January
01 – French singer Maurice Chevalier dies (b. 1888) in Paris. He is 83.
03 – An IRA bomb injures 55 women and children when it explodes in a Belfast department store.
04 – Rose Heilbron is the first woman to sit as a judge at the Old Bailey in London.
05 – ‘The Question of Ulster’ – a three-hour live debate on the crisis in Northern Ireland, chaired by Ludovic Kennedy – is broadcast on BBC-1 despite several attempts to stop the BBC from making it.
05 – President Nixon signs a Bill granting $5.5 billion to begin NASA’s Space Shuttle research.
05 – New anti-hijacking regulations requiring the screening of air passengers and their luggage come into effect in the US.
05 – The Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England vote to form a United Reformed Church.
09 – The first national coal strike for nearly 50 years begins in England, leading to large-scale power cuts and nationwide blackouts. Edward Heath insists there will be “no concessions” in the £31m pay offer rejected by the miners.
09 – A telephone caller to US journalists from billionaire recluse Howard Hughes explains that his supposed autobiography, penned by modestly successful novelist Clifford Irving, is a fake. Irving is subsequently imprisoned for two and a half years for creating the forgery, along with his wife and his research assistant.
09 – Fire destroys the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth in Hong Kong Harbour. The 83,000-ton ship – once the pride of the Cunard fleet – capsizes after 24 hours of fire collapses all of her 11 decks.
10 – The US Surgeon General advises that the health of non-smokers is endangered by secondhand cigarette smoke.
12 – Sheikh Mujibur becomes prime minister of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan).
13 – The Prime Minister of Ghana, Dr Kofi Busia, is ousted in a bloodless coup led by Lieutenant Colonel I K Acheampong, commander of Ghana’s first army brigade.
13 – Naval officer David Bingham is jailed for 21 years after selling British secrets to Russia.
14 – King Frederik IX of Denmark dies, aged 72.
15 – Princess Margrethe becomes Queen of Denmark.
16 – The Dallas Cowboys defeat the Miami Dolphins 24-3 in Super Bowl VI.
16 – Ross Bagdasarian, the man behind The Chipmunks, dies at 52.
17 – Highway 51 South (Bellvue Street) in Memphis is renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard.
18 – Two leading white campaigners for black majority rule in Rhodesia – former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, Garfield Todd, and his daughter, Judith – are arrested after violence erupts over Anglo-Rhodesian plans for independence
20 – Unemployment in the UK rises above one million for the first time since the 1930s.
23 – R&B shouter Big Maybelle Smith dies, aged 47.
24 – Discovered still hiding in the jungles of Guam, Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi of Japan’s Imperial Army is informed of his country’s World War II surrender 27 years earlier.
25 – World’s first kidney and pancreatic tissue transplant takes place in London.
26 – When JAT Airways Flight 367 explodes and breaks apart over Czechoslovakia, 22-year-old Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulović plummets over 33,000 feet (6.31 miles) to the ground in a piece of wrecked fuselage but lives. She remains in the hospital for 16 months.
27 – Female gospel singer Mahalia Jackson dies at the age of 71.
30 – “Bloody Sunday” in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. 14 civilians are shot and killed by soldiers of the British Parachute Regiment during riots against internment. The IRA declares that its immediate policy is “to kill as many British soldiers as possible”.
30 – Pakistan quits the Commonwealth after Britain, Australia and New Zealand recognise the independence of Bangladesh.
30 – Klaus Barbie – the Gestapo’s “Butcher of Lyons” – arrives in Bolivia from Peru.
30 – King Mahendra of Nepal dies aged 51.
31 – Large print health warnings will now be mandatory on cigarette advertising in the USA.
February
02 – Anti-British demonstrators in the Irish Republic burn down the British embassy in Dublin. The burning of the British embassy happens on the same day as the funerals are held for 11 of the 14 who died in Londonderry on what became known as “Bloody Sunday”.
03 – The first Winter Olympics held in Asia are opened by Emperor Hirohito in Sapporo, Japan.
04 – Britain recognises Bangladesh as a nation.
04 – A secret memo from Senator Strom Thurmond advises US Attorney General John Mitchell that John Lennon, now living in New York, should be deported as an undesirable alien and a political subversive.
05 – Due to increased hijackings, the screening of passengers and luggage becomes mandatory on all domestic and foreign flights by US airlines.
05 – T. Rex reach #1 on the UK singles chart with Telegram Sam.
07 – New Zealand prime minister Sir Keith Holyoake retires. His successor is John Marshall.
