1973

Events from the year 1973 in the United States. The year saw a number of important historical events in the country, including the death of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on Roe v. Wade, the signing of the Paris Peace Accords and end of the United States participation in the Vietnam War, the end of the post-World War II boom and the beginning of the first of a series of recessions that continued over the next decade, and the first oil crisis.
==Incumbents==
===Federal Government===
* President: Richard Nixon (R-CA)
* Vice President:
** until October 10: Spiro Agnew (R-MD)
** October 10–December 6: vacant
** starting December 6: Gerald Ford (R-MI)
* Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger (MN)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Carl Albert (D-OK)
* Senate Majority Leader: Mike Mansfield (D-MT)
* Congress: 92nd (until January 3), 93rd (starting January 3)
==Events==
===January===
* January 1 – CBS sells the New York Yankees baseball team for $10 million to a 12-person syndicate led by George Steinbrenner ($3.2 million more than CBS bought the Yankees for).
* January 7 – Mark Essex kills four civilians and three police officers during a siege at the Downtown Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge in New Orleans. Ten hours after the siege began, Essex is killed by a volley of gunfire from police officers stationed inside a Marine helicopter.
* January 14
** Elvis Presley's concert in Hawaii is the first worldwide telecast by an entertainer watched by more people than the Apollo moon landings. However, it is not shown in Eastern Bloc countries because of communist censorship (with the sole exception of East Germany, where it is shown on Der schwarze Kanal). In the United States and Brazil, it does not air until April of this year.
** Super Bowl VII: The Miami Dolphins defeat the Washington Redskins 14–7 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California.
* January 15 – Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.
* January 19 – Bee Gees' album, Life In A Tin Can is released in the United States.
* January 20 – President Nixon and Vice President Agnew are sworn in for their second term.
* January 22
** Roe v. Wade: The U.S. Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion.
** Former President Lyndon B. Johnson dies at his Johnson City, Texas ranch, leaving no former U.S. president living until the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974.
** George Foreman wins boxing's World Heavyweight Championship, defeating Joe Frazier by technical knockout in the second round at Kingston, Jamaica.
* January 23 – President Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.
* January 27 – U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ends with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.
* January 30 – G. Gordon Liddy is found guilty of Watergate charges.
* January 31 – Pan American and Trans World Airlines cancel their options to buy 13 Concorde airliners.
===February===
* February 11 – Vietnam War: The first American prisoners of war are released from Vietnam.
* February 12 – Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs (see Metric system in the United States).
* February 13 – The United States Dollar is devalued by 10%.
* February 21 – The 5.8 Mw Point Mugu earthquake affected the south coast of California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong). Several people were injured and damage totaled $1 million.
* February 22 – Sino-American relations: Following President Richard Nixon's visit to mainland China, the United States and the People's Republic of China agree to establish liaison offices.
* February 27 – The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
* February 28 – The landmark postmodern novel Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon is published.
===March===
* March 1 – Charlotte's Web, the animated film based on the children's book of the same name, is released.
* March 12 – Last episode of original Laugh-In airs on NBC. The show will continue with re-runs until May 14, 1973.
* March 17 – Many of the few remaining United States soldiers begin to leave Vietnam. One reunion of a former POW with his family is immortalized in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy.
* March 23 – Watergate scandal: In a letter to Judge John Sirica, Watergate burglar James W. McCord Jr. admits that he and other defendants have been pressured to remain silent about the case. He names former Attorney General John Mitchell as 'overall boss' of the operation.
* March 26
** UCLA captures its seventh consecutive college basketball national championship and eighth in ten seasons under John Wooden, defeating Memphis State 87–66 in the finals of the NCAA tournament at St. Louis. UCLA center Bill Walton sets championship game records by connecting on 21 of 22 field goal attempts and scoring 44 points.
** TV soap opera The Young and the Restless and game show The $10,000 Pyramid debuts on CBS.
* March 27 – The 45th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Charlton Heston and Rock Hudson, is held at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather wins Best Picture, also tied with Bob Fosse's adaptation of Cabaret in receiving ten nominations. The latter film wins eight awards, including Best Director for Fosse. The ceremony draws a television audience of 85 million viewers.
* March 29 – The last United States soldier leaves Vietnam.
===April===
* April 3 – The first handheld cellular phone call is made by Martin Cooper in New York City.
* April 4 – The World Trade Center officially opens in New York City with a ribbon cutting ceremony.
* April 6
** Pioneer 11 is launched on a mission to study the Solar System.
** Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees becomes the first designated hitter in Major League Baseball.
* April 17
** Federal Express officially begins operations, with the launch of 14 small aircraft from Memphis International Airport. On that night, Federal Express delivers 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities from Rochester, New York, to Miami, Florida.
** For the first time, the Army Corps of Engineers opens the Morganza Spillway near Baton Rouge to relieve record flooding along the lower Mississippi River.
* April 26 – The first day of trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
* April 30 – Watergate scandal: President Richard Nixon announces that White House Counsel John Dean has been fired and that Attorney General Richard Kleindienst has resigned along with staffers H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.
