1976

Years :	1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979
Years:	1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979
Decades:	1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
Centuries:	19th century · 20th century · 21st century

1976 by topic:
Arts
Architecture - Art - Film - Literature - Music - Television
Science and technology
Archaeology - Aviation - Meteorology - Rail transport - Radio - Science
By country
Australia - Canada - India - Ireland - Mexico - South Africa
Other topics
Awards - Sport - Law - State leaders - Religious leaders Video gaming
Birth and death categories
Births - Deaths

1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1976 calendar). Corresponds to 5736/7 in the Hebrew Calendar.

Events

January

January 12 - UN Security Council votes 11-1 to admit the Palestinian Liberation Organization
January 15 - Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison
January 16 - Trial against jailed members of the Red Army Faction begins in Stuttgart, West Germany
January 18 - The Scottish Labour Party is formed
January 21 - The first commercial Concorde flight takes off.
January 25 - 12 PIRA bombs explode in London's East End
January 27 - The trial of SLA member Patty Hearst begins. She is found guilty of robbery on March 20

February

February 4 - In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000.
February 4 - 1976 Winter Olympics open in Innsbruck, Austria
February 11 - Clifford Alexander Jr is confirmed as 1st African-American Secretary of US Army.
February 20 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands
February 24 - Cuba's current constitution enacted.
February 27 - Western Sahara declares independence
February 28 - Spain gives up territories in Sahara but retains its enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta

March

March 1 - Merlyn Rees ends Special Category Status for those sentenced for crimes relating to the civil violence in Northern Ireland
March 9-March 11 - Two coal mine explosions claim 26 lives at the Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scotia Mine, Letcher County, KY
March 17 - Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is retried
March 18 - Harold Wilson resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
March 20 - Patty Hearst is found guilty of armed robbery of a San Francisco bank
March 24 - Argentina military forces depose president Isabel Peron
March 27 - The first 4.6 miles of the Washington, DC subway system opens
March 29 - Military junta of general Jorge Videla comes to power in Argentina
March 31 - New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan could be disconnected from her ventilator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985

April

April 1 - Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
April 4 - Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigns as leader of Cambodia and is placed under house arrest
April 5 - Jim Callaghan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
April 5 - Large crowds lay wreaths at Beijing's Monument of the Martyrs in commemoration of the death of Premier Zhou Enlai. Poems against the Gang of Four are also displayed. This was followed by a police crackdown and became known as the Tiananmen Incident.
April 13 - An explosion in an ammunition factory in Lapua, Finland kills 40
April 16 - In India the minimum age for marriage is raised to 21 years for men and 18 years for women; it is to curb population growth
April 21 - Great Bookie Robbery in Melbourne. Bandits steal A$1.4 Million in bookmakers settlements in Queen Street, Melbourne
April 23 - Powerful punk rock group The Ramones release their first album which starts a new form of music
April 25 - Portugal's new constitution enacted

May

May 9 - Ulrike Meinhof of RAF is found hanging in an apparent suicide in her cell in Stuttgart-Stannheim prison
May 11 - President Gerald Ford signs Federal Election Campaign Act.
May 24 - Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 revolutionizes world of wine.
May 24 - Washington, DC Concorde service begins
May 30 - Indianapolis 500-Mile Race: Johnny Rutherford wins the shortest rain-shortened race in event history to date, at 102 laps, or 255 miles (410.38 km).

June

June 1 - UK and Iceland end the Cod War
June 5 - Teton Dam collapses in southeast Idaho in the U.S., killing 11 people.
June 14 - the trial begins at Oxford Crown Court of Donald Neilson, the killer known as the Black Panther.
June 16 - Soweto riots in South Africa mark the beginning of the end of apartheid
June 20 - Hundreds of Western tourists are moved from Beirut and taken to safety in Syria by the US military, following the murder of the US ambassador.
June 20 - Czechoslovakia beat West Germany 5-3 on penalties to win Euro 76, after the game had ended 2-2 after extra time.
June 27 - Palestinian extremists hijack an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos storms it on July 4
Sismik incident starts when the Turkish survey ship Sismik entered Greek waters.

