His Elo rating shot from 2540 in 1971 to 2660 in 1973, when he shared second in the USSR Chess Championship, and finished equal first with Viktor Korchnoi in the Leningrad Interzonal Tournament, with the latter success qualifying him for the 1974 Candidates Matches, which would determine the challenger of the reigning world champion, Bobby Fischer.

* 1974 – As a direct result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office.

* 1974 – Punk Rock pioneers The Ramones play their first show in a local New York club named CBGB.

* 1974 – Western Union ( in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft ) launches the United States ' first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.

* Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, 1974, paperpack, or hardback first edition ISBN 0-688-00230-7

The first anthroposophic bank was the Gemeinschaftsbank für Leihen und Schenken in Bochum, Germany, founded in 1974.

* 1974 – Christina Davis, Australian ballet dancer and contestant on the first season of Big Brother Australia

The University of Ouagadougou, founded in 1974, was the country's first institution of higher education.

* The Devil's Triangle, ( 1974 ), Richard Winer ( ISBN 0553106880 ); this particular book sold well over a million copies by the end of its first year ; to date there have been at least 17 printings.

Since the introduction of the first commercially available microprocessor ( the Intel 4004 ) in 1970, and the first widely used microprocessor ( the Intel 8080 ) in 1974, this class of CPUs has almost completely overtaken all other central processing unit implementation methods.

The first reforms were implemented in three rounds – 1974 – 1983, 1985, and 1990.

Following the collapse of the ruling Communist Party in Yugoslavia, Croatia adopted a new constitution in 1990 – which replaced the 1974 constitution adopted by the Socialist Republic of Croatia – and organised its first multi-party elections.

It was also the first full coalition in Britain since 1945, having been formed 70 years virtually to the day after the establishment of Winston Churchill's wartime coalition, although there had been the " Lib-Lab pact ", an agreement stopping short of a full coalition between the Labour and Liberal parties, from March 1977 until July 1978, when a series of by-election defeats had eroded Labour's majority of three seats which had been gained at the October 1974 election.

The rise of comic book specialty stores in the late 1970s created / paralleled a dedicated market for " independent " or " alternative comics " in the U. S. The first such comics included the anthology series Star Reach, published by comic book writer Mike Friedrich from 1974 to 1979, and Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, which continued sporadic publication into the 21st century and which Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini adapted into a 2003 film.

In 1974, Mike Marshall won the award, becoming the first relief pitcher to win the award.

Fairchild's effort, led by ex-Bell researcher Gil Amelio, was the first with commercial devices, and by 1974 had a linear 500-element device and a 2-D 100 x 100 pixel device.

The roles of Bet Lynch, Ivy Tilsley ( Lynne Perrie ), Deirdre Hunt ( Anne Kirkbride ), Rita Littlewood ( Barbara Knox ) and Mavis Riley ( Thelma Barlow ) were built up between 1972 and 1973 with characters such as Gail Potter ( Helen Worth ), Blanche Hunt ( Patricia Cutts and Maggie Jones ) and Vera Duckworth ( Elizabeth Dawn ) first appearing in 1974.

The first Soviet-made pocket-sized calculator, the " Elektronika B3-04 " was developed by the end of 1973 and sold at the beginning of 1974.

The first programmable pocket calculator was the HP-65, in 1974 ; it had a capacity of 100 instructions, and could store and retrieve programs with a built-in magnetic card reader.

The first paper by Puthoff and Targ on psychic research to appear in a mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journal was published in Nature in March 1974 ; in it, the team reported some degree of remote viewing success.

Dungeons & Dragons ( abbreviated as D & D or DnD ) is a fantasy role-playing game ( RPG ) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. ( TSR ).

In 1974 New York City's WPIX-FM premiered the first disco radio show.

Also in 1974, Gloria Gaynor released the first side-long disco mix vinyl album, which included a remake of The Jackson 5's " Never Can Say Goodbye " and two other songs, " Honey Bee " and " Reach Out ( I'll Be There )".

MFSB released " TSOP ( The Sound of Philadelphia )", a 1974 hit recording featuring vocals by The Three Degrees, which became the first disco song to reach number one, after " Love's Theme ", on the Billboard Hot 100 ; it was written as the theme song for Soul Train.

In 1974 the organization perpetrated a major terror attack in Israel, when attacking a local elementary school in the village of Ma ' alot.

Jack Lemmon presented Groucho with an honorary Academy Award in 1974, his final major public appearance, in which he received a standing ovation.

