1976

Year 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

January

• January - The Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is released by Seymour Cray's Cray Research.
• January 15 - Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison.
• January 16 - The trial against jailed members of the Red Army Faction begins in Stuttgart, West Germany.
• January 18
  • The Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 in Super Bowl X played at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida.
  • The Scottish Labour Party is formed.
• January 19 - Jimmy Carter wins the Iowa Democratic Caucus.
• January 21 - The first commercial Concorde flight takes off.
• January 27 - The United States vetoes a United Nations resolution that calls for an independent Palestinian state.
• January 29 - Twelve Provisional Irish Republican Army bombs explode in London's West End.
• January 30 - Live from Lincoln Center debuts on PBS.

February

• February 4
  • The 1976 Winter Olympics open in Innsbruck, Austria.
  • In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000.
• February 5 - Nearly 2,000 students become involved in a racially charged riot at Escambia High School in Pensacola, Florida. 30 students are injured in the four-hour fray.
• February 11 - Clifford Alexander Jr. is confirmed as the first African-American Secretary of the U.S. Army.
• February 13 - General Murtala Mohammed of Nigeria was assassinated in a military coup.
• February 15 - The 1976 Constitution of Cuba is adopted by national referendum.
• February 24 - Cuba's current constitution is 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 scheduled terrorist crimes relating to the civil violence in Northern Ireland.
• March 4
  • The Maguire Seven are found guilty of possessing explosives and subsequently jailed for 14 years.
  • The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention is formally dissolved in Northern Ireland, resulting in direct rule of Northern Ireland from London via the British parliament.
• March 9 - A cable-car disaster in Cavalese, Italy leaves 42 dead.
• March 9-March 11 - Two coal mine explosions claim 26 lives at the Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scotia Mine, Letcher County, KY.
• March 16 - Harold Wilson resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• March 17 - Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is retried in New Jersey.
• 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 26 - The Toronto Blue Jays are created.
• March 26 - Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom sends the first royal e-mail.
• March 27 - The first 4.6 miles of the Washington Metro subway system opens.
• March 29 - The military dictatorship of General Jorge Videla comes to power in Argentina
• March 31 - The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan can 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 1 - Conrail (Consolidated Rails Corporation) is formed by the U.S. government, to take control of 13 major Northeast Class-1 railroads that had filed for bankruptcy protection. Conrail takes control at midnight, as a government-owned and operated railroad until 1986, when it is sold to the public.
• April 1 - Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect first reported by the astronomer Patrick Moore
• April 2 - Norodom Sihanouk forced to resign as Head of State of Kampuchea by the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot. Under their control the country becomes known as Cambodia.
• April 3 - The 21st Eurovision Song Contest 1976 is won by Brotherhood of Man, representing the United Kingdom, with their song Save Your Kisses for Me.
• April 4 - Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigns as leader of Cambodia and is placed under house arrest.
• April 5 - James Callaghan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• April 5 - Tiananmen Incident: Large crowds lay wreaths at Beijing's Monument of the Martyrs to commemorate the death of Premier Zhou Enlai. Poems against the Gang of Four are also displayed, provoking a police crackdown.
• April 13 - An explosion in an ammunition factory in Lapua, Finland kills 40.
• April 16 - As a measure to curb population growth, the minimum age for marriage in India is raised to 21 years for men and 18 years for women.
• April 21 - The Great Bookie Robbery in Melbourne: Bandits steal A$1.4 million in bookmakers' settlements from Queen Street, Melbourne.
• April 23 - The Punk rock group The Ramones release their first self-titled album.
• April 25 - Portugal's new constitution is enacted.

May

• May 1 - Neville Wran becomes Premier of New South Wales.
• May 4 - The first LAGEOS (Laser Geodynamics Satellite) is launched.
• May 4 - A train crash in Schiedam, the Netherlands, kills 24 people.
• May 6 - An earthquake hits Friuli area in Italy killing more than 900 people with another 100,000 homeless.
• May 9 - Ulrike Meinhof of Red Army Faction is found hanging in an apparent suicide, in her Stuttgart-Stannheim prison cell.
• May 11 - U.S. President Gerald Ford signs the Federal Election Campaign Act.
• May 24 - Washington, D.C. Concorde service begins.
• May 25 - U.S. President Gerald Ford defeats challenger Ronald Reagan in three Republican presidential primaries: Kentucky, Tennessee and Oregon.
• May 30 - Indianapolis 500-Mile Race: Johnny Rutherford wins the (rain-shortened) shortest race in event history to date, at 102 laps or 255 miles (408 km).
• May 31 - Syria intervenes in the Lebanese Civil War in opposition to the Palestine Liberation Organization whom it had previously supported.

