History Defining Moments: Events That Reshaped the World 50 Years Ago
Being alive in 1974 had its advantages and disadvantages. The average price of gas wasn’t above $3. On the flip side, however, Richard Nixon most likely crushed any and all hope in politics.
The year 1974 was filled with life-changing events that would forever change the world.
1. World Population Year Declared
In an ominous moment, President Nixon proclaimed 1974 the “World Population Year.” The time had come for a serious conversation about the world’s rampant population growth. “While the causes are clear, the solutions are not. Many tough choices will have to be made,” observed Nixon. “The United States has no interest in imposing solutions upon other countries, but it does seek to help in a way which maintains our traditional respect for human freedom and dignity.”
Nixon would be close in his prediction, though humans would reach that landmark in 2018, almost 80 years shy of his guess.
2. Happy Days
In 1974, the world was treated to one of the most cherished Generation X (Gen X) television shows, Happy Days. Featuring a cast of favorite characters, the show had countless popular catchphrases and cultural references still used today. The troupe of actors became beloved icons for a generation of teens, and none more than Henry Winkler’s Fonzie, whose charisma was central to much of the show’s success.
However, according to Potsie actor Anson Williams, speaking on an Australian chat show, his character almost went to a certain John Travolta. Can you imagine peak Travolta and Winkler on the same set?
3. The Wimbledon Lovebird Double
It isn’t often that America has both men’s and women’s Wimbledon champions in the same year, but 1974 was the annus mirabilis for young US tennis stars, Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors. Connors was on fire in 1974, winning three grand slams (he was banned from the French Open). Moreover, Evert, who described the run-in to that year’s Wimbledon as “a total fairytale,” was world number one, winning two grand slams, losing a final, and making a semi-final.
They agreed to marry if they both won Wimbledon, and even though one fairytale happened, the marriage never happened. With Evert only 19 and Connors only 21, they agreed their tennis careers should come first.
4. Montreal and Ottawa Merge Stock Exchanges
Canada made fiscal history on January 2, 1974, when its two separately governed territories merged their trading resources. The Ottawa Citizen reported that the combined stock volume on the Montreal Stock Exchange almost doubled that day, rising from 155,600 to 263,400 overnight.
All issues formerly in the Canadian Stock Exchange now sit with the Montreal Stock Exchange.
5. Lord Lucan Vanishes
In one of the year’s moments more reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, hereditary peer, and son of the 6th Earl of Lucan, Richard John Bingham, disappeared into thin air. However, he had just murdered his children’s nanny and tried but failed to kill their mother.
A real-life Mr. Toad, Lord Lucan lived a fast life of cars and gambling, though he fell into a bitter custody battle after his marriage failed, leading to a downward spiral and his eventual disappearance. He was officially pronounced dead in 1999, though many conspiracy theories remain, with the occasional “sighting” for good measure.
6. The Dolphins Beat the Vikings
January 13, Super Bowl VIII saw the National Football Conference (NFC) champions, the Minnesota Vikings, take on the American Football Conference (AFC) winners, the Miami Dolphins. Remarkably, with Houston’s Rice Stadium as the venue, it would be the first time the final was played at a non-franchised stadium — the Houston Oilers were based at the Houston Astrodome.
The Dolphins won their second Super Bowl in a row, with Larry Csonka becoming the first running back named MVP.
7. Ronnie Biggs Arrested in Brazil
Nine years previously, Ronnie Biggs was one of many men involved in the world-famous “Great Train Robbery,” where a Traveling Post Office train was robbed during its journey between Glasgow, Scotland, and London, England.
The organized gang stopped the train by covering a signal with a glove before incapacitating the puzzled drivers and unloading £2.3 million ($40 million in today’s money).
Of the fifteen men involved, Ronnie Biggs was the most famous. He was arrested in 1963, then escaped from Belmarsh Prison in 1965, and escaped to Australia before moving to Rio, where British police finally intercepted Biggs in 1974.
8. Jonah H. Peretti Was Born
If you have ever read an article from Buzzfeed or the Huffington Post, you have Jonah H. Peretti to thank. However, the Buzzfeed CEO’s contribution to online media is underrated: Peretti also led New York’s Eyebeam Art and Technology Center team to develop an open-source tool used by independent bloggers called Reblog.
