* Gene Austin ( 1900 – 1972 ), American singer

* Charles Atlas ( 1892 – 1972 ), a famous bodybuilder

He was the fourth child of Ondrej Varchola ( Americanized as Andrew Warhola, Sr., 1889 – 1942 ) and Júlia ( née Zavacká, 1892 – 1972 ), whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U. S. Andy had two older brothers, Paul, born about 1923, and John, born about 1925.

* 1972 – Vietnam War: Easter Offensive – American forces begin sustained air strikes and naval bombardments.

* 1886 – Athenagoras I, Greek religious leader, 268th Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople ( d. 1972 )

* 1929 – Joi Lansing, American model and actress ( d. 1972 )

* 1972 – Scott Martin Brooks, American actor

* 1972 – Chad Eaton, American football player

* 1972 – Jason Hervey, American actor

* 1972 – Ami James, Israeli-American tattoo artist

* 1972 – Anders Thomas Jensen, Danish screenwriter and director

* 1972 – Dickey Simpkins, American basketball player

* 1972 – Jo Van Daele, Belgian discus thrower

* 1972 – Sebnem Ferah, Turkish singer and musician

* 1972 – Dimitrios Kokotis, Greek high jumper

* 1972 – Paul Lo Duca, American baseball player

* 1896 – Reverend Gary Davis, American singer and guitarist ( d. 1972 )

* 1972 – JR Richards, American singer-songwriter, and musician ( Dishwalla )

* 1887 – George, Crown Prince of Serbia ( d. 1972 )

* 1972 – Jaap-Derk Buma, Dutch field hockey player

* 1972 – Felix da Housecat, American DJ and producer

* 1972 – The Great Khali, Indian wrestler

* 1972 – Denise Lewis, English heptathlete

* 1972 – Apollo program: The launch of Apollo 16 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The first manned flight of Apollo was in 1968 and it succeeded in landing the first humans on Earth's Moon in 1969 through 1972.

Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972.

Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, and was supported by the two-man Gemini program which ran concurrently with it from 1962 to 1966.

Apollo 16 launches from the Kennedy Space Center on 16 April 1972.

The Apollo 16 mission successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12: 54 PM EST on 16 April 1972.

The aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga delivered the Apollo 16 command module to the North Island Naval Air Station, near San Diego, California on Friday, 5 May 1972.

* NASA Apollo 16 press kit-6 April 1972

* Interview with the Apollo 16 Astronauts ( 28 June 1972 ) from the Commonwealth Club of California Records at the Hoover Institution Archives.

In the 1972 novel Cyborg, upon which the series was based, Austin remembers watching the Earth " fall away during Apollo XVII.

* NASA Apollo 17 press kit-26 November 1972

* 1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched.

* 1972 – Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon.

* 1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final Extra-vehicular activity ( EVA ) or " Moonwalk " of Apollo 17.

The term most commonly applies to a spacewalk made outside a craft orbiting Earth ( such as the International Space Station ), but also has applied to lunar surface exploration ( commonly known as moonwalks ) performed by six pairs of American astronauts in the Apollo program from 1969 to 1972.

The Lunar Roving Vehicle ( LRV ) or lunar rover was a battery-powered four-wheeled rover used on the Moon in the last three missions of the American Apollo program ( 15, 16, and 17 ) during 1971 and 1972.

View of the Earth, taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 astronaut crew.

The Apollo 17 lunar module that landed on the Moon in 1972 was also named Challenger.

The first flight of Columbia ( STS-1 ) was commanded by John Young, a Gemini and Apollo veteran who was the ninth person to walk on the Moon in 1972, and piloted by Robert Crippen, a rookie astronaut originally selected to fly on the military's Manned Orbital Laboratory ( MOL ) spacecraft, but transferred to NASA after its cancellation, and served as a support crew member for the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz missions.