1970s

The 1970s

By Brisa Arroyo

  • OPEC

    OPEC
    The energy crisis played a key role in the economic downturn of the 1970s. With the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, oil prices jumped 350%, and the higher costs rippled through the economy.

  • Detente

    Detente
    Détente (a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form when President Richard M. Nixon visited the secretary-general of the Soviet Communist party, Leonid I. Brezhnev, in Moscow, May 1972.

  • Watergate

    Watergate
    The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents.

  • Endangered Species Act

    Endangered Species Act
    The Endangered Species Act (ESA) provides a program for the conservation of threatened and endangered plants and animals and the habitats in which they are found.

  • Camp David Accords

    Camp David Accords
    Camp David Accords, agreements between Israel and Egypt signed on September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between those two countries, the first such treaty between Israel and any of its Arab neighbours. Anwar el-Sādāt and officially titled the “Framework for Peace in the Middle East,” the agreements became known as the Camp David Accords because the negotiations took place at the U.S. presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland.

  • Iran Hostage Crisis

    Iran Hostage Crisis
    Iran hostage crisis, international crisis (1979–81) in which militants in Iran seized 66 American citizens at the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and held 52 of them hostage for more than a year. The crisis, which took place during the chaotic aftermath of Iran’s Islamic revolution (1978–79) and its overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy, had dramatic effects on domestic politics in the United States and poisoned U.S.-Iranian relations for decades.