Fifty-three years ago today, on June 17, 1972 (May 7, 1972), Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. Richard Nixon, a recognized foreign policy leader, was the first president in American history to resign, and was forced to resign after losing trust. Nixon was born on January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California. Nixon grew up in a poor family in Yorba Linda. As a child, he survived several deaths. At the age of 3, he fell from a carriage and bled to death. At the age of 4, he nearly died of pneumonia. Academically, he was known for his diligence, conscientiousness, and agility. He graduated first from Whittier High School in 1930, and second from Whittier College in 1934. He graduated third from law school in 1937. He qualified as a lawyer in California in November of the same year. In 1946, Nixon defeated five-term Democrat Jerry Wallace to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and began his political career. On November 5, 1968, Nixon defeated Humphrey of the Democratic Party and Wallace of the American Independence Party to become the 37th President of the United States. During his first term in office, Nixon withdrew American troops from Vietnam, gradually ending the war that divided the country. He formulated a new China policy, supported China's entry into the United Nations, and visited China, becoming the first US president to visit China and the first to visit a country without formal diplomatic relations with the United States. On June 17, 1972, five people led by James McCord, the chief security adviser to the Republican President Nixon's Committee for Re-Election, broke into the offices of the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate Tower to conduct wiretapping activities and were arrested by the police on the spot. It turned out that they were working for the Republican Committee for Re-Election of the President. Hearing this news, Nixon ordered a cover-up. Behind the scenes, he tried to get the FBI to stop investigating the matter, and on the one hand, he tried to bribe the arrested people to plead guilty and remain silent, so as to temporarily cover up the truth of the matter. On November 7, Nixon won a landslide victory in his re-election campaign. In March 1973, a defendant confessed to political pressure to perjury during his interrogation in order to avoid a long prison sentence, and the covered-up levee was swept away by a torrent of newly revealed material. Nixon had to declare that the Justice Department was responsible for investigating the Watergate scandal. The decision of the Senate Watergate Committee to televise the hearing to the national public caused even more political waves in the Watergate scandal. Due to the situation, President Nixon announced his resignation on August 8, becoming the first president in American history to be forced to resign.