1974

Events

• January 15 - Dennis Rader commits his first confirmed murders, killing all four members of the Otero family in Wichita, Kansas.
• January 27 - The Doodler emerges for the first time, killing 49-year old Gerald Cavanaugh.
• February 27 - William Calley is released from house arrest.
• March 12 - Ted Bundy commits his first confirmed murder.
• April 25 - The Estado Novo dictatorship of Portugal is overthrown during the Carnation Revolution.
• April 25 - End of the Angolan War of Independence.
• May 18 - The Heaven's Gate cult is founded by Marshall Applewhite.
• June 8 - Yasser Arafat introduces the Ten Point Program.
• June 14 - DINA is established as the secret police of Chile.
• July 16 - Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. is sentenced to life imprisonment for assisting Dean Corll in murdering 28 Texas boys from 1970 to 1973.
• July 24 - End of the Regime of the Colonels in Greece.
• August 9 - Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency of the United States in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
• September 12 - The Derg first comes to power in Ethiopia, overthrowing Emperor Haile Selassie I. Beginning of the Ethiopian Civil War.
• September 30 - Carlos Prats, who was a member of Salvador Allende's government, is assassinated along with his wife Sofía Cuthbert in a car bomb attack perpetrated by the DINA in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• November 13 - The DeFeo family murders
• November 21 - The Irish Republican Army bombs two pubs in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people.
• December 1 - Anastasio Somoza Deybale is elected President of Nicaragua for the second time.
• December 8 - The Irish National Liberation Army is founded.

Births

Villain births

• February 11 - Maria Sosa
• March 25 - Ana Julia Quezada Cruz
• April 9 - Alexander Pichushkin
• April 21 - Faust
• May 2 - Christy Sheats
• August 13 - Orlando Anderson
• August 21 - Amy Fisher
• October 5 - Laurie Tackett
• December 25 - Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano

Victim births

• April 8 - Chris Kyle
• May 9 - Jennifer Harbison
• May 16 - Eliza Thomas
• June 22 - Jo Cox
• November 14 - Adam Walsh

Deaths

Villain deaths

• January 26 - Johanna Langefeld
• February 28 - Joseph Adams Milteer
• May 12 - Tony Costa
• September 2 - David Barksdale

Victim deaths

• January 15 - Joseph, Julie, Josephine, and Joseph Otero, Jr.
• January 27 - Gerald Cavanaugh
• September 30 - Carlos Prats and Sofía Cuthbert
• December 14 - Charles Dean and Neal Sharman