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Earth Day is first celebrated as a day for participants to consider the effect of human actions on their natural surroundings
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Nixon announched his decision to order air and ground strikes into Cambodia. This decision sparked a massive breakout of antiwar protests across the nation.
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Four students were killed and eleven were wounded when national guard troops opened fire on a demonstration at Kent State University.
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Nixon oversees the establishment of the EPA, a federal watchdog on environmental affairs
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Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign a treaty limiting the two countires to 200 ABMs each. A symbolic first step toward control of the nuclear arms race.
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Nixon finally reaches an agreement with North Vietnam. America agreed to withdraw all of its troops from South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were allowed to keep their troops in the South.
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Five covert surveillance officers, known as "plumbers," were arrested during a break-in at the Democratic National Committee HQ in Washington. Nixon personally ordered a cover up.
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Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel after decades of tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
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The Arab members of the OPEC announced a 5% cut in oil production, to be followed by additional cuts of 5% each month until Israel surrendered the lands it had conquered in 1967
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Ford shocked America by announcing that he had granted Nixon a full, unconditional pardon for all federal crimes that he may have committed. This eroded public confidence in his leadership and linked him with the scandal.
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Nixon resigns in the culmination of the Watergate scandal. He is succeeded by Gerald Ford
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Hyde Amendment passed, denying the use of federal funds to pay for abortions for poor women
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Carter and Brezhnev signed a treaty that lowered the ceiling on nuclear delivery systems to 2550.
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Militants seized the US embassy in Tehran, taking 53 Americans prisoner. The crisis was an embarrasment for the US, dragging on to the fall of the following year.
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President Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court in a historical first.
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Congress approved a series of changes to guarantee the solvency of Social Security. They gradually raised the retirement age, delayed cost-of-living increases for six months, and taxing pensions paid to the well-to-do elderly.
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Movie star Rock Hudson is killed by AIDs, intensifying the sense of national panic
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An accident at a nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union released large amounts of radiation into the air, killing many
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A women's trade group estimated that women owned almost 8 million businesses and employed 1 in 4 Americans.
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Clinton signs an act decreeing that states did not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere
