Four events that happened on this date and a trivia question.
August 7, 1973
The last of the Watergate hearings airs on network TV. PBS broadcast the Watergate hearings in their entirety during the summer of 1973. ABC, CBS and NBC rotated their live coverage. Ten years after the last hearing aired on August 7, 1973, PBS looked back at the Watergate hearings:
The Watergate scandal began with a burglary in June 1972 and ended with a president’s resignation in August 1974. During the summer of 1973, a special Senate Committee held hearings, co-chaired by Sens. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., and Howard Baker, R-Tenn., to investigate the burglaries and whether “illegal, improper or unethical activities” had been committed in connection to President Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign for re-election.
Public television aired all 250 hours of the hearings, gavel-to-gavel. The parade of witnesses and testimony, from former White House counsel John Dean’s allegation that President Nixon knew about the cover-up of the burglary, to former presidential aide Alexander Butterfield’s revelation that there were tapes that could prove it, shocked the country and ultimately led Nixon to resign from office — the only time an American president has done so.
August 7, 1981
On this date in 1981, The Washington Star prints its final edition after 128 years.
August 7, 1996
America Online goes offline for 18 hours. Customers around the world are left without news, e-mail, and other services.
August 7, 2010
Soon after this edition of NPR’s “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” begins, Peter Sagal announces that Carl Kasell will be inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
Media History Trivia
Question:
In what year was Reddit launched? (Answer)
