's unlawful handling of witnesses and evidence.

March 7, 1973 - Sheikh Mujib Rahman, a leader of the Bangladeshi independence movement and first prime minister of Bangladesh, wins a landslide victory in the country's first general elections; 1974 - Pakistan agreed to recognize the independence of Bangladesh; December 1971 - India, which had provided substantial clandestine aid to the East Pakistani independence movement, launched a massive invasion of the region and routed the West Pakistani occupation forces. A few weeks later, Sheikh Mujib was released from a yearlong imprisonment in West Pakistan and returned to Bangladesh to assume the post of prime minister.

March 29, 1973 - America's involvement in the Vietnam War ended when, two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops left South Vietnam. Hanoi freed the remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam at the same time.

April 12, 1973 - France recognizes North Vietnam.

April 14, 1973 - Acting FBI director L Patrick Gray resigns after admitting he destroyed evidence in the Watergate scandal.

April 30, 1973 - In the midst of the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon announced the resignations of top aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, along with Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean. President Nixon accepted responsibility for the bugging of the Watergate building but denied any personal involvement.

May 8, 1973 - On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, armed members of the American Indian Movement (AIM -  founded in 1968 by Russell Means, Dennis Banks, and other Native-American leaders as a militant political and civil rights organization) surrender to federal authorities, ending their 71-day siege of Wounded Knee, site of the infamous massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1890. One federal agent was paralyzed after being shot. May 8 - AIM leaders and their supporters surrendered after White House officials promised to investigate their complaints. Russell Means and Dennis Banks were arrested; September 16, 1973 - charges against them were dismissed by a federal judge because of the U.S. government's unlawful handling of witnesses and evidence. 1978 - With many of its leaders in prison, AIM disbanded.

May 11, 1973 - On the 89th day of the trial United States District Court Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. dismissed charges against Daniel Ellsberg (six for espionage, six for theft, one for conspiracy) for his role in the Pentagon Papers, cited government misconduct. Dr. Ellsberg and Mr. Russo contended that they had taken the papers and copied them to give them to Congress, which, they hoped, would bring pressure to end the war in Vietnam. Government disclosed that telephone conversations of Dr. Ellsberg were picked up by wiretapping in late 1969 and early 1970, and that all records and logs of those conversations had disappeared from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When Government was unable to produce either the records or a legal authorization for the taps, it was evident that the case had ended. And he made it clear in his ruling that the two men would not be tried again on charges of stealing and copying the Pentagon papers. The Government's action in this case, he said, "offended a sense of justice," and so "I have decided to declare a mistrial and grant the motion for dismissal."

May 14, 1973 - The United States launched Skylab 1, its first manned space station; July, 1979 - fell back into and burned up in the Earth's atmosphere.

May 17, 1973 - Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, begins televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as special Watergate prosecutor. During the Senate hearings, former White House legal counsel John Dean testified that the Watergate break-in had been approved by former Attorney General John Mitchell with the knowledge of White House advisers Ehrlichman and Haldeman, and that President Nixon had been aware of the cover-up.

May 29, 1973 - Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.

June 13, 1973 - Representatives of the original signers of the January 27, 1973 cease-fire sign a new 14-point agreement calling for an end to all cease-fire violations in South Vietnam; included an end to all military activities at noon on June 15, 1973; an end to U.S. reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam and the resumption of U.S. minesweeping operations in North Vietnamese waters; the resumption of U.S. talks on aid to North Vietnam; and the meeting of commanders of opposing forces in South Vietnam to prevent outbreaks of hostilities.

June 20, 1973 - Juan Peron returns to Argentina.

June 21, 1973 - The Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards.