The resource helps writers share content between blogs and has revolutionized non-print media. Although they didn’t know it, January 1, 1974, would be a great year for bloggers.
9. Nixon Resigns Amid Watergate Scandal
The most famous presidential fall from grace doesn’t have its verb, but the very Nixonian Watergate scandal came two years before finally sinking him in 1974. Nixon’s scandal has become a vernacular-altering phenomenon in itself.
Anything resembling a scandal now gets the suffix “-gate” added to the end. America’s first seismic political scandal was broadcast worldwide, bringing shame to the world’s superpower. It came at a difficult period for the country, still recovering from the 1973 oil crisis.
10. Britain Starts the Three-Day Working Week
In the United Kingdom, the economic turmoil the country was experiencing pushed it to the brink. The mid-seventies were so bad to British coffers that the island nation became known as the “sick man of Europe.”
One symptom of this position was the emergence of the three-day working week to combat rising energy costs brought on by the Middle Eastern oil crisis. There is an oil-crisis-related theme here.
11. Jaws Is Published
Peter Benchley was to alter children’s perception of deep water for generations when he released his novel Jaws.
The book, which would become a world-beating Steven Spielberg Hall-of-Famer movie the following year, was a huge success after its 1994 release, selling over 20 million copies worldwide.
12. Britain Gets New Year’s Day Off
In the United Kingdom, they decided to make New Year’s Day a national holiday, which boosted the stock of bars, pubs, supermarkets, and nightclubs everywhere. New Year’s Eve was now Britons’ official chance to spend their Christmas bonuses in bars, pubs, and clubs, paying double for drinks while waiting twice as long for drink service.
On the plus side, they no longer had to think of an excuse for missing work the following day.
13. The Disaster Movie Cycle
The ’70s wouldn’t be complete without its cycle of disaster movies (which often occurs when there is no military enemy to fight that decade). However, 1974 was an excellent vintage for disaster flicks such as the misnomer Airport 1975 starring Charlton Heston and George Kennedy, Towering Inferno with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, or Juggernaut, which had a top-level cast of Anthony Hopkins, Richard Harris, and Omar Sharif.
1974 was a successful year for those who feasted on disaster.
14. Billie Jean Wins Her Final US Open
Beating the curiously named Evonne Goolagong Cawley of Australia in three sets, America’s tennis sensation Billie Jean King won her fourth and final US Open title at Flushing Meadows, New York City.
The victory came after King’s game-changing protest two years earlier when she had threatened to lead a boycott unless female players were awarded equal pay for their winnings.
15. The 55-Mph Speed Limit
Before resigning later that year, President Nixon signed a law decreeing a new national maximum speed limit. The states decided their limits before the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act was enacted, however, with the 1973 oil crisis pushing America’s economy to its limit, ending the West’s honeymoon period of cheap and plentiful petroleum, a new 55-mph limit for all highways nationwide was imposed to promote fuel economy.
Some Western states opposed the order, considering their long, monotonous desert and rural highways, though the limit stayed mainly on a national level until its repeal in 1995.
16. McCartney Finally Spread His Wings
Following the Beatles’ dissolution in 1970 and the toxic legal proceedings that followed, Paul McCartney recorded possibly his best work since the Fab Four’s demise with his band Wings. His album Band on the Run had a titular track that became McCartney’s most defining non-Beatles work of the time.
The message behind this 1974 single was that McCartney now felt free to spread his “wings” away from the beleaguering world of high-pressure record executives and abusive relationships. Its three-song medley begins wistfully before changing tack, finally letting its hair down for a rock classic third act.
17. Terracotta Army Discovered in China
In one of the most awe-inspiring cultural discoveries of the century, 8,000 terracotta statues of soldiers were uncovered in a giant underground tomb in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. The city is now synonymous with the Unesco World Heritage status monument.
The soldiers are individually designed, with no two being the same, and they were buried to protect Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di in the afterlife. Like many significant archaeological finds, the Terracotta Warriors were accidentally uncovered when local farmers began digging a new well.
