“My Mom And Dad In 1973”: 30 Striking Pics From People’s Lives In The 70s

With the help of the History Channel’s database and similar archives, people now can go back to nearly any day within the last several decades. Take January 14th of 1973, for instance, which was marked by the Miami Dolphins winning Super Bowl VII to cap off the NFL's only perfect season. Or, when the World Trade Center—the tallest building in the world back then—opened in New York City on April 4th of that same year.

Every day, there is something big happening, and that year was no exception. But what is considered a “big” thing differs from person to person—people who are not that interested in sports, for instance, would argue whether the Miami Dolphins’s win was that big of a deal.

For some people, the “big” things are the personal ones—like the birth of a child or a wedding, for instance. Well, can you guess how many people were born in 1973?

You are right if you guessed somewhere around 120,000,000. According to Database.Earth, 123,563,931 babies were born around the world in that year (25,032,563 males and 22,540,713 females).

The largest number of births was recorded in China, followed closely by India and Indonesia, respectively.

As for weddings, according to Statista’s data, the number of couples who got married in 1973 was roughly 46 million. If the love birds who said “yes” back then are still together, they should be celebrating their 52nd anniversary right about now. Congratulations to them!

The year 1973 was also big for music lovers, not only for the aforementioned “Dark Side Of The Moon.” The same year saw the release of David Bowie’s “Aladdin Sane,” Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions,” Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” Marvin Gaye’s “Let's Get It On,” and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” just to name a few.

As for popular songs, during the very first week of 1973, for instance, according to Billboard's archives, the most popular was Carly Simon’s “You're So Vain,” followed by Gilbert O' Sullivan’s “Clair.”

“The music tended to be more hedonistic due to the right-wing political backlash of the early 1970s and when disco came on board you were looking at an even more escapist musical scene,” said Dr. John Hatch, Associate Professor of Art History at Western University in London, Ontario, when discussing the role music played back in the 70s.

“I would make one exception, and that is the rise of African American pop music on the mainstream with bands like Sly and the Family Stone and Funkadelic, let alone singers such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder,” he added. “They tended to be more culturally meaningful and more critically engaged with issues of the time than their white counterparts.”

Continuing his discussion on the role music plays in people’s lives—both then and now—Dr. Hatch noted that the music we tend to revere is usually that of our teenage years, as that seems to be the time music has the most impact on us.

“As my generation passes on, there’ll be less and less of an interest in the music of the 60s and 70s and it will shift to the 80s, then the 90s, and so on,” the expert noted. “There’s a bit of an echo in children as they tend to be initially exposed to music through their parents and their collections, but eventually they’ll turn by their teenage years to their own contemporary scene.”

Those who care for sports more than they do for music know that, back in 1973, there were way more attention-worthy events in the sports world than just the Miami Dolphins winning the Super Bowl.

In 1973, John Newcombe and Margaret Court won the Tennis Australia Open in men’s singles and women’s singles, respectively (and later the same year, won the US Open, too); the Spanish road racing cyclist Luis Ocaña was #1 in the iconic Tour de France; and the American golfer Jack Nicklaus took 1st place at the PGA Golf Championship (and was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame just a year later, in 1974).