1973
An interesting time.. Listed some big events of the year below
Opposition to South African apartheid within the U.N. grows, and in 1973 a U.N. resolution labels apartheid a “crime against humanity.”
Marlon Brando won the Oscar for best actor, but he chose to boycott the ceremony, declined the award as a protest against Hollywood's portrayal of Native Americans. He sent a native American actress acquiantance to the ceremony to deny the award in his place. Some of the exchange can be seen here. The Clint Eastwood comment in the end was particularly hilarious who is obviously known for his roles in the Wild-West movies of the era. The Clint Eastwood movie released that year was this.
Denis Ritchie published his research paper on the famous computer language called C. "The development of the C programming language was a huge step forward and was the right middle ground - C struck exactly the right balance, to let you write at a high level and be much more productive, but when you needed to, you could control exactly what happened" says Bill Dally, chief scientist of NVIDIA and Bell Professor of Engineering at Stanford. "[It] set the tone for the way that programming was done for several decades."
The government agency DARPA funds the outfitting of a packet radio research van at SRI to develop standards for a Packet Radio Network (PRNET). As the unmarked van drives through the San Francisco Bay Area, stuffed full of hackers and sometimes uniformed generals, this tech was to become the basis of wireless, packet-switched digital networks, including the kind your mobile phone uses today.
Black and Sholes published their paper on pricing options, this work would earn them the (fake) Nobel Prize for economics later.
The Bureau of Narcotics was replaced by the DEA, a more professional organization with a global network of agents.
Thompson, Ritchie, and others at AT&T Bell Labs began developing a small operating system on a little-used PDP-7. The operating system was soon christened Unix, a pun on an earlier operating system project called MULTICS. In 1973 the system was rewritten in the programming language C, an unusual step that was visionary: due to this decision, Unix was the first widely-used operating system that could switch from and outlive its original hardware [..] The U in Unix is rumored to stand for uniplexed as opposed to the multiplexed of Multics, further underscoring the designers' rejections of Multics' complexity in favor of a more straightforward and workable approach for smaller computers.
The War Powers Act is passed which attempts to define when and how the US president could send troops to battle by adding strict time frames for reporting to Congress after sending troops to war, in addition to other measures.
Professor Lighthill was asked by the UK Parliament to evaluate the state of AI research in the United Kingdom. His report, now called the Lighthill report, criticized the utter failure of AI to achieve its "grandiose objectives.". This is the beginning of the so-called AI Winter where funding for the field were substantially reduced.
With the Smithsonian Agreement, most of the world's currencies switched to a floating exchange rate joining United States who had switched two years previously.
The OPEC oil embargo on the United States.
Vietnam War ended, Paris Piece Accords signed.
The Nixon administration began negotiations on what came to be known as "the petrodollar recycling system". Under the arrangement Saudis would only sell their oil in US dollars, and invest the excess of their oil earnings in US banks, capital markets. The IMF would then use this money to facilitate loans to oil importers who could be having difficulty in covering the increase in oil prices. The arrangement kept the price of dollar high which allowed US to print money and buy anything it wants. It is claimed making sure most oil is sold in dollars is at the root of most American wars after the 70s.
Nixon abandoned price controls at the start of the year.
Nixon was inaugurated for his second term in office.
Just two days after Nixon's inauguration, his predecessor, former President Lyndon Johnson, suffered a heart attack and died.
Watergate hearings begin.
Committee on the Environment is created in the European Parliament.
After the oil embargo Nejat Veziroglu, an Anatolian born scientist, formed the Clean Energy Research Institute (CERI) at the University of Miami to investigate alternate energy sources. Veziroglu however already had done extensive research on hydrogen as a fuel use (on planetary missions) and knew it to be a viable resource. Organization's findings confirmed this, so Veziroglu organized the first major conference next year on hydrogen energy, and started popularizing its use. Words such as "hydrogen economy" were first coined by Dr. Veziroglu.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) project was started by the U.S. Department of Defense.
The secular and modernising Daoud Khan, an Afghan PM, toppled his cousin, King Zahir Shah along with the monarchy came to power in Afghanistan to become its first President. Taliban's history includes many Islamists who opposed to his regime and started fighting his government.
Syria and Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War against Israel. Though the war reinforced Israel's military deterrence, it had a stunning effect on the population in Israel. Following their victory in the Six-Day War, the Israeli military had become complacent. The shock and sudden reversals that occurred at the beginning of the war inflicted a terrible psychological blow to the Israelis, who had hitherto experienced no serious military challenges.
Britain entered the European common market.
Roe vs Wade: SCOTUS ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion in a landmark decision.
On April, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) was formed to trade options on common stocks. This marked the first time an option was traded on an exchange.
World Trade Center in New York becomes the tallest building in the world.
The Sears Tower in Chicago is finished, becoming the new world's tallest building in the world, beating WTC's record, in the same year.
Chilean coup against the elected government of left-wing president Allende. The military dictatorship under General Pinochet took power on September 11. This is basically 9/11 for Chileans.
Student-led rebellion, demonstrations against the military junta in Greece.
Newly created Bangladesh elects first Prime Minister.
Sydney Opera House is opened.
The Bosporus Bridge is completed joining Europe and Asia in Istanbul, at the 50th anniversary of the republic's foundation, a few weeks after a new government was elected (the gov, comprised of largely leftists, partly Islamists, did not last long, and its only important decision would be to invade Cyprus next year, which in turn, helped trigger the fall of the junta in Greece, kinda like British invasion of the Falklands triggering the fall of the junta in Argentina).