09 – A state of emergency is declared in Britain as the month-old miners’ strike leads to widespread power cuts. Edward Heath imposes a three-day working week and the country suffers power cuts as power stations are closed to conserve energy.
09 – Paul McCartney and his new group, Wings, begin their debut low-key tour of small British venues with an unadvertised show at Nottingham University.
10 – David Bowie reveals his new incarnation as Ziggy Stardust at the Toby Jug pub, Tolworth, London.
11 – Life magazine claims Clifford Irving’s autobiography of Howard Hughes is a fake. Irving later admits to fabricating the book, and in June he is jailed for 30 months.
14 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono host The Mike Douglas Show on TV while Douglas takes a week’s holiday. Among their guests are Chuck Berry and Black Panthers leader, Bobby Seale.
14 – The 1950s rock musical Grease opens on Broadway.
15 – 12 nations sign an international convention to stop dumping at sea.
16 – From today, electricity in Britain will be switched off on a rota basis between 0700 and 2400 every day which means consumers will face longer power cuts, up from six to nine hours. Miners are now into the sixth week of their strike.
17 – The House of Commons passes a Bill to bring Britain into the European Common Market (EEC).
21 – Arab terrorists hijack a Lufthansa jumbo flying to New Delhi. Passengers onboard include Joseph Kennedy, the 19-year-old son of the late Senator Robert Kennedy. The Palestinian hijackers demand an undisclosed sum of money and the release of three Jordanians under arrest in West Germany.
21 – President Nixon arrives in China for a week-long summit aimed at ending 20 years of frosty relations between the two countries. He is the first US president to visit China.
21 – An official inquiry begins in Britain into the ‘Bloody Sunday‘ killings.
22 – Five female civilian kitchen staff and a Roman Catholic priest are killed by an IRA car bomb at the 16th Parachute Brigade’s headquarters at Aldershot barracks in Hampshire.
23 – Palestinian hijackers who took over a Lufthansa jet in the skies over India two days ago release the hostages and surrender at an airstrip in Yemen. It later emerges the hijackers belonged to the PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and had been paid $500m in ransom. The South Yemen government was also paid $1m for allowing the jet to land on its territory.
23 – Elvis Presley and his wife Priscilla separate.
24 – British PM Edward Heath imposes direct rule for Ulster with William Whitelaw as secretary of state. Northern Ireland will now be governed directly from Whitehall. This emergency measure is meant to last for 12 months but ends up lasting 25 years.
24 – The North Vietnamese walk out of peace talks in Paris in protest at a recent US bombing campaign in Vietnam.
25 – Hijacked hostages are released in Aden after West Germany pays a $3 million ransom to Arab terrorists.
25 – Soviet unmanned probe Luna 20 returns to Earth after drilling for rock samples on the moon’s surface.
28 – British coal miners accept a wage increase agreement and return to work after a seven-week strike which crippled the industry and forced large-scale power cuts.
March
01 – 14-year-old English schoolboy Timothy Davey is sentenced to six years in jail in Turkey for selling hashish (pictured at right). Despite appeals from Prime Minister Edward Heath, Davey is not released until he is 17 in May 1974.
02 – Jean-Bédel Bokassa appoints himself “President for life” of the Central African Republic.
03 – NASA launches Pioneer 10 on a mission to fly close to Jupiter. Adorned with figures of a man and a woman and carrying a peace-offering plaque, Pioneer 10 will eventually become the first spacecraft to exit our solar system.
03 – West Germany discloses that 398 East Germans have escaped to the West in the preceding year.
06 – John Lennon‘s temporary US visa is revoked (due to a 1968 marijuana possession conviction in the UK), leaving him with a long, drawn-out battle ahead to gain a Green Card.
08 – A bomb explodes on board a TWA jet at Las Vegas airport after a phone call demanding $2 million. No one is injured in the blast which destroys the cockpit of the aircraft as it stands empty on the tarmac.
08 – The 192 ft airship Europa flies in Britain – the first one to do so for 20 years.
10 – A jury in Vienna frees Walter Dejaco, the designer of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, because of “insufficient evidence” to convict him of a crime.
13 – Clifford Irving admits to a New York court that he fabricated Howard Hughes’ autobiography after receiving a $750,000 advance from his publishers. Irving was banking on the publicity-shy millionaire’s notorious reclusiveness to get away with the plan.
15 – Eccentric Los Angeles DJ Robert W Morgan plays the Donny Osmond single Puppy Love for 90 minutes non-stop on radio station KHJ. Fearing subversion of some sort, scared listeners call the police, who raid the station.
