The 1970s (pronounced "nineteen-seventies"; commonly shortened to the "Seventies" or the "'70s") was a decade that began on January 1, 1970, and ended on December 31, 1979.
In the 21st century, historians have increasingly portrayed the 1970s as a "pivot of change" in world history, focusing especially on the economic upheavals[1] that followed the end of the postwar economic boom.[2] On a global scale, it was characterized by frequent coups, domestic conflicts and civil wars, and various political upheavals and armed conflicts which arose from or were related to decolonization, and the global struggle between NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Many regions had periods of high-intensity conflict, notably Southeast Asia, the Mideast, and Africa.
In the Western world, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as increasing political awareness and economic liberty of women, continued to grow. In the United Kingdom, the 1979 election resulted in the victory of its Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, the first female British Prime Minister. Industrialized countries experienced an economic recession due to an oil crisis caused by oil embargoes by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, with the first neoliberal government coming to power with the 1973 Chilean coup d'état.
The 1970s was also an era of great technological and scientific advances; since the appearance of the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004 in 1971, the decade was characterised by a profound transformation of computing units – by then rudimentary, spacious machines – into the realm of portability and home accessibility.
On the other hand, there were also great advances in fields such as physics, which saw the consolidation of quantum field theory at the end of the decade, mainly thanks to the confirmation of the existence of quarks and the detection of the first gauge bosons in addition to the photon, the Z boson and the gluon, part of what was christened in 1975 as the Standard Model.
In Asia, the People's Republic of China's international relations changed significantly following its recognition by the United Nations, the death of Mao Zedong and the beginning of market liberalization by Mao's successors. Despite facing an oil crisis due to the OPEC embargo, the economy of Japan witnessed a large boom in this period, overtaking the economy of West Germany to become the second-largest in the world.[3] The United States withdrew its military forces from the Vietnam War. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, which led to the Soviet–Afghan War.
The 1970s saw an initial increase in violence in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria declared war on Israel, but in the late 1970s, the situation in the Middle East was fundamentally altered when Egypt signed the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty. Political tensions in Iran exploded with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty and established an Islamic republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Space Invaders is a 1978 shoot 'em uparcade video game, developed and released by Taito in Japan and licensed to Midway Manufacturing for overseas distribution. Commonly considered to be one of the most influential video games of all time, Space Invaders was the first fixed shooter and set the template for the genre. The goal is to defeat wave after wave of descending aliens with a horizontally moving laser cannon to earn as many points as possible.
... that Zzzzzz had the busiest residential telephone number in the United States in the 1970s?
... that in addition to creating milkshake products, Keventers Milkshake was also a major supplier of various milk products to the Indian Army for several decades up until the 1970s?
Politically, the López Portillo administration began a process of partial political openness by passing an electoral reform in 1977 [es] which loosened the requisites for the registration of political parties (thus providing dissidents from the left, many of whom had hitherto been engaged in armed conflict against the government, with a path to legally participate in national politics) and allowed for greater representation of opposition parties in the Chamber of Deputies, as well as granting amnesty to many of the guerrilla fighters from the Dirty War. On the economic front, López Portillo was the last of the so-called economic nationalist Mexican presidents. His tenure was marked by heavy investments in the national oil industry after the discovery of new oil reserves, which propelled initial economic growth, but later gave way to a severe debt crisis after the international oil prices fell in the summer of 1981, leading Mexico to declare a sovereign default in 1982. As a result of the crisis, the last months of his administration were plagued by widespread capital flight, leading López Portillo to nationalize the banks three months before leaving office, and by the end of his term Mexico had the highest external debt in the world. His presidency was also marked by widespread government corruption and nepotism. (Full article...)
Image 18The 1970 Bhola cyclone, considered the 20th century's worst cyclone disaster, kills an estimated 500,000 people in the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan during November 1970. (from 1970s)
Image 19The early 1970s' fashions were a continuation of the hippie look from the late 1960s. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 22British rock band Queen (pictured here in 1977) was considered to be one of the most influential bands of the '70s (as well as the '80s), along with American rock band Eagles and others (from 1970s)
Image 23Concorde landing at Farnborough in September 1974 (from 1970s)
Image 47Los Angeles high school students, 1973. The tousled, blond surfer hair was popular for young men in southern California. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 48Honda Civic sold well throughout the decade. (from 1970s)
Image 70By the early 1970s, miniskirts had reached an all-time popularity. This young English woman is wearing a fringed suede miniskirt, 1971. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 78British rock band Led Zeppelin was one of the most popular and influential bands of the 1970s. The band's heavy, guitar-driven sound has led them to be cited as one of the progenitors of heavy metal. (from 1970s)
Image 80Elton John was one of the most commercially successful solo pop acts of the 1970s (from 1970s in music)
Image 81Pink Floyd performing The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, the highest-selling album of the decade and one of the highest-selling of all time. (from 1970s)
Image 82Actress Camille Keaton in 1972. Throughout most of the decade, women preferred light, natural-looking make-up for the daytime. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 83American First Lady Pat Nixon wears a shirt with the wide collar that was popular until the final years of the decade. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 84Haile Selassie was overthrown from power in Ethiopia, ending one of the longest-lasting monarchies in world history. (from 1970s)
Image 88Margaret Thatcher shortly before becoming the United Kingdom's first woman Prime Minister in 1979. Thatcher's political and economic agenda began the first government committed to neoliberalism. (from 1970s)
Image 89Apollo 17 Astronaut Gene Cernan becomes the last man on the Moon, December 13, 1972 (from 1970s)
Image 100English girl in the mid-1970s wearing a wide-sleeved shirt, belted at the waist. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 101Isabel Perón becomes the first woman President of Argentina in 1974 and the first woman non-monarch head of state in the Western hemisphere. (from 1970s)
Image 102Singer Rod Stewart performing in 1976. He was one of the major British soft rock artists of the 1970s (from 1970s in music)
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