it wasn’t the best of times, it wasn’t the worst of times
But 1973, the backdrop for Proles, was a very weird year
the factoids behind the fiction
JANUARY
Former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy, a White House “plumber” and architect of fatally bungled break-ins of Democratic National Committee headquarters at D.C.’s Watergate Hotel, is convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping.
The United States signs the Paris Peace Accords with the governments of North and South Vietnam and the communist-led Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) in South Vietnam, effectively ending years of U.S military operations,
Ruling 7-2 in Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns state bans on abortion.
Melvin Laird, the U.S. defense secretary, announces the end of the military draft.
FEBRUARY
About 200 supporters of the American Indian Movement occupy Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
MARCH
Watergate burglar James McCord tells Judge John Sirica he and his fellow burglars have been pressured to keep silent about the case, and fingers former attorney general John Mitchell as the head of the operation.
Sacheen Littlefeather rejects the Oscar for Best Actor on behalf of Marlon Brando for his performance in The Godfather.
APRIL
Hoping to tamp down the Watergate scandal, Nixon announces the firing of White House Counsel John Dean, along with the resignations of Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and top aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.
MAY
One-time tennis champ Bobby Riggs defeats Margaret Court, the world’s No. 1 women’s player, in two sets in a match televised nationwide on Mother’s Day.
The Senate Watergate Committee, chaired by North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin, launches televised hearings into the scandal, parts of which will be viewed by 85 percent of U.S. households.
JUNE
W. Mark Felt, later to be revealed as “Deep Throat”—the D.C. insider who advised Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to “follow the money” in their investigation of the Watergate scandal—retires from the FBI.
John Dean begins testifying before the Ervin committee.
AIM‘s occupation of Wounded Knee ends after 71 days.
JULY
Testifying to the Ervin committee, former White House aide Alexander Butterfield reveals Nixon’s secret taping system.
AUGUST
The United States ends its bombing of Cambodia.
SEPTEMBER
Forces led by Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet, aided by the CIA, violently overthrow the elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende, impose martial law, and announce that Allende has killed himself.
Tuning in to a match billed as the “Battle of the Sexes,” a global TV audience estimated at 90 million watches as 39-time Grand Slam titleholder Billy Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in three sets at the Houston Astrodome.
Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security advisor, takes the reins as secretary of state as well.
OCTOBER
Arab states led by Egypt and Syria, hoping to recoup territory lost during 1967’s Six-Day War, mount a surprise attack on Israel to launch the Yom Kippur War, also known as the October War. The highest of Jewish holy days falls on the 10th day of Ramadan.
Spiro Agnew, dubbed “Nixon’s Nixon” for his attack-dog skills—and portrayed in Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” as a hyena—pleads no contest to a felony tax evasion charge stemming from his time as Maryland governor, then resigns as vice president.
Nixon orders his latest attoney general, Eliot Richardson, to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who has refused to back down from his demands for the secret White House tapes. Richardson quits instead, along with his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, leaving it to Solicitor General Robert Bork to fire Cox. Pundits call this messy house cleaning the Saturday Night Massacre, and it sparks the first calls for Nixon’s impeachment.
OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, announces an oil embargo against the United States and other countries providing military aid to Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
NOVEMBER
Bork, now the acting attorney general, names Leon Jaworski to replace Cox as special prosecutor. in the Watergate probe.
Speaking to 400 Associated Press editors, Nixon declares, “I’m not a crook.”
A lawyer for Nixon reveals the existence of a mysterious 18½-minute gap in one of the White House tapes.
DECEMBER
Gerald Ford, a U.S. congressman from Michigan, is sworn in as vice president.
Nixon signs the Endangered Species Act into law.