June 24, 1973 - Eamon de Valera, the world's oldest statesman, resigns as president of Ireland at the age of 90; most dominant Irish political figure of the 20th century, Eamon de Valera was born in New York City in 1882, the son of a Spanish father and Irish mother. When his father died two years later, he was sent to live with his mother's family in County Limerick, Ireland. He attended the Royal University in Dublin and became an important figure in the Irish-language revival movement. 1916 - participated in the Easter Rising against the British in Dublin (last Irish rebel leader to surrender and was saved from execution because of his American birth); 1917 - released under a general amnesty and became president of the nationalist Sinn Fein Party. May 1918 - deported to England and imprisoned again; December 1918 - Sinn Fein won an Irish national election, making him the unofficial leader of Ireland. February 1919 - he escaped from jail and fled to the United States, where he raised funds for the Irish Republican movement. 1920 - returned to Ireland, Fein and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were engaged in a widespread and effective guerrilla campaign against British forces. 1921 - truce was declared; 1922 - Arthur Griffith and other former Sinn Fein leaders broke with de Valera and signed a treaty with Britain, which called for the partition of Ireland, with the south becoming autonomous and the six northern counties of the island remaining part of the United Kingdom. Sinn Fein - unofficial political wing of the underground movement for northern independence; 1932 - formed Fianna Fail, party gained control of the Dail Eireann (the Irish assembly), and de Valera became taoiseach, or Irish prime minister. For the next 16 years, de Valera pursued a policy of political separation from Great Britain, including the introduction of a new constitution in 1937 that declared Ireland the fully sovereign state of Eire. During World War II, he maintained a policy of neutrality but repressed anti-British intrigues within the IRA. 1948 - narrowly lost reelection; 1951 - re-elected; 1954 - lost; 1957 - re-elected; 1959 - de Valera resigned as prime minister and was elected Irish president--a largely ceremonial post.

June 24, 1973- Graham Martin is sworn in as Ambassador to South Vietnam, replacing Ellsworth Bunker, who had served in that position since April 1967. Martin's instructions were to demonstrate unswerving U.S. support for South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu and thereby restore Thieu's faith in the United States as an ally. One of the last Americans to leave South Vietnam was Ambassador Martin, who departed Saigon on the morning of April 30, 1975.

June 25, 1973 - Former White House Counsel John Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee.

June 27, 1973 - Former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an ''enemies list'' kept by the Nixon White House.

July 16, 1973 - During the Senate Watergate hearings, former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Richard Nixon's secret taping system - official recordings of White House conversations between Nixon and his staff. Archibald Cox subpoenaed these tapes.

July 16, 1973 - Senate Armed Services Committee begins a probe into allegations that the U.S. Air Force made thousands of secret B-52 raids into Cambodia in 1969 and 1970 at a time when the United States recognized the neutrality of the Prince Norodom Sihanouk regime in Cambodia. The Pentagon acknowledged that President Richard Nixon and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird had authorized the raids against Cambodia, but Sihanouk denied the State Department claim that he had requested or authorized the bombing. Though it was established that the bombing records had been falsified, Laird and Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Advisor, denied any knowledge of the falsification. The Senate hearings eventually exposed the extent of the secrecy involved in the bombing campaign and seriously damaged the credibility of the Nixon administration.

July 23, 1973 - President Nixon refuses to release Watergate tapes of conversations in the White House relevant to the Watergate investigation.

August 8, 1973 - Vice President Spiro T. Agnew branded as ''damned lies'' reports he had taken kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland and vowed not to resign.

August 14, 1973 - U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to a halt; in accordance with June Congressional legislation passed in June and ended 12 years of combat activity in Indochina. President Nixon denounced Congress for cutting off the funding for further bombing operations, saying that it had undermined the "prospects for world peace." The United States continued unarmed reconnaissance flights and military aid to Cambodia, but ultimately the Khmer Rouge prevailed in 1975.

September 11, 1973 - Chilean President Salvador Allende Gossens died in a violent military coup. Chile's armed forces stage a coup d'etat against the government of President Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist leader in Latin America. Allende retreated with his supporters to La Moneda, the fortress-like presidential palace in Santiago, which was surrounded by tanks and infantry and bombed by air force jets. Allende survived the aerial attack but then apparently shot himself to death as troops stormed the burning palace, reportedly using an automatic rifle given to him as a gift by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The U.S. government and its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had worked for three years to foment a coup against Allende, who was regarded by the Nixon administration as a threat to democracy in Chile and Latin America. Allende, after all, had threatened to nationalize U.S.-owned industries in Chile, and Nixon did not want another Fidel Castro coming to power in an American hemisphere during his watch. President Nixon authorized $10 million for the covert operation against Allende and instructed that it be carried out without the knowledge of the U.S. embassy in Chile. In his nearly three years as Chilean president, Allende worked to restructure Chilean society along socialist lines while retaining democratic government and respecting civil liberties and the due process of law. The real cause of the 1973 coup against President Allende was the U.S.-led international backlash against his economic policies, which had a disastrous effect on the Chilean economy. In 1971 - President Allende began nationalizing foreign businesses in Chile, including U.S.-owned copper mines--Chile's main source of protection--and a large U.S.-run telephone company. Nixon was outraged, and he created an interagency task force to organize economic reprisals against Chile. The task force plotted steps to sink the world price of copper and ordered a complete ban on U.S. economic aid. The World Bank was successfully pressured to end all loans to Chile, and the Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank likewise turned their back on the country. Meanwhile, other foreign investment in Chile dried up out of fears of nationalization. 1973 - Chilean economy was in shambles. Inflation, labor strikes, and food shortages were rampant, and violence between the right and the left became a daily occurrence. Ironically, the democratically elected Allende was succeeded by the brutal dictator General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, commander in chief of the armed forces, who ruled over Chile with an iron fist for the next 17 years of repressive authoritarian rule - more than 3,000 political opponents were assassinated or "disappeared." His assassination squads were also active outside Chile, and in 1976 Orlando Letelier, Allende's former defense minister, was killed by a car bomb in Washington, DC. 1990 - Pinochet stepped down as President Patricio Aylwin Azocar was sworn in as Chile's new leader. That year, Salvador Allende's remains were exhumed and given an official burial. In December 2004 - Allende was charged with several crimes.

