Year 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. According to measurements of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest ever year, as two leap seconds were added during this year, an event which has not since been repeated.
- February 1 - The first scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) is introduced (price $395).
- February 2 - A bomb explodes at the British Yacht Club in West Berlin, killing Irwin Beelitz, a German boat builder.
- February 2 - The German militant group Movement 2 June announces its support of the Irish Republican Army.
- February 2 - Anti-British riots take place throughout Ireland. The British Embassy in Dublin is burned to the ground, as are several British-owned businesses.
- February 3–13 - The 1972 Winter Olympics are held in Sapporo, Japan.
- February 4 - Mariner 9 sends pictures from Mars.
- February 5 - U.S. airlines begin mandatory inspection of passengers and baggage.
- February 5 - Bob Douglas becomes the first African American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
- February 9 - The British government declares a state of emergency over a miners' strike.
- February 15 - President of Ecuador José María Velasco Ibarra is deposed for the fourth time.
- February 15 - Phonorecords are granted U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time.
- February 17 - Volkswagen Beetle sales exceed those of the Ford Model-T when the 15,007,034th Beetle is produced.
- February 18 - The California Supreme Court voids the state's death penalty, commuting all death sentences to life in prison.
- February 19 - Asama-Sanso incident: Five United Red Army memberes break into a lodge below Mount Asama, taking the wife of the lodge keeper hostage, starting the
- February 21 - The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon.
- February 21–28 - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon makes an unprecedented 8-day visit to the People's Republic of China and meets with Mao Zedong.
- February 22 - Aldershot bombing: An Official IRA bomb kills 7 in Aldershot, England.
- February 23 - Angela Davis is released from jail. A Caruthers, California farmer, Rodger McAfee, helps her make bail.
- February 23 - A Lufthansa plane is hijacked and taken to Aden. Passengers are released after a ransom of 16 million German marks is agreed.
- 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.
- February 26 - Luna 20 comes back to Earth with a cargo of moon rocks.
- February 28 - The Asama-Sanso incident ends in a standoff between 5 members of the Japanese United Red Army and the authorities, in which 2 policemen are killed and 12 injured.
- 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.
- April 10 - A 7.0 Richter scale earthquake kills 5,000 people in the Iranian province of Fars.
- April 10 - The 44th Annual Academy Awards are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.
- April 13 - The Universal Postal Union decides to recognize the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese representative, effectively expelling the Republic of China administering Taiwan.
- April 16 - Apollo 16 (John Young, Ken Mattingly, Charlie Duke) is launched. During the mission, the astronauts achieve a lunar rover speed record of 18 km/h.
- April 16 - Vietnam War - Nguyen Hue Offensive: Prompted by the North Vietnamese offensive, the United States resumes bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.
- April 22 - Sylvia Cook and John Fairfax finish rowing across the Pacific.
- April 27 - A no-confidence vote against German Chancellor Willy Brandt fails under obscure circumstances.
- 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 marijuana use.
- May
- The Burundian Genocide against the Hutu begins; more than 500,000 Hutus die.
- The Magnavox Odyssey video game system is released, thus marking the dawn of the video game age.
- May 2 - Fire in a silver mine in Idaho kills 91.
- May 5 - An Alitalia DC-8 crashes west of Palermo, Sicily; 115 die.
- May 7 - General elections are held in Italy.
- May 8 - U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the mining of Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam.
- May 13 - Fire in a nightclub atop the Sennichi department store in Osaka, Japan, kills 115.
- May 15 - Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama is shot by Arthur Herman Bremer at a Laurel, Maryland political rally.
- May 16 - The first financial derivatives exchange, the International Monetary Market (IMM), opens on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
- May 18 - Four troopers of both SAS and SBS are parachuted onto the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, 1,000 miles (1,600 km) off Britain in the Atlantic, after a bomb threat and ransom demand, which turns out to be bogus.
- May 19 - Three out of 6 bombs explode in the Springer Press building in Hamburg, Germany, injuring 17; the Red Army Faction claims responsibility.
- May 21 - In Rome, Laszlo Toth attacks Michelangelo's "Pietà" statue with a sledgehammer, shouting that he is Jesus Christ.
- May 22 - Ceylon becomes the republic of Sri Lanka under prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, when its new constitution is ratified.
- May 23 - The Tamil United Front (now known as Tamil United Liberation Front, a pro-Tamil organization, is founded.
- May 24 - Rangers lift the Cup Winners Cup, defeating Dynamo Moscow in the final at the Nou Camp. Their supporters invade the pitch, with the team banned from defending the trophy the following season.
- 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.
- May 26 - The Watergate first break-in, the "Ameritas dinner", fails.
