1971

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 murdered 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.

Births

Villain births

• January 12 - Alfredo Beltrán Leyva & Peter Madsen
• February 16 - Michael Avenatti
• March 7 - Todd Kohlhepp
• April 2 - Lorenzo Fayne
• April 21 - Anwar al-Awlaki
• June 4 - Joseph Kabila
• June 27 - Dipendra of Nepal
• July 26 - Kendall Francois
• July 28 - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
• August 14 - Chris Nelloms
• September 1 - Christina Marie Riggs
• September 15 - Dario Antonio Úsuga
• September 26 - Susan Smith
• September 30 - Joshua Blahyi (General Butt Naked)
• November 9 - Ronald Baquiran Bae
• November 11 - Wade Michael Page
• December 15 - Tawana Brawley
• December 19 - Amy Locane
• Unknown - Harold Keke

Victim births

• January 18 - Junko Furuta
• April 16 - Selena Quintanilla-Perez
• May 10 - Kim Jong-nam
• May 28 - Krista Harrison
• June 16 - Tupac Shakur
• October 8 - Phillip DeVine
• November 5 - Teri Jo Bradish

Deaths

Villain deaths

• February 5 - Mátyás Rákosi
• April 21 - François Duvalier
• May 15 - Billy Reid
• June 28 - Franz Stangl
• August 29 - Nathan Leopold
• September 11 - Nikita Khrushchev
• October 10 - Nardong Putik
• October 23 - Ion Rîmaru

Victim deaths

• April 25 - Carol Spinks
• May 21 - Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones
• June 8 - Edmundo Pérez Zujovic
• July 8 - Darlenia Denise Johnson
• July 27 - Brenda Faye Crockett
• August 29 - John Victor Young
• October 1 - Nenomoshia Yates
• October 23 - Ion Rîmaru
• November 3 - James R. Greene
• November 9 - Helen, Alma, Patricia, Frederick, and John List, Jr.
• November 15 - Brenda Woodward
• November 28 - Wasfi Tal