| 2nd January 1971 | A stairway crush at the Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow kills sixty-six spectators during a Rangers vs. Celtic football match. |
| 3rd January 1971 | BBC Open University begins in the United Kingdom. |
| 5th January 1971 | The first ever One Day International match is played between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. |
| 4th February 1971 | Rolls-Royce goes bankrupt and is nationalised. |
| 15th February 1971 | The United Kingdom and Ireland both switch to a decimal currency. |
| 28th February 1971 | ‘Evel Knievel‘, an American daredevil, sets a world record by jumping over nineteen cars on his motorbike. |
| 7th March 1971 | The postal workers' strike ends after forty-seven days. |
| 1st April 1971 | The United Kingdom lifts all restrictions on gold ownership. |
| 5th April 1971 | Mount Etna erupts in Sicily, threatening several small villages on the eastern side of the volcano. |
| 17th April 1971 | The People's Republic of Bangladesh forms at Mujibnagor, under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. |
| 14th June 1971 | Norway begins oil production in the North Sea. |
| 3rd July 1971 | Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, is found dead in his bathtub in Paris. |
| 31st July 1971 | David Scott and James Irwin become the first two astronauts to ride in a lunar rover on the Moon, a day after ‘Apollo 15’ lands. |
| 9th August 1971 | British security forces arrest hundreds of nationalists in Northern Ireland and detain them without trial in Long Kesh prison. Twenty people die in the riots that follow. |
| 15th August 1971 | The number of British troops in Northern Ireland is raised to 12,500. |
| 1st October 1971 | ‘Walt Disney World’ opens in Florida. |
| 30th October 1971 | Reverend Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party is founded in Northern Ireland. |
| 3rd December 1971 | The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 begins, leading to the liberation of Bangladesh. |
| 29th December 1971 | The United Kingdom gives up its military bases in Malta. |