September 21, 1973 - The Senate confirmed Henry Kissinger to be secretary of state.

September 23, 1973 - Former Argentine president Juan Peron was returned to power after an 18-year exile in Spain; September 19, 1955 - President Juan Domingo Peron of Argentina was ousted after a revolt by the military.

October 6, 1973 - Egypt and Syria attacked Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday (fourth Arab-Israeli war). Hoping to win back territory lost to Israel during the third Arab-Israeli war, Egyptian and Syrian forces launch a coordinated attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Taking the Israeli Defense Forces by surprise, Egyptian troops swept deep into the Sinai Peninsula, while Syria struggled to throw occupying Israeli troops out of the Golan Heights. In late October, an Egyptian-Israeli cease-fire was secured by the United Nations. Although Egypt had again suffered military defeat at the hands of its Jewish neighbor, the initial Egyptian successes greatly enhanced Sadat's prestige in the Middle East and provided him with an opportunity to seek peace.

October 10, 1973 - Vice President Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion in exchange for the dropping of charges of political corruption (U.S. Justice Department uncovered widespread evidence of his political corruption, including allegations that his practice of accepting bribes had continued into his tenure as U.S. vice president); subsequently fined $10,000, sentenced to three years probation, and disbarred by the Maryland court of appeals. December 6, 1973 - Gerald Ford was sworn in as new Vice President.

October 12, 1973 - President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich., to succeed Spiro T. Agnew as vice president.

October 16, 1973 - Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who negotiated a cease-fire in the Vietnam War, were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize; Tho declined the award.

October 17, 1973 - 11 Arab oil producers increased oil prices and cut back production in response to the support of the United States and other nations for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. The same day, OPEC, (The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), approved the oil embargo at a meeting in Tangiers, Morocco. Almost overnight, gasoline prices quadrupled; total embargo that lasted until March 1974.

October 20, 1973 - In the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, President Nixon orders Solicitor General Robert Bork to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox (his detailed investigation of the Watergate break-in revealed that the burglary was just one of many possible abuses of power by the Nixon White House; President Nixon had agreed to send summaries of his office recordings which Cox rejected); Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resign in protest. October 22, 1973 - House Judiciary Committee began to look into the possible impeachment of Nixon.

October 23, 1973 - President Richard M. Nixon agreed to turn White House tape recordings requested by the Watergate special prosecutor over to Judge John J. Sirica.

October 25, 1973 - President Nixon vetoes the War Powers Resolution (introduced by Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York), which would limit presidential power to commit armed forces abroad without Congressional approval (required president to report to Congress within 48 hours after commitment of armed forces to foreign combat and limited to 60 days the time they could stay there without Congressional approval); November 7, 1973 - passed the law over Nixon's veto.

November 1, 1973 - Following the ''Saturday Night Massacre,'' acting Attorney General Robert H. Bork appointed Leon Jaworski to be the new Watergate special prosecutor, succeeding Archibald Cox. Jaworski leveled indictments against several high-ranking administration officials, including Mitchell and Dean, who were duly convicted.

November 7, 1973 - Congress over-rode President Richard M. Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive's power to wage war without congressional approval.

November 16, 1973 - President Richard Nixon declares that America’s energy requirements have outpaced its production capacity and urges Congress to pass Senate Bill 1081 (Alaska Pipeline measure), which would authorize the construction of a pipeline to access oil from the North Slope of Alaska. Nixon projected that the pipeline would be completed in 1977, and would eventually carry 2 million barrels of oil per day into the port at Valdez, Alaska, where tankers would then carry the precious cargo into the continental United States. Nixon sought to assure an increasingly vocal environmental movement that the planned pipeline—which he called the "single largest endeavor ever undertaken by private enterprise"--would be constructed and operated "under the most rigid environmental safeguards ever devised." Meanwhile, though, he asked Congress not to attach amendments to the bill that would have given federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Fish and Game regulatory power over the pipeline’s construction.

