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Portal:1970s

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The 1970s Portal

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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.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1976. The Democratic ticket of former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter and Minnesota senior senator Walter Mondale narrowly defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent president Gerald Ford and Kansas junior senator Bob Dole. This was the first presidential election since 1932 in which the incumbent was defeated, as well as the only one of the six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988 to have the Democratic Party ticket win.

Ford ascended to the presidency when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which badly damaged the Republican Party and its electoral prospects. Ford previously served as Nixon's second vice president after his first vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned in 1973 due to a bribery scandal. Ford promised to continue Nixon's political agenda and govern as a moderate Republican, causing considerable backlash from the conservative wing of his party. Ford narrowly prevailed against former California governor Ronald Reagan in the Republican primaries. Carter was unknown outside of his home state of Georgia at the start of the Democratic primaries, but he emerged as the front-runner after his victories in the first set of primaries. Campaigning as a political moderate within his own party and as a Washington outsider, Carter defeated numerous opponents to clinch the Democratic nomination. (Full article...)

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Wonder in 2019

Stevland Hardaway Morris (/ˈstvlənd/ STEEV-lənd;  Judkins; born May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, and is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include R&B, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz. A virtual one-man band during much of his peak years, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments in the 1970s reshaped the conventions of contemporary R&B. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex compositions.

Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy who signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, where he was given the professional name Little Stevie Wonder. As a teenager he established himself as one of Motown's most successful acts, becoming known for his excited harmonica playing and high-pitched singing in hits such as "Uptight (Everything's Alright)", "I Was Made to Love Her", "For Once in My Life", and "My Cherie Amour"; his single "Fingertips" (1963) hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 when he was 13, making him the youngest solo artist ever to top the chart. Wonder's critical and commercial peak, termed his "classic period" (1972–1976), began with the albums Music of My Mind and Talking Book (1972), which abandoned the Motown sound in favor of a synthesizer- and keyboard-driven one. With Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974), and Songs in the Key of Life (1976), he became the first Black musician to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and the only artist to have won the award with three consecutive album releases. (Full article...)

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Sources

  1. ^ Howard Brick, "Review", American Historical Review (2012) 117#5 p 1537
  2. ^ Marglin, Stephen A.; Schor, Juliet B. (1992). Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience – Oxford Scholarship. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198287414.001.0001. ISBN 9780198287414.
  3. ^ Hays, Jeffrey (August 2012). "Economic History of Japan in the 1970s and 80s". Facts and Details. Archived from the original on 2012-05-19. Retrieved 2012-12-02.
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