Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After studying at Whittier College and Duke University, he became a lawyer and practiced law in California from 1937 to 1942. During World War II he joined the navy and served in the South Pacific. In 1946 he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he gained national attention as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He was elected to the Senate in 1950 and then served as vice president under President Dwight Eisenhower. As a Republican he made a bid for the presidency (against Democrat John F. Kennedy) in 1960 and for the governorship of California in 1962. In 1968, however, he was elected president. During his two terms as president, he achieved a cease-fire in the Vietnam War and opened talks with communist China. Soon after his re-election in 1972, Nixon was linked to a break-in attempt at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, Washington, D.C. In 1974, after several leading figures in his government had been found guilty of involvement in the Watergate break-in, the House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings against Nixon. On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign. A month later he was given a full presidential pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford. The Nixon presidential library was opened in Yorba Linda, California, in 1990. Richard Nixon died in New York in 1994.
