US Air Force stop bombing in South Vietnam after more than nine years
This week in 1972, US Air Force bombing of Viet Cong guerrilla strongholds in South Vietnam ceased after more than nine years. A historian would later note that “some four million tons of bombs fell” on South Vietnam, “making it the mostbombed country in the history of aerial warfare”.
Elsewhere, hundreds of guests at a wedding in New Delhi drank bootleg liquor and were poisoned by what turned out to be a mixture of rubbing alcohol and paint varnish. Less than 48 hours later, more than 100 had died.
Also this week in ‘72, the first home video game system, Odyssey, was introduced by Magnavox.
Designed by Ralph Baer, the console could be hooked up to a TV set for two players to play a tennis-like game, similar to Nolan Bushnell’s game Pong.
A national referendum on divorce, a potential source of serious social upheaval, was given the go-ahead this week in 1972 by the Italian Constitutional Court.
The court ruled that a referendum on the repeal of the 13-month old Divorce Act, passed in 1970, legalised divorce.
In sport, formula One champion Jackie Stewart began the defence of his title by winning the 1972 Argentine Grand Prix in Buenos Aires.
On the other side of the Atlantic, a man claiming to have a gun and a dynamite hijacked a Mohwak Airlines plane and demanded$200,000(£77,000) and two parachutes.
The hijacker seized the aircraft while it was flying between Albany and New York’s La Guardia Airport.
FBI agents and Westchester County Police went to the airport but made no attempt to board the plane.
On completion of the race, the legendary Scottish driver learned that his father, Robert Paul Stewart, had died earlier in the day.
King Frederick of Denmark was laid to rest in the 12-century cathedral in Roskilde, mourned by hundred of thousands of Danes.
The Duke of Edinburgh represented the Queen.