1970s
When Truckers Shut Down America to Protest Oil Prices—and Became Folk Heroes
At 10:00 p.m. on December 3, 1973, a 37-year old trucker from Overland Park, Kansas named J.W. Edwards stopped his rig suddenly in the middle of Interstate I-80 near Blakeslee, Pennsylvania and picked up his CB radio microphone. The insurrection he was about to start, using his ...read more
The Mullet Wasn't Just An '80s Thing: Rebels Have Rocked It for Centuries
The bi-level. The Kentucky waterfall. The Missouri compromise. Hockey hair. No matter what it’s called, there’s more to the mullet than just light beer, Camaros and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The short-long hair style, popularized in the 1980s, has a surprisingly proud history and has been ...read more
Could Male Birth Control Finally Be On the Way?
The modern birth control pill was conceived in 1950. That year, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, asked a doctor named Gregory Pincus to develop an oral contraceptive for women. Pincus succeeded very quickly: He released a contraceptive pill in 1957 as “Enovid,” ...read more
Until 1975, ‘Sexual Harassment’ Was the Menace With No Name
Rain poured down in Ithaca, New York, but the women who streamed into the Greater Ithaca Activities Center on May 4, 1975 weren’t daunted by a bit of weather. Hundreds of women packed into the modest room. Then they began tospeak about their experiences being groped and sexually ...read more
What Led to the Iran Hostage Crisis?
Ever since oil was discovered in Iran in the first decade of the 20th century, the country had attracted great interest from the West. British corporations controlled the majority of Iran’s petroleum by the early 1950s, when newly elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh ...read more
When “Panda-Monium” Swept America
Security was extra tight at Maryland’s Andrews Air Force Base on April 16, 1972, as a pair of high-profile Chinese emissaries disembarked from a military plane. Government officials whisked the envoys into waiting vehicles that sped off with a police escort through the streets of ...read more
Energy Crisis (1970s)
By the early 1970s, American oil consumption–in the form of gasoline and other products–was rising even as domestic oil production was declining, leading to an increasing dependence on oil imported from abroad. Despite this, Americans worried little about a dwindling supply or a ...read more
The 1970s
The 1970s were a tumultuous time. In some ways, the decade was a continuation of the 1960s. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, gays and lesbians and other marginalized people continued their fight for equality, and many Americans joined the protest against the ongoing ...read more
Shah flees Iran
Faced with an army mutiny and violent demonstrations against his rule, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the leader of Iran since 1941, is forced to flee the country. Fourteen days later, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution, returned after 15 ...read more
Iran Hostage Crisis
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The immediate cause of this action was President Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow Iran’s deposed Shah, a pro-Western autocrat who had been expelled from ...read more
Patty Hearst captured by police
Newspaper heiress and wanted fugitive Patty Hearst is captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. On February 4, 1974, Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, ...read more
OPEC enacts oil embargo
The Arab-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announces a decision to cut oil exports to the United States and other nations that provided military aid to Israel in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. According to OPEC, exports were to be reduced by 5 ...read more
Jimmy Carter speaks about a national “crisis in confidence”
On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter addresses the nation via live television to discuss the nation’s energy crisis and accompanying recession. Carter prefaced his talk about energy policy with an explanation of why he believed the American economy remained in crisis. He ...read more
SLA member captured after more than 20 years
On June 16, 1999, Kathleen Ann Soliah, a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), is arrested near her home in St. Paul, Minnesota. Soliah, who now calls herself Sara Jane Olson, had been evading authorities for more than 20 years. In the mid-1970s, the SLA, a ...read more
LAPD raid leaves six SLA members dead
In Los Angeles, California, police surround a home in Compton where the leaders of the terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) are hiding out. The SLA had kidnapped Patricia Hearst, of the fabulously wealthy Hearst family publishing empire, months earlier, ...read more
Richard M. Nixon
Richard Nixon (1913-94), the 37th U.S. president, is best remembered as the only president ever to resign from office. Nixon stepped down in 1974, halfway through his second term, rather than face impeachment over his efforts to cover up illegal activities by members of his ...read more
Jimmy Carter
As the 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter struggled to respond to formidable challenges, including a major energy crisis as well as high inflation and unemployment. In the foreign affairs arena, he reopened U.S. relations with China and made efforts to broker ...read more