| 1950–1980 | UK [television] | Watch With Mother, a series for young children featuring favourite characters such as Andy Pandy, the Flowerpot Men, Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, and the Woodentops, is shown on British television. |
| October 1969 - December 1974 | UK [television] | Monty Python's Flying Circus, an anarchic comedy sketch show starring John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, and Terry Gilliam, is shown on British television. |
| 1970–1979 | USA [statistics and demography] | The number of one-parent families in the USA increases 79%, representing one in five of all families. |
| 1970–1979 | USA [statistics and demography] | There are over 4 million immigrants to the USA in the period 1970–79, coming mainly from Asia and the Americas. |
| 1971–1978 | USA, North America, Asia, Europe, South America, Africa [statistics and demography] | Immigration patterns in the USA: 38% from North America (Mexico, Caribbean); 35% from Asia; 19% from Europe; 6% from South America; and 2% from Africa. |
| 1973 | USA [other structures] | The Sears Tower opens in Chicago, Illinois; with 110 storeys and standing 443 m/1,454 ft high, it is the world's tallest building, until 1996. |
| 1973 | USA [sculpture] | The US artist Duane Hanson sculpts Florida Shopper, a work of Superrealist sculpture. |
| 1973 | France [women's rights] | A physician in France is arrested for performing an illegal abortion; 10,000 protesters march to protest the abortion laws, resulting in the introduction of abortions rights legislation in parliament. |
| 1973 | USA [cinema and film] | The film The Sting, directed by George Roy Hill, is released in the USA. It stars Robert Redford and Paul Newman. The film will win seven Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, and best music score. |
| 1973 | UK [cinema and film] | The film Don't Look Now, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, is released in the UK. It is based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier. |
| 1973 | USA [cinema and film] | The horror film The Exorcist is released in the USA. Based on the best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty, it is directed by William Friedkin and stars Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, and Linda Blair. |
| 1973 | world [ecology] | Representatives from 80 nations sign the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) that prohibits trade in 375 endangered species of plants and animals and the products derived from them, such as ivory; the USA does not sign. |
| 1973 | Germany [economics] | German economist E F Schumacher publishes Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, an influential book that expresses a growing concern with the disparity between the economies of the West and the developing world. |
| 1973 | world [energy] | The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raises oil prices dramatically, causing a worldwide energy crisis. People drive less and turn to more fuel-efficient cars, airlines reduce services, offices turn the heating down, the US president Richard Nixon proposes tax incentives to encourage oil exploration, demand for nuclear power increases, and coal prices rise, giving a boost to the ailing industry. |
| 1973 | USA [fiction] | The US writer Erica Jong publishes her novel Fear of Flying. Controversial because of its explicit sexuality, it becomes a best-seller. |
| 1973 | USA [medicine] | US biochemists Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer develop the technique of recombinant DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Strands of DNA are cut by restriction enzymes from one species and then inserted into the DNA of another; this marks the beginning of genetic engineering. |
| 1973 | USA [medicine] | US medical physicist Paul Lauterbur obtains the first NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) image, in Britain. Radio waves are beamed through a patient's body while subjected to a powerful magnetic field; an image is generated because different atoms absorb radio waves at different frequencies under the influence of a magnetic field. |
| 1973 | Russia, USSR [memoirs] | The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn publishes Arkhipelag Gulag/The Gulag Archipelago in Paris, France, a detailed account of the Soviet prison camps. |
| 1973 | USA [musicals] | The musical A Little Night Music, with lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim, is first performed, at the Shubert Theater in New York City. Based on the film Smiles of a Summer Night by Ingmar Bergman, it includes the song ‘Send in the Clowns’. |
| 1973 | Italy [music] | The Italian composer Bruno Maderna completes his theatre piece Satyricon. |
