January 1 – CBS sells the New York Yankees 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. The first worldwide telecast by an entertainer watched by more people than watched the Apollo moon landings. However, it was not shown on the Eastern Bloc countries because of communist censorship, with the sole exception of Der schwarze Kanal on Deutscher Fernsehfunk in East Germany. In the United States and Brazil, it did not air until April of that year.
January 15 – Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, U.S. President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.
January 20 – U.S. President Richard Nixon is inaugurated for his second term.
February 14 – CBS begins airing the second season of Peanuts.
February 21 – The 5.8 MwPoint 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.
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 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.
March 29 – The last United States soldier leaves Vietnam.
July 5 – The catastrophic BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) in Kingman, Arizona, following a fire that broke out as propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank, kills 11 firefighters. This explosion has become a classic incident, studied in fire department training programs worldwide.
July 31 – A Delta Air Lines Flight 173DC9-31 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, 1 of the passengers dying several months after the accident.
أغسطس
August 8 – The death of Dean Corll leads to the discovery of the Houston Mass Murders: 27 boys have been killed by 3 men.
August 15 – The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, officially halting 12 years of combat activity in Southeast Asia.
سبتمبر
September 11 – Chile's democratically elected government is overthrown in a military coup after serious instability. President Salvador Allendecommits suicide during the coup in the presidential palace, and General Augusto Pinochet heads a U.S.-backed military junta that governs Chile for the next 16 years.
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.
^James Stuart Olson, ed. (1999). "Chronology". Historical Dictionary of the 1970s. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN978-0-313-30543-6. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
^Mitchell K. Hall (2008). "Chronology". Historical Dictionary of the Nixon-Ford Era. Scarecrow Press. ISBN978-0-8108-6410-8. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
