Events from the year 1972 in the United States.
Incumbents
Federal government President: Richard Nixon (R-California) Vice President: Spiro Agnew (R-Maryland) Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger (Virginia) Speaker of the House of Representatives: Carl Albert (D-Oklahoma) Senate Majority Leader: Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) Congress: 92nd
State governments Governors and lieutenant governors Governors
Lieutenant governors
Events
January January 5 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a Space Shuttle program. January 7 – Howard Hughes speaks to the press by telephone to denounce Clifford Irving's hoax biography of him. January 16 – Super Bowl VI: The Dallas Cowboys defeat the Miami Dolphins 24–3. January 24 – Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi is discovered in Guam; he had spent 28 years in the jungle and becomes the third-to-last Japanese soldier to surrender after World War II. January 25 – Shirley Chisholm, the first African American Congresswoman, announces her candidacy for president. January 27 – Two New York City Police Department officers, Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie, are assassinated by members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) while on foot patrol in New York's East Village area.
February February 2 – The last draft lottery is held, a watershed event in the wind-down of military conscription in the United States during the Vietnam era. These draft candidates are never called to duty. February 4 – Mariner 9 sends pictures from Mars. February 5 – Bob Douglas becomes the first African American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. February 15 – Phonorecords are granted U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time. February 18 – The California Supreme Court voids the state's death penalty, commuting all death sentences to life in prison. February 21–28 – U.S. President Richard Nixon makes an unprecedented 8-day visit to the People's Republic of China and meets with Mao Zedong. February 23 – Activist Angela Davis is released from jail. A Caruthers, California, farmer, Rodger McAfee, helps her make bail. February 24 – North Vietnamese negotiators walk out of the Paris Peace Talks to protest U.S. air raids. February 26 – A coal sludge spill kills 125 people in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia.
March March 2 – The Pioneer 10 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy, to be the first man-made satellite to leave the Solar System. March 3 Sculpted figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson are completed at Stone Mountain in the U.S. state of Georgia. Mohawk Airlines Flight 405 crashes into a house on Edgewood Avenue in Albany, New York, killing 16 of the 47 people on board, and one person in an upstairs apartment. The impact happened at 8:48 pm after the commuter plane lost power during a snowstorm. March 13 – Clifford Irving admits to a New York court that he had fabricated Howard Hughes' "autobiography". March 15 – The Godfather has its premiere at the Loew's State Theatre in New York City. March 16 – The first building of the Pruitt–Igoe housing development in St. Louis is destroyed. March 22 – The 92nd U.S. Congress votes to send the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. March 24 – Gilchrest Road, New York crossing accident: A school bus crashes into a train in Congers, New York, killing five students. March 26 – After 14 years, the last of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts is telecast by CBS. This last concert is devoted to Gustav Holst's The Planets.
April April 1 - The Major League Baseball Players Association calls a strike, the first work stoppage in the 103-year history of the sport. The walkout lasts 13 days, with 86 games cancelled. April 4 – The Wall Street Journal announced the Digital Watch was on sale. April 7 – Vietnam War veteran Richard McCoy Jr. hijacks a United Airlines jet and extorts $500,000; he is later captured. April 10 The U.S. and the Soviet Union join some 70 nations in signing the Biological Weapons Convention, an agreement to ban biological warfare. The 44th Annual Academy Awards, hosted by Helen Hayes, Alan King, Sammy Davis Jr. and Jack Lemmon, is held at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. William Friedkin's The French Connection wins five awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Friedkin. The film is also tied with both Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof and Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show in receiving eight nominations. April 12 – The X-rated animated movie Fritz the Cat is released. April 16 – Vietnam War – Nguyen Hue Offensive: Prompted by the North Vietnamese offensive, the United States resumes bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. April 17 – The first Boston Marathon in which women are officially allowed to compete. April 29 – The fourth anniversary of the Broadway musical Hair is celebrated with a free concert at a Central Park bandshell, followed by dinner at the Four Seasons. There, 13 Black Panther protesters and the show's co-author, Jim Rado, are arrested for disturbing the peace and for using marijuana. On this day Kings Island in Mason Ohio opened to the public.
