THE SEVENTIES
A Chronology of Events
Editor: Piero Scaruffi
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1970:
- The communist party seizes power in Chile, Salvador Allende is elected president
- German chancellor Willy Brand launches "Ostpolitik"
- Oct 1970: Quebec separatists kidnap a government minister and murder him
- Peruvian philosopher Abimael Guzman Reynoso founds the Maoist guerrilla movement Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) at Ayacucho
1971:
- War between India and Pakistan, Bangla Desh gains indipendence
- India and Soviet Union sign a treaty of friendship
- Attica prison: 33 convicts and 10 guards die in the riots
- End of the Bretton Woods agreement and of fixed exchange rates: currencies float
1972:
- Arab terrorists storm the Israeli dormitory at the Olympic Games
- The Soviet Union achieves "strategic parity" in nuclear weapons
- Richard Nixon meets with Mao
- Richard Nixon orders carpet bombing of civilian areas in North Vietnam during the Christmas holidays
- The Dow Jones index reaches 1000
- Tutsis in Burundi massacre Hutus
- Ray Tomlinson invents e-mail
- January: Bloody Sunday in Norther Ireland (British troops shoot on a catholic demonstration and kill 13 people)
- Jul 1972: The IRA kills 11 people in Belfast ("Bloody Friday")
- Magnavox introduces the first video game console
1973:
- Pinochet seizes power in Chile, 3,000 people will "disappear"
- USA, defeated, leaves Vietnam after killing close to 2 million civilians and 1 million soldiers
- Egypt, Syria and Jordania attack Israel
- Oil crisis: Arab countries impose an oil embargo against the West. Oil prices skyrocket and precipitate a world recession.
- May 1973: A hijacker blows up a Soviet flight in an attempt to reach China
- Aug 1973: Fascist terrorists blow up a train in Bologna, Italy
- Dec 1973: Basque terrorists kill the Spanish prime minister
1974:
- First personal computer (Altair 8800)
- Ethiopian king Haile Selassie is deposed by a revolution and a socialist government led by Menghitsu is installed
- Haile Selasie is deposed by a military junta after 40 years of reign
- Clay soldiers of Xian discovered
- Supply-side economic theory (Arthur Laffer)
- Astrelopitecus Lucy found in Africa
- Turkey invades Cyprus and partitions the island in a Greek and a Turkish speaking halves
- Revolution in Portugal
- Sep 1974: A Pakistani terrorist group blows up a TWA flight over the Mediterranean Sea, killing all 88 passengers
- Mar 1974: Black September terrorists seize the Saudi Arabian embassy in Sudan
- Apr 1974: Terrorists of the PFLP-GC kill 18 Israeli civilians in Qirayt Shemona
- May 1974: Palestinian terrorists kidnap schoolchildren and 21 people are killed when Israeli troops rescue them
1975:
- The Baader-Meinhof in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy terrorize the population
- Ethiopian dictator Menghitsu starts the "red terror" that will kill 100,000 people in 3 years
- Vienna: terrorists headed by "Carlos the Jackal" (aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez) kidnap OPEC ministers
- South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnam. The US reneges on its pledge to
pay $3 billion in war reparations and instead imposes an economic embargo
- Lebanon: civil war intensifies
- Indonesia invades East Timor after Portugal withdraws from its colony
- Spanish dictator Franco dies and Spain turns democratic
1976:
- Riots in Soweto, South Africa, to protest apartheid
- First outbreak of Ebola (western Sudan and Congo)
- Mao dies
- The supersonic airplane Concorde begins service
- Indonesia occupies former portuguese colony East Timor; catholic rebels start Fretilin; fighting and ethnic cleansing will eventually claim 600.000 lives
- The first supersonic passenger plane debuts, the Concorde
- Oct 1976: Anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch blows up a Cubana flight killing all 73 passengers
1977:
- Mysterious suicides in the Stammheim prison by members of the Baader-Meinhof
- Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak develop the Apple II
- Smallpox eradicated from the world
- Voyager launched to reach other galaxies
1978:
- A polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyla, is elected pope
- Vietnam invades Cambodia and deposes Pol Pot.
- Jim Jones and his believers commit a mass suicide at Jamestown, Guyana (917 dead)
- First test tube baby (Louise Joy Brown)
- Deng Tsiao Ping seizes the power in China and calls for reforms (end of Maoism)
1979:
- Sandinista rebels overthrow the dictator of Nicaragua
- First cellular phone (Ericsson)
- Israel and Egypt sign peace treaty
- China, Pol Pot only ally, attacks Vietnam but is defeated
- 279,000 boat people leave Vietnam
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