1973

Years: 1970 1971 1972 - 1973 - 1974 1975 1976

Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s

Events of 1973

January

• January 1 - The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark enter the European Economic Community, which later became the European Union.
• January 15 - Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, U.S. President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.
• January 17 - Ferdinand Marcos becomes President for Life of the Philippines.
• January 20
  • U.S. President Richard Nixon is inaugurated for his second term.
  • Guinea-Bissau nationalist Amilcar Cabral is assassinated.
• January 22 -
  • Roe v. Wade: The U.S. Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion.
  • A Royal Jordanian Boeing 707 flight from Jeddah crashes in Kano, Nigeria; 176 people are killed.
  • Former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson dies at his Stonewall, Texas ranch leaving no former U.S. President living until the resignation of Richard M. Nixon in 1974.
• January 23
  • Eldfell on the Icelandic island of Heimaey erupts.
  • U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.
• January 27 - Paris Peace Accords are signed. Allies officially wins Vietnam War.
• January 31 - Pan American and Trans World Airlines cancelled their options to buy 13 Concorde airliners.

February

• February 11 - Vietnam War: The first release of American prisoners of war from Vietnam takes place.
• 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 was devalued by 10%.
• February 21 - Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 (Boeing 727) is shot down by Israeli fighter aircraft over the Sinai Desert, after the passenger plane is suspected of being an enemy military plane. Only 5 (1 crew member and 4 passengers) of 113 survive.
• 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.

March

• March 7 - Comet Kohoutek is discovered.
• March 8
  • In the 'Border Poll', voters in Northern Ireland vote to remain part of the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists are encouraged to boycott the referendum.
  • Provisional Irish Republican Army bombs explode in Whitehall and the Old Bailey in England.
• March 11 - Sir Richard Sharples, Governor of Bermuda, was assassinated in Government House.
• March 17
  • Queen Elizabeth II opens the modern London Bridge.
  • Many of the few remaining United States soldiers begin to leave Vietnam. One reunion of a former POW reuniting with his family is immortalized in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy.
• March 22 - United Kingdom government announces that the Channel Tunnel could be finished by 1980, costing £366m.
• March 23 - Watergate scandal (United States): 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 Attorney General John Mitchell as 'overall boss' of the operation.
• March 29 - The last United States soldier leaves Vietnam.

April

• April 2 - The LexisNexis computerized legal research service begins.
• 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.
• April 10 - Israeli commandos raid Beirut, assassinating 3 leaders of the Palestinian Resistance Movement. The Lebanese army's inaction brings the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Saib Salam, a Sunni Muslim.
• April 11 - The British House of Commons voted against restoring capital punishment by a margin of 142 votes.
• April 17
  • The German counter-terrorist force GSG 9 is officially formed.
  • 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, NY, to Miami, Fla.
• April 28 - Six Irishmen, including Joe Cahill, are arrested by the Irish Naval Service off County Waterford on board a coaster carrying five tons of weapons destined for the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
• April 30 - Watergate Scandal: President Richard Nixon announces that top White House aids H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and others have resigned.

May

• May 3 - The Sears Tower in Chicago is finished, becoming the world's tallest building.
• May 8 - A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement who were occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends with the surrender of the militants.
• May 14
  • Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.
  • The British House of Commons votes to abolish capital punishment in Northern Ireland.
• May 17 - Watergate scandal: Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate.
• May 18 - Cod War: Joseph Godber, British Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, announces that Royal Navy frigates will protect British trawlers fishing in the disputed 50-mile limit round Iceland.
• May 25 - Skylab 2 (Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz, Joseph Kerwin) is launched on a mission to repair the Skylab space station.

June

• June 1 - The Greek military junta abolishes the monarchy and proclaims a republic.
• June 3 - A Tupolev Tu-144 crashes at the Paris air show; 15 are killed.
• June 4 - A patent for the ATM is granted to Donald Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain.
• June 16 - U.S. President Richard Nixon begins several talks with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
• June 20 - The Ezeiza massacre occurs in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Snipers shoot on left-wing Peronists, killing at least 13 and injuring more than 300.
• June 22 - W. Mark Felt ("Deep Throat") retires from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• June 24 - Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev addresses the American people on television, the first to do so.
• June 25
  • Erskine Hamilton Childers is elected the fourth President of Ireland.
  • Watergate scandal: Former White House counsel John Dean begins his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee.
• June 26 - At Plesetsk Cosmodrome, 9 persons are killed in the explosion of a Cosmos 3-M rocket.
• June 28 - Elections are held for the Northern Ireland Assembly, which will lead to power-sharing between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland for the first time.
• June 30 - Very long total solar eclipse. During the entire 2nd millennium, only 7 total solar eclipses exceeded 7 minutes of totality.