16 – Fog on the British M1 motorway results in 9 deaths and 50 people injured.
19 – Bangladesh signs a Treaty of Friendship with India.
20 – Police have found Marlon Brando’s son Christian being held by a group of people in Mexico who say that his mother, Anna Kashfi, paid them to kidnap the child. Miss Kashfi, meanwhile, has been arrested and imprisoned in Los Angeles for disorderly behaviour and assault.
21 – A hoax call in Belfast deliberately steers shoppers and pedestrians towards a massive explosion. Six people die and 146 are injured.
22 – The US Supreme Court rules that unmarried people have the same right to obtain and possess contraception as married people do.
25 – America reach #1 on the US singles chart with A Horse With No Name.
26 – Britain signs a seven-year pact with Malta to retain military bases there.
30 – North Vietnam launches the heaviest attacks against South Vietnam for four years.
31 – Anti-nuclear protestors gather in Trafalgar Square, London, to begin their 56-mile Easter march to Aldermaston in Berkshire.
April
01 – Cosmopolitan magazine publishes a centrefold of actor Burt Reynolds in the nude.
01 – American Major League baseball players go on strike for the first time in history. They settle less than two weeks later.
01/03 – Four people die during Puerto Rico’s Mar y Sol Festival, which features performances from Black Sabbath, ELP and The Allman Brothers Band.
07 – Joey Gallo – said to have been the leader of the Mafia – is killed in New York
07 – Vietnam veteran Richard Floyd McCoy Jr skyjacks a United Airlines 727, demands $500,000 and jumps from the plane over Provo, Utah at 16,000 feet with the money. He survives the jump but is tracked down, arrested two days later, and sent to prison for 45 years.
10 – 5,300 die in a massive earthquake in southern Iran. The quake centres on the town of Ghir and the tremors are felt in the ancient city of Shiraz, 100 miles (160 km) away.
11 – Paul McCartney is fined for importing cannabis into Sweden.
13 – 23 explosions take place in Northern Ireland in the worst day of violence since direct rule was imposed.
15 – The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards top the UK pop charts with their bagpipe-dominated version of Amazing Grace.
15 – Nixon steps up bombing as North Vietnamese launch a new offensive. American bombers, including the B-52 Strato-Fortress, pound Hanoi and its port Haiphong.
16 – Apollo 16 blasts off for the fifth moon landing.
16 – Roy Wood’s new band, Electric Light Orchestra, make their live debut at The Fox and Greyhound pub in Park Lane, Croydon (England).
18 – Bangladesh joins the Commonwealth of Nations
20 – Apollo 16 lands on the Moon. Astronauts Colonel Charles Duke and Commander Thomas K Mattingly walk on the Moon’s surface, conducting tests and collecting rocks. Their roving vehicle travels nearly 17 miles, and the astronauts set up an astronomical observatory.
22 – John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook become the first people ever to row across the Pacific Ocean.
25 – The body of actor George Sanders is discovered in a hotel room near Barcelona (Spain). He had taken a drug overdose and left a note which read: “Dear world, I am leaving you because I am bored. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool”.
27 – Phil King, manager of the Blue Öyster Cult, dies after being shot in the head 13 times with a .38 Magnum handgun by a gambling associate.
27 – Splashdown of Apollo 16 in the Pacific Ocean.
28 – Fritz The Cat, a full-length X-rated cartoon following the exploits of the counterculture feline created by underground animator R Crumb, is released.
30 – The Brighton Belle train makes its last journey from London Victoria to Brighton.
May
02 – FBI founder and director-for-life, J Edgar Hoover (b. 1895), dies.
02 – A fire at the Sunshine Mine in Idaho kills 91 workers.
03 – 150,000 evacuate Hue as Communists draw near.
03 – Stone The Crows lead guitarist Les Harvey dies when he is electrocuted by a poorly grounded microphone while on stage in Swansea, Wales. He is 25.
04 – An environmental activist group called the Don’t Make A Wave Committee is renamed as Greenpeace.
05 – 115 die in Alitalia DC-8 crash.
06 – Thousands of members of the Tutsi tribe are massacred in the African republic of Burundi by members of the Hutu tribe, backed by Congolese mercenaries.
06 – Leeds beat Arsenal 1-0 in the FA Cup Final.
07 – The Los Angeles Lakers defeat the New York Knicks 114-100 to claim their first NBA title.
