Born January 9, 1913
Yorba Linda, California
Died April 22, 1994
New York, New York

U.S. president, vice president,
senator, and congressman

Richard Nixon was the thirty-seventh president of the United States. He also served as vice president for both terms of U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969; served 1953–61; see entry) through the 1950s and before that was a member of the U.S. Congress from 1947 to 1953. As a result, his public career spanned over half of the forty-six years of the Cold War (1945–91). Politically benefiting from a strong public anticommunist position in the 1940s and 1950s, Nixon would open the door to formal relations with communist China and pursue détente, or the easing of tensions, with the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. He would also become the first U.S. president to resign from office after facing almost...