18. Turkish Jumbo Jet Disaster Kills 345
On March 3, Turkish Airlines Flight 981 crashed in a forest 26 miles north of Paris after collecting passengers from Orly, most of whom were Brits flying home from Istanbul. The crash is still one of the most deadly without survivors; after all, 345 passengers lost their lives when the plane descended, lopping trees in its crash path like daisies before plowing into the Earth.
The cause was a faulty cargo door system, operated and sealed by an untrained baggage handler, and resulted in substantial civil lawsuits for the DC-10 manufacturer, McDonnell-Douglas.
19. Christian Bale Born in Wales
The Welsh actor, who turns 50 this year, entered the world on January 30 in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, born to a British circus performer mother and South African commercial pilot father. His early life involved living in several countries, including the USA, England, and Portugal, a fact he cites as influential in his career choice.
“I kind of tried to fit in very quickly into certain different towns and environments,” said the actor in an interview. “I’ve just always had a real enjoyment of putting myself into other people’s shoes.”
20. Lucy the Hominin Is Discovered
In November, Donald Johanson, a young Ph.D. graduate and professor of anthropology, made one of archaeology’s most famous discoveries in Hadar, Egypt. Legend has it that Johanson and his international team of paleoanthropologists were listening to the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” when they unearthed rare hominin bones, which soon became a partial skeleton.
Named Lucy, the skeleton was the most complete hominid skeleton discovery ever and considered by the science community an essential piece of evidence to prove the upright primate species’ existence.
21. A New Era Begins in Portugal
The Second Portuguese Republic began after a coup d’etat against the fragile First Republic. The Ditadura Nacional grew soon after, and together, the two groups formed a corporatist government opposed to all forms of communism, socialism, and liberalism.
In 1974, after 41 years of control, the “Carnation Revolution” took place in Lisbon, where militant left-wing military officers enacted a military coup, thus changing the face of Portugal for decades to come.
22. West Germany Wins Its Second World Cup
Following a previous win in 1954, West Germany continued to enjoy life while its Eastern neighbors looked on with jealousy, winning its home World Cup in 1974, beating bitter rivals the Netherlands two goals to one. The final featured two of soccer’s premium talents, Johan Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer.
While the latter is regarded as one of Germany’s greatest-ever players, Cruyff won the Most Valuable Player (Golden Ball) award with three assists and three goals. The Netherlands demonstrated its self-styled “Total Football” technique in the 1974 finals, which has influenced the sport ever since.
23. The Super Outbreak of 1974
Storm chasers would have had a treacherous field day between April 3 and April 4 that year, when 148 tornadoes swept through the Midwest, causing $1 billion ($6 billion today) in damage and killing 330 people. Weather.com says the Super Outbreak of 1974 is still America’s largest tornado outbreak, with some devastating individual tornadoes among the number.
Arguably, the most destructive was the F4-category Monticello tornado. Measuring a half-mile across and trailing for 109 miles through Indiana, the storm had the longest path in the outbreak.
24. Roman Polanski Releases Chinatown
Regarded by many film enthusiasts as the greatest film ever made, many film critics might argue it was the greatest ever written. Chinatown was a critical and box-office success, grossing $29 million worldwide — at the time, a handsome sum for a movie.
The film’s complex nature, talented cast (Jack Nicholson plays the iconic JJ Gittes), and thrilling narrative were like no private detective movie before it: screenwriter Robert Towne took the Oscar home the following winter. Anybody serious about writing a film script must watch Chinatown at least five times.
25. The Air Ball Dunk NCAA Final
In one of the most thrilling NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships, the Greensboro Coliseum, North Carolina, hosted a sporting treat for the world. The North Carolina State Wolfpack became the team to break UCLA’s winning hold over the trophy.
After seven years of Bruins’ supremacy, they beat the Marquette Warriors after overtime by 76 to 64 points. Notwithstanding a win in 1995, UCLA would regain the trophy the following year before entering a five-decade-long drought.
26. The Way We Were Hits #1
Barbra Streisand was anointed with her first number-one single in America, following the success of Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were the previous year. The movie’s winning Robert Redford and Streisand combination made for a memorable Romeo-and-Juliet political love story.
