From the South China Morning Post this week in 1974
Twenty-six months after the Watergate break-in and interminable weeks of ever-mounting pressure, Richard Milhous Nixon resigned as the 37th president of the United States - the first time in 198 years of the republic that a president had to renounce his office and resign amid scandal.
His resignation was necessary to avoid his certain removal from office by Congress.
After emotional farewells to members of his staff, the author of detente with China and the Soviet Union, and the man who withdrew the United States from the war in Vietnam flew with his wife, Pat, to their home in California.
Perhaps the greatest personal tragedy of his spectacular roller-coaster career was that, in the end, his country judged that his foreign triumphs were outweighed by the misdeeds of the Watergate scandal, when his aides stooped to burglary of the Democratic Party's national headquarters.
Although he apparently was not himself involved in the planning, Nixon finally admitted after months of denials that he had, in fact, sought to cover up the connection between the burglary and his handpicked team of counsellors.
