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

Watch a news clip from the evening of 'the Saturday Night Massacre'

On Oct. 20, 1973, President Nixon ordered the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox—prompting the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus. This NBC News Special Report shows the immediate aftermath of the decision.

The Watergate scandal took 2 years to unfold

Beginning with the June 17, 1972, break-in, the scandal progressed through Senate hearings in 1973 and the explosive revelation of Oval Office tapes, and culminated in Nixon's resignation by August 1974.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The wife of Nixon's attorney general was forcibly held to silence her Watergate revelations

While vacationing in June 1972, Martha Mitchell was held captive, sedated, and physically abused by operatives connected to Nixon, intent on keeping her from speaking to reporters.

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.

Journalism's real drama made 'All the President's Men' irresistible for Robert Redford

Robert Redford was drawn to Watergate not by Nixon, but by the partnership of two contrasting journalists—Woodward and Bernstein. In the interview, he explains how he shaped the film's documentary style to spotlight the story rather than the scandal.

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.

A movie helped make JFK assassination conspiracies widespread

Oliver Stone's film "JFK" (1991) imagined the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy as the result of a conspiracy by US government agents. Before the film, this belief was not common, but it became widely adopted afterward. The film's impact contributed to the release of major CIA files in subsequent decades. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

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.

33 images that became central to huge scandals

See how the National Archives protects America's founding documents

This "60 Minutes" segment takes viewers behind the scenes at the National Archives, showcasing how experts use conservation science, security, and technology to preserve cornerstone records—such as the original Declaration of Independence—for future generations.

Watch a 1986 television special about the discovery of the ozone hole

The groundbreaking discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in the mid-1980s marked a critical turning point, galvanizing international action to address the ozone-depleting properties of chlorofluorocarbons, which had been identified about a decade earlier. This environmental crisis was brought vividly to public attention through media pieces like this one.

Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 for perjury and obstruction of justice

The House impeached President Bill Clinton over charges related to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Senate acquitted him on both counts in 1999, allowing him to finish his second term in office.

What happened during the Fall of Saigon?

After the U.S. pulled out of the conflict in 1975, North Vietnam quickly subsumed the South, renaming its then-capital of Saigon into Ho Chi Minh City. What happened during the city's fall? Take the next 17 minutes to watch this 1975 footage from the Associated Press to learn more.

Listen to the five-part podcast series that reconstructs how Challenger failed

The "American Scandal" podcast devotes a five-part series to Challenger, tracing the engineering warnings, internal pressure to launch, the moment of the explosion, and the long aftermath that reshaped NASA's safety culture.

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

Hear firsthand accounts from the 1963 March on Washington

This video features stories from people who attended the 1963 March on Washington—the largest demonstration in US history at the time—capturing what it felt like to witness a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement as it unfolded.

Hear about the Supreme Court case so divisive that it caused a justice's breakdown

This podcast episode examines Baker v. Carr, a landmark redistricting ruling that Earl Warren called the most important of his tenure. The case was so divisive it triggered a justice's breakdown and permanently reshaped American democracy.

The Pete Rose scandal was exposed by Sports Illustrated

In the spring of 1984, a reporter at Sports Illustrated answered a call on the newsroom tip line claiming player/manager Pete Rose was gambling on baseball games. That March, the magazine published the bombshell report that led Major League Baseball to investigate and then ban Rose for life.

'The Chinatown Sting': Unraveling an international drug smuggling ring

In the late 1980s, a group of women connected through the mahjong parlors in Manhattan’s Chinatown were caught in a massive undercover drug bust. But this bust was just the beginning of an even bigger case.

See a timeline of the events that shaped the Iranian Revolution

From a defamatory newspaper editorial that sparked protests in January 1978 to Khomeini's return from exile and the Shah's flight from Iran in 1979, this timeline traces the rapidly escalating chain of events—protests, crackdowns, and political collapses—that toppled one of the Middle East's most powerful monarchies.

The Love Canal disaster exposed the dangers of buried toxic waste

In the late 1970s, residents of Niagara Falls, New York, discovered their neighborhood was built atop 20,000 tons of chemical waste. Leaking toxins caused illness and birth defects, sparking nationwide outrage and leading to the creation of the EPA's Superfund cleanup program in 1980.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Hamilton publicly admitted to an affair to rebut corruption charges

In 1797, Alexander Hamilton published the Reynolds Pamphlet, confessing to an extramarital affair and blackmail payments to disprove accusations of financial corruption—clearing his name legally but ruining his reputation.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

A small mistake in a press conference triggered the fall of the Berlin Wall

This video explains how a confused East German spokesman—misreading new travel rules at an otherwise routine 1989 press conference—accidentally announced immediate border openings, prompting crowds to surge to the Berlin Wall and igniting Germany’s rapid reunification.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

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

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

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

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

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

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

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

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

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.

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.