His major subsequent films include The French Connection ( 1971 ), in which he played Jimmy " Popeye " Doyle ; The Poseidon Adventure ( 1972 ); The Conversation ( 1974 ); Superman ( 1978 ), in which he played arch-villain Lex Luthor ; Hoosiers ( 1986 ); Mississippi Burning ( 1987 ); Unforgiven ( 1992 ); The Firm ( 1993 ); Crimson Tide ( 1995 ); Get Shorty ( 1995 ); The Birdcage ( 1996 ); Enemy of the State ( 1998 ); and The Royal Tenenbaums ( 2001 ).

The counties of England at the time ( today known as the historic counties, since the major boundary changes of 1974 ) were used as the basis of the system.

The counties of England at the time ( now known as the historic counties, since the major boundary changes of 1974 ) were used as the basis of the system.

In 1974 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a major retrospective of his work, and in 1983 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1974, Bench led the league with 129 RBI and scored 108 runs, becoming only the fourth catcher in major league history with 100 or more runs and RBI in the same season.

Dick himself is a major character, though fictitious protagonist Nicholas Brady serves as a vehicle for Dick's alleged gnostic theophany on February 11, 1974.

In his books The Book Which Tells the Truth ( 1974 ) and Extraterrestrials Took Me to their Planet ( 1975 ), Vorilhon alleges that he had alien encounters with beings who gave him knowledge of the origins of all major religions.

The last major outbreak of the disease in humans occurred between 1974 and 1976, where an estimated 10, 000 to 20, 000 cases were recorded.

In 1974, Moon took full-page ads in major newspapers defending President Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate controversy.

Yugoslavia's communist ruler Joseph Broz Tito subdues the Croatian Spring movement and arrests its leaders, but does initiate major constitutional reform resulting in the 1974 Constitution which decentralized powers to the republics, gave them the official right to separate from Yugoslavia, and weakened the influence of Serbia ( Yugoslavia's largest and most populous constituent republic ) in the federation by granting significant powers to the Serbian autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina.

* October 13 – The United States Commission on Civil Rights releases the report, Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States: An Uncertain Future, that documents that Puerto Ricans in the United States have a poverty rate of 33 percent in 1974 ( up from 29 percent in 1970 ), the highest of all major racial-ethnic groups in the country ( not including Puerto Rico, a U. S. territory ).

In 1965 and 1974 – 1975, a major re-organisation of local government created in England and Wales several new administrative counties such as Hereford and Worcester and also created several new metropolitan counties which served large urban areas as a single administrative unit.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development ( IFAD ), ( Italian: Fondo Internazionale per lo Sviluppo Agricolo ), a specialized agency of the United Nations, was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference.

These specific election donations are known as ‘ hard money .’ The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ( BCRA ) of 2002, also known as " McCain-Feingold ", after its sponsors, is the most recent major federal law on campaign finance, which revised some of the legal limits on expenditures set in 1974, and prohibited unregulated contributions ( commonly referred to as " soft money ") to national political parties.

Lombardy counts many protected areas: the most important are the Stelvio National Park ( the largest Italian natural park ), with typically alpine wildlife: red deer, roe-deer, ibex, chamois, foxes, ermine and also golden eagles ; and the Ticino Valley Natural Park, instituted in 1974 on the Lombard side of the Ticino River to protect and conserve one of the last major examples of fluvial forest in Northern Italy.

Now recognized as a major talent, Altman had critical breakthroughs with McCabe & Mrs. Miller ( 1971 ), known for its gritty portrayal of the American frontier ; The Long Goodbye ( 1973 ), a remake of a Raymond Chandler novel ; Thieves Like Us ( 1974 ), and Nashville ( 1975 ).

When East Timorese political parties were first legalised in April 1974, three major players emerged.

The spirit of reformist optimism was cut short by the 1973 oil crisis and the major public services strike 1974, which gave Germany's trade unions, led by Heinz Kluncker, a big wage increase but reduced Brandt's financial leeway for further reforms.

His first major film as director, Dark Star ( 1974 ), was a science fiction black comedy that he cowrote with Dan O ' Bannon ( who later went on to write Alien, borrowing freely from much of Dark Star ).

Limassol became the major sea port of the Republic of Cyprus in 1974.

In early 1974, in a major feat of journalism, the Tribune published the complete 246, 000-word text of the Watergate tapes in a 44-page supplement that hit the streets a mere 24 hours after the transcripts ' release by the Nixon White House.

The large retrospectives devoted to Miró in his old age in towns such as New York ( 1972 ), London ( 1972 ), Saint-Paul-de-Vence ( 1973 ) and Paris ( 1974 ) were a good indication of the international acclaim that had grown steadily over the previous half-century ; further major retrospectives took place posthumously.

Moscow was the only major world capital Mobutu never visited, although he did accept an invitation to do so in 1974.