| abstract
| - "Nixon's backtrack on Vietnam did little to surprise me. What did, was the strength and ferocity amongst America's youth, whose unrelenting resistance to bloodshed inspired my hopes for what we could do to get back in the White House." -Ted Kennedy Interviewed for The Tenacity of Progress (2003)
* Willy Brandt becomes Chancellor of West Germany.
* U.S. President Richard M. Nixon addresses the nation on television and radio, asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity with the Vietnam War effort, and to support his policies. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew denounces the President's critics as 'an effete corps of impudent snobs' and 'nattering nabobs of negativism'. "It was my address to the nation that I came to see as a watershed moment in my Presidency, a point in which I put my faith in the American people, who I trusted would do the right thing. I hoped Americans would stand up to the brats and the snobs who constantly denounced what what the real America was fighting for, and I knew I sure as hell wasn't going to back down." -From RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1979)
* Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai story, revealing the atrocities committed by American troops, who killed hundreds of South Vietnamese civilians. Immediately, there is widespread outrage as domestic support for the war dips further. Across the United States, anti-war protests break out with thousands of found people taking to the streets. In San Francisco demonstrators clash with police as scenes of civil unrest are broadcast throughout the nation. California Governor Ronald Reagan calls protestors "destructive, malicious and misguided." Across Europe, similar mass demonstrations are seen for weeks. President Nixon quickly announces that he had no knowledge of the incident. "The revelation of what went on at My Lai was to say the least disturbing. If there was any single event that proved we shouldn't be in Vietnam it was that. A single crime that shouted out loud that this conflict must end." -From True Compass: The Memoirs of Ted Kennedy (1993)
* Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki, to begin the SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides
* The United States Senate votes down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement Haynsworth, the first such rejection since 1930. "Clement Haynsworth is a living, breathing danger to the success of African Americans in this country, and I am glad to stop him at all costs." -Ted Kennedy Interviewed 1969
* U.S. President Richard Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato agree in Washington, D.C. to the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. retains rights to military bases on the island, but they must be nuclear-free.The first ARPANET link is established (the progenitor of the global Internet).
* The Piazza Fontana bombing in Italy (Strage di Piazza Fontana) takes place.
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