On this day in 1972, five men are caught trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The story of the break-in, which seemed like a minor event, was handed to two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, by their Washington Post editor-in-chief, Ben Bradlee. The reporters pursued the story tirelessly and broke the scoop of White House involvement in a pattern of unethical practices against political enemies. The pair later wrote the bestselling book All the President’s Men (1974), about the journalistic process of exposing the Watergate scandal.