Ah, 1970. What can we say about 1970? Or rather, what can we Google and regurgitate here since we sadly weren’t around for it? Well, it got off on the wrong foot with the breakup of The Beatles, but it picked right back up with the very first Earth Day! A Mr. Edwin Land introduced the very first Polaroid instant camera, so people could start pumping out sweet memories in real time. Of course, Jimmy Hendrix passed away in September of 1970, so… Actually, you know what? A lot of good and bad things happen every year, so we won’t ping pong your emotions like that.

We’ll take a more day-to-day look at regular, everyday people who were living it up! It’ll be a more nostalgic approach that helps bring back the overall feeling of the simpler times, or a window into those times for the younger readers. However you’d like to take this, here are 17 photos of the sweet life back in 1970.