09 – Israeli commandos disguised as maintenance staff storm the hijacked Sabena Boeing jet at Lod airport in Tel Aviv and rescue 92 passengers held hostage by Black September guerrillas. Two of the Arab hijackers are shot dead, and their two female companions are captured.
11 – John Lennon appears on TV on The Dick Cavett Show, claiming he is under constant surveillance by the FBI and that his telephone has been tapped.
13 – 118 die in a department store fire in Japan.
15 – Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama is shot by Arthur H. Bremer (21) at a political rally in Laurel, Maryland. The assassination attempt leaves Wallace permanently paralysed from the waist down.
18 – After a bomb threat aboard the Queen Elizabeth II, bomb disposal experts from the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service parachute aboard the liner, which is en route from New York to Southampton, but find nothing. The threat turns out to have been a hoax. A $350,000 ransom is delivered but not collected.
21 – Claiming to be Jesus Christ, Hungarian-born Australian geologist Laszlo Toth attacks Michelangelo’s Pietà statue in the Vatican with a hammer, breaking the arm of the sculpture’s Virgin Mary.
22 – Nixon becomes the first US President to visit the USSR. He is welcomed – not very warmly – by President Nikolai Podgorny, Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.
22 – Ceylon becomes the independent Republic of Sri Lanka.
26 – Nixon and Brezhnev sign the Moscow pact – a treaty limiting strategic arms – in an attempt to slow the nuclear arms race.
26 – The state-owned travel firm Thomas Cook & Son is sold to a consortium of private businesses headed by the Midland Bank. The consortium pays £22.5m for the firm – far higher than expected.
28 – The Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII who gave up his throne for the love of Wallis Simpson) dies in Paris, aged 77.
30 – Three Japanese gunmen employed by Palestinian terrorists kill 26 people and wound 76 at Lod Airport, Tel Aviv, in Israel. Security staff were on the alert for a Palestinian attack and allowed the smartly dressed Japanese men with violin cases to pass them by. One of the terrorists is shot by an Israeli security guard, another kills himself by letting off a grenade, and the last, Kozo Okamoto, is arrested.
30 – A Big Dipper crashes at Battersea fun fair in London, killing four children and injuring 16 others (pictured at right).
30 – The official wing of the IRA in Northern Ireland announces a ceasefire, reserving the right of self-defence against attacks by the British Army and sectarian groups. But the Provisional IRA dismiss the truce as having “little effect” on the situation.
June
01/15 – West German police arrest the Baader-Meinhof urban guerrilla group. Andreas Baader is captured on 1 June by Frankfurt police after a gun battle. Ulrike Meinhof is arrested in Hanover two weeks later.
01 – Iraq nationalises the London-based Iraq Petroleum Company.
03 – A Protestant march against the creation of “no-go” areas in Londonderry ends in a bloody battle on the Craigavon Bridge. Soldiers use rubber bullets and water cannon to control the crowd when the so-called “Tartan gangs” at the tail end of the march begin to throw bottles and stones at the Army.
03 – Sally Priesand is ordained at the Isaac M Wise Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio, to become the first woman rabbi.
04 – Black activist Angela Davis is found innocent of abetting a 1970 courtroom escape that left four dead.
05 – The Duke of Windsor is laid to rest at the royal burial ground at Frogmore after a two-day lying-in-state at St George’s Chapel in Windsor.
06 – 400 miners are killed in an explosion in Wankie, Rhodesia.
07 – Lester Piggott rides ‘Relko’ to victory in the Derby.
08 – US Planes bomb a South Vietnamese village in error. The iconic image by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Nick Ut of nine-year-old Kim Phúc, running naked and burned from the village of Trang Bang, where a napalm bomb has just been dropped, makes a serious impact on efforts to stop the war.
08 – 422 miners are feared dead after a pit explosion in Rhodesia.
09 – John Hammond, director of talent acquisition at Columbia Records, signs New Jersey unknown Bruce Springsteen.
09/11 – Elvis Presley plays his first ever concerts in New York (at Madison Square Garden). John Lennon, Bob Dylan and George Harrison are in the audience on his opening night.
10 – Torrential rain causes floods in the Black Hills of South Dakota (USA), with the loss of 200 lives.
12 – The ITA takes control of independent radio as well as television in the UK and is renamed the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA).
13 – Clyde McPhatter, the original vocalist with The Drifters, dies of complications from liver, heart and kidney ailments. He is just 38.
14 – In the US, the EPA (Environmental Protection Authority) outlaws nearly all uses of the pesticide DDT.
15 – Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher discontinues free milk to British schoolchildren. The nickname “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher” will stay with her for the rest of her life.