| 1973 | UK [opera] | The opera Death in Venice by the English composer Benjamin Britten is first performed, at Aldeburgh in England. It is based on the novella Death in Venice by the German writer Thomas Mann. |
| 1973 | UK [plays] | The play Absurd Person Singular, by the English writer Alan Ayckbourn, is first performed, at the Criterion Theatre in London, England. |
| 1973 | USA [human rights] | The US Supreme Court rules that advertisements for employment cannot specify gender. |
| 1973 | UK [Judaism] | British Judaic scholar Geza Vermes publishes Jesus the Jew. |
| 1973 | England [psychology] | English psychologist John Bowlby publishes Attachment and Loss. |
| 1 January 1973 | UK, Ireland, Denmark [political events] | Britain, Ireland, and Denmark become members of the European Economic Community (Common Market). |
| 21 January 1973 | USA [social legislation] | In the case Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court rules that state restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional and that a woman has the right to an abortion within the first six months of pregnancy. This provokes militant anti-abortion protests. |
| 22 January 1973 | USA [births and deaths] | Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th president of the USA 1963–69, a Democrat, dies in Texas (64). |
| 27 January 1973 | USA, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, France [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | The USA, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong (armed forces of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam) sign a Vietnam War ceasefire agreement in Paris, France. |
| 13 February 1973 | USA [banking and finance] | The USA devalues the dollar by 10% by raising the price of gold to $42.22 an ounce. |
| 21 February 1973 | Laos [political events] | The government of Laos and the communist resistance group, the Pathet Lao, sign a ceasefire agreement in the captial, Vientiane. |
| 8 March 1973 | Northern Ireland [law and government] | In a Northern Ireland referendum, 591,820 people vote to remain in the United Kingdom and 6,463 to join the Republic of Ireland. |
| 16 March 1973 | France [banking and finance] | Finance ministers of the European Economic Community (Common Market) countries, meeting in Paris, France, agree to establish a floating exchange rate system. |
| 17 March 1973 | UK [popular music] | The British progressive rock band Pink Floyd releases the album The Dark Side of the Moon. It will sell 20 million worldwide and remain in the US top 200 albums for 17 years. |
| 1 April 1973 | USA [information technology] | A committee of grocers and manufacturers recommends the use of Universal Product Codes (UPC) (bar codes) on items sold in grocery stores. The codes will permit electronic scanning of items, reduce cashier error, and improve stock control; a few stores use it from 1974 and it comes into general use in the USA in 1980. |
| 8 April 1973 | Spain, France [births and deaths] | Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor who, along with Georges Braque, founded cubism, dies in Mougins, France (91). |
| May 1973 | USA [space exploration] | NASA launches Skylab, the first US space station. It contains a workshop for carrying out experiments in weightlessness, an observatory for monitoring the Sun, and cameras for photographing the Earth's surface. Skylab is subsequently visited by three three-person crews, and astronauts make observations of the Sun, manufacture superconductors, and conduct other scientific and medical experiments. |
| 14 May 1973 - 8 February 1974 | USA [space exploration] | The USA launches the Skylab space station. It contains a workshop for carrying out experiments in weightlessness. It is visited by three three-person crews and astronauts make observations of the Sun, manufacture superconductors, and conduct other scientific and medical experiments. The third mission lasts a record 84 days and gathers data about long space flights. |
| 1 June 1973 | UK [television] | Trevor MacDonald becomes the first black newsreader on national British television, appearing on ITN news broadcasts. |
| 7 July - 16 July 1973 | USA [law and government] | The former White House aide Alexander P Butterfield discloses the existence of the so-called ‘Watergate tapes’, when he tells a US Senate committee during the hearing on the Watergate affair that President Richard Nixon secretly tape-records all conversations in his office. Within a week, both the US Senate and special prosecutor subpoena them. |
| 10 July 1973 | Bahamas, UK [decolonization] | The Bahamas achieve independence within the Commonwealth after almost 300 years of British colonial rule. |
| 17 July 1973 | Afghanistan [political events] | A bloodless army-backed coup deposes King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan and the country is proclaimed a republic. |
