January 1, 1973. The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union.

January 22, 1973. Roe v. Wade: The U.S. Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion and declares that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

January 27, 1973. The Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War are signed in France. President Nixon tells the American people that the treaty will “bring peace with honor.”

February 27, 1973. The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Seventy days later in May the occupation by Native American activists ends with an agreement between protesters and the U.S. government.

May 3, 1973. The Sears Tower in Chicago is finished, becoming the world’s tallest building at 1,451 feet.

May 14, 1973. Skylab, the first orbiting space station for the U.S., blasts off from Cape Canaveral.

September 11, 1973. President Salvador Allende of Chile commits suicide or is assassinated, and opponents take over the government of Chile in a military coup. General Augusto Pinochet becomes President of Chile and Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army. According to various reports and investigations 1,200–3,200 people will be killed, up to 80,000 interned, and up to 30,000 tortured by Pinochet’s regime, including women and children. Pinochet rules as dictator in Chile until the transfer of power to a democratically elected president in 1990. Gringolandia by Lyn-Miller Lachman is a Young Adult fiction novel set in the United States and in Pinochet’s Chile.

October, 1973. Students revolt in Bangkok, Thailand, resulting in democratic elections in 1975 and 1976 and the withdrawal of American forces from Thailand. Political instability and communist insurgencies continue in Thailand throughout the 1970’s and the 1980’s.

October 6-25, 1973. A coalition of of Arab states, including Egypt and Syria, launches an attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, a Jewish holy day of atonement and forgiveness. Egyptian and Syrian forces cross ceasefire lines to enter the Israeli-held Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, and the Soviet Union and the United States support opposite sides in the war with weapons and strategic advice. As a result of this war, Israel and Egypt both realize that it in both countries’ best interest to reach a peace accord.

November 27, 1973. Greek dictator George Papadopoulos is ousted in a military coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis.

January, 1968. The Czechoslovak Communist Party chooses a new leader, liberal Alexander Dubcek.

January 30, 1968. The Tet Offensive begins, as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam.

February, 1968. the North Korean government refuses to release the U.S. spy ship Pueblo, captured last month within Korean waters.

March, 1968. In the U.S., Lockheed presents the world’s largest aircraft to date, the Galaxy.

April 4, 1968. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is shot dead in Memphis, Tennessee by escaped convict Jams Earl Ray. The night before his death Dr. King gave a speech at a church in Memphis:

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

May 6-13, 1968. Paris student riots; one million march through streets of Paris protesting the war in Vietnam and other grievances.

May 19, 1968. Nigerian forces capture Port Harcourt and form a ring around the Biafrans. This contributes to a humanitarian disaster as the surrounded population already suffers from hunger and starvation.

June 6, 1968. Robert Kennedy, younger brother of John F. Kennedy and Democratic candidate for president of the U.S., is assassinated in Los Angeles by lone Jordanian gunman Sirhan Sirhan.

July, 1968. Thirty-six nations, including the United States, the USSR, and Britain, sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

August 22, 1968. The Prague Spring of increasing freedom in Czechoslovakia ends abruptly as 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5000 tanks enter the country to force the Czechs to remain within the Soviet sphere. Unarmed Czech youths try, unsuccessfully, to resist the Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague and other cities. Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek’s goal and policy was “socialism with a human face”, but the Soviet Union and its vassal states will not allow changes in Czechoslovakia.

August 24, 1968. France explodes its first hydrogen bomb.

September, 1968. At least 11,000 people die in a series of earthquakes in Iran lasting for two days.

January 2, 1959. President Fulgencio Batista of Cuba flees the country to take refuge in the Dominican Republic, as rebels take over the government of Cuba in a coup. The new president of Cuba is Dr. manuel Urrutia, but rebel leader Fidel Castro holds the power in the new government in his position as premier.

January 3, 1959. Alaska becomes the 49th and largest state in the United States.

April 19, 1959. The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, finds refuge in India after fleeing Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Chinese troops have put down a rebellion in Tibet that was an attempt to wrest Tibetan independence from the Chinese Communist government in Beijing. The Dalia Lama left Tibet secretly in March and traveled over the mountains by yak into India.

June 3, 1959. Singapore becomes a self-governing crown colony of Britain with Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister.

