Full list  |  Top Global population: 3.7 billion Olympics: Munich, 1972 (7,134 athletes from 121 nations); Montreal, 1976 (6,084 athletes from 92 nations)

SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES made in the 1960s deepened in the 1970s. Space exploration in particular captivated global interest on unprecedented scale even though facing something of a tail-off. The big wins had happened already – first, getting someone up to space and, second, landing them on the moon. But another important advance happened through Mariner 9. Although less heralded and intrinsically less sexy than Sputnik or the moon landings still this small American space probe circumnavigation of Mars changed much (Decisive Day #73, 13/11/1971). Ability for close inspections of other planets using their gravitational forces prized open a valuable investigation technique of other planets – not just the Red Planet – within the solar system.

Back on planet earth scientists continued searching for more humdrum but widespread changes in daily lives. Impacts as great as the Kodak Brownie camera from 1900 that had introduced imagery to so many lives; penicillin in 1928 that made lives immeasurably healthier; and jet planes in 1939 made transport much swifter. The next big stride to alter many lives was computing. Specifically, a little gizmo able to switch computing from a fringe occupation based on chubby machines occupying expensive spaces as large as rooms – the launch in America of the svelte microchip (Decisive Day #74, 15/11/1971).

While computing was pushing ahead global politics played catch-up. Unsuitably and increasingly embarrassing for the United Nations the big loser from the Chinese Civil War of the 1940s, the Nationalists brooding and fuming on Taiwan, still held China’s UN seat. In November of 1971 this injustice ended. Presciently, possession of the seat switched from Taipei, reluctant home to defeated Nationalists, to Beijing, cherished home of victorious Communists. Most countries around the world gradually shifted diplomatic recognition bar a few stick-in-the-muds agreeable to Taiwanese inducements. Most prominent and significant was the capitalist superpower of America. It was not just at ministerial level either. Within three months the number #1 inhabitant of the White House visited the #1 inhabitant of Zhongnanhai – between them holding two of the vetoes in the UN Security Council. In February of 1972 President Nixon visited the new powerhouse (Decisive Day #75, 12/02/1972) as the first sitting American president to do so. Both sides commented warmly if warily on the new Sino-American relations influencing the world.

Communist China might have welcomed so much face but looked cautiously at the latest barbarian bearing gifts. America’s social landscape at times seemed unfathomable and a direct opposite of unblemished Red Guard patriotism. In September of 1970 Jimi Hendrix, a gifted guitar musician, became a notorious celebrity death from drug overdose. Far from rebuking this failure of social modesty and decency much of America seemed bereft at losing the 28-year old. The same behaviour appeared at premature celebrity deaths of singers Janis Joplin (aged 27 in 1970 – heroin and alcohol) and Jim Morrison (aged 27 in 1971 – most likely heroin). Perhaps the Chinese could related to James Dean (aged 24 in 1955 – car accident). But as a contrast to the seniority-fixated Chinese the gap could not be larger. Worse, Hendrix and his sort played guitar music that mimicked the self-indulgent blues greats like Muddy Waters. Better the former army paratrooper had served his country in Vietnam. It was not total distance. China found some concord with the American Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 that tweaked the US Constitution. From now ‘equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex’, which was not unlike what Communism had tried to do. The one-child policy and imperils of overpopulation found some camaraderie with the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe-v-Wade, that abortion within the first trimester was up to individual choice as envisaged by the fourteenth amendment of 1868. Both China and America, though perhaps from different moral positions, shared similar dislikes to Mother Teresa’s warning a century later in 1979 against abortion: ‘Many people are very, very concerned with the children in India, with the children in Africa where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today.’

Regardless of how they connected with America socially the Chinese both found themselves negotiating through a series of global tangles. Chief among these was Middle East tension. Within a year of China’s accession to the UN this flared with the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in September of 1972. Although striking at 5am it could have been worse and eighteen more Israeli athletes escaped. Matters fizzled out among acidic accusations from Israel against the German police for low security. Matters did not fizzle out in the region. Within a year, striking in October of 1973, a much more decisive moment in Jewish-Arab relations came in the Yom Kippur war (Decisive Day #76, 23/10/1973). Tensions faced by China, and the Soviet Union, rested not just how to play an influential hand on the world stage but to handle matters at home. Unlike Chinese Communism the Russian version had been in power for over half-a-century – twice as long – and portentously cracks were starting to show. Of several events in the 1970s that exposed these cracks one delivered a striking impact that resonated for many years. Disclosing the flaws in the regime Alexander Solzhenitsyn published Gulag Archipelago in late 1973 (Decisive Day #77, 28/12/1973). The influential book rippled not just throughout the Soviet Union and dissidents scattered around the world but as a critique of Communism in itself. Communist officials banned and disparaged the book.

Beijing took a little more comfort from the tactical tensions wrapping up the capitalist superpower of America. Hands may have shaken as part of accession to the family of nations at the United Nations but doubted the political ambitions of America. China greedily sucked in insights from the Pentagon Papers during the summer of 1971. First published in the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg these revealed a far from pristinely clean approach to Vietnam. Such openness in Beijing or Moscow was non-existent – pointedly clarified by Solzhenitsyn – and Beijing rather liked its suffocation of information. But more tellingly in America was not the military analysis but the underlying political reality of accountability policed by a free press. The American President’s entanglement with Watergate absorbed not only America but the wider world. Finally when Nixon resigned, a brief couple of years after having visited the two Communists, resigned from office over the Watergate crisis (Decisive Day #78, 08/08/1974).