16 – German police capture the last remaining member of the notorious Baader-Meinhof ‘Red Army Faction’ when they arrest Ulrike Meinhof in Hanover (Andreas Baader was arrested two weeks previously in Frankfurt).
16 – Clifford Irving is jailed for 30 months for writing and selling the fake Howard Hughes autobiography.
17 – Five intruders are caught trying to install listening devices in the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate offices in Washington. One of them is James McCord, a former CIA agent currently working for the Republican National Committee.
17 – Eisaku Sato, Japanese Head of State since 1964, resigns.
18 – All 118 people on board BEA flight 548 from London Heathrow to Brussels are killed when the Trident aircraft crashes in a field in Staines minutes after take-off.
18 – Jack Nicklaus wins the US Open – his 11th major golf victory.
18 – West Germany beats the Soviet Union 3-0 to win the European Football Championships.
20 – The Tallahatchie Bridge featured in Bobbie Gentry‘s song Ode to Billy Joe collapses into the muddy water that also swallowed up Billy Joe McAllister.
24 – Floods in the Eastern USA follow a severe hurricane, with the loss of more than 120 lives.
26 – A total of 87 British soldiers have now died while serving in Northern Ireland.
29 – US Supreme Court rules that capital punishment is unconstitutional, deeming the death penalty cruel and unusual.
July
02 – Pakistan and India sign a peace treaty known as the Simla Agreement.
05 – After a fire at Coldharbour Hospital in Sherborne, Dorset, 30 mentally handicapped patients die.
06 – Kakuei Tanaka is new PM of Japan.
10/14 – US Democratic National Convention nominates Senator George McGovern for president. McGovern vows to end the Vietnam War within 90 days of taking office.
14 – Fierce fighting in Belfast kills three British soldiers and five civilians.
15 – Pioneer 10 enters the asteroid belt. The following February, it becomes the first spacecraft to make it all the way through it.
15 – The album Honky Chateau by Elton John begins a five-week run at #1 in the US. It contains future hit singles Rocket Man and Honky Cat.
17 – Japanese terrorist Kozo Okamoto is jailed for life for the airport massacre in Tel Aviv.
17 – During The Rolling Stones‘ eight-week North American tour, a bomb planted underneath a truck ramp at a venue in Montreal explodes and damages the band’s equipment.
20 – The police forcibly remove an aboriginal camp set up to draw attention to land rights outside the Australian Parliament building in Canberra, which aboriginals claim is built on land of special significance.
21 – 22 IRA bombs explode in 80 minutes in Belfast, killing 13 people and injuring 130.
25 – Reporter Jean Heller publishes a story revealing the Tuskegee Experiment, a 40-year-old study conducted by US government health services and the Tuskegee Institute that monitored the effects of untreated syphilis on Black men.
28 – A nationwide dock strike begins in the UK.
29 – England win the fourth Test by seven wickets and retain the Ashes.
29 – Screaming Lord Sutch is arrested in London with four naked women as part of a publicity stunt to promote his upcoming tour.
30 – 17 men are killed in an explosion at the Box Flat coal mine at Ipswich, near Brisbane (Australia).
August
04 – The Black September Organisation attacks the Trans-Alpine oil pipeline in Italy, causing $35 million of damage.
04 – Arthur Bremer, 21 – the man who attempted to assassinate Governor George Wallace on 15 May – is sentenced to 63 years in prison.
05 – London’s Wembley Stadium fills with people clamouring to see musical artists 15 years past their peak. The ‘London Rock ‘n’ Roll Show’ features Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley and Bill Haley and his Comets and is one of the first rock shows to explicitly trade on nostalgia. Former Joe Meek discovery Heinz plays one Eddie Cochran song, accompanied by a band including Wilko Johnson and John Sparks from Dr Feelgood.
06 – Idi Amin gives Asians of non-Ugandan citizenship 90 days to leave Uganda. 50,000 attempt to flee to Britain. The expulsion makes General Amin popular among many of the black majority, and members of the Army are rewarded with Asian property and businesses. The Ugandan economy, however, goes into drastic decline.
09 – British troops clash in Belfast with the protestant Ulster Defence Association for the first time.
11 – The last American ground combat unit – the 3rd Battalion of the 21st Infantry – leaves the huge base at Da Nang. America’s role in the ground war in Vietnam is now at an end.
11 – Apparently unaware of the duo’s sex and drugs focus, the mayor of San Antonio declares 11 August 1972 ‘Cheech and Chong Day’.
