We were a generation from World War 2 and the war machines were continuing their pursuits.  Cold wars, coups, terrorists attacks, scandals.  We saw them all unfolding, well a little bit, on the nightly news.  The news was broadcast twice a day - at 6 pm and at 11 pm.  Newspapers were important then and delivered to everyone's doorstep.  Read all about it!  War! 

 

The biggest one in the 70's was Vietnam because it involved the Americans.  There were a dozen more including in Cambodia, Soviet-Afghan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Arab-Israeli - so many conflicts in exotic countries we knew very little about.  They were far away wars.  We would see them on t.v. or read about them in newspapers but we were detached.  They didn't involve us, we thought. 

 

There was also political turmoil with Nixon/Watergate, the FLQ in Quebec, Pol Pot in Cambodia (2 million souls gone), Iran hostages, Yugoslavia, Uganda's Idi Amin, coups in Pakistan, El Salvador, Iran.  There was a terrorist attack at the Olympics in 1972 in Munich Germany.  On September 6, 1970, the world witnessed the beginnings of modern rebellious fighting in what is today called as Skyjack Sunday. Palestinian terrorists hijacked four airliners and took over 300 people on board as hostage. The hostages were later released, but the planes were blown up.

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The oil and energy crisis was huge.  Gas stations ran out of gas.  Keeping the lights on was in question.  Chili and Argentina had internal coup struggles.  Jim Jones takes out his followers from California to 'Jonestown' in  Guyana and 900 drink the koolaid.   Changes in UK with Margaret Thatcher, in Spain with Juan Carlos, continuing troubles in Northern Ireland, Camp David accords, Nixon and Kissinger go to China, Saddam Hussein in Iraq becomes powerful. 

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Natural disasters

Two major earthquakes in China and Peru killing thousands. 

A cyclone in 1970 India kills over 500,000.  Another the following year taking another 10,000+. 

Hurricane Agnes in the U.S and on April 3, 1974, the 1974 Super Outbreak occurred in the U.S. producing 148 tornadoes and killing a total of 330 people. 

 On December 24, 1974, Cyclone Tracy devastated the Australian city of Darwin.
Bangladesh famine of 1974 — Official records claim a death toll of 26,000. However, various sources claim about 1,000,000.
On August 8, 1975, the Banqiao Dam, in China's Henan, failed after a freak typhoon; over 200,000 people perished.
On February 4, 1976, a major earthquake in Guatemala and Honduras killed more than 22,000.
On July 28, 1976, a 7.5 earthquake flattened Tangshan, China, killing 242,769 people and injuring 164,851.
On August 17, 1976, a magnitude 8 earthquake struck the Moro Gulf near the island of Sulu in Mindanao, Philippines, causing a tsunami killing 5,000 to 8,000 people.
Super Typhoon Tip affected areas in the southwestern Pacific Ocean from October 4–19, 1979. Off the coast of Guam, Tip became the largest and most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded, with a gale diameter of almost 1,400 miles, 190-mph winds, and a record intensity of 870 millibars.

That's a lot for one decade!

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There were at least 15 major airline crashes including the worst in history in the Canary Islands (538 gone).  On March 28, 1979, there was a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor in Pennsylvania, United States. It is the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.

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More Changes

The Green Revolution of the late 1960s brought about self-sufficiency in food in many developing economies. At the same time an increasing number of people began to seek urban prosperity over agrarian life. This consequently saw the duality of transition of diverse interaction across social communities amid increasing information blockade across social class.

Another common global ethos of the 1970s world included increasingly flexible and varied gender roles for women in industrialized societies. More women could enter the workforce. However, the gender role of men remained as that of a breadwinner. The period also saw the socioeconomic effect of an ever-increasing number of women entering the non-agrarian economic workforce. The Iranian revolution also affected global attitudes toward and among those of the Muslim faith toward the end of the 1970s.

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There were at least 13 assassinations or attempts in the 70's including Pope Paul and Gerald Ford.  

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Economy

The 1970s were perhaps the worst decade of most industrialized countries' economic performance since the Great Depression.[23] Although there was no severe economic depression as witnessed in the 1930s, economic growth rates were considerably lower than previous decades. As a result, the 1970s adversely distinguished itself from the prosperous postwar period between 1945 and 1973. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 added to the existing ailments and conjured high inflation throughout much of the world for the rest of the decade. U.S. manufacturing industries began to decline as a result, with the United States running its last trade surplus (as of 2009) in 1975. In contrast, Japan and West Germany experienced economic booms and started overtaking the U.S. as the world's leading manufacturers. In 1970, Japan overtook West Germany to become the world's second-largest economy.

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Inventions and Technology

The second generation of face lifts were first attempted in the 1970s, popularizing the procedure for millions.
The first MRI image was published in 1973.

In 1978, Louise Brown became the first child to be born via in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

Concorde makes the world's first commercial passenger-carrying supersonic flight.

1978 = Sony Walkman

The earliest floppy disks, invented at IBM, which were 8 inches wide and long, commercially available by 1971
Email, with the first transmission in 1971

Fiber optics, microwave ovens, VHS VCR's, first voicemail and e-commerce invented

Cell phones, with the first call transmitted in 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola
Car phone services, first available in Finland in 1971 in form of the zero-generation ARP (Autoradiopuhelin, or Car Radiophone) service
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
Apple Computer Company, founded in 1976 and incorporated the following year by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

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New Hollywood films like Jaws, Star Wars, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Grease, and Rocky as well as Superman, Saturday Night Fever, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory were all extremely popular during the 1970s and decades following.  Oscar winners of the decade were Patton (1970), The French Connection (1971), The Godfather (1972), The Sting (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Rocky (1976), Annie Hall (1977), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).

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Disco balls and roller skating trends were popular and widely used in nightclubs and roller rinks in the 1970s. Songs like Bee Gee's Stayin' Alive and ABBA's Dancing Queen were played during the decade.

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A major event in music in the early 1970s was the deaths of popular rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, all at the age of 27. 

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Elvis died in 1977.  The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel broke up.  Led Zeppelin and Elton John were the most successful musical acts of the 1970s, both having sold more than 300 million records since 1969.

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