The 1970s Government, Politics, and Law: Chronology
The 1970s Government, Politics, and Law: Chronology
1970: February 20 U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger begins secret talks in Paris with Le Duc Tho, representative of North Vietnam, focused on ending the Vietnam War.
1970: May 4 Members of the National Guard kill four students during an antiwar protest at Kent State University in Ohio.
1971: March 29 U.S. Army First Lieutenant William Calley is found guilty of murder in the 1968 massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My (pronounced MEE) Lai.
1971: June 10 President Richard M. Nixon ends the U.S. trade embargo of China.
1971: September 9 Prisoners riot at the Attica State Correctional Facility in Attica, New York. After four days, Governor Nelson Rockefeller orders state police to retake the prison by force.
1972: February 21 Nixon becomes the first American president to visit China.
1972: May 27 Nixon becomes the first American president to visit Moscow. While in the Soviet Union, he signs treaties relating to antiballistic missiles and other strategic weapons.
1972: June 17 Police arrest five men for breaking into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Three of the men have ties to Nixon's reelection campaign.
1973: January 20 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Roe v. Wade by a vote of six to three that women's privacy rights prevent states from prohibiting abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
1973: January 27 In Paris, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho sign the cease-fire agreement on Vietnam.
1973: June 25–29 Former White House counsel John Dean testifies before the Ervin congressional investigative committee, implicating himself, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Nixon, and others in the Watergate cover-up.
1973: October 23 Eight resolutions to impeach Nixon are introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1974: July 24 The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that Nixon must turn over tapes requested by the special prosecutor. The Court holds that the president does not have unlimited "executive privilege" as he claims.
1974: July 24 The House Judiciary Committee commences formal impeachment hearings against Nixon.
1974: August 8 In a televised address, Nixon announces his resignation from the presidency, effective at noon on August 9. He becomes the first president in American history to resign.
1975: April 29 The last Americans leave the U.S. embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam. General Duong Van Minh of the South Vietnamese army surrenders to the North Vietnamese the following day.
1976: July 3–4 The nation celebrates the Bicentennial (two-hundredth anniversary of its independence) with festivals and political events around the country.
1976: November 15 The United States vetoes the admission of Vietnam to the United Nations.
1977: January 21 President Jimmy Carter signs an unconditional pardon for almost all Vietnam War-era draft evaders.
1977: June 20 The U.S. Supreme Court upholds by a vote of six to three the authority of the states to refuse to pay for poor women's abortions unless a physician says that it is medically necessary.
1978: September 17 President Carter, Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt end eleven days of discussions at Camp David, Maryland, by signing an accord designed to conclude a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
1979: January 1 The United States officially recognizes the People's Republic of China and terminates its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan.
1979: August 15 United Nations ambassador Andrew Young resigns following an uproar caused by his meeting with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a meeting that violated U.S. Middle East policy.
1979: November 4 In Tehran, Iran, several hundred Iranian militants storm the U.S. embassy and seize the diplomatic personnel. The militants announce they will release the hostages when the United States turns over the former shah of Iran, who is recovering from medical treatment in a New York hospital.