Born in 1972

If you were born in 1972, you arrived in the year of Watergate, though most of America didn't know it yet. On June 17th, five men in business suits were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

It seemed absurd at first—a two-bit burglary, the White House called it—and Nixon won the most lopsided presidential election in modern history in November. The connection between the two events would take another two years to fully surface. Meanwhile, Mark Spitz won seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics before Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage; the massacre killed eleven Israelis and cast a shadow over what had been a moment of sporting transcendence.

Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was song of the year. *The Godfather* was in every theater and rearranged the American idea of what a movie could be—Don Corleone's voice was everywhere that year. The Atari Pong arcade game appeared in bars, and grown men were fishing quarters from their pockets to hit a blinking dot back and forth.

Title IX passed, mandating equal athletic opportunity for women in schools, and the reverberations would take years to fully feel. The macramé plant holder and the shag carpet were the interior design choices of the moment. Life had a warm, slightly fuzzy seventies texture—and under it, the slow-building drama of Watergate.