July 1972

July 1, 1972 (Saturday)

• John N. Mitchell, who had resigned as the United States Attorney General to head the Committee to Re-elect the President, quit that job, ostensibly to reconcile with his wife, Martha. Mitchell was later convicted of conspiracy arising from his role in the Watergate scandal during his tenure at CRP.
• Gloria Steinem published the first issue of Ms. magazine, with Wonder Woman on the cover and the title "Wonder Woman For President". Steinem wanted to lobby DC comics to display Wonder Woman as a feminist hero because she felt that new images of Wonder Woman in the 1960s objectified her. By including Wonder Woman on the cover of Ms., Steinem was able to encourage Dick Giordano to reinstate Wonder Woman's truth lasso, bracelets, and her origin story.
• The first official UK Gay Pride Rally was held in London. July 1 was chosen as the nearest Saturday to the third anniversary of the six-day Stonewall riots in New York City during the period from June 28 to July 3, 1969. The rally attracted approximately 2,000 participants.

  July 2, 1972 (Sunday)

• The musical Fiddler on the Roof closed on Broadway after a record 3,242 performances. With music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, Fiddler had first been performed on September 22, 1964.
• The North Slope Borough, Alaska, was created. Lying above the Arctic Circle, the borough, similar to a county, is the northernmost state subdivision in the United States.

  July 3, 1972 (Monday)

• Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi and President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto signed the Simla Agreement, resolving to peacefully negotiate future disputes, releasing prisoners of war, and withdrawing their military forces behind their sides of a 460-mile long border.

  July 4, 1972 (Tuesday)

• At 10:00 a.m., announcements were made simultaneously in North Korea and South Korea that the two nations had secretly negotiated an agreement to discuss reunification.
• Born: Craig Spearman, New Zealand cricketer; in Auckland

  July 5, 1972 (Wednesday)

• In a vote to replace outgoing Prime Minister Eisaku Satō, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party leaders selected Kakuei Tanaka over Sato's protege, Foreign Minister Takeo Fukuda, on the second ballot by a 282–190 majority. Masayoshi Ohira, who threw his support to Tanaka after a first ballot bid, replaced Fukuda as Foreign Minister. Fukuda, Ohira, and the other original candidate, Takeo Miki, would all eventually attain the Prime Minister post. As the new LDP leader, Tanaka received majority approval in both Houses of the Diet the following day.
• In the Japanese village of Kami in the Kōchi Prefecture on Shikoku Island, a levee collapsed at Lake Shinji, killing at least 61 people as part of a series of flood disasters that would kill 447 people and injure 1,056 in the 11-day period from July 3 to July 13.
• France's President Georges Pompidou fired Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas, who had been under investigation because of income taxes. Pompidou then exercised his right to select a new Premier, picking Pierre Messmer to succeed him.
• In San Francisco, a team of FBI agents stormed a hijacked Pacific Southwest Airlines jet, and killed the two men who had been holding 86 people on board Flight 710 hostage. One passenger, E.H. Stanley Carter of Quebec, was killed in the crossfire and two other men were wounded, including actor Victor Sen Yung, who portrayed Hop Sing on the TV series Bonanza.

  July 6, 1972 (Thursday)

• Heavy rains began in southern Japan, triggering landslides that would kill 183 people, including 25 on the island of Amakusa, part of the Kumamoto Prefecture. The debris reportedly swept down mountainsides to bury the villages of Ryugatake, Kuratake and Himedo. There were a total of 122 fatalities from 5 to 13 July.
• The first payment of "hush money", via the Committee to Re-Elect the President, to the Watergate burglars, was made. Over eight months, lasting until March 22, 1973, almost $430,000 was paid to the men to keep them from implicating the White House in the break-in of DNC headquarters.
• Born: Daniel Andrews, Australian politician, Premier of Victoria since 2014; in Williamstown, Victoria
• Died:
• *Athenagoras I, 86, Patriarch of Greek Orthodox Church since 1948
• *Brandon deWilde, 30, child actor, was killed when his car skidded off the road during a thunderstorm near Lakewood, Colorado and struck a parked construction truck. De Wilde had been nominated for an Oscar at age 10 for his performance in the film ''Shane''

  July 7, 1972 (Friday)

• Harold B. Lee was formally ordained as the 11th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, succeeding Joseph Fielding Smith, who had died five days earlier. At 73, Lee was the youngest church president in 40 years.
• United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who was later shown to have been an active participant in the Holocaust, visited the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz
• Irish Republican Army leaders were secretly flown to London to meet with British officials to discuss a settlement in Northern Ireland.
• Born: Lisa Leslie, American pro basketball star, for the Los Angeles Sparks and MVP of Women's National Basketball Association in 2001, 2004, and 2006; in Gardena, California
• Died: Former King Talal of Jordan, 63, who had been monarch from 1951 until 1952 until being forced to abdicate because of schizophrenia