July

• July 1 - The United States Drug Enforcement Administration is founded.
• July 10 - The Bahamas gains full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations.
• July 11 - Varig Flight 820 disaster near Orly, France - 123 killed.
• 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 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 17 - King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery.
• July 20 - France resumes nuclear bomb tests in Mururoa Atoll, over the protests of Australia and New Zealand.
• July 25 - The Soviet Mars 5 space probe is launched.
• July 28 - Skylab 3 (Owen Garriott, Jack Lousma, Alan Bean) is launched, to conduct various medical and scientific experiments aboard Skylab.
• July 31
  • Militant protesters led by Ian Paisley disrupt the first sitting of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
  • 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 3000 feet (914 m) short. All 6 crew members and 83 passengers are killed, 1 of the passengers dying several months after the accident.

August

• August 2 - A flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.
• August 5 - Black September members open fire at the Athens airport; 3 are killed, 55 injured.
• August 15 - The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, marking the official halt to 12 years of combat activity in Southeast Asia.
• August 23 - The Norrmalmstorg robbery occurs, famous for the origin of the term Stockholm syndrome.

September

• September 11 - Chile's democratically-elected government is overthrown in a military coup after serious instability. President Salvador Allende commits suicide during the coup in the presidential palace, and General Augusto Pinochet heads a U.S.-backed military junta that will govern Chile for the next 16 years.
• September 15 - Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden dies. His grandson, Carl XVI Gustav, becomes king.
• September 18 - The two German Republics, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), are admitted to the United Nations
• September 22 - Henry Kissinger, United States National Security Advisor, starts his term as United States Secretary of State.
• September 27 - Soviet space programme: Launch of Soyuz 12, the first manned flight since 1971.
• September 28 - ITT is bombed in New York City by Leftist terrorists protesting the restoration of the Chilean Constitution ordered by the Chilean judicial and legislative branches against the Allende administration.

October

• October 6 - Yom Kippur War: The fourth and largest Arab-Israeli conflict begins, as Egyptian and Syrian forces attack Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights on Yom Kippur.
• October 10 - Spiro T. Agnew resigns as Vice President of the United States and then, in federal court in Baltimore, Maryland, 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 17 - The Arab Oil Embargo against several countries which support Israel triggers the 1973 energy crisis.
• 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.
  • The Sydney Opera House is opened by Elizabeth II after 14 years of construction work.
• October 26
  • The Yom Kippur War ends.
  • United Nations recognize the independence of Guinea-Bissau.
• October 27 - The Canyon City meteorite, a 1.4 kilogram chondrite type meteorite, strikes Earth in Fremont County, Colorado.
• October 30 - The Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time in history.
• October 31 - Mountjoy Prison helicopter escape. Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escaped from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, Republic of Ireland after a hijacked helicopter landed in the exercise yard.

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 3.
  • 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 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 17
  • Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors "I am not a crook."
  • A student uprising occurs against the military regime in Athens, Greece.
• November 21 - U.S. President Richard Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, reveals the existence of an 18½-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.
• November 25 - Greek dictator George Papadopoulos is ousted in a military coup led by Lieutenant General Phaidon Gizikis.
• November 27 - The United States Senate votes 92-3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States.
• November 29 - 104 people killed in a Taiyo department store fire in Kumamoto, Kyūshū, Japan.

December

• December 1 - Papua New Guinea gains self government from Australia.
• 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 23 - OPEC doubles the price of crude oil.
• December 28 - The Endangered Species Act is passed.
• December 30 - Terrorist Carlos fails in his attempt to assassinate British businessman Joseph Sieff.

Births

• May 20 - J. Patrick Bedell, Pentagon shooter (d. 2010)

Deaths

• June 9 - Lyrl Clark Van Hyning, isolationist Mothers' Movement leader (b. 1892)
• June 10 - Erich von Manstein, German military commander (b. 1887)
• September 2 - J. R. R. Tolkien, British writer (b. 1892)
• September 11 - Salvador Allende, President of Chile (b. 1908)
• December 1 - David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel (b. 1886)