Timing was perhaps fortuitous for President Nixon in that he avoided the shame of publicly recognizing American failures in south-east Asia. Dating back at least to forming MAAG in the 1950s in the following three decades had been a catalogue of political failures and half-hearted tactics. The first decisive moment was the fall of a satellite regime. America may have meddled less in Cambodia but this did not lessen the tragedy of what followed the win of the Khmer Rouge (Decisive Day #79, 17/04/1975). China for a brief and misguided years supported the new regime. A fortnight later the Vietnamese Civil War ended and with it American involvement in civil wars in the region (Decisive Day #80, 30/04/1975). It fell to President Ford, the only President in American history not elected, to pardon his predecessor and find the words for America’s biggest and most pivotal military defeat.

Reflecting the impact on America in 1976, a brief year after the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam to Communist forces, the first president since 1844 elected from the Deep South, the old Confederacy. Four-fifths of African-Americans voted for the former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, who predictably injected a religious tone into his presidency. In a Playboy magazine interview he explained: ‘I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.’ Where Ford pardoned Nixon it fell to Carter to offer broader pardons. He quickly made good on his election promise to pardon Vietnam War draft evaders. More strategically he made some moves towards ending production of the expensive B1 bomber and other pressing military spending. Altogether military spending dipped from 5.5% of GDP at the height of Vietnam to 4.6%. A short-lived saving as Reagan jumped it back to a peak of 6.2% - higher even than the exchequer sapping years of the Vietnamese Civil Wars.

Carter also set out to limit aid to those governments guilty of human rights violations and denied the Shah of Iran to receive medical treatment in the US. For a while there was a muffled cheer at the prominent religious leader Khomeini returned to Iran after fifteen years of exile in Paris. Washington noticed how most of the 35 million Iranians, predominately Shia Muslims, supported him and the aggressive anti-American stance. In November of 1979 a brace of students and political cadres kidnapped American embassy workers in Tehran. United Nations and the World Court condemned the kidnapping, despite the release of women, but failed to secure an early release. Faced with an ineffective United Nations and an aggressive Iran President Carter ordered a rescue bid. It captured global interest when it failed in April of 1980. Eight soldiers died, helicopters crashed in the desert, and the 52 captives remained in custody until January of 1981. Altogether the crisis lasted 444 days and ended only on inaugurating a new American president – and receipt of fifty tons of gold transferred back to Iran.

Even though many sensed the government of America on a back foot the productivity of individuals advanced all around the world. Higher up the value chain America spotted the microchip could have massive commercial advances. Ready to capitalize on the advances of computers and the demands for them were a brace of companies. Of several tries to do so by far the more decisive historically was forming a company called Microsoft, an abbreviation from microprocessor and software (Decisive Day #81, 26/11/1975). Over the remaining decades of the twentieth century this west-coast American firm defined large parts of personal computing. It showed in particular the possibilities of creating a network effect where the more people used specific software on their computers the more other people wanted to use the same software. When in the summer of 1977 Elvis Presley died – another early death at age 42 and found unconscious in his bedroom of Graceland at Memphis, Tennessee, with an irregular heartbeat – the first stories edited using World Perfect software. Started in mid-1950s with help of manager, Colonel Tom Parker, the stories explained he combined rhythm and blues with rockabilly for rock and roll. Drafted in 1958 soon after he met Priscilla Bealieu, daughter of a garrison colonel, and eight years later in 1967 they married. Mathematical software documented his hundred Top-40 hits, over thirty movies and nearly thirty gold records.

Scientific advances were not just about exploiting space or productivity advances at work with computers. In the medical field the most eminent was first test tube baby (Decisive Day #82, 25/07/1978). Fascination rather amused China who, far from wishing to encourage fertility, disliked it.

After several years of tension in the Middle East Camp David on Israel-Palestine peace (Decisive Day #83, 26/03/1979). Despite the wars this showed the will to resolve the issue existed not just in capitals outside the region but within too.

By the 1970s decolonisation of distant and unrewarding assets had largely finished. This was with some relief as the debt and other financial burdens passed from European exchequers to former colonies. In 1970 the third world – a loose and new term which reflected a large slew of former colonies – awoke to freedom to find it owed a combined US$25 billion in debt. In the following years this new burden rocketed. By 2000 and thanks to an at times usurious compounding principal-and-interest rate this debt had become US$525 billion. Replacing colonial obsession in Britain was cautious curiosity about Europe. In some measure these resolved when Britain joined the European Economic Community in 1973. But the move was not decisive. While Britain quickly adapted, despite fears to the contrary, around administrative rules such as the increased use of metric measures – a system in wider use in the continent which originated in France in the 1790s. Yet the commitment was at best partial. Large strands of thought disliked the political control and commitment needed. These could not scatter even when the entire Iberian peninsula – both Spain and Portugal – joined on the same day in 1986. Lurking fears of the socialist agenda lingered Eric Hobsbawn in 1994: ‘Since the 1970s the World bank and the International Monetary Fund, politically backed by the USA, had pursued a policy systematically favouring free-market orthodoxy, private enterprise and global free trade, which suited the late twentieth-century US economy as well as it had the mid-nineteenth century British one.’ Socialist Labour governments had suffered with increasing industrial relations. Enter the election in 1979 where British voters chose the first female British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (Decisive Day #84, 04/04/1979) represented an end to elegiac feelings for what socialism might produce.