12 – US planes make their heaviest bombing raids ever on North Vietnam. US troop strength in South Vietnam is now down to 39,000.
14 – 156 people die in a plane crash in East Berlin.
16 – Transport Workers’ Union calls off the dock strike in Britain.
17 – The World Court rules that Iceland should not extend its exclusive fishing zone to 50 miles.
20 – South Vietnamese troops abandon the provincial capital of Quezon.
21 – The oil supertankers Oswego Guardian and Texanita collide in waters off South Africa, causing an explosion that kills 47 and spills about 10,000 tons of oil. One of the lifeboats from the Texanita is found at Bunbury, Western Australia, two years later.
21/23 – Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew are nominated for re-election by the Republican National Convention.
22 – The International Olympic Committee expels Rhodesia from the Munich Olympics.
26 – XXth Olympic Games open in Munich, Germany.
26 – British yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester (b. 1901) dies.
26 – Swimmer Mark Spitz wins a record seven Olympic gold medals at Munich.
28 – The Queen’s cousin, Prince William of Gloucester and his co-pilot, Vyrell Mitchell, are killed when their Piper Cherokee aircraft crashes after take-off at Halfpenny Green Airfield near Wolverhampton while taking part in an air race. The accident occurs in front of William’s mother, the Duchess of Gloucester and 30,000 appalled spectators.
29 – Nixon announces that an investigation of the Watergate break-in led by White House counsel John Dean, has revealed that administration officials were not involved.
September
01 – Bobby Fischer becomes the first US citizen to win the world chess championship, beating Boris Spassky of the USSR. His victory in Reykjavik, Iceland, ends 24 years of Soviet domination of the title.
02 – 22 people are killed in a nightclub bomb attack in Montreal.
05 – Palestinian militants from the Black September group murder two Israeli athletes and take nine others hostage in the Olympic Village at the Munich games. In a bungled rescue attempt, all nine remaining hostages, four Palestinians and one German policeman, are killed.
08 – Israeli planes attack ten guerrilla bases in Syria and Lebanon in retaliation for the deaths of their Olympic athletes.
12 – ‘Cod War’ breaks out after an Icelandic gunboat sinks two British trawlers in the North Sea.
14 – The Waltons debuts on CBS.
14 – The US halts a $3 million loan to Uganda after Idi Amin publically praises Hitler.
14 – Pope Paul VI abolishes the tonsure – the circular shaving of the head for the clergy.
15 – The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Fisher of Lambeth, dies.
17 – M*A*S*H premieres on CBS.
18 – The first Ugandan refugees fleeing the persecution of Idi Amin‘s military dictatorship arrive in Britain.
19 – An Israeli diplomat, Dr Ami Sachori, is killed at the Israeli embassy in London by a letter bomb from the Black September organisation. Four more are intercepted by police. 51 letter bombs in total were sent on 16 September from Amsterdam to Israeli embassies all over the world, but Dr Sachori was the only fatality.
22 – No US military deaths are reported in Vietnam for the first time since March 1965.
23 – President Ferdinand Marcos declares martial law in the Philippines.
23 – Manly-Warringah defeats Eastern Suburbs 19-14 in the Australian Rugby League Grand Final.
24 – A fighter jet takes off from Sacramento Executive Airport in California, fails to become airborne, and crashes into an ice cream parlor. 22 people die in the crash, including 12 children.
25 – In a referendum, Norway votes against joining the Common Market. The government resigns.
26 – The Philips N1500, the first commercially available home video cassette recorder (VCR), becomes available to schools and colleges in the UK – although the general public must wait until the end of 1973 before they can get their hands on one.
27 – Former Merseybeat legend Rory Storm (born Alan Caldwell) dies from suicide. He is 32.
29 – Japan and China agree to end the state of war existing since 1937.
October
02 – Denmark’s referendum votes in favour of joining the Common Market.
02 – Led Zeppelin begin a Japanese tour with the first of two nights at The Budokan in Tokyo.
05 – Six small girls and their teacher are kidnapped from a country school at Faraday, near Castlemaine in Victoria (Australia). The captives are driven through the bush and held overnight in the back of a red baker’s van while their kidnappers demand $1 million ransom from the Education Minister. The teacher and her charges escape while their captors go to collect the ransom, and the two kidnappers, Robert Boland (32) and Edwin Eastwood (21), are captured.
06 – 147 die and 700 are injured in a train crash in Mexico.
09 – Robert Boland and Edwin Eastwood are charged over the Faraday kidnapping on 5 October.
