Electric Light Orchestra
Electric Light Orchestra‘s self-titled debut album is released in the UK, though it proves to be the last released collaboration between founders (and former Move members) Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne; Wood leaves the band after an unpromising live debut. The album is released in the US in March 1972, where a phone call to clarify the album’s title results in a misunderstood written note that leads to the American release going out under the unintentional title No Answer.
Mariner 9 at Phobos
NASA’s Mariner 9 Mars orbiter becomes the first spacecraft to provide relatively close-up images of Mars’ innermost, larger moon, Phobos, from over 3,500 miles away. The irregular shape and heavily cratered surface of Phobos point up its likely origins as an asteroid that long ago came close enough to Mars to be captured into an orbit. Phobos (and its still unseen-at-close-range smaller sibling, Deimos) will be imaged at much closer range later in the 1970s by the Viking orbiters.
Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: Episode 17
NBC airs the 17th episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, an anthology series of original short plays and short story adaptations hosted by Serling himself. Bardford Dillman, Louise Sorel, Steve Lawrence, and Donald Moffat (Logan’s Run) guest star in an episode that includes an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “Pickman’s Model”.