Wage increase started to slow, a situation that lasted well until today. The link between productivity increases and wage increase broke, and continued to diverge ever since. Labor's share of income starts decreasing the same year (from link)
Leonid Brezhnev visits Bonn - first time a Soviet leader ever set foot in West German territory.
According to the Polity dataset and looking at yearly averaged democracy scores, democracy fell to its lowest point in the 20th century.
Clifford Cocks, working in secrecy at the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) discovered a public-key based cryptosystem, three years before Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman publicized the same approach called RSA.
Mr. Metcalfe and his colleagues at Xerox PARC adopted and tweaked the [wireless communication] ALOHAnet technology in creating Ethernet.
China was in the midst of their infamous Cultural Revolution (66-76). Mao Zedong started his Criticize Lin (Biao), Criticize Confucius campaign this year which lasted until the end of the Revolution.
Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.
Genetic engineering based on recombination was pioneered by American biochemists Stanley N. Cohen and Herbert W. Boyer, who were among the first to cut DNA into fragments, rejoin different fragments, and insert the new genes into E. coli bacteria, which then reproduced.
Economist Milton Friedman convinced Richard Nixon to end the military conscription.
Spanish PM is assassinated in Madrid by the Basque separatist group ETA. The assassination is considered to be the biggest attack against the state since the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939.
Cheap gasoline and an endless real estate boom were hallmarks of the thirty years of postwar American dominance and prosperity; both ended in 1973–1974. There were shortages of gasoline, electricity, and even onions, and rumors of insufficient stockpiles of everything from mustard to vegetable oil to cat food. In November of 1973, The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson made a joke about a toilet paper shortage, prompting a run on toilet paper as Americans rushed to buy every roll they could find.
The [Dutch] government began to re-address the city’s cycling infrastructure in response to an inordinate amount of deaths from the sudden influx of vehicles on the roads after WWII. The "Stop de Kindermoord" ("Stop Child Murder") protest movement arose in revolt of a government advancing the ideals of the 'functionalist' city. The protests (sometimes of a violent and extreme nature) highlighted the number of child deaths caused by the high density of cars travelling through the city. The Dutch people successfully fought for the regeneration of a safe cycle, pedestrian and child friendly city.
George Foreman beats Frazer (who had beaten Ali beforehand) in a surprise win and becomes champion. Ali would beat Foreman the next year and also beat Frazer later on.
The first spacecraft to ever reach Jupiter, NASA’s Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter on December 3, 1973.
Mariner 10 a space probe launched by NASA flied by the planets Mercury and Venus. It was the first spacecraft to perform flybys of multiple planets.
Hip-hop was born. In New York August 11th, an 18 year old DJ who went by the name DJ Kool Herc began speaking over the beat of the music reminiscent of the toasting style heard in Jamaica, it wasn't long before the style could be heard all over New York and that made way for a range of art including Sugar Hill Gang and Rapper's Delight which took hip-hop mainstream in the 1980s.
A chef named Peng Chang-kuei created the General Tso's Chicken, he was a banquet chef for Chinese Nationalists and he fled to Taiwan with them after their 1949 defeat by Mao Zedong’s Communists. It was there that he came up with the general idea for the dish, and he brought it to the States when he immigrated to New York in 1973.
Richard Pryor hit the Comedy Store for a night recording of which yielded one of the greatest comic documents of all time.
Bruce Lee dies.
Hang glider manufacturer Wills Wing is founded in Southern California. Their award winning hang glider and its later reincarnations helped multiple pilots break long-distance records, 1990, 2013, including the current record in 2020, by Owen Morse.
The use of supercomputers to solve aerodynamic problems began to pay off around this time. One early success was the experimental NASA aircraft called HiMAT (Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology), started in 1973, designed to test concepts of high maneuverability for the next generation of fighter planes. Wind tunnel tests of a preliminary design for HiMAT showed that it would have unacceptable drag at speeds near the speed of sound; if built that way the plane would be unable to provide any useful data. The cost of redesigning it in further wind tunnel tests would have been around $150,000 and would have unacceptably delayed the project. Instead, the wing was redesigned by a computer at a cost of 6,000 dollars.
Joe Biden joins the Senate.
Akaike Information Criteron discovered.
The finite volume method that was introduced into the field of numerical fluid dynamics for the solution of two-dimensional, timedependent Euler equations were extended by Rizzi and Inouye (1973) to three-dimensional flows.
J. R. R. Tolkien, the creator of Lord of the Rings lore, died
Leaders in 1973
Pierre Trudeau (Justin Trudeau's father) was the Prime Minister in Canada, Willy Brandt (guy who fell on his knees apologizing for DE actions in WWII later) was Germany's Chancellor, Mao Zedong was leading China, Indira Gandhi was PM in India (first and to date the only female Indian PM).
Movies Released in 1973
James Bond Live and Let Die, Soylent Green, The Exorcist, Don Juan, American Graffiti, The Sting. Westworld, and of course Clint Eastwood's Magnum Force.
Movies Taking Place in 1973
Kong: Skull Island takes place right after the piece concluding the Vietnam War, and some of the soldiers dealing with that aftermath go to an island where they encounter a giant orangutan.
X-Men: Days of Future Past has the character Wolverine going back in time to 1973 to fix some problems that would unravel in the future. He wakes up in US next to a lava lamp.
Books
The Princess Bride, Rendezvous with Rama.