Robert Mugabe and Ndabaningi Sithole split from ZAPU to found ZANU, the Zimbabwe African National Union

Plaid Cymru sends its first MP to Westminster when Gwynfor Evans wins a Carmarthen by-election

Congress passes a Freedom of Information Act, giving the public an important new right in the USA

Robert Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic presidential nomination

The Parti Québécois is formed in Canada by René Lévesque

The first civil rights march in northern Ireland, in Derry, is halted by the police with batons and water cannon

The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) is formed in northern Ireland as a coalition of Catholic nationalists and civil-rights campaigners

The outgoing Pakistan government, led by Yahya Khan, rejects the election result and sends troops to East Pakistan

Ian Paisley and others in northern Ireland form the Democratic Unionist Party, as the intransigent wing of Ulster Unionism

Jean-Marie Le Pen founds a neo-Fascist party in France, the National Front

Five burglars are arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee HQ at the Watergate office building in Washington

The Washington Post publishes the first report that the Watergate break-in was linked to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign

The Watergate scandal claims its first senior victims with the resignation of two of Nixon's closest advisers, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman

Likud is formed in Israel as an alliance of right-wing parties

The US Supreme Court orders President Nixon to hand over White House tapes of conversations relevant to Watergate

The House Judiciary Committee takes the first steps in the process of impeaching President Nixon, citing obstruction of justice

Faced by the prospect of impeachment over Watergate, President Nixon resigns

President Ford pardons ex-president Nixon for his part in the Watergate affair, thus removing the possibility of criminal charges

The SNP achieves a surge in Scottish nationalism, winning eleven seats at Westminster on 30% of the Scottish vote

Portugal adopts a democratic constitution after 43 years of dicatorship

Jacques Chirac, leader of a recently formed neo-Gaullist party, is elected mayor of Paris

An Islamic revolution forces the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to flee from Iran

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerges in India from previous Hindu nationalist groups and wins the first of several general ellections in 1996

Lech Walesa is elected chairman of the newly formed Polish trade union movement Solidarnośc (Solidarity)

The SDP hives off from Britain's Labour party – and seven years later merges with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats