1973
Roe v. Wade
The Supreme Court ruled seven to two that the Constitution protected a woman's right to abortion until viability of the fetus. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the opinion. The ruling set off a fifty-year political war, rearranged American electoral coalitions, and would finally be overturned in 2022 by a very different court.
Pinochet coup in Chile
Chilean air force jets bombed La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago while Salvador Allende, with a rifle given him by Fidel Castro, fought on from inside. He died that morning. General Augusto Pinochet took power and ruled for seventeen years. Three thousand Chileans were killed or disappeared in the years that followed.
Yom Kippur War
Egyptian and Syrian forces launched coordinated surprise attacks on Israeli positions in the Sinai and Golan Heights on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Israel reeled, counterattacked, and won, but the illusion of invincibility was gone. An Arab oil embargo that followed quadrupled crude prices and recast the world economy.
OPEC oil embargo
Arab oil producers cut exports to nations supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Prices quadrupled within months. Gas stations in the West ran dry, drivers lined up for blocks, speed limits fell, and a decade of stagflation began. The post-war assumption of cheap energy was dead. The environmental movement was handed a new argument.
First mobile phone call
Motorola engineer Martin Cooper placed the first public cellular phone call from a Manhattan sidewalk, to his rival at Bell Labs. The phone he held weighed two pounds. Commercial cellular service was still a decade away. Within twenty-five years, mobile phones would be in more pockets than people had books, changing what it meant to be reachable.
Cellphone prototype demonstrated
At a Manhattan press conference, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper held up a two-pound brick and placed the first public cellular phone call, to his rival at Bell Labs. He was on a sidewalk. It would be another decade before the technology reached consumers, and another twenty before it became ubiquitous. Mobile telephony had its birth moment.