Portal:1970s

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The 1970s Portal

Clockwise from top left: U.S. President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office following the Watergate scandal in 1974; The United States was still involved in the Vietnam War in the early decade. The New York Times leaked information regarding the nation's involvement in the war. Political pressure led to America's withdrawal from the war in 1973, and the Fall of Saigon in 1975 leading to evacuations of South Vietnamese that same year; the 1973 oil crisis causes a financial crisis throughout the developed world; both the leaders of Israel and Egypt shake hands after the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978; in 1971, the Pakistan Armed Forces commits the 1971 Bangladesh genocide to curb independence movements in East Pakistan, killing 300,000 to 3,000,000 people; this consequently leads to the Bangladesh Liberation War; the 1970 Bhola cyclone kills an estimated 500,000 people in the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan in November 1970, and became the deadliest natural disaster in 40 years; the Iranian Revolution of 1979 ousts Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who is later replaced by an Islamic theocracy led by Ayatollah Khomeini; the popularity of the disco music genre and subculture peaks during the mid-to-late 1970s.

The 1970s (pronounced "nineteen-seventies"; commonly shortened to the "Seventies" or the "'70s") was a decade that began on January 1, 1970, and ended on December 31, 1979.

In the 21st century, historians have increasingly portrayed the 1970s as a "pivot of change" in world history, focusing especially on the economic upheavals[1] that followed the end of the postwar economic boom.[2] On a global scale, it was characterized by frequent coups, domestic conflicts and civil wars, and various political upheavals and armed conflicts which arose from or were related to decolonization, and the global struggle between NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Many regions had periods of high-intensity conflict, notably Southeast Asia, the Mideast, and Africa.

In the Western world, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as increasing political awareness and economic liberty of women, continued to grow. In the United Kingdom, the 1979 election resulted in the victory of its Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, the first female British Prime Minister. Industrialized countries experienced an economic recession due to an oil crisis caused by oil embargoes by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, with the first neoliberal government coming to power with the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. The 1970s was also an era of great technological and scientific advances; since the appearance of the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004 in 1971, the decade was characterised by a profound transformation of computing units – by then rudimentary, spacious machines – into the realm of portability and home accessibility.

On the other hand, there were also great advances in fields such as physics, which saw the consolidation of quantum field theory at the end of the decade, mainly thanks to the confirmation of the existence of quarks and the detection of the first gauge bosons in addition to the photon, the Z boson and the gluon, part of what was christened in 1975 as the Standard Model.

In Asia, the People's Republic of China's international relations changed significantly following its recognition by the United Nations, the death of Mao Zedong and the beginning of market liberalization by Mao's successors. Despite facing an oil crisis due to the OPEC embargo, the economy of Japan witnessed a large boom in this period, overtaking the economy of West Germany to become the second-largest in the world.[3] The United States withdrew its military forces from the Vietnam War. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, which led to the Soviet–Afghan War.

The 1970s saw an initial increase in violence in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria declared war on Israel, but in the late 1970s, the situation in the Middle East was fundamentally altered when Egypt signed the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty. Political tensions in Iran exploded with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty and established an Islamic republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini.

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The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Incumbent Republican president Richard Nixon defeated Democratic U.S. senator George McGovern in a landslide victory. With 60.7% of the popular vote, Richard Nixon won the largest share of the popular vote for the Republican Party in any presidential elections.

Nixon swept aside challenges from two Republican representatives in the Republican primaries to win renomination. McGovern, who had played a significant role in changing the Democratic nomination system after the 1968 presidential election, mobilized the anti-Vietnam War movement and other liberal supporters to win his party's nomination. Among the candidates he defeated were early front-runner Edmund Muskie, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey, governor George Wallace, and representative Shirley Chisholm. (Full article...)
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  • ... that Zdzisław Najmrodzki, a thief in 1970s–1980s Poland, escaped from law-enforcement authorities and prisons on 29 occasions?
  • ... that American teenagers of the 1960s and 1970s used to chat and arrange dates over the sound of the busy signal?
  • ... that in the 1970s, the Shelton Hotel avoided demolition after seven elderly residents and a secretary refused to move out?
  • ... that until the 1970s, most shōjo manga (Japanese girls' comics) were written by men?
  • ... that Suzie Zuzek's impactful 1960s and 1970s textile designs for Lilly Pulitzer dresses were recovered from under floorboards?
  • ... that in the 1970s, anime song lyrics which centered on the characters' thoughts and feelings became more widely known to the Japanese public?

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Withers in 1976

William Harrison Withers Jr. (July 4, 1938 – March 30, 2020) was an American singer and songwriter. He had several hits over a career spanning 18 years, including "Ain't No Sunshine" (1971), "Grandma's Hands" (1971), "Use Me" (1972), "Lean on Me" (1972), "Lovely Day" (1977) and "Just the Two of Us" (1980). Withers won three Grammy Awards and was nominated for six more.

His life was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Still Bill. Withers was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Two of his songs were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. (Full article...)

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Sources

  1. ^ Howard Brick, "Review", American Historical Review (2012) 117#5 p 1537
  2. ^ Marglin, Stephen A.; Schor, Juliet B. (1992). Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience – Oxford Scholarship. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198287414.001.0001. ISBN 9780198287414.
  3. ^ Hays, Jeffrey (August 2012). "Economic History of Japan in the 1970a and 80s". Facts and Details. Archived from the original on 2012-05-19. Retrieved 2012-12-02.
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