| 19 July 1973 | UK [social legislation] | The British government introduces a child-benefit scheme giving weekly cash payments of £2 per child to mothers. |
| 13 August 1973 | USA [golf] | The US golfer Jack Nicklaus wins the US Professional Golfers Association (PGA) championship at Canterbury, Cleveland, Ohio to surpass US golfer Bobby Jones's 1930 record of 13 major championship victories. He also becomes the first golfer to earn more than $2 million in winnings. |
| 15 August 1973 | USA, Cambodia, Laos [political events] | US bombing in Cambodia and Laos ends. |
| 29 August 1973 | Egypt, Libya [political events] | Presidents Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Moamer al-Khaddhafi of Libya proclaim the unification of their two countries, with a plan for a joint constituent assembly. |
| 2 September 1973 | England [births and deaths] | J R R Tolkien, English novelist known for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, dies in Bournemouth, Hampshire, England (81). |
| 17 September 1973 | UK, Ireland [law and government] | The British prime minister Edward Heath meets Prime Minister Liam Cosgrave of the Republic of Ireland at an airfield near Dublin for talks on Northern Ireland. It is the first official visit to the republic by a British prime minister. |
| 18 September 1973 | East Germany, West Germany [political events] | East and West Germany are admitted to the United Nations (UN). |
| 6 October 1973 | Egypt, Syria, Israel [Yom Kippur War (1973)] | Full-scale war erupts in the Middle East, as Egypt and Syria attack Israel while Israelis are observing the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. |
| 8 October 1973 | UK [radio] | The London Broadcasting Company (LBC) becomes the first commercial radio station in mainland UK, ending the 50-year British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) monopoly of radio. The first channel, funded by advertising, broadcasts only news. |
| 9 October 1973 | UK [radio] | Capital Radio, a pop music radio channel, begins broadcasting as a rival to the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC's) Radio 1 in the UK. |
| 11 October 1973 | Israel, Syria [Yom Kippur War (1973)] | Counterattacking Israeli forces break through on the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War and invade Syria. |
| 15 October 1973 | UK, Iceland [diplomacy] | Britain and Iceland end the ‘Cod War’ with an agreement on fishing rights. |
| 16 October 1973 | Israel, Egypt [Yom Kippur War (1973)] | Israeli forces cross the Suez Canal and invade Egypt in the Yom Kippur War. |
| 17 October 1973 | Middle East, USA, Israel [Yom Kippur War (1973)] | Eleven Arab states agree to cut their oil production by 5% a month in protest against US support for Israel in the Middle East Yom Kippur War. |
| 20 October 1973 | Australia [civic and commercial buildings] | The Sydney Opera House, designed by the Danish architect Jørn Utzon, is completed in Australia. His highly original design – perhaps the best-known building in Australia – was controversial, and he left the project before building had finished. |
| 21 October - 22 October 1973 | USSR, USA, Egypt, Israel [diplomacy] | The US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev meeting in Moscow, agree a plan to stop the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East. Egypt and Israel accept a United Nations (UN) ceasefire on 22 October, but fighting continues. |
| 24 October 1973 | Syria, Israel [Yom Kippur War (1973)] | Syria accepts a ceasefire in the Yom Kippur War against Israel and fighting halts on both fronts. |
| 7 November 1973 | USA [legislation] | The US Congress overrides President Richard Nixon's veto and passes the War Powers Act, restricting the ability of the president to maintain troops overseas without congressional approval. |
| 14 November 1973 | UK [everyday life] | Princess Anne, the queen's only daughter, marries Mark Phillips in Westminster Abbey, London, England. |
| December 1973 | USA [space exploration] | The US probe Pioneer 10 (launched 2 March 1972) passes within 130,000 km/81,000 mi of Jupiter taking hundreds of photographs. It is destined to travel beyond the Solar System, leaving it on 13 June 1983. |
| 1 December 1973 | Israel [births and deaths] | David Ben-Gurion, Zionist statesman and first prime minister of the newly formed state of Israel 1948–53 and 1955–63, dies in Tel Aviv, Israel (87). |
| 13 December 1973 | UK [law and government] | The British prime minister, Edward Heath, orders industry to work a three-day week from 31 December to save energy. |
| 17 December 1973 | UK [television] | Emergency measures introduced by the Conservative government in Britain during the energy crisis include a television blackout after 10.30 at night. |