June

• June 1 - The UK and Iceland end the Cod War.
• June 2 - A car bomb fatally injures Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.
• June 5 - The Teton Dam collapses in southeast Idaho in the U.S., killing 11 people.
• June 13 - Savage thunderstorms roll through the state of Iowa spawning several tornadoes, including an F-5 tornado that destroyed the town of Jordan, Iowa.
• June 14 - The trial begins at Oxford Crown Court of Donald Neilson, the killer known as the Black Panther.
• June 16 - The Soweto riots in South Africa begin.
• June 20 - Hundreds of Western tourists are moved from Beirut and taken to safety in Syria by the U.S. military, following the murder of the U.S. ambassador.
• June 20 - General elections are held in Italy.
• June 20 - Czechoslovakia beats West Germany 5-3 on penalties to win Euro 76, when the game had ended 2-2 after extra time.
• June 25 - Strikes start in Poland (Ursus, Radom, Płock) after communists raise food prices; strikes end on June 30.
• June 26 - The CN Tower is built in Toronto; the tallest free-standing land structure opens to the public.
• June 27 - Palestinian extremists hijack an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda.

July

Italian tall ship Amerigo Vespucci in New York Harbor during the United States Bicentennial celebration.

• July 2 - North Vietnam and South Vietnam unite to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam - a Communist country.
• July 3 - Gregg v. Georgia: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that the 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: From coast to coast, United States celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
• July 4 - The Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) leads 50,000 marchers in Philadelphia to demand a "Bicentennial Without Colonies" and independence for Puerto Rico.
• July 4 - Entebbe Raid: Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda's Entebbe Airport; 1 Israeli soldier and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in the raid.
• July 6 - The first class of women is inducted at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.
• July 7 - German left-wing terrorists Monika Berberich, Gabriella Rollnick, Juliane Plambeck and Inge Viett escape from the Lehrter Straße maximum security prison in West Berlin.
• July 10 - Three British and 1 American mercenaries are shot by firing squad in Angola.
• July 10 - An explosion in Seveso, Italy, kills a large number of people.
• July 12 - Barbara Jordan is the first black person to keynote a political convention.
• July 15 - Jimmy Carter is nominated for U.S. President at the Democratic National Convention in New York City.
• 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, Quebec, 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-Biggs, British ambassador to the Irish Republic.
• July 26 - In Los Angeles, Ronald Reagan announces his choice of liberal U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker as his vice presidential running mate, in an effort to woo moderate Republican delegates away from President Gerald Ford.
• July 27 - The United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with Uganda.
• July 28 - The Tangshan earthquake flattens Tangshan,China, killing 242,769 people, and injuring 164,851.
• July 29 - In New York City, the "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag, killing 1 and seriously wounding another, in the first of a series of attacks that terrorize the city for the next year.
• July 30 - In Santiago, Chile, Cruzeiro from Brazil beats 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.
• July 31 - The Big Thompson River in northern Colorado floods, destroying more than 400 cars and houses.

August

• August 1 - The Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago becomes a republic, replacing Queen Elizabeth II with a President as its head of state.
• August 1 - The Seattle Seahawks first football game.
• August 1 - Racing Champion Niki Lauda suffers serious burns in the German Grand Prix.
• 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, is tried and found innocent for Andrea's murder, involvement in a plot to kill several people (including Priscilla and a judge), and a wrongful death lawsuit. Cullen goes broke afterwards.
• August 4 - The first recognized outbreak of Legionnaires' disease kills 29 at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
• August 5 - The Great Clock of Westminster (or Big Ben) suffers internal damage and stops running for over 9 months.
• August 6 - Former UK Postmaster General John Stonehouse is sentenced to 7 years' jail for fraud, theft and forgery.
• August 7 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
• August 14 - Ten thousand 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 United States soldiers are killed while trying to chop down part of a tree in the Korean Demilitarized Zone which had obscured their view.
• August 19 - U.S. President Gerald Ford edges out challenger Ronald Reagan to win the Republican Party presidential nomination in Kansas City.
• August 24 - In Uruguay, the army captures Marcelo Gelman and his pregnant wife. Marcelo is later killed and his wife (and unborn child) disappear.
• August 25 - Resignation of Jacques Chirac as Prime Minister of France; he is succeeded by Raymond Barre.
• August 26
  • First known outbreak of Ebola virus in Yambuku, Zaire.
  • Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, resigns from various posts over a scandal involving alleged corruption in connection with business dealings with the Lockheed corporation.

