Also Within This Year in History:
1974
1974 was a year of firsts. Richard Nixon, enmeshed in the Watergate scandal, became the first American president to resign from office. Hank Aaron became the first baseball player to top Babe Ruth’s career home run record. Scientists in Ethiopia found the first skeleton of a 3-million-year-old human ancestor that walked upright, while archaeologists in China unearthed an army of more than 8,000 lifesize terracotta warriors. In America, disco fever raged, and Archie Bunker broke TV sitcom ground with his blunt and bigoted take on hot-button social issues.
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 within their boundaries and highway speed limits across the country ranged from 40 mph to 80 mph. The U.S. and other industrialized nations enjoyed easy […]
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 serial killers as he had recently attacked his first victim, Sharon Clarke, in her Seattle home. By the time he was finally captured on April […]
On February 2, 1974, a sweet, soft ballad by a 31-year-old Barbra Streisand knocks Beatle Ringo Starr down a notch on the Billboard Hot 100. Streisand’s “The Way We Were” overtakes the jaunty “You’re Sixteen” as the No. 1 song—Streisand’s first. It would spend 24 weeks total on the Hot 100 chart, three in the […]
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, Steven Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and […]
In one of Hollywood’s zaniest movie premiere stunts, Mel Brooks’ 1974 western spoof Blazing Saddles screens at the Pickwick Drive-In Theater in Burbank, California. Guests attend not in cars—but on horseback. Attendees, many sporting cowboy hats, watched the movie from atop their steeds. Movie sound came through speakers attached to saddle pommels, and the studio […]
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 of heating oil to donate to the poor. The 33-year-old Williams abducted Murphy, who was well known for his anti-Vietnam War stance, at gunpoint. For […]
On February 26, 1974, Nike receives a U.S. patent for its waffle trainer running shoes. Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman invented the now-iconic soles in a waffle iron over breakfast. Before Air Jordans and “Just do it,” Nike was a small sneaker company founded at the University of Oregon. Bill Bowerman, the coach of the Oregon […]
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 negligent maintenance, contributed to the disaster. Nearly two years earlier, on June 6, 1972, an American Airlines DC-10 was flying over Ontario, Canada, when its […]
On March 4, 1974, actress Mia Farrow from The Great Gatsby graces the cover of the inaugural issue of People, a weekly celebrity and human interest magazine spotlighting the personal lives of notable and intriguing people. People remains one of America’s best-selling weeklies. People’s founding editor Richard Stolley came from the newsweekly LIFE, where he’d […]
Journalist Helen Thomas is named United Press International’s White House Bureau Chief on March 6, 1974. At a press conference that day, President Nixon personally congratulates her on becoming the first woman to serve in the distinguished role. The moment marks the beginning of a boundary-breaking career, in which Thomas becomes a fixture in the […]
On March 29, 1974, prominent Soviet author, historian and political dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is reunited with his family after being exiled from his home country. Publication of The Gulag Archipelago, his detailed history of the Soviet Union’s vast system of prisons and labor camps, helped raise global awareness of the communist nation’s rampant political repression. Its […]
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 usually obscured because of its proximity to the sun. Mariner 10 had visited the planet Venus eight weeks before but only for the purpose of […]
John Denver scores his first #1 song, “Sunshine On My Shoulders,” on March 30, 1974. He would go on to become one of the most popular singer-songwriters of the 1970s. “Sunshine On My Shoulders” was John Denver’s attempt to write a sad song, a big part of Denver’s broad appeal. “I was so down I […]
On April 4, Opening Day of the 1974 Major League Baseball season, 39-year-old Hank Aaron sends the very first pitch he sees over the wall, tying the all-time home run record set by Babe Ruth. Four days later, he would break that record. Aaron, who played in the majors from 1954 until 1976, was known […]
On April 5, 1974, Stephen King, a Maine high school teacher who had been writing on evenings and weekends, sees his first full-length novel, Carrie, published. The release by Doubleday & Co. becomes a bestseller and inspires a movie of the same name. For King, Carrie kicks off a phenomenal writing career, one in which […]
Hank Aaron make homerun history when he broke Babe Ruth’s record of 714 homeruns on April 8th in Atlanta. This historical event along with others is recapped by Russell Mitchell in this video clip from This Day In History. Other events included the founding of Cape town South Africa by traders of the Dutch East […]
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 largest in the history of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, was with Aaron that night to cheer when he hit a 4th inning pitch off the Los […]
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 and tempo of games. The league also moves goal posts from the front to the back of the end zone and limits contact defensive players […]
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 in July 1973. The House Judiciary committee accepted 1,200 pages of transcripts the next day, but insisted that the tapes themselves be turned over as […]
On May 2, 1974, the Maryland Court of Appeals orders the disbarment of former U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew, seven months after his no-contest plea to a tax-evasion charge in the United States District Court in Baltimore. In a strongly worded, 13-page opinion, Maryland’s highest court writes that disbarment is an automatic consequence for a […]