It also laid the ground for Streisand to capitalize with her soundtrack, which peaked at 20 on the Billboard 100 chart. However, Streisand’s aching single touched a nerve everywhere and is still one of the most recognizable songs of the 20th century.
27. President Ford Pardons President Nixon
Following protocol, the former American vice president, Gerald Ford, could now erase the “vice” from his title. Now his running mate was gone; the presidency was his. However, Ford’s first act as president was to pardon Nixon for all his alleged crimes.
Nixon duly accepted the pardon, considered a soft admission of Scot-free guilt. In the subsequent years, political scholars have argued over the ethics behind Ford’s decision, though some believe it weakened his administration; in 1976, Jimmy Carter beat Ford in the following US presidential race.
28. The Fighting Falcon Takes Off
One of the US Military’s most iconic fighter jets, made famous by movies such as Iron Eagle, took to the skies for the first time in 1974. However, contrary to logic, the F-16 Fighting Falcon’s sky debut was a case of serendipity.
During a high-speed ground test in January, a test pilot named Phil Oestricher was forced to take off in the prototype after an oscillation issue risked the plane’s safety. He kept the plane airborne for six minutes before landing safely, becoming the first person to fly the Fighting Falcon.
29. Patty Hearst Is Kidnapped
William Randolph Hearst was one of America’s most prominent and controversial characters during his life. However, in a bizarre episode of American history, the publishing tycoon’s granddaughter, Patty Hearst, was kidnapped by a group of militant American radical leftist terrorists known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). The SLA had already shot dead an Oakland school official with cyanide-tipped bullets.
Moreover, not only did they demand millions of dollars for food donations, they turned Hearst into a follower, making her a poster child for their anarchic movement.
30. The Horseback Movie Premiere
When Blazing Saddles premiered in 1974, director Mel Brooks’ sense of humor didn’t end on celluloid. At the Pickwick Drive-In in Burbank, California, Brooks’ comic masterpiece had perhaps the greatest-ever movie premiere of all time. Riding on the movie’s spoof Western theme, he invited viewers to come along, provided they were on a horse.
Subsequently, even movie stars found horses to saddle up on to enjoy the film, with speakers attached to saddle pommels. Surprisingly, no other movie has had such a creative debut show.
31. ABBA Unleashed on the World
Some people are unaware that for ’70s zeitgeist darlings ABBA, their breakthrough was in the cringefest Eurovision Song Contest, traditionally a place where music careers went to die. However, the Swedish four-piece made history by winning the competition in 1974 with their excellent “Waterloo,” which soon went number one across Europe.
Their Eurovision tag followed them briefly, but the band showed the world how serious it was with a string of worldwide hits over the next decade.
32. Henry Aaron Surpasses Babe Ruth
After an eponymous 1973 season in which Atlanta Braves batter Henry Aaron made history, equalling Babe Ruth’s 713 career home runs, his destiny awaited him in 1974. Although Aaron sat out one of the three-game sets with the Reds, on April 8, the Braves slugger entered baseball immortality, hitting his 715th career home run against the Dodgers in front of a sellout 53,775 crowd at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.
“It’s 715! There’s a new home run champion of all time,” cried excitable commentator Milo Hamilton during the live broadcast, “and it’s Henry Aaron!”
33. Ted Bundy Begins His Spree
Ted Bundy was one of America’s most prolific serial killers, and in February 1974, he embarked on his depraved murder spree, starting in Seattle, Washington. His campaign of terror continued throughout the year as he made his way across America, often feigning an injured arm to compliment the good looks he used to lure his wholly female victims in.
In 1974, Bundy mercilessly took the lives of eleven innocent girls during a tour through the Rocky Mountains before continuing the following year.
34. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Released
One of the cult slasher movies of the modern era debuted this year. October 1 (surely the 31st was a better choice?), director Tobe Hooper enjoyed the Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘s premiere in his hometown of Austin, Texas. The movie’s stark tone and lack of soundtrack gave cinemagoers one of their most uncomfortable horror film experiences – and they loved it.
Hooper’s movie was once credited as doing for motorized cutting tools what Jaws did for sharks.