- May 26 - Wernher von Braun retires from NASA, frustrated by the agency's unwillingness to pursue a manned trans-orbital space program.
- May 26 - Willandra National Park is established in Australia.
- May 27 - A second Watergate break-in attempt fails.
- May 30 - The Angry Brigade goes on trial in the United Kingdom.
- May 30 - Three Japanese Red Army members kill 24 and injure 100 in Lod Airport, Israel.
- July - U.S. actress Jane Fonda tours North Vietnam, during which she is photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.
- July 1 - The Canadian ketch Vega, flying the Greenpeace III banner, collides with the French naval minesweeper La Paimpolaise while in international waters, to protest French nuclear weapon tests in the South Pacific.
- July 1 - The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms becomes independent from the IRS.
- July 2 - Following Pakistan's surrender to India in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, both nations sign the historic Simla Agreement, agreeing to settle their disputes bilaterally.
- 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 - A stampede of elephants kills 24 people in the Chandka Forest in India.
- 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 18 - Anwar Sadat expels 20,000 Soviet advisors from Egypt.
- July 21 - Bloody Friday: 22 bombs planted by the Provisional IRA explode in Belfast, Northern Ireland; 9 people are killed and 130 seriously injured.
- 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 21 - A collision between two trains near Sevilla, Spain kills 76 people.
- 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.
- July 29 - A national dock strike begins in Britain.
- July 31 - Operation Motorman: British troops move into the no-go areas of Belfast and Derry, Northern Ireland, ending Free Derry.
- August 1 - U.S. Senator Thomas Eagleton, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, withdraws from the race after revealing he was once treated for mental illness.
- August 4 - Arthur Bremer is jailed for 63 years for shooting George Wallace.
- August 4 - Dictator Idi Amin declares that Uganda will expel 50,000 Asians with British passports to Britain within 3 months.
- August 4 - 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.[1]
- August 12 - The last U.S. ground troops are withdrawn from Vietnam.
- August 14 - An East German Ilyushin airliner crashes near East Berlin; all 156 onboard perish.
- August 16 - The Royal Moroccan Air Force mistakenly fires upon, but fails to bring down, Hassan II of Morocco's plane while he is traveling back to Rabat.
- 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.
- August 22 - Jane Fonda makes an antiwar broadcast from a hotel room in Hanoi.
- August 26 – September 11 - The 1972 Summer Olympics are held in Munich, West Germany.
- October 1 - The first publication reporting the production of a recombinant DNA molecule, marks the birth of modern molecular biology methodology.
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- Jackson, David A.; Symons, Robert H.; and Berg, Paul. (1972). Biochemical Method for Inserting New Genetic Information into DNA of Simian Virus 40: Circular SV40 DNA Molecules Containing Lambda Phage Genes and the Galactose Operon of Escherichia coli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) 69(10), 2904-2909.
Nixon's landslide victory in the electoral college during the
1972 Election .
- November - At a scientific meeting in Honolulu, Herbert Boyer and Stanley N. Cohen conceive the concept of recombinant DNA. They publish their results in November 1973 in PNAS. Separately in 1972, Paul Berg also recombines DNA in a test tube. Recombinant DNA technology has dramatically changed the field of biological sciences, especially biotechnology, and opened the door to genetically modified organisms.
- November 5 - A group of Amerindians occupies the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
- November 7 - U.S. presidential election, 1972: Republican incumbent Richard Nixon defeats Democratic Senator George McGovern in a landslide (the election had the lowest voter turnout since 1948, with only 55 percent of the electorate voting).
- November 11 - Vietnam War - Vietnamization: The United States Army turns over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam.
- November 14 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 1,000 (1,003.16) for the first time.
- November 16 - The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization adopts the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage [1].
- November 19 - Seán Mac Stíofáin, a leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, is arrested in Dublin after giving an interview to RTÉ.
- November 22 - Vietnam War: The United States loses its first B-52 Stratofortress of the war.
- November 28 - The last executions in Paris, France. Roger Bontems and Claude Buffet - the Clairvaux Mutineers - were guillotined at La Sante Prison by chief executioner Andre Obrecht (already suffering from Parkinson's Disease). Bontems had been found innocent of murder by the court, but as Buffet's accomplice was condemned to death anyway. President Georges Pompidou, in private an abolitionist, upheld both death sentences in deference to French public opinion.
- November 29 - Atari kicks off the first generation of video games with the release of their seminal arcade version of Pong, the first game to achieve commercial success.
- November 30 - Vietnam War: White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler tells the press that there will be no more public announcements concerning United States troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels are now down to 27,000.
- November 30 - Cod War: British Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home says that Royal Navy ships will be stationed to protect British trawlers off Iceland.