10 – Sir John Betjeman becomes Britain’s Poet Laureate.
10 – Godfather of Soul, James Brown, visits the White House to discuss America’s race and drug problems with President Richard Nixon.
11 – A US bombing raid destroys the French Embassy in Hanoi.
13 – A Uruguayan plane crashes in the Andes. Of the 45 people on board, 29 die in the crash. The remainder, mainly members of a rugby team called the Old Christians, are trapped for ten weeks on a remote Andean mountain. They survive by eating the bodies of six of the dead.
14 – 170 die in the USSR’s worst civil air disaster.
14 – Kung Fu starring David Carradine premieres on ABC.
17 – The Queen arrives in Yugoslavia on a State Visit – the first to a Communist state by a British monarch.
17 – Martial Law is declared in Seoul, South Korea.
18 – The Clean Water Act comes into effect in the US.
19 – Vietnam peace is close – Kissinger holds talks.
21 – In Australia, the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme is officially completed.
21 – The soundtrack album to the Blaxploitation movie Superfly by Curtis Mayfield reaches #1 in the US album chart.
22 – England goalkeeper Gordon Banks damages his eyesight in a car crash.
22 – The Oakland A’s defeat the Big Red Machine of Cincinnati to clinch the World Series.
24 – Baseball legend Jackie Robinson dies of an apparent heart attack.
29 – Arab terrorists hijack a Lufthansa flight over Turkey and secure the release of three Palestinians being held in West Germany for the Olympic massacre.
November
02 – 500 American Indians seize the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington DC in protest at government neglect of them. The protesters remain there until 8 November.
02 – Singers Carly Simon and James Taylor wed at her apartment in Manhattan.
03 – Allende forms a new People’s Front Government to end a wave of strikes in Chile.
04 – The Communist Party headquarters in New York is firebombed.
05 – Miss Christine, a member of Frank Zappa‘s GTOs, dies of a heroin overdose.
06 – Billy Murcia, drummer with The New York Dolls, dies at a Chelsea (London) apartment, suffocating on black coffee poured down his throat by a girlfriend who is attempting to keep him awake following an alcohol and drugs session. He is only 21.
06 – UK wage freeze imposed in an attempt to combat inflation.
07 – Nixon is re-elected as president of the USA over George McGovern in the largest Republican landslide in history.
08 – The Pay TV network Home Box Office (HBO) is launched.
09 – A 2.6 million-year-old skull with human characteristics is found at Koobi Fora in Kenya by paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey. It is thought it may be a link between the ape-like australopithecines and the more recent Homo Erectus.
10 – Letter bombs go off in London.
10 – Tickets go on sale for Led Zeppelin‘s huge forthcoming UK tour – The price is £1.
11 – The P&O liner Spirit Of London begins her maiden voyage.
11 – Berry Oakley, bass player of The Allman Brothers Band, is killed in a motorcycle accident three blocks from where fellow band member Duane Allman was killed. He is 24.
12 – George Harrison drills 200 feet deep holes at his Friar Park mansion near Henley-on-Thames. He needs water to replenish his vast ornamental lakes.
13 – “It’s Time”, says Gough Whitlam as he campaigns to bring Labor to power in Australia.
15 – A gun battle takes place at Alice Springs in the Australian outback with an unidentified Hungarian hijacker.
17 – Juan Peron returns to Argentina after 17 years in exile. Thousands line the streets to celebrate.
17 – The High Court in Britain bans The Sunday Times from printing articles on thalidomide.
18 – Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten dies of a heroin overdose.
19 – Willy Brandt’s SPD Government is returned to office in West Germany.
19 – Provisional IRA leader Sean MacStiofain is arrested by Special Branch.
20 – The Queen and Prince Philip celebrate their silver wedding anniversary at Westminster Abbey and the Guildhall, London.
21 – After convicted murderer Richard Speck’s death sentence is reversed, a Peoria, Illinois, judge issues him with a new sentence of hundreds of years in prison.
22 – The first US B-52 is shot down in Vietnam.
22 – The US Navy reveals it has spent over $375,000 studying the aerodynamic qualities of the Frisbee.
25 – Norman Kirk becomes Prime Minister of New Zealand after the Labour party wins a sweeping victory.
26 – Police foil a rescue attempt as eight armed men try to rescue IRA chief Sean MacStiofain from the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin. Four men, two of them bystanders, are injured during a gunfight between the IRA men and Special Branch officers on the ward before the attackers are arrested.
28 – The 100th British soldier dies in Northern Ireland.
