This Year in History:
1974
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 2, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon signs the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, setting a new national maximum speed limit. Prior to 1974, individual states set speed limits…
President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee. Marking the beginning of the end of his presidency, Nixon…
On February 1, 1974, University of Washington student Lynda Ann Healy disappears from her apartment and is killed by Ted Bundy. The murder marked Bundy’s entry into the ranks of…
On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19‑year‑old granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by three armed strangers. Her fiancee, Stephen…
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn awaits reunion with his family after exile from Russia. Publication of The Gulag Archipelago, a detailed history of the Soviet prison system, prompted Russia to exile the 55 year‑old…
Reg Murphy, an editor of The Atlanta Constitution, is kidnapped after being lured from his home near the city. William A.H. Williams told the newspaperman that he had 300,000 gallons…
A DC‑10 jet crashes into a forest outside of Paris, France, killing all 346 people on board, on March 3, 1974. The poor design of the plane, as well as…
The unmanned U.S. space probe Mariner 10, launched by NASA in November 1973, becomes the first spacecraft to visit the planet Mercury, sending back close‑up images of a celestial body…
Of his many enormous hits in the 1970s, none captured the essence of John Denver better than his first #1 song, “Sunshine On My Shoulders,” which reached the top of…
As the 1974 Major League Baseball season began, all eyes were on Hank Aaron. He had finished 1973 with 713 career home runs, one shy of the all‑time record set…
On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s legendary record of 714 homers. A crowd of 53,775 people, the…
On April 25, 1974, the NFL adopts a new overtime rule for regular‑season games to prevent tie games. The rule change comes as part of sweeping effort to improve the action…
On April 29, 1974, President Richard Nixon announces to the public that he will release transcripts of 46 taped White House conversations in response to a Watergate trial subpoena issued…
The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opens impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon, voting to impeach him on three counts on July 30. The impeachment was the result of the…
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…
In the Rajasthan Desert in the municipality of Pokhran, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on…
With Argentine President Juan Perón on his deathbed, Isabel Martinez de Perón, his wife and vice president, is sworn in as the leader of the South American country. President Isabel Perón, a…
Considered one of the world’s greatest ballet dancers of all time, Soviet virtuoso Mikhail Baryshnikov choreographs his own Cold War‑era defection from the U.S.S.R. after four years of planning. Known…
On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee recommends that America’s 37th president, Richard M. Nixon, be impeached and removed from office. The impeachment proceedings resulted from a series of…
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 scandal—to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. The same…
