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On May 19, 1972 — the 82nd birthday of Ho Chi Minh, communist leader of North Vietnam – shortly before midnight, a woman known only as Anna entered the women’s bathroom on the fourth floor of the Air Force wing in the Pentagon, the massive US military headquarters just outside Washington, DC. Shortly after, at … Continue reading
On March 7, 1972, the East Lansing, Michigan, city council approved by a vote of 4–to-1 an act declaring the city must seek to “employ the best applicant for each vacancy on the basis of his qualifications for the job and without regard to race, color, creed, national origin, sex or homosexuality.” It was the … Continue reading
In February 1972, US Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the controversial Southern politician who years before had run for the presidency on a platform of racial segregation — a Republican who had defected from the Democratic ranks in 1964 — sent a memo to Attorney General John Mitchell declaring that John Lennon, the former … Continue reading
On August 5, 1972, one of the biggest raids staged in America’s so-called “war on drugs” took place when a task force of state, local and federal law enforcement agencies combined to take down a secretive group of hippie LSD dealers and hashish smugglers known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Police and federal agents … Continue reading
In 1972, American electronics manufacturer CTI announced that it was eliminating its home stereo system division to concentrate on one marketing area: 8-track players for cars. Bad move. By 1972, audio cassettes, with their smaller footprint, easier storage and increased audio facility — thanks to the introduction of Dolby B noise reduction technology in 1971 … Continue reading
Beginning with the 1972 models, all cars, trucks, vans and utility vehicles were required to have seat belts as standard equipment – which was rather late in the game, because doctors have been calling for the installation of seat belts in cars since the 1930s. Those early physicians knew that seat belts could reduce traffic … Continue reading
On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, which stated that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal … Continue reading
In 1972, the “@” symbol made its debut in the world’s first networked emails. Credit for the adoption of the symbol to separate user names from computer hosts goes to Ray Tomlinson, a long-time computer scientist at the company Bolt, Beranek and Newman, which had won the contract in the late 1960s to create ARPANET, … Continue reading
On July 21, 1972, comedian George Carlin was arrested at Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Summerfest and charged with violating that state’s obscenity laws after performing his controversial routine, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” originally contained in his album Class Clown, recorded May 27, 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in California. “There are … Continue reading
On May 28, 1972, operatives from the Nixon White House broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate in Washington, DC, and installed bugging equipment, to monitor the party’s activities in the months leading up to the presidential election later that year. The burglars were tied to President Nixon’s re-election campaign. – the … Continue reading
Mark Walston 