November 17, 1973 - In a one-hour question-and-answer session President Nixon told 400 participants in The Associated Press Managing Editors annual convention in Orlando, FL that he had never "profited from public service." He stated: "…people have got to know whether or not their President's a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I've earned everything I've got"; reporter Jack White (Providence Journal) had reported (based on tax documents and a tip) that Nixon had underpaid income taxes in 1970 and 1971; Nixon agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes; White won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

November 21, 1973 - President Richard Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.

March 13, 1974 - The five-month oil embargo by Arab countries was lifted; March 18, 1974 - Most of the Arab oil-producing nations ended their embargo against the United States (in retaliation for the U.S. support of Israel during the 1973 Middle East war).

April 29, 1974 - President Richard Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of secretly made White House tape recordings related to the Watergate scandal. Transcripts of 46 taped White House conversations in response to a Watergate trial subpoena issued in July 1973. The House Judiciary committee accepted 1,200 pages of transcripts the next day, but insisted that the tapes themselves be turned over as well. July 1974 - the Supreme Court rejected Nixon’s claim of executive privilege and ordered him to turn over the remaining tapes. On one of them, the president could be heard ordering the FBI to end its investigation of the Watergate break-in; this came to be known as the "smoking gun" that proved Nixon’s guilt.

May 2, 1974 - Maryland Court of Appeals disbarred former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew.

May 9, 1974 - The House Judiciary Committee opened hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

May 16, 1974 - Helmut Schmidt becomes West German chancellor.

May 18, 1974 - In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received the message "Buddha has smiled" from the exuberant test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made India the world's sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security Council--the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France.

May 19, 1974 - Valeri Giscard d'Estaing wins French presidential election.

June 29, 1974 - With Argentine President Juan Peron on his deathbed, Isabela Martinez de Peron, his wife and vice president, is sworn in as the leader of the South American country. President Isabela Peron, a former dancer and Peron's third wife, was the Western Hemisphere's first female head of government. Two days later, Juan died from heart disease, and Isabela was left alone as leader of a nation suffering from serious economic and political strife. March 24, 1976 - following a sharp rise in political terrorism and guerrilla activity, the military deposed Isabela Peron and instituted one of the bloodiest regimes in South American history. Isabela Peron was imprisoned for five years on a charge of abuse of property and upon her release in 1981 settled in Madrid.

July 1, 1974 - Isabel Peron succeeds husband Juan as President of Argentina.

July 1, 1974 - General Pinochet becomes president of Chile.

July 9, 1974 - Pierre Trudeau's Liberal Party wins Canadian parliamentary election.

July 12,1974 - John Ehrlichman, a former aide to President Richard Nixon, and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Daniel Ellsberg's former psychiatrist.

July 21, 1974 - House Judiciary approves three Articles of Impeachment against President Nixon: obstruction of justice, abuse of presidential powers, and hindrance of the impeachment process.

July 24, 1974 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.

July 27, 1974 - The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to recommend President Richard Nixon's impeachment on a charge that he had personally engaged in a ''course of conduct'' designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case. House of Representatives charges President Richard M. Nixon with the first of three articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice after he refused to release White House tape recordings that contained crucial information regarding the Watergate scandal.

July 30, 1974 - Under coercion from the U.S. Supreme Court, President Richard M. Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings--suspected to prove his guilt in the Watergate cover-up--to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. The same day, the House Judiciary Committee voted a third article of impeachment against the president: contempt of Congress in hindering the impeachment process. The previous two impeachment articles voted against Nixon by the committee were obstruction of justice and abuse of presidential powers.

August 5, 1974 - transcripts of the recordings were released, including a segment in which the president was heard instructing Haldeman to order the FBI to halt the Watergate investigation.

August 5, 1974 - Congress places a $1 billion ceiling on military aid to South Vietnam for fiscal year 1974. This figure was trimmed further to $700 million by August 11. Military aid to South Vietnam in fiscal year 1973 was $2.8 billion; in 1975 it would be cut to $300 million. Once aid was cut, it took the North Vietnamese only 55 days to defeat the South Vietnamese forces when they launched their final offensive in 1975.

September 8, 1974 - President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon  from any criminal charges.

October 1, 1974 - Watergate cover-up trial opens in Washington DC.