1.

On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon became the first American president to resign from office. I was playing in the street in San Luis Obispo when I heard. I had been raised to dislike Nixon and to consider him a buffoon, but I was a child: all I really knew was that the bad guy had lost. Still, my friends and I somehow got the news, and we jumped up and down shouting giddily — seven years old and caught up in the zeitgeist.

Illustration by Luke Best

On the day Nixon delivered his resignation…