September

• September 3 - Viking program: The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars, taking 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 Hokkaidō in Japan, and requests political asylum from the United States.
• September 6 - Frank Sinatra brings Jerry Lewis's former partner Dean Martin onstage, unannounced, at the 1976 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon in Las Vegas, Nevada, reuniting the comedy team for the first (and only) time in over 20 years.
• September 6 - first appearance of Motley's Crew, American comic strip by Ben Templeton and Tom Forman
• September 9 - Chairman Mao Zedong, of the People's Republic of China, dies.
• September 10 - Zagreb mid-air collision: a British Airways Trident and a Yugoslav DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), killing all 176 aboard.
• September 10 - Osamu Tezuka begins serialising MW, a manga inspired by the 1974 Kakuei Tanaka government scandal.
• September 16 - Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from a trolleybus that had fallen into Erevan reservoir.
• September 17 - The space shuttle Enterprise is rolled out of a Palmdale, California hangar.
• September 20 - September 21 - The semi-legendary 100 Club Punk Festival ignites the careers of several influential punk and gothic rock bands, arguably sparking the Punk Movement's introduction into mainstream culture.
• September 21 - Seychelles joins the United Nations.
• September 21 - Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
• September 24 - Patricia Hearst is sentenced to 7 years in prison for her role in a 1974 bank robbery (an executive clemency order from U.S. President Jimmy Carter will set her free after only 22 months).
• September 25 - The Irish rock band U2 is formed after drummer Larry Mullen Jr. posts a note seeking members for a band on the notice board of his Dublin school.

October

• October 6 - Cubana Flight 455 crashes due to a bomb placed by anti-Fidel Castro terrorists, after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados. All 73 people on board are killed. [1]
• October 6 - Massacre of students gathering at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand to protest the return of ex-dictator Thanom by a coalition of right-wing paramilitary and government forces, triggering the return of the military to government.
• October 6 - In San Francisco, during his second televised debate with Jimmy Carter, U.S. President Gerald Ford stumbles when he declares that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" (there was at the time).
• October 10 - Taiwan Governor Hsieh Tung-ming is injured by a letter bomb from a pro-independence activist.
• October 12 - The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to Mao Zedong, as Chairman of the Communist Party of China.
• October 13 - The United States Commission on Civil Rights releases the report, Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States: An Uncertain Future, that documents that Puerto Ricans in the United States had a poverty rate of 33 percent in 1974 (up from 29 percent in 1970), the highest of all major racial-ethnic groups in the country (not including Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory).
• October 15 - Schools in Eagle Point, OR close due to rejection of budget by voters prompting taxpayer creation of B.E.L.T. (Better Education for Less Taxes) Committee.
• October 19 - The Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 20 years in the United States.
• October 19 - The Battle of Aishiya is fought in Lebanon.
• October 19 - The Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is placed on the list of endangered species.
• October 20 - The Mississippi River ferry MV George Prince is struck by a ship while crossing from Destrehan, LA to Luling, LA, killing 78 passengers and crew.
• October 22 - Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, the fifth President of Ireland, resigns after being publicly insulted by the Minister for Defense.
• October 25 - Clarence Norris, the last known survivor of the Scottsboro Boys, is pardoned.

November

• November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Ford, becoming the first candidate from the Deep South to win since the Civil War.
• November 15 - The first megamouth shark is discovered off Oahu in Hawaii.
• November 19 - Jaime Ornelas Camacho takes office as the first President of the Regional Government of Madeira, Portugal.
• November 24 - At least 3,840 killed, Richer Scale 7.3 magunitude of Van and Muradiye earthquake at Turkey.
• November 25 - In San Francisco, The Band holds its farewell concert, The Last Waltz.
• November 26 - Microsoft is officially registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.

December

• December 1
  • Angola joins the United Nations.
  • Sex Pistols achieve public notoriety as they unleash several 4-letter words live on Bill Grundy's TV show.
• December 3 - Bob Marley and his manager Don Taylor are shot in an assassination attempt, at 56 Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica. Marley is shot twice, but Taylor takes most of the bullets; both survive.
• December 3 - Patrick Hillery is elected unopposed as the sixth President of Ireland.
• December 8 - The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is established by the 5 Latinos in the United States Congress: Herman Badillo of the Bronx, E. de la Garza and Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas, Edward R. Roybal of California, and the nonvoting Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, Baltasar Corrada del Rio.
• December 8 - "The Hotel California", by The Eagles released.
• December 15 - Samoa joins the United Nations.
• December 20 - Richard J. Daley, Mayor of Chicago for 21 years, dies.
• December 23 - A new volcano, Murara, erupts in eastern Zaire.

Undated

• First laser printer introduced by IBM - the IBM 3800
• California's sodomy law repealed.
• The term memetics first proposed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene.
• Diffie-Hellman cryptography proposed
• Plans to move the Nigerian capital from Lagos to Abuja are approved.
• The New Jersey State Legislature passes legislation legalizing casinos in the shore town of Atlantic City commencing in 1978. After signing the bill into law Governor Brendan Byrne declared "The mob is not welcome in New Jersey!" referring to the Mafia's influence at casinos in Nevada.
• Nadia Comaneci earns seven perfect "10.00" in the 1976 Olympics as well as three gold medals, one silver and one bronze.

Ongoing

• Angolan Civil War (1974-2002)
• Cambodian-Vietnamese War (1975-1989)
• Cold War (1945-1991)
• Ethiopian Civil War (1975-1991)
• Independence War in Cabinda (1975-2006)
• Indonesian invasion of East Timor (1975-1978)
• Lebanese Civil War (1975-1991)

Births