Life As We Knew It

 

1970 Costs of Living

  • Yearly U.S. Inflation Rate: 5.72%
  • Year end close of the Dow Jones Industrial Average: 838 pts
  • Average cost of new house: $23,600* (same house sold for $240,100 in 2011)
  • Average income per year: $9,870*
  • Average apartment's monthly rent: $140.00*
  • Average mortgage rate: 8.5 percent: Average monthly payment $126
  • Cost of a gallon of gas: 36 cents (about $2.95 in today's dollars)
  • United States postage stamp: 6 cents
  • McDonalds hamburger: $.18
  • Sports Illustrated Magazine: 50 cents per issue
  • Men's Westclox watch: $18.00
  • Chevy Vega ($2090), Ford Pinto ($1,830), and AMC Gremlin ($1,959 ) are introduced
  • 1970 Corvette Stingray sells for $5,192

1970 Sports Highlights

  • 1970 Cubs: 84 Wins / 78 Losses. Finished 2nd in NL East
  • 1970 White Sox: 56 Wins / 106 Losses. Finished season in last place, 42 wins behind the first-place Minnesota Twins in the AL West.
  • 1970 Chicago Bears: 6 Wins / 8 Losses - better than in '69 when they were 1-13, the worst in franchise history. Ticket price $5.
  • Super Bowl IV: Kansas City Chiefs won 23–7 over the Minnesota Vikings
  • Chicago Bears player Brian Piccolo died of cancer
  • 1970 PGA Tour money leader – Lee Trevino – $157,037

1970 Technology

  • Pan American Airways offered the first commercially scheduled Boeing 747 service from John F. Kennedy International Airport to London Heathrow Airport.
  • Concorde made its first supersonic flight (700 mph/1127 km/h).
  • The first computer chess tournament took place
  • In 1970 Corning Glass created a glass fiber so clear that it could be used to communicate pulses of light - fiber optic tech was born
  • LCD (Liquid Crystal Display ) was invented by George Gray
  • Douglas Engelbart received a United States patent for the first computer mouse
  • VCR was invented

1970 Grammy Awards

1970 News Events

  • 'Houston, we've had a problem'. An oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 spacecraft exploded, forcing the crew to abort the mission and return in 4 days.
  • First Earth Day celebrated
  • Boeing 747 maked its first commercial passenger trip to London
  • US forces invaded Cambodia to hunt out the Viet Cong
  • The world's population reached 3,692,492,000.
  • 100,000 people demonstrated against the Vietnam War Washington, D.C
  • Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury debuted
  • Paul McCartney announced that the Beatles had disbanded
  • The US population was 205 million
  • The US had 85 people per square mile
  • Glen Ellyn population was 21,909; 1.589 people per square mile
  • President Richard Nixon signed a measure lowering the voting age to 18.
  • The United States Environmental Protection Agency began operations
  • Chicago Seven defendants found not guilty of conspiring to incite a riot, in charges stemming from the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
  • Four students at Kent State University in Ohio were killed and nine wounded by Ohio State National Guardsmen, at a protest against the incursion into Cambodia.
  • The United States got its first female generals: Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington.
  • The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four passenger aircraft from Pan Am, TWA and Swissair on flights to New York from Brussels, Frankfurt and Zürich.
  • Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix overdosed and died 16 days apart. Both were only 27 years old
  • Gary Gabelich drove the rocket-powered Blue Flame to an official land speed record at 622.407 mph (1,001.667 km/h)[5] on the dry lake bed of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The record, the first above 1,000 km/h, stands for nearly 13 years.
  • The Miss World 1970 beauty pageant, hosted by Bob Hope at the Royal Albert Hall, London was disrupted by Women's Liberation protesters.
  • The North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City topped out at 1,368 feet