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1972
• On 30 January, in Derry, Northern Ireland, British troops fire on a Republican protest march, resulting in the deaths of 14 people. After this Bloody Sunday massacre, recruitment to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) increases. • From 21 to 27 February, US president Richard Nixon visits China, easing some Cold War tensions. • On 30 March, Britain takes on direct rule over Northern Ireland. • On 4 August, President Idi Amin of Uganda orders the country's Asian community to leave within 90 days. • On 5 September, during the summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, 11 Israeli athletes are massacred by Black September Palestinian terrorists, five of whom are gunned down by West German police. • On 7 November, US president Nixon is re-elected by a landslide against left- wing Democrat George McGovern. • Pocket calculators are first introduced. • Richard Leakey discovers a hominid skull in Kenya that is 2.5 million years old, proving that the ancestors of modern human beings go back much further in time than previously suspected. • The Apollo 17 space mission of 7-19 December is the last to the moon. • American film-maker Francis Ford Coppolla makes The Godfather, an evocative story of Mafia gangsters in the United States. • Pop star David Bowie releases the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars LP. |
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