| 1950–1980 | UK [television] | Watch With Mother, a series for young children featuring favourite characters such as Andy Pandy, the Flowerpot Men, Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, and the Woodentops, is shown on British television. |
| October 1969 - December 1974 | UK [television] | Monty Python's Flying Circus, an anarchic comedy sketch show starring John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, and Terry Gilliam, is shown on British television. |
| 1970–1979 | USA [statistics and demography] | The number of one-parent families in the USA increases 79%, representing one in five of all families. |
| 1970–1979 | USA [statistics and demography] | There are over 4 million immigrants to the USA in the period 1970–79, coming mainly from Asia and the Americas. |
| 1971–1978 | USA, North America, Asia, Europe, South America, Africa [statistics and demography] | Immigration patterns in the USA: 38% from North America (Mexico, Caribbean); 35% from Asia; 19% from Europe; 6% from South America; and 2% from Africa. |
| 1972 | UK [television] | Mastermind, a general and specialist knowledge competition presented by Magnus Magnusson, begins on British television. |
| 1972 | USA [thought and scholarship] | US palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Nils Eldridge propose the punctuated equilibrium model – the idea that evolution progresses in fits and starts rather than at a uniform rate. |
| 1972 | USA [statistics and demography] | The US birth rate – 15.8 per thousand of the population – is the lowest since records began in 1917. |
| 1972 | USA [surgery] | Approximately 500 sex-change operations have been performed since Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, performed the first one in the USA in 1966. |
| 1972 | USA [sports] | US runners Philip Knight and William Bowerman found Nike, Inc, under the name of Blue Ribbon Sports. By 1990, Nike will be the leader in the training shoes market and Knight will be a billionaire. |
| 1972 | USA [buildings] | The 411-m/1,350-ft-high World Trade Center opens in New York City – it is the tallest building in the world, until 1973. |
| 1972 | USA [cinema and film] | The epic gangster picture The Godfather is released in the USA. It is co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Diane Keaton, and Robert Duvall. |
| 1972 | USA [cinema and film] | Sears, Roebuck introduces the first video rental system in the USA, hiring out films for $3–6 a night, to run on the Avco Cartavision video player. |
| 1972 | USA [computing] | US computer scientist Nolan Bushnell invents ‘Pong’, the first computer game. |
| 1972 | England [health and medicine] | English engineer Godfrey Hounsfield performs the first successful CAT (computerized axial tomography) scan, which provides cross-sectional X-rays of the human body. |
| 1972 | UK [horse-racing] | The British Jockey Club allows women jockeys to compete in horse racing for the first time, though only on the flat. |
| 1972 | Netherlands [information technology] | The Dutch company Philips patents the video disk. Information is contained in 45,000 grooves, all of the same width and depth but varying in length and spacing, cut in a spiral onto the plastic disc, and reproduced by a laser. |
| 1972 | South Africa [plays] | The play Sizwe Banzi is Dead, by the South African writer Athol Fugard, is first performed, in South Africa. |
| 1972 | UK [plays] | The play Jumpers, by the English writer Tom Stoppard, is first performed, at the Old Vic Theatre in London, England. |
| 1972 | Ireland [poetry] | The Irish poet Seamus Heaney publishes his poetry collection Wintering Out. |
| 1972 | UK, USA [popular music] | Groups such as the Bay City Rollers, the Jackson Five, the Osmonds, and David Cassidy mark the era of ‘Teenybop’, with the bands appealing particularly to teenage girls. |
| 1972 | France [literary criticism] | The French cultural critic Roland Barthes publishes Le Plaisir du texte/Pleasure of the Text. |
| 1972 | Japan [materials] | Japanese researcher Hideki Shirakawa attempts to make the polymer polyacetylene but accidentally adds a thousand times too much catalyst and discovers electrically conductive plastics; they have a metallic appearance. |
| 1972 | USA [medicine] | US microbiologist Daniel Nathans uses a restriction enzyme that splits DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules to produce a genetic map of the monkey virus (SV40), the simplest virus known to produce cancer; it is the first application of these enzymes to an understanding of the molecular basis of cancer. |
| 1972 | USA [musicals] | The musical Grease, with lyrics and music by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, is first performed at the Eden Theatre in New York City. Its better known songs include ‘Shakin'’ and ‘At the High School Hop’. |
| 10 January 1972 | USA [public health] | The US surgeon general reports that inhalation of cigarette smoke by nonsmokers is a severe health hazard; his report prompts calls to ban smoking in such public areas as restaurants, offices, and aeroplanes. |
| 20 January 1972 | USA [banking and finance] | Juanita Kreps is appointed the first woman governor of the New York stock exchange. |
| 25 January 1972 | USA, North Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | The US president Richard Nixon reveals that his national security adviser Henry Kissinger has been conducting secret peace negotiations with North Vietnam, during the Vietnam War, since 1969. |
| 30 January 1972 | Northern Ireland [political events] | British troops shoot dead 13 civilians in Northern Ireland when violence erupts at a civil-rights march in the Bogside, Londonderry. The day is described as ‘Bloody Sunday’ by Labour members of the British Parliament. |
| 30 January 1972 | Pakistan [political events] | Pakistan leaves the Commonwealth in protest at Britain's plans to recognize Bangladesh as an independent nation. |
| 28 February 1972 | UK [football] | English women's football clubs are officially recognized by the English Football Association (FA) under the assurance that no matches are to be allowed between mixed teams or between men's teams and women's teams.The FA had banned women from playing at the grounds of clubs under its jurisdiction in 1921. |
| March 1972 | USA [legislation] | The US Senate sends a 27th amendment to the states. Known as the Equal Rights Amendment, the legislation prohibits sex discrimination. |
| 22 March 1972 | USA [family planning] | The Supreme Court in the USA rules that a Massachusetts law denying contraceptives to single people is unconstitutional. |
