On this day in 1972, a band of operatives hired by the Nixon White House were apprehended in the act of burglarizing the Washington offices of the Democratic National Campaign Commitee in a hotel-office building called Watergate. The incident was not given much play in the nation's press, and, despite efforts of the federal judiciary to get to the bottom of the mystery (clues were already pointing to the White House itself as the prime mover of the Watergate breakin), the Nixon Presidential campaign sailed merrily along, and Richard Milhous Nixon was re-elected by a landslide, getting the electoral vote of every state except that of Massachusetts. Only after the re-election did the press get serious about Watergate. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, both then young reporters for the Washington Post, led the way with some brilliant reporting that finally led to a full-blown Senate hearing, which gave the nation stunning, daily, televised revelations about the perfidious White House, even about the role of the president himself. That led to a House Judiciary Committee's asking for the impeachment of the president, which Pres. Nixon forestalled by resigning his office on August 9, 1974. It was the first and only time that an American president has resigned.

MODEL: You might go back and read some of the books written about Watergate. They number more than 500. You can find references to them on the Web.

A note of advice: .

Also born on this day: