How former President Nixon's visit to China shifted geopolitics

Nixon's landslide in the 1972 presidential election

Despite the Watergate break-in becoming public in June 1972, voters largely shrugged it off. On Nov. 7, 1972, Richard Nixon still achieved a historic landslide—winning 520 out of 538 electoral votes, carrying 49 states—making it one of the largest Electoral College victories in US history.

Watch President Nixon's resignation speech

With impeachment looming, President Richard Nixon gave a televised Oval Office address. Watch this famous address in which Nixon announced his resignation due to the Watergate scandal—becoming the first and only president to resign from office.

Experience Watergate through photographs

The Watergate scandal produced some of the most iconic images in American political history—especially the candid shot of Nixon boarding a helicopter while leaving the White House for the final time on Aug. 9, 1974.

Watch the breaking news report of the revelation that brought down the Nixon presidency

In August 1974, following a unanimous Supreme Court ruling, the White House released the "smoking gun" tape—revealing Nixon's role in the cover-up. Watch the CBS News report from Aug. 5, 1974, detailing the fallout from the release of the tapes.

Views on the Nixon pardon softened over time

Americans initially rejected Ford's September 1974 pardon of Nixon—38% approved it versus 53% disapproved—but by 1986, a slim majority (54%) believed it was the right call, showing that public sentiment softened over more than a decade after the controversy.

The Nixon administration tried and failed to stop the press from publishing the Pentagon Papers

In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled against the government's attempt to block The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing classified documents on the Vietnam War, delivering a landmark victory for press freedom.

The War Powers Act of 1973 was passed over Nixon's veto to limit the president's ability to wage war unilaterally

Passed in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying forces and to end military operations within 60 days without congressional approval. Nixon vetoed the bill, arguing it was unconstitutional, but Congress overrode his veto.

Nixon's 1971 decision to untether the dollar from gold ended the Bretton Woods exchange rate system

The Bretton Woods system initially pegged all major currencies to the US dollar, which could be exchanged for gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce. Growing deficits and decreasing gold reserves prompted Nixon to end that guarantee in 1971, marking the end of the fixed exchange rate era.

Nixon secretly recorded nearly 3,700 hours of conversations

The White House taping system was secretly installed on Feb. 16, 1971, beginning with the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, and later expanded to Nixon's offices, Camp David, and telephones.

Prelude to the Tiananmen Square crackdown

On June 2, 1989, two days before the military-led massacre that would come to be known as the Tiananmen Square crackdown, nine of China's top leaders discussed how to stop pro-democracy protesters. During this meeting, leader Deng Xiaoping delivered a speech that has shaped the country ever since, in which he advocated for a forceful end to the protests while supporting China's economic "opening-up" featured in protesters' demands.

Amid the aftermath of Watergate, Gerald Ford declared that the state of the union was 'not good'

In his first State of the Union in January 1975, President Ford departed from the usual optimism, bluntly acknowledging recession, inflation, and public distrust as the country worked to recover from Nixon's resignation and the Watergate scandal.

The Lunar New Year was nearly lost

In 1949, Mao Zedong's rise to power reshaped Chinese traditions, including Lunar New Year. Mao saw it as outdated and replaced its festivities with political activities. During the Cultural Revolution, traditional customs were banned. After Mao's death in 1976, reforms under Deng Xiaoping revived the holiday.

How did China go from an empire to a republic?

In the 1800s, as China's economy was in flux, foreign imperialist powers began appearing on the horizon, leading China to lose land and influence in the region. This 48-minute podcast episode explores how this destabilization set the stage for the...

In 1979, Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days

Outraged by the US decision to allow the exiled Shah to enter the United States for medical treatment, student protesters stormed the embassy in November 1979. The crisis paralyzed the Carter presidency and ended with a negotiated release on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration.

David Stern brought the NBA to China

In 1987, he started shipping VHS tapes of games to state-run TV stations in China, and opened an NBA office there by 1992. Today, China is the league’s second-largest market.

See who sat where at the US-China state dinner and why

This graphic maps the seating arrangements at the May 2026 dinner, showing how Chinese banquet etiquette shaped the placement of officials and executives from both delegations, along with details on the food served.

How a skin cancerous growth shifted an initially skeptical President Reagan on the ozone crisis

While a 1985 Nature study revealing the Antarctic ozone hole jolted public concern, Reagan's administration was more focused on the Cold War than on environmental policy. His health scare and the market potential for developing alternatives to chlorofluorocarbons helped turn the tide, leading to the Montreal Protocol's unanimous ratification by a bipartisan Senate in 1988.

Central bank independence is correlated with lower inflation on average

Executives may seek to influence the central bank to reduce interest rates for political points. Since its creation in the early 20th century, the US' Federal Reserve saw the most interactions from the president during the Nixon and Ford administrations.

China's WTO membership produced significant disputes

Two decades after China joined, its trade practices—such as state subsidies, intellectual property disputes, and market access restrictions—have sparked accusations that it has not fully met WTO commitments of free and open trade.

Davos has been home to many pivotal moments in international diplomacy

Davos provides a forum for unlikely meetings: FW de Klerk met with Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi during South Africa’s transition from apartheid, North and South Korea held their first-ever ministerial talks, and East and West German leaders discussed reunification.

The threat of nuclear annihilation reshaped global diplomacy

The first use of atomic weapons introduced the possibility of a war with no survivors. This article examines how nuclear fear shaped Cold War diplomacy and continues to influence international relations today.

Photos of Olympians visiting with US presidents

American Olympic athletes have visited the White House for nearly a century, with presidents using these ceremonial receptions to celebrate athletic excellence and connect sports achievement to national pride. The tradition has evolved from modest gatherings into major media events across multiple administrations.

A Chinese-Mexican alliance marked one of history's largest nonviolent money laundering schemes

In 2019, Chinese-American gangster Xizhi Li was arrested for an expansive money laundering scheme spanning four continents. Li reportedly laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for cartel members, wealthy Chinese Americans, and other foreign countries.

Diego Rivera hid a tiny image of Vladimir Lenin in Rockefeller Center

Nelson Rockefeller commissioned painter Diego Rivera to paint a mural for the entrance of the Rockefeller Center. Allegedly in response to criticism that he had “sold out,” Rivera slipped in a painting of Vladimir Lenin.

Donald Trump redefined presidential communication in the social media age

Trump used platforms like Twitter (now X) to bypass traditional media, announce policy, and confront opponents directly. His online presence reshaped political messaging, blurred the line between official and personal communication, and transformed how presidents engage the public.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.