April 3 - The Super Outbreak, the largest series of tornadoes in history, hits 13 U.S. states and one Canadian province. By the time the last of 148 tornadoes hit early the following morning, 315 died and over 5,000 were injured.
July 14 - Chris Chubbuck, US radio presenter for Channel 40 , draws a revolver and shoots herself in the head during a live broadcast. She dies in a hospital 14 hours later.
July 15 - Military coup overthrows President Makarios in Cyprus
July 17- A bomb planted by Irish Republican Army terrorists explodes in the White Tower at the Tower of London, killing one person and injuring 41. Another bomb explodes outside a government building in South London.
July 27-30 - Watergate Scandal: The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee adopts three articles of impeachment charging President Richard M. Nixon with obstruction of justice, failure to uphold laws, and refusal to produce material subpoenaed by the committee. He announces he will resign the next day, the first president to do so.
August-October
August 3 – Former Scottish Works team Ferranti Thistle joins the Profesional Scottish Leagues and changes its name to Meadowbank Thistle Football Club.
August 4 – Bomb explodes in Italicus Expressen train between Italy and West Germany. Italian neo-fascist terrorists take responsibility
November 10 - Members of the Movement 2 June try to kidnap Günter von Drenkmann , the president of West Germany's Superior Court of Justice, at his home but he is fatally shot during the attempt
ABBA wins the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest on April 6 with their song "Waterloo." The group will go on to become the most commercially successful pop group of the decade.
September 10 - The controversial TV movie Born Innocent, starring Linda Blair, was first screened on the NBC network in the United States. The film, which involved a fourteen-year-old being sent to what the television preview deemed a women's prison (when in reality it was a reform school), drew heavy criticism due to an all-female rape scene, the first ever seen on American television. The scene was deleted in subsequent re-airings after a group of girls assaulted an eight-year-old with a pop bottle, influenced by the scene in the film.
