1972

News Highlights of 1972

• The Coca-Cola Bottling Company recalls 3 million cans of Coke because some of the aluminum lids are found to be contaminated.

• The Winter Olympics are held in Sapporo, Japan.

• Germany pays $5 million to hijackers of a jumbo jet for the release of passengers held hostage.

• President Nixon becomes the first U.S.president to visit China.

• The Pioneer 10 spacecraft takes a 21-month journey to Jupiter, beaming back to earth detailed photos of the planet and its moons.

• President Nixon becomes the first U.S.president to visit Moscow. He spends one week there in talks with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

• Alabama Governor George Wallace, a controversial presidential candidate because of his white supremacist sympathies, is shot by a sniper and paralyzed from the waist down but plans to continue his quest for the White House.

• Five burglars are charged with breaking into the Washington, D.C., office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex.

• President Nixon orders the biggest ever bombing raid on North Vietnam.

• South Dakota Senator George McGovern chooses Sergeant Shriver as his vice-presidential running mate on the Democratic ticket.

• Arabs massacre 11 Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany. The Olympic flag flies at half mast.

• American swimmer Mark Spitz wins a record seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics.

• President Nixon and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko sign a strategic arms limitation treaty.

• Richard Nixon wins a second term in the White House.