July, 1959. The Australian airline Quantas makes its first flight across the Pacific from Sydney to the U.S.

August 21, 1959. Hawaii becomes the 50th state in the United States.

September 25, 1959. The prime minister of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Simon Bandaranaike, dies from his wounds after being shot by a Buddhist monk.

October 7, 1959. A Soviet space probe sends back the first-ever photographs of the dark side of the moon.

December 1, 1959. Twelve countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign an agreement not to claim any part of Antarctica for themselves. Military bases and the dumping of nuclear waste in Antarctica are banned by the treaty. However, scientists of all nationalities will be allowed free access to the continent to conduct experiments and research in the areas climate, geology, wildlife, and other subjects.

December, 1959. Archbishop Markarios, leader of the Greek Orthodox Church, becomes the first president of the new republic of Cyprus. Cyprus gained its independence from the United Kingdom in August, 1959.

All year, 1953. The First Indochina War: French forces continue to fight the Viet Minh independence movement in Vietnam. The French have been fighting to retain control of the Indochinese countries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam since the end of World War II.

January 14, 1953. Communist leader and war hero Josip Broz,also known as Marshal Tito, is elected president of Yugoslavia. Tito is a dedicated Communist, but he and the other leader of the Communist bloc, Josef Stalin, are openly estranged and at odds with one another.
Tito’s message to Stalin in : “Stop sending people to kill me. We’ve already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle (…) If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send a second.”

March 5, 1953. Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union for almost 30 years, dies of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 73.

April 25, 1953. Scientists Francis Crick and James D. Watson of Cambridge University in England publish their discoveries of the double helix structure of DNA.

May 29, 1953. Sir Edmund Hilary of New Zealand and Nepali Tenzing Norgay become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world.

June 18, 1953. Army leaders depose King Faud of Egypt and declare Egypt a republic.

July 27, 1953. The Korean War ends after three years of fighting and over two million lives lost. United Nations, South Korea, the United States, People’s Republic of China, and North Korea sign an armistice at Panmunjom.

August 8, 1953. Soviet prime minister Georgi Malenkov announces that the Soviet Union has a hydrogen bomb.

August 19, 1953. The United States and the United Kingdom help to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and retain Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the throne.

November 9, 1953. Cambodia becomes independent from France.

February 6-7, 1952. King George VI of the United Kingdom dies at age 56, and Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen Elizabeth II. (Photo: Princess Elizabeth and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh on a rail car in Canada.)

February 26, 1952. Prime Minister Winston Churchill announces that the United Kingdom has an atomic bomb.

July 23, 1952. General Mohammed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real power behind the coup, bring about the overthrow of King Farouk of Egypt. King Farouk, known as “The Playboy King”, abdicates and sails away on his luxury yacht.

August 11, 1952. The Jordanian army forces King Talal to resign due to mental illness; he is succeeded by his son King Hussein of Jordan, age 16.

September 2, 1952. Dr. C. Walton Lillehei and Dr. F. John Lewis perform the first open-heart surgery at the University of Minnesota.

October 20, 1952. The Uk declares a state of emergency and martial law in Kenya due to the Mau Mau uprising.

November 1, 1952. A small island off Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean is the site of a U.S. nuclear test explosion of the new hydrogen bomb. It is believed that Soviet scientists will soon produce their own H-bomb.

November 4, 1952. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeats Democrat Adlai Stevenson to become the president of the United States.

December 10, 1952. Dr. Albert Schweitzer receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a doctor in French Equitorial Africa. He intends to use the prize money to set up a leper colony.

In the United States, the 1952 polio epidemic became the worst outbreak in the nation’s history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis. Although a polio vaccine is under development by Dr. Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh, and another by Dr. Albert Sabin in Cincinnati, a polio vaccine will not be announced until 1955 nor widely administered until the late 1950’s/early 1960’s. I was born in 1957, and I remember being taken to the health clinic at City Hall to get my polio vaccination and also a smallpox vaccination when I was about four years old. I’m sure my mom and other parents of her generation were quite thankful for the protection of a vaccine against the double scourges of smallpox and polio. (Photo: An “iron lung” was used to help some polio victims breathe.)