May May 2 – A fire in the Sunshine Mine in northern Idaho kills 91. May 7 - The Los Angeles Lakers win the NBA championship, defeating the New York Knicks in five games. May 8 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the mining of Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam. May 11 – The Boston Bruins defeat the New York Rangers four games to two to win the Stanley Cup. May 15 Okinawa is returned to Japan after 27 years of United States occupation. Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama is shot and paralyzed by Arthur Bremer at a political rally in Laurel, Maryland, United States. May 16 – The first financial derivatives exchange, the International Monetary Market (IMM), opens on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. May 24 – A Red Army Faction bomb explodes in the Campbell Barracks of the U.S. Army Supreme European Command in Heidelberg, West Germany; 3 U.S. soldiers (Clyde Bonner, Ronald Woodard and Charles Peck) are killed. May 26 Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty in Moscow, as well as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and other agreements. The Watergate first break-in, the "Ameritas dinner", fails. Wernher von Braun retires from NASA, frustrated by the agency's unwillingness to pursue a crewed trans-orbital space program. May 27 Mark Donohue wins the Indianapolis 500 in the Penske Racing McLaren-Offenhauser. This was the first win for Team Penske in the 500. A second Watergate break-in attempt fails.
June
June 3 – Sally Priesand becomes the first female rabbi in the U.S. June 4 – Angela Davis is found not guilty of murder. June 9 – The Black Hills flood kills 238 in South Dakota. June 12 American Airlines Flight 96 during a domestic flight leg between Detroit, Michigan and Buffalo, New York, suffers an explosive rapid decompression over Windsor, Ontario due to the aircraft's left cargo door breaking off mid-flight. Everyone onboard survives after the aircraft makes a successful emergency landing back in Detroit. The first Popeyes opens in Arabi, Louisiana. June 14–23 – Hurricane Agnes kills 117 on the U.S. east coast. June 15–18 – The first U.S. Libertarian Party National Convention is held in Denver, Colorado. June 17 Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The United States returns Okinawa, occupied and governed since the Battle of Okinawa, to Japan. Main Street Electrical Parade debuts at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Parade was also cloned for other Disney Parks worldwide June 23 Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon and White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the C.I.A. to obstruct the F.B.I.'s investigation into the Watergate break-ins. President Nixon signs Title IX into law as part of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibiting gender discrimination in any educational program receiving federal funds. June 26 – Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney co-found Atari, Inc. June 28 – U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that no new draftees will be sent to Vietnam. June 29 – Furman v. Georgia: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that the death penalty is unconstitutional, converting all death sentences to life imprisonment.
July July – U.S. actress Jane Fonda tours North Vietnam, during which she is photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. July 1 Ms. magazine begins publication. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms becomes independent from the IRS. July 4 – The first Rainbow Gathering is held in Colorado. July 8 – The U.S. sells grain to the Soviet Union for $750 million. July 10–14 – The Democratic National Convention meets in Miami Beach. Senator George McGovern, who backs the immediate and complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam, is nominated for president. He names fellow Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate. July 15 – The Pruitt–Igoe housing development is demolished in Saint Louis, Missouri. July 20 – The Armstrong Air & Space Museum is dedicated to honor Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon. July 21 – Comedian George Carlin is arrested by Milwaukee, Wisconsin police for public obscenity, for reciting his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" at Summerfest. July 23 – The United States launches Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite. July 25 – U.S. health officials admit that African Americans were used as guinea pigs in the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.
August August 1 – U.S. Senator Thomas Eagleton, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, withdraws from the race after revealing he suffered from depression and had been hospitalized three times for its treatment. August 4 Arthur Bremer is jailed for 63 years for shooting U.S. presidential primary candidate George Wallace. A huge solar flare (one of the largest ever recorded) knocks out cable lines in U.S. It begins with the appearance of sunspots on August 2; an August 4 flare kicks off high levels of activity until August 10. August 10 – A brilliant, daytime meteor skips off the Earth's atmosphere due to an Apollo asteroid streaking over the western US into Canada.Observation of Meteoroid Impacts by Space-Based Sensors astrosociety.org, 1998, 'Apollo asteroid about ten meters in diameter' August 12 – The last U.S. ground troops are withdrawn from Vietnam. August 13–18 – The Special Olympics World Games take place in Los Angeles. August 20 – One hundred thousand people attended the legendary Wattstax Black music concert in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in California.The Summer Of Music Documentaries: 'Wattstax' National Public Radio, 2010-07-16. August 21 – The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, renominates U.S. President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew for a second term. August 22 – John Wojtowicz, 27, and Sal Naturile, 18, hold several Chase Manhattan Bank employees hostage for 17 hours in Gravesend, Brooklyn, N.Y, an event later dramatized in the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon.
September September 1 – World Chess Championship 1972 ("Match of the century"): Bobby Fischer defeats Boris Spassky in a chess match at Reykjavík, Iceland, becoming the first American chess champion. September 4 – The New Price is Right, a revival of the 1956-65 NBC and ABC game show of the same name premieres on CBS, along with Gambit and The Joker's Wild, overhauling the network's daytime schedule. September 12 – Maude, the first in a series of spin-offs from All in the Family, premieres on CBS. Bea Arthur stars as the title character. September 17 – The television series M*A*S*H begins its run on CBS.