===May===
* May 3 – The Sears Tower in Chicago is finished, becoming the world's tallest building (held until 1998).
* May 5
** Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby and sets a new time record for the event.
** Led Zeppelin plays before 56,800 people at Tampa Stadium on the band's 1973 North American Tour, thus breaking the August 15, 1965, record of 55,600 set by The Beatles at Shea Stadium.
* May 8 – A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and American Indian Movement activists who were occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends with the surrender of the militants.
* May 10 – The New York Knicks defeat the Los Angeles Lakers, 102–93 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals to win the NBA title.
* May 13 – Bobby Riggs challenges and defeats Margaret Court, the world's #1 women's player, in a nationally televised tennis match set in Ramona, CA northeast of San Diego. Riggs wins 6–2, 6-1 which leads to the huge Battle of the Sexes match against Billie Jean King later in the year on September 20.
* May 14 – Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.
* May 17 – Watergate scandal: Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate.
* May 25 – Skylab 2 (Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz, Joseph Kerwin) is launched on a mission to repair damage to the recently launched Skylab space station.
* May 30 – Gordon Johncock wins the Indianapolis 500 in the Patrick Racing Special Eagle-Offenhauser, after only 133 laps, due to rain. (The race was begun May 28 but was called due to rain, and the race was unable to be restarted May 29)
===June===
* June 4 – A United States patent for the Docutel automated teller machine is granted to Donald Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain.
* June 9 – Secretariat wins the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths becoming a Triple Crown winner and breaking a 25-year hiatus since 1948.
* June 16 – U.S. President Richard Nixon begins several talks with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
* June 21 – The Supreme Court of the U.S. delivers its decision in the landmark case Miller v. California, establishing the "Miller test" for determining obscenity.
* June 22 – W. Mark Felt ("Deep Throat") retires from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
* June 24 – UpStairs Lounge arson attack: A fire at a gay bar in New Orleans' French Quarter kills 32.
* June 25 – Watergate scandal: Former White House counsel John Dean begins his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee.
===July===
* July 1 – The United States Drug Enforcement Administration is founded.
* July 2 – The United States Congress passes the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA), mandating Special Education federally.
* July 4 – MLB: The New York Mets fall 121⁄2 games back in last place of the National League Eastern Division.
* July 5 – A catastrophic BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) in Kingman, Arizona kills 11 firefighters. The explosion occurred after a fire broke out as propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank. This explosion has become a classic incident, studied in fire department training programs worldwide.
* July 12 – 1973 National Archives Fire: A major fire destroys the entire 6th floor of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri.
* July 15 – Nolan Ryan of the California Angels pitches his second no-hitter of the season against the Detroit Tigers. He previous no-hit the Kansas City Royals exactly two months prior.
* July 16 – Watergate Scandal: Former White House aide Alexander Butterfield informs the United States Senate Watergate Committee that President Richard Nixon had secretly recorded potentially incriminating conversations.
* July 28
** Skylab 3 (Owen Garriott, Jack Lousma, Alan Bean) is launched, to conduct various medical and scientific experiments aboard Skylab.
** The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, a massive rock festival featuring the Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band and The Band, attracts over 600,000 music fans.
* July 31 – A Delta Air Lines Flight 173 DC9-31 aircraft lands short of Boston's Logan Airport runway in poor visibility, striking a sea wall about 165 feet (50 m) to the right of the runway centerline and about 3,000 feet (914 m) short. All 6 crew members and 83 passengers are killed, one of the passengers dying several months after the accident.
===August===
* August 8 – Serial killer, rapist, kidnapper and torturer Dean Corll is shot to death by one of his teenage accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley, at Corll's Pasadena, Texas, home. Henley turns himself in and confesses, uncovering the Houston Mass Murders, a series of murders in which 28 young boys had been abducted, tortured and murdered by Corll and his accomplices Henley and David Brooks (who is also arrested).
* August 11 – DJ Kool Herc originates the hip hop music genre in New York City.
* August 15 – The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, officially halting 12 years of combat activity in Southeast Asia.
===September===
* September 11 – American singer Art Garfunkel finally releases his solo debut album Angel Clare, 17 years after starting his career.
* September 20
** The Battle of the Sexes: Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in a televised tennis match, 6–4, 6–4, 6–3, at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
** Singer-songwriter Jim Croce dies following a gig at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, having boarded a small chartered plane that crashes on takeoff; all six people aboard are killed.
** Baseball legend Willie Mays announces his retirement.
* September 22 – Henry Kissinger, United States National Security Advisor, starts his term as United States Secretary of State.
* September 23 – In American football, the Oakland Raiders defeat the Miami Dolphins 12–7, ending the Dolphins' unbeaten streak at 18. It is the Miami Dolphins' first loss since January 16, 1972 in Super Bowl VI.
* September 28 – ITT is bombed in New York City by the Weather Underground, protesting its involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état.
