Bill Bowerman invents the Waffle Trainer
The origins of the Oregon Waffle, afterwards named the Waffle Trainer, derive from Bowerman’s experiments with a simple waffle iron, the grooves of which proved to be a near perfect mold for a running shoe.
North & Central America
Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game
Pong quickly became a success and was the first commercially successful video game, which helped to establish the video game industry along with the first home console, the Magnavox Odyssey.
The United Church of Christ becomes the first mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. to ordain an openly gay clergyperson
The Rev. Dr. William R. Johnson was the first openly gay person ordained in the United States and perhaps the first worldwide in a mainline Protestant denomination. His ordination took place on June 25, 1972 at the Community UCC in San Carlos, California, authorized by the Golden Gate Association of the Northern California/Nevada Conference UCC.
World’s first plastic recycling mill opens in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania
By the 1980s, plastic recycling was widely practiced in many communities across the United States.
Ray Tomlinson sends the world’s first ever email, to himself
The email was sent from one computer to another computer sitting right beside it in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but it traveled via ARPANET, a network of computers that was the precursor to the Internet.
U.S. NASA’s Mariner 9 becomes the first articial satellite of Mars
Mariner 9 was launched successfully on May 30, 1971, and became the first artificial satellite of Mars when it arrived and went into orbit.
The first Earth Day is celebrated
Earth Day was the brainchild of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the grassroots environmental movement and increase ecological awareness.
ARPANET is first deployed via UCLA, SRI, UCSB, and The University of Utah
ARPANET was an early packet-switching network and the first network to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the moon
After the astronauts returned safely to Earth, another five NASA crewed lunar missions followed in their footsteps. The last, Apollo 17, landed on December 14 1972.
James T. Russell invents precursor to laser discs
American inventor James T. Russell has been credited with inventing the first system to record digital information on an optical transparent foil that is lit from behind by a high-power halogen lamp.