1975 Headlines--
January 1 -- Watergate scandal: John N. Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman are found guilty of the Watergate cover-up
January 8 -- Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States who did not succeed her husband
January -- Altair 8800 is released, sparking the era of the microcomputer
Mar. 25 -- Saudi Arabian King Faisal, 70, was assassinated by his own nephew, who later was beheaded.
April 17 -- Pol Pot proclaims the "Democratic Republic of Kampuchea" in Cambodia and becomes its Prime Minister (1975–1979).
April 30 -- The Vietnam War ended with the occupation of Saigon by Communist troops. The conflict killed 1.2 million persons and had cost the U.S. alone $28 million per day since 1961.
May 12 -- Cambodia seized the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez and its 39-man crew in the Gulf of Siam. Anxious to prove that the U.S. could not be pushed around, President Ford called for an immediate counterattack. U.S. marines stormed Tang Island and, after losing 38 dead, recovered both ship and crew. In addition, U.S. planes carried out two retaliatory bombings of the Cambodian mainland--one before and one after the recovery of the Mayaguez.
September -- President Ford survived two separate assassination attempts by women in California. On Sept. 5, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, 26, a disciple of Charles Manson, fired a .45-caliber pistol at the President in Sacramento, but it failed to go off. Eighteen days later in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore, 45, got off a shot at Ford from 35 ft. away, only to have her aim deflected by an alert 33-year-old Oliver Sipple, a former marine.
July 15 -- Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft take off for US-Soviet link-up in space
November 27 -- Ross McWhirter, the co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records, is shot dead by the IRA for offering reward money to informers
November 29 -- The name "Micro-soft" (for microcomputer software) is used by Bill Gates in a letter to Paul Allen for the first time (Microsoft became a registered trademark on November 26, 1976).
Civil war in Lebanon between Christians and Muslims killed thousands and left even more injured and homeless.
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1975 by the numbers
Median Household Income(current dollars): $11,800
Consumer Price Index: 53.8
Unemployment: 8.5%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.10 ($0.13 as of 12/31/75)
Comments
Median Household Income matches the current mimimum wage.... that is sad....