1976

1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar).

Years: 1973 1974 1975 - 1976 - 1977 1978 1979
Decades: 1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century 1976 in aviation 1976 in film 1976 in literature 1976 in music 1976 in politics 1976 in sports 1976 in television

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Events

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January-February

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 21 - The first commercial Concorde flight took off.
January 27 - The trial of SLA member Patty Hearst begins. She is found guilty of robbery in March 20
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

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March-May

March 1 - Merlyn Rees ends Special Category Status for those sentenced for crimes relating to the civil violence in Northern Island
March 3 - Fleetwood Mac records Rumours, which will be a blockbuster album in 1977
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 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 31 - New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Anne Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985
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 - British prime minister Harold Wilson resigns and is replaced by Jim Callaghan
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 25 - Portugal's new constitution enacted
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 - Washington, DC Concorde service begins

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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 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

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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 that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment
July 4 - United States Bicentennial
July 4 - Israeli airborne commandos attack Uganda's Entebbe Airport and free 103 hostages being held by pro-Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane; 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 - Explosion in Seveso, Italy, kills a large number of people
July 15 ? East Timor becomes the province of Indonesia
July 16-20 - 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 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 - 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 31 - NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1

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August

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 5 - Racing Champion Niki Lauda suffers serious burns in the German Grand prix
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 18 - In North Korea at Panmunjom, two US soldiers are killed while trying to chop down part of a tree in the DMZ which had obscured their view

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September-October

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 4 - George W. Bush is arrested and fined for driving under the influence of alcohol.
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 17 - Space Shuttle Enterprise rolled out
September 21 - Seychelles joins the United Nations
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 22 - Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, fifth President of Ireland, resigns following accusations by the Minister for Defence.
October 25 - Full pardon to Clarence Norris, last known survivor of the Scottsboro Boys

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November-December

November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbant Gerald Ford to become first candidate from deep south to win since the Civil War.
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 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

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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.
Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 20 years in the United States
Diffie-Hellman cryptography proposed

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Year in topic

1976 in film
- March 22 - Filming begins on George Lucas' Star Wars science fiction film. In one of the best business decisions in film history, Lucas cuts his directing fee by $500,000 to gain ownership of merchandising and sequel rights
- Rocky
- All the President's Men
- Taxi Driver
- Carrie
- Network
- The Omen
1976 in literature
1976 in music
- December 8 - The Eagles releases one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, Hotel California
- Björk's musical career begins
- The Clash form
- The Damned form
- Graffiti artist Lee Quinones begins painting large, intricate murals in New York City; along with Quinones, hip hop artists (rappers, DJs and breakdancers) begin to expand the boundaries of the art form
1976 in sports
1976 in television
- January 17 - The Blues Brothers make their debut on NBC's Saturday Night Live
- April 24 - Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels makes on on-air offer to pay the Beatles $3000 to reunite on the show. Lennon and McCartney were apparently watching the show together in New York and considered walking down to the studio to accept the check.
- May 22 - Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels raises his previous offer to The Beatles from $3000 to $3,200.
- December 1 - Infamous Bill Grundy incident, wherin UK punk group the Sex Pistols cause a storm of controversy and outrage by swearing on television
- The Olympics, broadcast from Montreal, draw an estimated 1 billion viewers worldwide.
- The Sonny and Cher Show premieres