The 37th President of the United States was born on January 9, 1913 in a small farmhouse in Yorba Linda, California and raised in nearby Whittier. He attended Whittier College and Duke University School of Law and then joined a law firm in his hometown. He and Patricia Ryan were married in 1940. In 1942 he applied for and received a Navy commission and was assigned to duty in the Pacific. He won a seat in the House of Representatives in 1946; in 1948 he took the lead role, as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, in investigating espionage charges against Alger Hiss, who had spied for the Soviet Union before and during World War II. The case turned the young congressman into a national figure as well as a controversial one among those who asserted Hiss's innocence. After two terms he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1952 General Eisenhower selected him as his running mate. He was Vice President for eight years.
             After losing to John F. Kennedy by a razor-thin margin in 1960 and then making an unsuccessful bid for governor of California in 1962, he practiced law, wrote, and traveled extensively in Europe and Asia. After a painstaking political comeback that astonished political friends and foes alike, he was elected President in 1968 winning re-election in 1972 by an historic margin. While in office he opened the door to the People's Republic of China, established the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, laid the foundation for the Mideast peace process, and pursued domestic initiatives that included establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, launching the "war on cancer," and bringing about the peaceful desegregation of public schools in the South. He made four appointments to the Supreme Court, including the current Chief Justice, William Rehnquist. The central event of the the years Richard Nixon served as President --influencing virtually every aspect of U.S. foreign and domestic policy, ca...