July

July 2 - North Vietnam and South Vietnam united to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam - a Communist country
July 3 - Supreme Court of the United States rules on Gregg v. Georgia and decides that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment
July 3 - The great heat wave in the United Kingdom, which is currently suffering from drought conditions, reaches its peak.
July 4 - United States Bicentennial
July 4 - Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda's Entebbe Airport; one Israeli and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in raid.
July 7 - German left-wing terrorists Monika Berberich, Gabriella Rollnick, Juliane Plambeck and Inge Viett escape from Lehrterstrasse maximum security prison in West Berlin
July 10 - Three British and one American mercenaries were shot by firing squad in Angola.
July 10 - Explosion in Seveso, Italy, kills a large number of people
July 16-July 20 - Albert Spaggiari and his gang break into the vault of the Societe Generale Bank in Nice, France
July 17 - The 1976 Summer Olympics begin in Montreal, Canada.
July 17 - East Timor is declared the 27th province of Indonesia
July 19 - Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
July 20 - Viking program: The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars
July 21 - A bomb kills Christopher Ewart, British ambassador to the Irish Republic
July 27 - United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with Uganda
July 28 - Tangshan earthquake flattens Tangshan,China, killing 242,769 people, and 164,851 people are heavily injured
July 29 - In New York City, the "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag killing one and seriously wounding another in the first of a series of attacks that terrorized the city for the next year.
July 30 - In Santiago, capital of Chile, Cruzeiro from Brazil wins River Plate from Argentina and are the Copa Libertadores de América champions.
July 31 - NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1

August

August 1 - the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago becomes a republic, replacing Queen Elizabeth II with an elected president as their Head of State.
August 2 - A gunman murders Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr, and injures Priscilla Davis and Gus Gavrel in an incident at Priscilla's Mansion at Mockingbird Lane in Fort Worth, Texas. T. Cullen Davis, Priscilla's husband and one of the richest men in Texas, was tried and found innocent for Andrea's murder. He was later found innocent of a plot to kill several people, including Priscilla and a judge, and a wrongful death lawsuit. Cullen went broke afterwards
August 4 - First outbreak of Legionnaire's disease kills 29 at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia
August 5 - Racing Champion Niki Lauda suffers serious burns in the German Grand prix; the Great Clock of Westminster (or Big Ben) suffers internal damage and stops running for over nine months
August 6 - Former UK Postmaster General John Stonehouse is sentenced for seven years for fraud
August 7 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars
August 14 - 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women demonstrate for peace in Northern Ireland
August 14 - The Senegalese political party PAI-Rénovation is legally recognized. PAI-Rénovation thus becomes the third legal party in the country.
August 18 - In North Korea at Panmunjom, two US soldiers are killed while trying to chop down part of a tree in the Demilitarized Zone which had obscured their view
August 24 - Uruguayan army captures Marcelo Gelman and his pregnant wife. Marcelo is later killed and his wife and child disappears

September

September 3 - Viking program: The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars takes the first close-up, color photos of the planet's surface
September 6 - Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido in Japan and requests political asylum from the United States
Military Junta in power in Argentina.
September 10 - A British Airways Trident and a Yugoslav DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia) killing all 176 aboard.
September 17 - Space Shuttle Enterprise rolled out.
September 21 - Seychelles joins the United Nations.
September 21 - Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

October

October - The Damned release New Rose - the first ever single released / marketed as "punk rock".
October 6 - Cubana Flight 455 crashes due to a bomb placed by anti-Castrist militants, after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados. [1]
October 6 - Students gathering at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand to protest the return of ex-dictator Thanom are massacred by a coalition of right-wing paramilitary and government forces, triggering the return of the military to government.
October 10 - Taiwan Province Governor Hsieh Tung-ming was injured by a bombing letter from a pro-independence activist.
October 12 - The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to the late Mao Tse-tung as chairman of Communist Party of China
October 19 - Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 20 years in the United States
October 22 - Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, fifth President of Ireland, resigns after being publicly insulted by the Minister for Defence.
October 25 - Full pardon given to Clarence Norris, last known survivor of the Scottsboro Boys.

November

November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Rudolph Ford to become first candidate from deep south to win since the Civil War.
November 11 - KISS issues their next studio album, Rock and Roll Over, which contains the classics "Calling Dr. Love" and "Hard Luck Woman".
November 15 - First Megamouth Shark is discovered off Oahu in Hawaii
November 26 - Little known company Microsoft is officially registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.

December

December 1 - Angola joins the United Nations
December 3 - Patrick Hillery is elected unopposed as the sixth President of Ireland.
December 15 - Samoa joins the United Nations
December 23 - New volcano, Murara, began erupting in eastern Zaire.

Unknown dates

First laser printer introduced by IBM - the IBM 3800
Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, invented by Seymour Cray
California's sodomy law repealed.
The term memetics first proposed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene.
Toronto Blue Jays created
CN Tower built in Toronto - The tallest free standing land structure.
Diffie-Hellman cryptography proposed
Plans to move the Nigerian capital from Lagos to Abuja are approved.
Ebola is first discovered in Zaire
Women For Sobriety established.