  July 8, 1972 (Saturday)

• A three-year, $750,000,000 deal, for the Soviet Union to purchase grain from the United States, was announced by Henry Kissinger from the "Western White House" at San Clemente. The Soviets, who needed to make up for agricultural shortfalls, agreed to purchase the grain on credit at % annual interest, the standard rate for the Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose Secretary, Earl Butz, had conferred with his counterpart, Soviet Agriculture Minister Vladimir Matskevich.
• Palestinian author and spokesman Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated in Beirut, when a bomb destroyed his car shortly after he started it. The blast, which was believed to have been arranged by Israeli forces in retaliation for the Lod Airport massacre, killed Kanafani's 18-year-old niece as well.
• Born: Sourav Ganguly, Indian cricketer; in Calcutta

  July 9, 1972 (Sunday)

• The body of the late Kwame Nkrumah was returned to Ghana for burial in his home village of Nkroful. Nkrumah, who had been Ghana's first President before being deposed and exiled, had died on April 27.
• A ceasefire between the Irish Republican Army and British forces effectively came to an end when British troops killed five civilians in Belfast, three of whom were teenagers. Although the Irish Republican Army had killed many Protestant civilians during the ceasefire period. and two British Soldiers only minutes before the ceasefire came into effect on the 26th June 1972

  July 10, 1972 (Monday)

• The MK-ULTRA program of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, testing drugs for mind control on unsuspecting people, was terminated after 19 years by the CIA official in charge, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. The existence of the project would not be revealed publicly until 1977 hearings by a U.S. Senate investigative committee.
• The Indian News Agency reported that at least 24 people had been killed during the previous month in the Chandaka Forest in the Indian state of Odisha.
• An intentionally set fire on board the aircraft carrier as it sat in port in Norfolk, Virginia, caused USD $7,000,000 worth of damage, and was the largest single act of sabotage in United States Navy history. Seaman apprentice Jeffrey Allison was later convicted of having started the blaze. The Forrestal had been the site of a fire in 1967 that had killed 132 people.
• A total solar eclipse was visible over northeastern Asia and northern America.
• Born: Sofía Vergara, Colombian-born American TV actress known for Modern Family; in Barranquilla

  July 11, 1972 (Tuesday)

• The long anticipated chess match between world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, and United States champion Bobby Fischer, began in Iceland at Reykjavík, nine days and seven minutes after the original start date. With no opponent present, Spassky made his opening move at by moving his queen's pawn forward two spaces in the first of 24 games. Fischer walked into the 2,500-seat Reykjavík Sports Hall minutes later.
• U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was assured the Democratic presidential nomination after his chief rivals, Hubert H. Humphrey and Edmund S. Muskie, announced that they would release their delegates to him.
• Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin were reprimanded for carrying 400 stamped envelopes to the Moon and back as a favor for West German stamp dealer Herman Sieger.

  July 12, 1972 (Wednesday)

• The "Intersputnik" Treaty took effect, formally creating the "Organization for Cooperation of Socialist Countries in Telephone and Postal Communications". The agreement, which included sharing of communications and satellite technology between Communist nations, had been signed on November 15, 1971, by representatives from Albania, Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, North Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, the USSR, and North Vietnam.
• Died: Drana Bojaxhiu, mother of Mother Teresa

  July 13, 1972 (Thursday)

• The British House of Commons narrowly approved the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community, voting to ratify the Treaty of Accession on its third reading, 301–284
• At the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, delegates formally nominated George McGovern as their candidate for President of the United States. McGovern was not able to find a running mate until late in the afternoon, when U.S. Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri agreed to join the ticket. The formal nomination of Eagleton as the Democratic candidate for Vice-President went on throughout the evening and past midnight, with frivolous votes being cast, and Eagleton did not receive the nomination until 1:51 the next morning. As a result, Senator McGovern was not able to deliver his acceptance speech on live national television until after most viewers had gone to bed.
• NFL owners Robert Irsay and Carroll Rosenbloom swapped franchises. "We avoided capital gains taxes by doing it this way", Rosenbloom explained, adding that the value of each team was $19,000,000. The teams and their players did not move when the ownership changed. Later, Irsay would move the Colts to Indianapolis and Rosenbloom's widow would move the Rams to St. Louis.