Tidbits Looks Back at the Year 1972 • Vol. 18: #31

• In the world of sports, Super Bowl VI was held on January 16 at New Orleans’ Tulane Stadium. At kickoff, the temperature was a chilling 39 degrees, a record cold day for The Big Easy and, in fact, the coldest Super Bowl ever played. The contest between the Dallas Cowboys and the Miami Dolphins resulted in a Cowboys win, 24-3, the team’s first Super Bowl victory. The halftime show was a salute to New Orleans native and jazz legend, Louis Armstrong, who had died six months earlier. It featured jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, singer Carol Channing, and trumpeter Al Hirt

• In September 1972, Roberto Clemente, the 18-year veteran of the Pittsburgh Pirates, recorded the 3,000th hit of his career.

It was also the final hit of his career. Clemente retired to continue the charitable work he had engaged in during most of his life. On December 23 that year, a massive 6.2 earthquake hit Nicaragua, killing an estimated 11,000 and leaving 300,000 homeless. On New Years’ Eve, Clemente chartered a plane to deliver aid to earthquake victims. Sadly, the plane crashed shortly after takeoff, and the baseball great perished along with the crew.

• Baseball’s World Series was a match between the Oakland Athletics and the Cincinnati Reds. The A’s captured the title, four games to three, their first championship since 1930, when the team was located in Philadelphia.

Notable players in this Series included Catfish Hunter, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, and Pete Rose. The A’s were forced to play without their star outfielder Reggie Jackson, who had been injured in the final game of the playoffs.

• At the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, American swimmer Mark Spitz became the first athlete to win seven gold medals in a single Olympics.

The day after Spitz’s achievement, tragedy struck the Olympics when eight members of the terrorist group Black September, a faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, scaled the fence surrounding the Village carrying grenades and assault rifles. Entering the Israeli athletes’ dorm, the group killed two immediately, and took nine others hostage, citing their demands of the release of 234 Palestinians jailed in Israel. Rescue efforts failed drastically, and by the end of September 6, all of the athletes, along with a German policeman and five of the terrorists were dead.

• Through the marketing know-how of automotive executive Lee Iacocca, the recently introduced Ford Pinto subcompact ranked among the most popular cars in 1972, selling over three million of their models during its production. But its popularity waned when the car was dubbed a potential death trap if involved in a rear-end collision due to the vulnerable placement of the gas tank. Despite knowing about the danger, Ford management made the decision not to modify the design, because doing so would have harmed corporate profits.

• San Francisco residents had a new innovative method of transportation when the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART, began passenger service in September 1972.

• The big story in Washington in 1972 was the infamous Watergate scandal, which involved five White House operatives burglarizing and illegally telephone wiretapping the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office/hotel/apartment complex in Washington. When witnesses testified that President Richard Nixon had a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office, Nixon attempted to cover up the activities and persuaded other federal officials to deflect the investigation, all of which led to Nixon’s resignation. He remains the only president to resign from office. All in all, of the 69 people indicted in the scandal, 48 were convicted.

• On March 15, 1972, the first of three Godfather movies premiered in New York City, a film based on Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel, chronicling the fictional Corleone Mafia family. The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, winning three, including Best Picture and Best Actor, Marlon Brando. Considered one of the greatest films of all time, it was 1972’s highest-grossing movie, earning about $290 million at the box office. Director Francis Ford Coppola was just 31 years old when he was hired for the job.

• Today, if you need a calculator, you whip out your phone. But in 1972, consumers were introduced to the first pocket scientific calculator, the HP-35. Hewlett-Packard debuted their 35-key calculator with its four basic functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) to replace the slide rule that had been used for generations. The price was a spendy $395, which translates to over $2,600 today. The company estimated first year sales of 10,000 calculators, which would be their break-even number. Instead, they sold 100,000. By the time the HP-35 was discontinued in 1975, upwards of 300,000 had been sold.

• The year 1972 was a monumental one for women. The Equal Rights Amendment, providing for the legal equality of the sexes and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex was passed by the U.S. Senate in March. In April, women were officially allowed to compete in the Boston Marathon for the first time in the race’s 75-year history. The first woman winner was 33-year-old Nina Kuscsik, who was also the winner of the New York City marathon.

Women were allowed into Dartmouth College for the first time in the Fall of 1972, the last Ivy League college to break the gender barrier. Also that Fall, the first female FBI agents were hired, one a 31-year-old former nun. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was adamant in his ruling that only men could be special agents, but following his death four months earlier, the ban was lifted. J. Edgar Hoover had been the FBI Director for 48 years at the time of his death at age 77.

• If you wanted to be seen as a stylish hipster in 1972, your wardrobe would likely include bell-bottom pants, high-waisted jeans, colorful tie-died shirts, gold chains, doubleknit slacks, round sunglasses and a feathered hair style.

You probably owned at least one mesmerizing lava lamp to gaze at while you listened to ABBA, Roxy Music, Paul Simon, John Denver, and The Eagles on an 8-track tape player.

Your favorite television programs would likely have included The Benny Hill Show, The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, and Monty Python's Flying Circus, which you probably watched in black & white, or, if you were really, really hip -- on a color counsel TV that was a prized piece of furniture in your shag-carpeted living room. □