35. National Underground America Day Observed
On May 14, just when Americans thought they had all the days covered, along came National Underground America Day in 1974. The day still arrives each year and celebrates people who live in some form of underground abode. In our increasingly ecologically-driven times, those who build underground or partially underground believe they are far more in tune with the Earth’s natural settings than overground dwellings and require less upkeep because of consistent temperatures, requiring less heating and cooling than their above-ground counterparts.
36. Gary Player Wins the Masters
The wily South African global golf ambassador, Gary Player, consolidated his place among the greats when he won the Masters, taking home his second green jacket of three and regaining golf’s most coveted prize at -10 strokes. Golf was slightly different in 1974: Player earned $35,000 for his four days’ work; 2023 champion John Rahm pocketed a cool $3,240,000 for his troubles.
Though some purists would argue the British Open is golf’s most sought-after title, the Masters remains golf’s only one-course major event and retains a mythological-like status, with Augusta arguably golf’s true spiritual home.
37. The Troubles Claims Its 1,000th Victim
Northern Ireland underwent one of its most violent years in modern memory in 1974, with a continued standoff between Ulster’s unionist parties and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) leading to countless deaths. But on April 20, 1974, a new milestone was reached when James Murphy, a Roman Catholic gas station worker, was found dumped by a roadside, shot at close range.
His body marked the 1,000th fatality in the ongoing conflict between British Northern Ireland and the Southern Republic. Over 3,000 people would lose their lives in the sectarian dispute, which reached a truce with 1998’s “Good Friday” agreement.
38. America Elects Its First Gay Politician
Ann Arbor City was etched into history in April when a University of Michigan (UM) student named Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly gay or lesbian to win a seat on the city council. Remarkably, the student representing the Human Rights Party still lived in the UM residential college.
Kozachenko would lay the ground for many other gay candidates in the future, with Elaine Noble following in her footsteps the same year she was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
39. Dungeons and Dragons Arrives
Role-playing games (RPGs) came into being in 1974 with a familiar name, Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), leading the charge. The first role-playing game had no competitors for decades, giving it cult status in the RPG community.
Fans might be depressed seeing that the game is now in its fifties, though they can be encouraged by the fact that D&D is still going strong and bringing new generations into the fold on its way.
40. The Heimlich Maneuver Is Made Official
In June of 1974, the Journal of Emergency Medicine (JEM) published the Heimlich maneuver, an abdominal thrust method used to dislodge food from one’s airway. Doctor Henry Heimlich believed the extra air in our lungs would be enough to force detritus from lodged in our upper airways.
Curiously, the American Red Cross (ARC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) continued to promote back-slapping as their default method for the next ten years, and Dr. Heimlich, aged 96 years, even had to use his maneuver to save a fellow care home patient in 2016.
41. Philippe Petit Skirts the Twin Towers
Frenchman Philippe Petit made death-defying history when he walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center’s twin towers. His display of bravery was immortalized in the 2008 documentary Man on Wire.
Petit dazzled crowds in French and American cities with displays in parks and on public buildings, including a walk between the Notre Dame Cathedral towers and a demonstration for the new Hess store opening in Allentown, Pennsylvania. However, Petit’s crowning achievement was on August 7, 1974, when an unfinished World Trade Center became his new target.
42. Barcodes Enter the World
Of all the technological advances made in the ’70s, one still surviving in today’s high-octane world of commerce is the universal product code (UPC), better known as the product barcode. Inspired by Morse code, the inventor Joe Woodland drew his first UPC on a beach in Florida after hearing how a local supermarket manager pleaded with the dean of Drexel Institute of Technology (DIT) to design something to get customers through his store faster.
The first product scanned was a pack of Wrigley’s gum at Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
43. Humans Send Extraterrestrials a Message
Puerto Rico became the site for the most powerful broadcast ever sent into space in 1974 as part of a ceremony for the Arecibo Radio Telescope’s new upgrades. The destination chosen was the globular star cluster M13, sitting 21,000 light years away from Earth near the edge of the Milky Way. Using the Arecibo megawatt transmitter, a 1679-bit simple pictorial message was laid out in 73 lines or 23 characters per line.
The message’s visual graphic shows a human figure flanked by our solar system, DNA, the Arecibo telescope itself, and biochemicals of early human life. We are yet to get a response, though we will likely need to wait a few thousand years if one is forthcoming.
