19731776 Club

King dispatches Riggs in three sets before 30,000 at the Astrodome

The 29-year-old outplays the 55-year-old hustler he built his comeback on beating women.

Bobby Riggs had spent the summer of 1973 promising that a 55-year-old man could still beat any woman in tennis, and after flattening Margaret Court in May, plenty of people believed him. On September 20, 1973, Billie Jean King, 29, walked into the Houston Astrodome to settle it in front of more than 30,000 spectators and a live international broadcast. King won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, taking the winner-take-all $100,000 purse without dropping a set. Riggs' claim of male superiority lost with him…

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The Times begins printing the Pentagon Papers; four presidents, the documents show, misled the country on Vietnam

A 7,000-page classified Defense Department study reveals the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations each obscured the true scope of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

1961

Twelve nations' Antarctic pact takes force; military operations and nuclear tests are now banned on the continent

The agreement, signed in 1959 after Argentine marines fired on British researchers, designates everything south of 60°S as a scientific preserve open to all signatories.

1972

Nixon signs 37 words into law; no federal program may turn away a student on the basis of sex

Senator Birch Bayh's passage, buried in the Education Amendments of 1972, draws almost no public attention at the signing.

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King dispatches Riggs in three sets before 30,000 at the Astrodome

This story is held for members.

Bush tells Congress: this is a war on terror, and it starts with al Qaeda

A van bomb tears into the US embassy annex at Aukar, killing 23

Arthur takes the oath before dawn, in his own parlor

Scientists regroup as a national body: the American Association for the Advancement of Science forms in Philadelphia

Thurgood Marshall takes the oath; the Supreme Court has its first Black justice

The Times begins printing the Pentagon Papers; four presidents, the documents show, misled the country on Vietnam

Twelve nations' Antarctic pact takes force; military operations and nuclear tests are now banned on the continent

Nixon signs 37 words into law; no federal program may turn away a student on the basis of sex

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