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.
The Color TV-Game is the first video game system ever made by Nintendo. The system was released as a series of five dedicatedhome video game consoles between 1977 and 1983 in Japan only. Nintendo sold three million units of the first four models: one million units of each of the first two models, Color TV-Game 6 and 15; and half a million units of each of the next two models, Block Breaker and Racing 112. The Color TV-Game series has the highest sales figures of all the first generation of video game consoles. (Full article...)
... that the manga series Sora ga Suki! depicted two male characters kissing each other although it was a taboo for manga in the 1970s?
... that health economist Selma Mushkin estimated in the early 1970s that up to 50 percent of poor children in Washington, D.C., were affected by lead poisoning?
... that Suzie Zuzek's impactful 1960s and 1970s textile designs for Lilly Pulitzer dresses were recovered from under floorboards?
... that in the 1970s, the Shelton Hotel avoided demolition after seven elderly residents and a secretary refused to move out?
... that the art of Irma Blank, of "drawing languages without words" and including sounds, was recognised in the 1970s but fell into obscurity until a rediscovery in the 2010s?
Rabin was born in Jerusalem to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and was raised in a Labor Zionist household. He learned agriculture in school and excelled as a student. He led a 27-year career as a soldier and ultimately attained the rank of Rav Aluf, the most senior rank in the Israeli Defense Force (often translated as lieutenant general). As a teenager he joined the Palmach, the commando force of the Yishuv. He eventually rose through its ranks to become its chief of operations during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He joined the newly formed Israel Defense Forces in late 1948 and continued to rise as a promising officer. He helped shape the training doctrine of the IDF in the early 1950s, and led the IDF's Operations Directorate from 1959 to 1963. He was appointed chief of the general staff in 1964 and oversaw Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. (Full article...)
Image 27Actress Camille Keaton in 1972. Throughout most of the decade, women preferred light, natural-looking make-up for the daytime. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 35Los Angeles high school students, 1973. The tousled, blond surfer hair was popular for young men in southern California. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 361970 Dodge Challenger Trans Am, an example of a muscle car in the earlier part of the decade. (from 1970s)
Image 40Pink 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 41Singer Barry Manilow wears his hair longish in the soft, layered style favoured by men in the 1970s. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 53British 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 54America's first space station Skylab in orbit February 8, 1974 (from 1970s)
Image 55English girl in the mid-1970s wearing a wide-sleeved shirt, belted at the waist. (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 58By 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 71American 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 72Microvision (1979) is the first handheld game console that used interchangeable cartridges. (from 1970s)
Image 73The world map of military alliances in 1970s: Western allies (blue), Non-aligned countries (green) and Soviet allies (red) (from 1970s)
Image 74British 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 75In the 1970s, women's hair was usually worn long with a centre parting (from 1970s in fashion)
Image 93The 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 94Margaret 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 95Line at a gas station in Maryland, June 15, 1979. (from 1970s)
Image 104Isabel 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)
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