December
01 – Belinda Green, a blue-eyed, 20-year-old Australian honey blonde, wins the Miss World contest at the Royal Albert Hall in London, beating 52 others for the title. Ingeborg Sørensen, the 24-year-old Miss Norway, takes second place, and Hanna Urdan, 17, of Israel, captures the third spot.
01 – Two die in bomb blasts in Dublin. The first blast was outside the Liffey Bar at the Liberty Hall (home of Irish Trade Unions), the second was outside a bus driver’s canteen in Marlborough Street, which killed a bus driver and a ticket collector.
01 – Former Italian President Antonio Segni dies in a Rome hospital, aged 81.
02 – Australian Labor Party wins federal election after 23 years in opposition. Gough Whitlam is new Prime Minister.
05 – New Australian PM Gough Whitlam ends National Service and frees all jailed draft resisters.
07 – Apollo 17 is launched, the sixth and last spacecraft of that series. Over 80% of American households watch the launch live on television. Astronauts Captain Eugene Cernan, Lieutenant-Commander Ronald Evans and Dr Harrison Schmitt splash back to Earth on December 19 carrying 249 lb of rock and soil samples from the Moon.
08 – A United Airlines Boeing 737 coming in to land at Midway Airport in Chicago crashes into a heavily populated neighbourhood, killing at least 43 people. Amongst the passengers killed are Illinois congressman George W. Collins, CBS News correspondent Michele Clark and Dorothy Hunt, the wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt.
08 – Seven hijackers are killed in an Ethiopian aircraft.
08 – Citing an inexcusable delay between the seating of the jury and the start of actual court proceedings, the judge in the Pentagon Papers trial in Los Angeles declares a mistrial.
09 – Veteran US gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who, with Hedda Hopper, was once the most influential and feared critic in Hollywood, dies aged 91.
10 – British businessman Ronald Grove is kidnapped in Buenos Aires.
11 – Apollo 17 lands on the moon. Captain Eugene A Cernan and Dr Harrison H Schmitt will be the last men to walk on the moon.
11 – In Australia, the new Whitlam government orders withdrawal of all remaining Australian troops in Vietnam.
13 – £11.25 million ($18m) in compensation is offered to Thalidomide victims in the UK.
16 – Pepsico reveals its agreement with the Soviet Union to manufacture and distribute Pepsi to the USSR. The following April, this deal will be expanded into a soda-for-vodka swap, bringing Stolichnaya vodka to American drinkers.
16 – Becoming the first-ever NFL team to remain undefeated and untied through a regular season, the Miami Dolphins shut out the Baltimore Colts 16-0.
16 – At least 1,000 British motorcyclists are ordered to surrender their licenses because they are too young to ride. The age limit for a motorcycle licence has been raised from 16 to 17, so many 16-year-olds are having to send their licences back.
18 – US tries to force North Vietnam back to the conference table with the resumption of full-scale bombing of North Vietnam by B-52’s after Paris peace negotiation reach impasse.
19 – Apollo 17 splashes down safely.
19 – The last Australian troops leave Vietnam after 10 years of fighting in the war.
20 – Billy Snedden replaces William McMahon as Australian Liberal Party leader, following McMahon’s resounding defeat.
22 – The Chilean Air Force find 14 survivors from a plane that crashed in the Argentine Andes over two months ago. The survivors later confirm that they ate human flesh to survive during their ordeal.
22 – Australia establishes diplomatic relations with Red China and East Germany.
24 – A severe earthquake lasting two hours kills 10,000 in Managua, Nicaragua.
24 – Former weakling and then mail-order strongman Charles Atlas dies.
26 – Former US President Harry S Truman dies in a hospital in Kansas City, aged 88. America goes into mourning.
29 – The weekly Life magazine is published for the last time.
30 – Nixon orders a halt to US bombing of Hanoi.
31 – Sectarian killings in Northern Ireland now total 676.
Also this year . . .
- XX Olympic Games in Munich, Germany
- XI Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan
- Sony introduces 3/4 inch “U-Matic” cassette VCR
- CAT brain scanner used for the first time
- Belinda Green (Australia) is crowned Miss World
- Kerry Anne Wells (Australia) is crowned Miss Universe
- The BBC offers Ceefax, two-way cable information system
- HBO starts pay-TV service for cable in the USA
- Gilbert O’Sullivan, a 23-year-old former Swindon postal clerk turned singer/songwriter, sells more records in 1972 than any artist in the world
- Wearing of seat belts made compulsory throughout Australia
- ‘Piping Lane’ wins Melbourne Cup