| 26 March 1972 | Malta, UK [diplomacy] | Britain and NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) agree to pay Malta £14 million a year for the use of its military bases. |
| 29 March 1972 | North Vietnam, South Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | The North Vietnamese launch a major offensive in the Vietnam War in Quang Tri, South Vietnam's northernmost city. |
| 30 March 1972 | Northern Ireland [political events] | Britain assumes direct rule over Northern Ireland, with William Whitelaw as secretary of state. |
| 1 April 1972 | UK [family planning] | Hounslow Borough Council in London, England, is the first local authority to offer free contraceptives to residents. |
| 1 May 1972 | South Vietnam, North Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | The South Vietnamese city of Quang Tri falls to North Vietnamese forces. |
| 8 May 1972 | North Vietnam, USA [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | The US president Richard Nixon orders the blockade and mining of North Vietnamese ports in the Vietnam War. |
| 22 May - 30 May 1972 | USSR, USA [diplomacy] | Richard Nixon becomes the first US president to visit the USSR. On 26 May he signs a treaty limiting antiballistic missile sites. |
| 22 May 1972 | Ceylon [political events] | Ceylon ceases to be a British dominion and becomes a republic within the Commonwealth under the name of Sri Lanka. |
| 23 May 1972 | Rhodesia, UK [political events] | Britain abandons its Rhodesian settlement proposals when the Pearce Commission reports that black opinion is unfavourable. |
| 28 May 1972 | UK [births and deaths] | Edward VIII, King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (January–December 1936) who abdicated to marry the US divorcée Wallis Simpson, dies in Paris, France (77). |
| June 1972 | world [ecology] | The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment is held in Stockholm, Sweden; the first international conference on the state of the environment, its aim is to improve the world's environment through monitoring, resource management, and education. |
| June 1972 | USA [Judaism] | Sally J Priesand, of Cincinnati, Ohio, becomes the first woman to be ordained a rabbi. |
| July 1972 | USA, Japan [sports] | Hawaiian-born Jesse Kuhaulua, also known as Takamiyama, is the first non-Japanese sumo wrestler to win an official top-division tournament. |
| 3 July 1972 | UK [television] | The first paying cable television service in Britain is supplied by Greenwich Cablevision. Designed as a community television service, it has around 9,000 subscribers. |
| 8 July 1972 | USA, USSR [trade] | The US president Richard Nixon announces that the USSR will purchase $750 million worth of US grain over three years. |
| 23 July 1972 | USA [space exploration] | The USA launches Landsat 1, the first of a series of satellites for surveying the Earth's resources from space. |
| August 1972 | USA [newspapers] | Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein implicate the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP) in the Watergate burglary, leading to a series of revelations about the Nixon administration's complicity in the Watergate affair that contribute to the president's eventual downfall. |
| 4 August 1972 | Uganda, UK [political events] | President Idi Amin of Uganda gives Asians holding foreign passports 90 days to leave the country on the grounds that they are ‘sabotaging the economy’. His action prompts a flood of refugees into Britain. |
| 12 August 1972 | North Vietnam, South Vietnam, USA [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | Heavy US air raids on North Vietnam accompany the departure of US combat infantry from South Vietnam. |
| 1 September 1972 | Iceland [political events] | Iceland unilaterally extends its fishing limit from 19 km/12 mi to 80 km/50 mi. |
| 5 September 1972 | West Germany, Israel [terrorism] | Eight members of the Palestinian Black September guerrilla group attack the Olympic village in Munich, West Germany, killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine hostage; they issue demands for the release of 200 Palestinians from Israeli jails. Five terrorists and all nine hostages are killed when West German police storm the compound the next day. |
| 6 September 1972 | West Germany, Israel [Olympic Games] | A memorial service is held at the Olympic stadium in Munich, West Germany, in honour of the 11 Israeli athletes murdered by Arab terrorists on 5 September. Later the same day, with the support of the Israelis, competition recommences. |
| 7 September 1972 | South Korea, South Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | South Korea withdraws its remaining 37,000 troops from South Vietnam. |
| 15 September 1972 | South Vietnam, North Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | South Vietnamese forces recapture the city of Quang Tri from the North Vietnamese. |
| 22 September 1972 | Uganda [political events] | President Idi Amin orders 8,000 Asians to leave Uganda within 48 hours. |
| 24 September 1972 | Norway [political events] | A referendum in Norway results in a 52.7% vote against entry into the European Economic Community (Common Market). |
| 29 September 1972 | Japan, China [political events] | Japan and China agree to end the legal state of war that has existed between them since 1937. |
| October 1972 | France [women's rights] | A French teenager is tried for having an illegal abortion and is acquitted after outspoken support by influential figures, resulting in increased availability of free abortions in major cities. |
| 3 October 1972 | USA, USSR [political events] | The USA and the USSR sign the final SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) accords limiting submarine-carried and land-based missiles. |
| 24 October 1972 | USA [births and deaths] | Jackie Robinson, US baseball player, the first black player in the major leagues, dies in Stamford, Connecticut (53). |
| 24 November 1972 | Finland, East Germany [diplomacy] | Finland formally recognizes East Germany as a separate country, the first Western nation to do so. |
| 15 December 1972 | Australia [women's rights] | Australian law orders equal pay for women. |
| 26 December 1972 | USA [births and deaths] | Harry S Truman, 33rd president of the USA 1945–53, a Democrat, dies in Kansas City, Missouri (88). |
| 31 December 1972 | UK, USA [everyday life] | British inventor Clive Sinclair launches his pocket calculator, the first to be widely available. The ‘Sinclair Executive’ weighs 70 g/12.5 oz and goes on sale for £79 in Britain and $195 in the USA. |
