World Events
Population: 3.783 billion
Nobel Peace Prize: Willy Brandt (West Germany)
A military junta led by Major General Idi Amin siezes power in Uganda (Jan. 25).
Mao Zedong invites the US ping-pong team to visit Beijing (Apr. 6).
Nixon ends the US trade embargo against China. (Apr. 14).
Erich Honecker assumes leadership of the East German Communist Party after Walter Ulbricht's resignation (May).
India and the USSR sign a 20-year friendship pact (Aug. 9).
President Mobutu renames the Democratic Republic of Congo, establishing Zaire (Oct. 27).
U.S. Events
President: Richard M. Nixon
Vice President: Spiro T. Agnew
Population: 207,660,677
Life expectancy: 71.1 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 41.6
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000): 37.7
Economics
US GDP (1998 dollars): $1,125.40 billion
Federal spending: $210.17 billion
Federal debt: $408.2 billion
Median Household Income
(current dollars): $9,028
Consumer Price Index: 40.5
Unemployment: 4.9%
Cost of a first-class stamp: $0.06 ($0.08 as of 5/16/71)
US Supreme Court rules unanimously that busing of students may be ordered to achieve racial desegregation (April 20).
Anti-war militants attempt to disrupt government business in Washington (May 3)—police and military units arrest as many as 12,000; most are later released.
Pentagon Papers published (June 13).
Twenty-sixth Amendment to US Constitution lowers voting age to 18. (June 30).
Sports
Super Bowl
Baltimore d. Dallas (16-13)
World Series
Pittsburgh d. Baltimore (4-3)
NBA Championship
Milwaukee d. Baltimore Bullets (4-0)
Stanley Cup
Montreal d. Chicago (4-3)
Wimbledon
Women: Evonne Goolagong d. M. Court (6-4 6-1)
Men: John Newcombe d. S. Smith (6-3 5-7 2-6 6-4 6-4)
Kentucky Derby Champion
Canonero II
NCAA Basketball Championship
UCLA d. Villanova (68-62)
NCAA Football Champions
Nebraska (13-0-0)
Entertainment
Pulitzer Prizes
Music: Synchronisms No. 6 for Piano and Electronic Sound, Mario Davidowsky
Drama: The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Paul Zindel
Oscars awarded in 1971
Academy Award, Best Picture: Patton, Frank McCarthy, producer (Twentieth Century-Fox)
Nobel Prize for Literature: Pablo Neruda (Chile)
Grammy Awards
Record of the Year: Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
Album of the Year: Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel (Columbia)
Song of the Year: Bridge Over Troubled Water - Paul Simon, songwriter
Miss America: Phyllis Ann George (TX)
All in the Family debuts on CBS and introduces a trend in socially conscious programming.
Jim Morrison dies in Paris at age 27. (July 3).
The Allman Brothers' Duane Allman dies in a motorcycle accident at age 24. (Oct. 29).
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opens in Washington, D.C. with the premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass.
Movies
A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection, The Last Picture Show, Fiddler on the Roof, McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Books
E.M. Forster, Maurice
John Hawkes, Blood Oranges
Frank O'Hara, The Collected Poems
Bernard Malamud, The Tenants
Cynthia Ozick, The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Science
Nobel Prizes in Science
Chemistry: Gerhard Herzberg (Canada), for contributions to knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals.
Physics: Dennis Gabor (UK), for invention of holographic method of three-dimensional imagery.
Physiology or Medicine: Earl W. Sutherland, Jr. (US), for research on how hormones work.
Intel introduces the microprocessor. Background: Computers and Internet.
Cho Hao Li synthesizes the growth hormone somatotropin. Background: Health & Nutrition.
Mariner IX, orbitting Mars, takes revealing pictures of the planet's surface. Background: US Unstaffed Planetary and Lunar Programs.
Deaths
J.C. Penney
Igor Stravinsky