People don’t talk about it a whole lot, but 1970 was the most significant midterm election of the Vietnam War. The Dems picked up twelve house seats and lost 3 Senate seats, including Al Gore’s father’s seat. Just looking back, it’s easy to see how bad the news was.
February 18 – A jury finds the Chicago Seven defendants not guilty on charges of conspiring to incite a riot in charges stemming from the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Five of the defendants are found guilty on the lesser charge of crossing state lines to incite riot.
March 17 – My Lai massacre: The United States Army charges 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident.
April 1 – American Motors introduces the Gremlin.
April 10 – Paul McCartney announces that the Beatles have disbanded.
April 11 – US spaceflight Apollo 13 launches for the moon, carrying Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert. On April 13, an oxygen tank in the spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission. The crew returns to earth safely on April 17.
April 29 – U.S. invades Cambodia to hunt out Viet Cong. Massive protests against the war continue in the U.S.
May 4 – The Kent State shootings: Four students at Kent State University in Ohio are killed and 9 wounded by National Guardsmen at a demonstration protesting against the incursion into Cambodia.
May 9 – 100,000 people demonstrate in Washington DC against the Vietnam War.
May 14 – In the second day of violent demonstrations at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, state law enforcement officers fire into the demonstrators, killing 2 and injuring 12.
September 3-6 – Israeli forces fight Palestinian guerillas in southern Lebanon.
September 7 – An anti-war rally is held at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, attended by John Kerry, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.
September 11 – Spiro Agnew refers to the press as “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” (sidenote: the Ford Pinto is introduced).
September 18 – Jimi Hendrix dies of barbiturate overdose in Europe.
September 29 – US Congress gives president Richard Nixon authority to sell arms to Israel.
October 4 – Janis Joplin dies of a heroin overdose inside her hotel room in Los Angeles, California.
October 8 – US foreign office announces that it renews its arms sales to Pakistan.
October 8 – Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects US President Richard Nixon’s October 7 peace proposal as “a maneuver to deceive world opinion.”
October 9 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia.
October 12 – Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas.
October 30 – In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.
That is one hell of a string of bad news. And I didn’t even include some doozies. Our country has been thru some hard times before. We’ve been led by corrupt and venal leadership in the past. We’ve fought on in a hopeless war before, for years, with the Republicans looking to paint realists as appeasers, or communist sympathizers, etc. And it was successful in the 1968-1972 period. What people forget is that reality caught up to the Republicans and they paid a heavy price. The press thinks it is 1972. I think it is 1974.
Regardless, do you remember 1970?
