1970 – Kent State and Jackson State shootings occur during student protests which grow violent. Nation Guard troops and police kill six students, wound others.
1970 – American Top 40, hosted by radio personality Casey Kasem, becomes the first successful nationally syndicated radio program featuring a weekly countdown.
1972 – First African-American major league baseball player Jackie Robinson dies.
1972 – Watergate scandal: Five men arrested for the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.
October 10, 1973 – Vice President Agnew resigns in disgrace as part of a plea bargain.
December 6, 1973 – Gerald R. Ford becomes the first person to be appointed vice president under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
1973 – Watergate scandal: President Nixon fires two attorneys general, and their appointed acting attorney general replacement fires the Watergate Special Prosecutor over disposition of the secret tapes.
1973–1974 — The United States is affected by the Arab Oil Embargo; gasoline prices skyrocket as supplies of gasoline and heating oil are in short supply. In response, daylight saving time is started in January (nearly four months earlier than usual), and the national speed limit is lowered to 55 mph.
1974 – The 1974 Super Outbreak, the second-largest series of tornadoes in history (at 148), hits 13 U.S. states and one Canadian province; 315 people are killed and more than 5,000 are injured.
August 9, 1974 – President Nixon resigns, becoming the first and only U.S. president to step down. Vice President Ford becomes the 38th president.
December 19, 1974 – Nelson A. Rockefeller becomes the second person to be appointed vice president under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
1974 – Watergate scandal: Ford pardons Nixon for any crimes he may have committed against the United States while president, believing it to be in the "best interests of the country."
1975 – Bill Gates founds Microsoft, which will eventually dominate the home computer operating system market.
1975 – The Apollo–Soyuz Test Project begins, where an American Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock in orbit, marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.
1977 – Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll, dies in his home in Graceland at age 42. 75,000 fans line the streets of Memphis for his funeral
1977 – The Atari 2600 becomes the first successful home video game system, popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code.
The International Women’s Year Conference (IWY), is held in Houston, Texas, where 2,000 state-appointed delegates vote on planks to form a “Plan of Action” called “What Women Want.”
1978 – Volkswagen becomes the second non-American automobile manufacturer (after Rolls-Royce) to open a plant in the United States, commencing production of the Rabbit.
1978 – The Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act is signed into law, adjusting the government's economic goals to include full employment, growth in production, price stability, and a balance of trade and budget.
1978 – The Senate votes to turn the Panama Canal over to Panamanian control on December 31, 1999.
1978 – Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone are assassinated by Dan White in San Francisco on November 27.
1979 – The Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurs, America's most catastrophic nuclear power plant accident in its history.
1979 – The Iran hostage crisis begins. In the aftermath, a second energy crisis develops, tripling the price of oil and sending U. S. gasoline prices over $1 per gallon for the first time.
1979 — Facing bankruptcy, Chrysler receives government loan guarantees upon the request of CEO Lee Iacocca to help revive the company.
1979 – The Sugarhill Gang releases Rapper's Delight, widely considered the first major hip hop song. The hip hop music movement occurred in the Early 1970s, but would evolve over time.
January 20, 1981 – Reagan becomes the 40th president; Bush becomes the 43rd vice president. On the same day Iran releases hostages, marking the end of the Iran hostage crisis.
March 30, 1981 – Attempted assassination of President Reagan by John Hinckley Jr.
1981 – 1982 United States is part of the global recession, with national unemployment as high as 9%, with some areas much higher, and inflation as high as 13.5%. Early 1980s recession
1981–1982 — The killing of 6-year-old Adam Walsh (1981), and the disappearance of Johnny Gosch, a 12-year-old newspaper carrier from Des Moines, Iowa (1982), raise awareness of missing children cases in the United States.
1985 – World awareness of famine in Third World countries spark "We Are the World" and Live Aid. Also, awareness of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is raised with the death of actor Rock Hudson.
1985 – Country music singer Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp organize the first Farm Aid concert to raise money for family farmers facing financial crisis.
November 22, 1987 – An unidentified man wearing the Max Headroom mask appears out of nowhere on television stations WGN-TV and WTTW in Chicago. It is to this day the most notorious television broadcast interruption. As of 2019, the mystery is still unsolved, However, many people on Reddit claim they were behind the crime.
1988 – Drunk driving awareness is raised after a drunk driver's car crashes into a church bus near Carrollton, Kentucky, killing 27.
1988 – Severe droughts and massive heat wave gripping the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. The crisis reaches its peak with the Yellowstone fires of 1988.
1989 – The animated television sitcom The Simpsons debuts on Fox.
1989 – President Bush and Soviet Premier Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between their nations may be coming to an end. Symbolic elsewhere around the world was the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany.