44. Oakland A’s Win the World Series
The Bay Area was awash with pride on October 17, 1974, after the Oakland Athletics won the World Series. The A’s beat the Los Angeles Dodgers convincingly three games to two while registering fewer hits than their rivals. However, the Dodger’s fewer runs show the A’s superior hitting overall. Interestingly, it was the first World Series to end at night, which meant fans had the whole day to drink beer in preparation for the festivity.
Upon becoming champions, A’s fans stormed the field to celebrate, ripping the turf up as souvenirs in scenes of delirium. It would be the Bay Area’s last major sporting trophy for four decades — a spell finally broken by Steph Curry’s Golden Bay Warriors in the 2014 NBA Finals.
45. Evel Knievel Crashes His Rocket
Daredevil motorcycle performer Evel Knievel will always be a cherished part of the ’70s for several generations. His death-defying — borderline death-wishing — antics on a motorcycle gave millions of kids joy worldwide. The stuntman did 300 jumps in his career, and although his 1968 Caesar’s Palace Fountain attempt ended with a fractured skull and a coma, Knievel came back with a safer plan in 1974: to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho on a steam-powered rocket bike.
Sadly for Knievel, this episode ended with a crash into the river, though thankfully, he escaped with minor injuries.
46. The Rise of Ceausescu Begins
Nicolae Ceausescu was one of the century’s better-known war criminals and will always be remembered for his downfall following the brutal crimes committed against his people. However, in 1974, at 56, Ceausescu was elected to power as the president of Romania. He had already secured the leadership of the Communist Party a decade before, though the president was a role created in the wake of Romania’s secession from the Warsaw Pact.
Some of Ceausescu’s actions visited terror upon his subjects: his two decades of personality cult dictatorship culminated with his firing on demonstrators in 1989. Five days later, his military turned on him, taking back control of the country and ending the dictator’s life by firing squad.
47. The Godfather: Part II Is Released
Francis Ford Coppola was already a superstar maverick director after his first Godfather installment and the following year’s American Graffiti. His masterful sequel, which dovetailed young Vito Corleone and his son Michael’s lives over two periods, is still considered the superior movie of the trilogy.
At the time, noted critic Pauline Kael could barely contain her response: “Throughout the three hours and twenty minutes of Part II, there are so many moments of epiphany- mysterious, reverberant images, such as the small Vito singing in his cell,” wrote Kael, “that one scarcely has the emotional resources to deal with the experience of this film.”
48. American Citizens Strike Gold
On August 14, President Gerald Ford made one of his first acts (other than pardoning his former boss, Richard Nixon, for his Watergate crimes), signing an act allowing Americans to own gold again after a 40-year hiatus.
Initially considered a bad idea by the US Treasury, who thought it might encourage speculation and damage the international monetary situation, the New York Times wrote in a news story how experts “thought the new law would lead to the establishment of gold markets in the United States where gold may be bought and sold as a commodity.”
49. Bangladesh Experiences Deadly Famine
The Bangladesh famine of 1974 remains one of the worst human catastrophes of the 20th century due to human error and natural disasters. The first signs of disaster came following the war against Pakistan, which decimated up to 6,000,000 homes and put 1.4 million farming families out of work, destroying tools and livestock. The subsequent shortfall in grain stocks exacerbated the newly independent nation’s mismanaged security stocks.
Moreover, rice production was affected when the Brahmaputra River flooded, devastating a rapidly growing population. One scholar, Mohiuddin Alamgir, estimated the deaths caused by the flood and famine at 1.5 million people.
50. Lockheed Breaks the Air Speed Record
In the Cold War battle for technological radar-avoiding supremacy, Lockheed Martin’s contribution to the fight was the SR-71 Blackbird, an aircraft that traveled faster than any anti-aircraft missile. Manned by Major James V. Sullivan and Noel F. Widdifield, the Blackbird flew between New York and London on September 1, traveling at 2,000 mph and taking precisely 1 hour, 54 minutes, and 56.4 seconds.
The SR-71 Blackbird remains one of the fastest manned aircraft of all time.
