WHAT HAPPENED IN 1972.
Look what happened the 1972.

Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London, England. (4. January 1972)

United States President Richard Nixon orders the development of a Space Shuttle program. (5. January 1972)

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to the newly independent Bangladesh as president after spending over nine months in prison in Pakistan. (10. January 1972)

East Pakistan renames itself Bangladesh. (11. January 1972)

Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia and President Edward Akufo-Addo of Ghana are ousted in a bloodless military coup by Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong. (13. January 1972)

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark ascends the throne, the first Queen of Denmark since 1412 and the first Danish monarch not named Frederick or Christian since 1513. (14. January 1972)

Pakistan launched its Nuclear weapons program few weeks after its defeat in Bangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. (20. January 1972)

Japanese Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi is found hiding in a Guam jungle, where he had been since the end of World War II. (24. January 1972)

Bloody Sunday: British Paratroopers open fire on and kill fourteen unarmed civil rights/anti-internment marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland. (30. January 1972)

Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations. (30. January 1972)

Kuala Lumpur becomes a city by a royal charter granted by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia. (1. February 1972)

The British embassy in Dublin is destroyed in protest at Bloody Sunday. (2. February 1972)

The first day of the seven-day 1972 Iran blizzard, which would kill at least 4,000 people, making it the deadliest snowstorm in history. (3. February 1972)

Bob Douglas becomes the first African American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. (5. February 1972)

Sound recordings are granted U.S. federal copyright protection for the first time. (15. February 1972)

José María Velasco Ibarra, serving as President of Ecuador for the fifth time, is overthrown by the military for the fourth time. (15. February 1972)

Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle exceed those of the Ford Model-T. (17. February 1972)

The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, (6 Cal.3d 628) invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment. (18. February 1972)

The Asama-Sansō hostage standoff begins in Japan. (19. February 1972)

President Richard Nixon visits the People's Republic of China to normalize Sino-American relations. (21. February 1972)