Editing 1971 (section)

== Events ==
* January 25 - [[Idi Amin Dada]] deposes [[Milton Obote]] in a successful ''coup d'etat'' and declares himself President of Uganda.
* February 7 - A soldier named Robert Curtis is shot dead by the [[IRA]].
* March 12 - [[Hafez al-Assad]] declares himself President of Syria.
* March 21 - The [[1971 Bangladesh Genocide]] is initiated by Pakistani dictator [[Yahya Khan]] as a means of suppressing Bengali calls for self-determination.
* March 26 - [[Operation Searchlight]] is launched by the Pakistan Army, beginning the Bangladesh Liberation War.
* March 31 - [[William Calley]] is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the [[My Lai Massacre]]; three days later, President [[Richard Nixon]] commutes his sentence to house arrest.
* April 1 - The [[Fatherland and Liberty Nationalist Front]] is founded.
* April 22 - [[Jean-Claude Duvalier]] takes office as President of Haiti following the death of his father [[François Duvalier]]. Duvalier is only 19 when he takes office, making him the youngest president in the world at the time.
* April 25 - The first victim of the [[Freeway Phantom]], 13-year old Carol Denise Spinks, is found [[murder]]ed  behind St. Elizabeths Hospital on a grassy embankment next to the northbound lanes of I-295, about 1,500 feet south of Suitland Parkway in Washington D.C.
* May 3 - [[Erich Honecker]] succeeds [[Walter Ulbricht]] as General Secretary of the [[Socialist Unity Party of Germany]].
* May 25 - End of [[Operation Searchlight]].
* June 8 - Chilean politician and former Minister of the Interior Edmundo Pérez Zujovic is assassinated by three members of the [[Organized Vanguard of the People]].
* June 10 - The ''[[El Halconazo]]'' massacre takes place in Mexico City.
* July 23 - [[William Tolbert]] is elected President of Liberia.
* August 18 - [[Hugo Banzer]] takes power in Bolivia in a successful military coup.
* September 1 - [[Muammar Gaddafi]] enters into a political union with Egypt and Syria, known as the '''Federation of Arab Republics'''.
* September 30 - The [[Democratic Unionist Party]] is founded by [[Ian Paisley]].
* October 12 - [[Jaafar Nimeiry]] is elected President of Sudan. The National Revolutionary Command Council is subsequently dissolved.
* October 27 - [[Mobutu Sese Seko]] renames the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the '''Republic of Zaire'''.
* November 9 - [[John List]] murders his wife, mother, and three children at their home in Westfield, New Jersey, before going on the run.
* November 24 - A man calling himself "[[D. B. Cooper]]" hijacks a Boeing 727 aircraft in the northwest United States, in the airspace between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, extorting $200,000 in ransom before parachuting off the plane to an unknown fate.
* November 28 - Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi Tal is assassinated by [[Black September]].
* December 16 - Both the Bangladesh Liberation War and the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide come to an end. East Pakistan formally declares independence from Pakistan and declares the formation of an independent nation of Bangladesh.
* December 20 - [[Yahya Khan]] resigns as President of Pakistan.
* Unknown - The [[Japanese Red Army]] is founded.
* Unknown - [[Provo Canyon School]] is founded.
* Unknown - [[The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord]] is founded.