This Year in History:
1972
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On May 11, 1972, Mexican American labor organizer and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez begins a hunger strike. The strike, which he undertook in opposition to an Arizona law severely…
During an outdoor rally in Laurel, Maryland, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and a presidential candidate, is shot by 21‑year‑old Arthur Bremer. Three others were wounded, and Wallace was…
On May 22, 1972, President Richard Nixon arrives in Moscow for a summit with Soviet leaders. Although it was Nixon’s first visit to the Soviet Union as president, he had…
On May 26, 1972, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements. At the time, these agreements were…
Angela Yvonne Davis, a Black communist activist and former philosophy professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, is acquitted on charges of conspiracy, murder and kidnapping by a jury…
Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, visits Alabama Governor George Wallace, perhaps the single most famous supporter of racial segregation in modern history,…
In the early morning of June 17, 1972, five men are arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, an office‑hotel‑apartment complex in Washington, D.C. In…
On June 18, 1972, a Trident jetliner crashes after takeoff from Heathrow Airport in London, killing 118 people. The official cause of this accident, which becomes known as the Staines…
On June 23, 1972, Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 is enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based…
On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon’s advisor, H.R. Haldeman, tells the president to put pressure on the head of the FBI to “stay the hell out of this [Watergate…
President Nixon announces that no more draftees will be sent to Vietnam unless they volunteer for such duty. He also announced that a force of 10,000 troops would be withdrawn…
In Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court rules by a vote of 5‑4 that capital punishment, as it is currently employed on the state and federal level, is unconstitutional.…
On July 1, 1972, the first standalone issue of the feminist publication Ms. Magazine debuts—and the issue sells out quickly. Launched during an era when male‑run women’s magazines typically focused…
The last U.S. ground combat unit in South Vietnam, the Third Battalion, Twenty‑First Infantry, is deactivated and begins departing for the United States. The unit had been guarding the U.S.…
Delegates entering the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach are harassed by 3,000 antiwar demonstrators, many painted with death masks. The rest of the convention is marked by demonstrations outside…
On September 1, 1972, in what’s billed as the “Match of the Century,” American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer defeats Russian Boris Spassky during the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland.…
U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz wins his seventh gold medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Spitz swam the fly leg of the 400‑meter medley relay, and his team set…
During the 1972 Summer Olympics at Munich, in the early morning of September 5, a group of Palestinian terrorists storms the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, killing two…
At Furstenfeldbruck air base near Munich, an attempt by West German police to rescue nine Israeli Olympic team members held hostage by Palestinian terrorists ends in disaster. In an extended…
After nearly 40 years of riding across millions of American TV and movie screens, the cowboy actor William Boyd, best known for his role as Hopalong Cassidy, dies on September…