* September 30 – Yankee Stadium, known as "The House That Ruth Built", closes for a two-year renovation at a cost of $160 million. The New York Yankees play all of their home games at Shea Stadium in 1974 and 1975.
===October===
* October 1 – The Ideal Toy Company debuts the Evel Knievel stunt-cycle, which would go on to become one of the best-selling toys of Christmas 1973.
* October 6 – American Country Countdown, a country music-oriented spin off of the nationally syndicated radio program American Top 40, debuts with host Don Bowman. The countdown, featuring the top 40 country hits of the week according to the Billboard magazine Hot Country Singles chart, becomes a major success.
* October 10 – Spiro T. Agnew resigns as Vice President of the United States. In federal court in Baltimore, Maryland, he pleads no contest to charges of income tax evasion on $29,500 he received in 1967, while he was governor of Maryland. He is fined $10,000 and put on 3 years' probation.
* October 20 – The Saturday Night Massacre: U.S. President Richard Nixon orders Attorney General Elliot Richardson to dismiss Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refuses and resigns, along with Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Solicitor General Robert Bork, third in line at the Department of Justice, then fires Cox. The event raises calls for Nixon's impeachment.
* October 21 – The Oakland A's repeat as champions of Major League Baseball, defeating the New York Mets 5–2 in game 7 of the World Series.
* October 27 – The Canon City meteorite, a 1.4 kilogram chondrite type meteorite, strikes Earth in Fremont County, Colorado.
===November===
* November 1 – Watergate scandal: Acting Attorney General Robert Bork appoints Leon Jaworski as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.
* November 3
** Pan Am cargo flight 160, a Boeing 707-321C, crashes at Logan International Airport, Boston, killing three.
** Mariner program: NASA launches Mariner 10 toward Mercury (on March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet).
* November 7 – The Congress of the United States overrides President Richard M. Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.
* November 8 – Walt Disney Productions' 21st feature film, Robin Hood, is released to critical praise and box office success, though critical reception has gradually waned over the years.
* November 11 – Egypt and Israel sign a United States-sponsored cease-fire accord.
* November 16
** Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 (Gerald Carr, William Pogue, Edward Gibson) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an 84-day mission.
** U.S. President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.
* November 20 – The animated Thanksgiving special A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving premieres on CBS. It ends up winning an Emmy Award the following year.
* November 17 – Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors "I'm not a crook."
* November 21 – U.S. President Richard Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, reveals the existence of an 18-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.
* November 27 – The United States Senate votes 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States.
===December===
* December 3 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
* December 6 – The United States House of Representatives votes 387–35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States; he is sworn in the same day.
* December 15
** Gay rights: The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from its DSM-II.
** SeaWorld Orlando opens to the public.
* December 16 – O. J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills becomes the first running back to rush for 2,000 yards in a pro football season.
* December 26 – The Exorcist, the film adaptation of William Peter Blatty's 1971 bestselling novel, is released in 30 theaters nationwide. Long lines form as it becomes a huge success, helped by accounts of audiences fainting and vomiting.
* December 28 – The Endangered Species Act is passed in the United States.
==Memoriam==
* January 22 – Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, 37th Vice President of the United States from 1961 to 1963 (aged 64; Stonewall, TX, USA)
* January 24 – J. Carrol Naish, actor (aged 77; La Jolla, CA, USA)
* March 18 – William Benton, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1949 to 1953 (aged 72; New York City, NY, USA)
* April 26 – Irene Ryan, actress and comedian (aged 70; Santa Monica, CA, USA)
* April 27 – Arthur James, 31st Governor of Pennsylvania (aged 89; Plymouth, PA, USA)
* May 6 – Myrna Fahey, actress (aged 40; Santa Monica, CA, USA)
* May 18 – Jeannette Rankin, first United States congresswoman (aged 92; Carmel, CA, USA)
* June 21 – Frank Leahy, football player and coach (aged 64; Portland, OR, USA)
* June 27 – Earl Browder, politician and communist activist (aged 82; Princeton, NJ, USA)
* July 12 – Lon Chaney Jr., actor (aged 67; San Clemente, CA, USA)
* July 20 – Bruce Lee, actor, martial artist and filmmaker (aged 32; Kowloon Tong, (British) Hong Kong)
* August 8 – Dean Corll, serial killer, rapist, kidnapper and torturer (aged 33; Pasadena, TX, USA)
* August 30 – Michael Dunn, a.k.a. Gary Neil Miller, dwarf actor and singer (aged 38; London, England, UK)
* September 20 – Jim Croce, singer (aged 30; Natchitoches, LA, USA)
* October 9 – Sister Rosetta Tharpe, gospel singer (aged 58; Philadelphia, PA, USA)
* December 19 – Prentiss M. Brown, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1936 to 1943 (aged 84; St. Ignace, MI, USA)
* December 20 – Bobby Darin, singer, songwriter, musician, actor, dancer, impressionist and TV presenter (aged 37; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
==External links==
* 1973 in the United States
Category:United States History: Volume 20