1972

Clockwise from top-left: an earthquake in Nicaragua kills 4,000–11,000 people; the first commercial home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, is released; a photo of the Earth known as The Blue Marble is taken during Apollo's final mission; during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, a terrorist attack carried out; Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is signed; Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashes at the Andes, survivors resort to cannibalism to survive; President Ferdinand Marcos announces on television that the entirety of the Philippines is under martial law (eventually lifted in 1981); US President Richard Nixon is implicated in a scandal involving the theft of documents from the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.
Millennium: 2nd millennium
Centuries:
Decades:
Years:
1972 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar1972
MCMLXXII
Ab urbe condita2725
Armenian calendar1421
ԹՎ ՌՆԻԱ
Assyrian calendar6722
Baháʼí calendar128–129
Balinese saka calendar1893–1894
Bengali calendar1379
Berber calendar2922
British Regnal year20 Eliz. 2 – 21 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar2516
Burmese calendar1334
Byzantine calendar7480–7481
Chinese calendar辛亥年 (Metal Pig)
4669 or 4462
    — to —
壬子年 (Water Rat)
4670 or 4463
Coptic calendar1688–1689
Discordian calendar3138
Ethiopian calendar1964–1965
Hebrew calendar5732–5733
Hindu calendars
 - Vikram Samvat2028–2029
 - Shaka Samvat1893–1894
 - Kali Yuga5072–5073
Holocene calendar11972
Igbo calendar972–973
Iranian calendar1350–1351
Islamic calendar1391–1392
Japanese calendarShōwa 47
(昭和47年)
Javanese calendar1903–1904
Juche calendar61
Julian calendarGregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar4305
Minguo calendarROC 61
民國61年
Nanakshahi calendar504
Thai solar calendar2515
Tibetan calendar阴金猪年
(female Iron-Pig)
2098 or 1717 or 945
    — to —
阳水鼠年
(male Water-Rat)
2099 or 1718 or 946
Unix time63072000 – 94694399

1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1972nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 972nd year of the 2nd millennium, the 72nd year of the 20th century, and the 3rd year of the 1970s decade.

Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using mean solar time [the legal time scale], its duration was 31622401.141 seconds of Terrestrial Time (or Ephemeris Time), which is slightly shorter than 1908).[1]

  1. ^ Stephenson, F. R.; Morrison, L. V. (1984). "Long-Term Changes in the Rotation of the Earth: 700 B. C. to A. D. 1980". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 313 (1524). Royal Society: 47–70. Bibcode:1984RSPTA.313...47S. doi:10.1098/rsta.1984.0082. S2CID 120566848.