Top News Stories from 1973

World Events

World Statistics

Population: 4.378 billion
population by decade
Nobel Peace Prize: Henry A. Kissinger (US); Le Duc Tho (North Vietnam)1
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U.S. Events

U.S. Statistics

President: Richard M. Nixon
Vice President: Spiro T. Agnew
Population: 211,908,788
Life expectancy: 71.4 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 41.5
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000) 37.4
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  • Nixon, on national TV, accepts responsibility, but not blame, for Watergate; accepts resignations of H. R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, fires John W. Dean III as counsel (April 30).
  • Spiro T. Agnew resigns as Vice President and then pleads no contest to charges of evasion of income taxes while Governor of Maryland (Oct. 10).
  • In the "Saturday Night Massacre," Nixon fires special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus; Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson resigns (Oct. 20).
  • US Supreme Court rules on Roe v. Wade.

Economics

US GDP (1998 dollars): $1,382.60 billion
Federal spending: $245.71 billion
Federal debt $466.3 billion
Consumer Price Index: $44.4
Unemployment: 4.9%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.08

Sports

Super Bowl
Miami d. Washington
World Series
Oakland A's d. NY Mets (4-3)
NBA Championship
New York d. LA Lakers
Stanley Cup
Montreal d. Chicago
Wimbledon
Women: Billie Jean King d. C. Evert (6-0 7-5)
Men: Jan Kodes d. A. Metreveli (6-1 9-8 6-3)
Kentucky Derby Champion
Secretariat (also won the Triple Crown: Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes)
NCAA Basketball Championship
UCLA d. Memphis St. (87-66)
NCAA Football Champions
Notre Dame (AP, FW, NFF) (11-0-0) & Alabama (UPI) (11-1-0)

Entertainment

Entertainment Awards

Pulitzer Prizes
Fiction:

The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty

Music: String Quartet No. 3, Elliott Carter
Drama: That Championship Season, Jason Miller
Academy Award, Best Picture: The Godfather, Albert S. Ruddy, producer (Paramount)
Nobel Prize for Literature: Patrick White (Australia)
Record of the Year: "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," Roberta Flack
Album of the Year: The Concert for Bangla Desh, George Harrison, Ravi Shanker, Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voormann (Apple)
Song of the Year: "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," Ewan MacColl, songwriter
Miss America: Terry Anne Meeuwsen (WI)
More Entertainment Awards...

Events

  • At the 1972 Academy Awards, Sacheen Littlefeather stands in for Marlon Brando and refuses his Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Godfather, to protest the U.S. government's treatment of Native Americans.
  • The Jamaican film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, launches the popularity of reggae music in the United States.
  • PBS airs the series An American Family, about the dysfunctional Loud family.

Movies

  • The Harder They Come, American Graffiti, The Exorcist, The Sting, Last Tango in Paris

Books

Science

Nobel Prizes in Science

Chemistry: Ernst Otto Fischer (W. Germany) and Geoffrey Wilkinson (UK), for work that could solve problem of automobile exhaust pollution
Physics: Ivar Giaever (US), Leo Esaki (Japan), and Brian D. Josephson (UK), for theories that have advanced and expanded the field of miniature electronics
Physiology or Medicine: Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz (both Austria), and Nikolaas Tinbergen (Netherlands), for their studies of individual and social behavior patterns
More Nobel Prizes in 1998...
  • Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is designed and in 1983 it becomes the standard for communicating between computers over the Internet. Background: Computers and Internet
  • Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), the technology behind MRI scanning, is developed.
  • Skylab, the first American space station, is launched (May 14). Background: Space Exploration

Death

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