1976

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

Years:
1973 1974 1975 - 1976(MCMLXXVI) - 1977 1978 1979

Decades:
1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s

Centuries:
19th century - 20th century - 21st century

1976 in topic:
Arts
Architecture - Art - Film - Literature - Music - Television
Science and technology
Aviation - Rail transport - Science
Other topics
Australia - Canada - Ireland - South Africa - Sport
Births - Deaths

Lists of leaders:
State leaders - Religious leaders

Events

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 18 - The Scottish Labour Party is formed
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 on 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 14 - David Lambert is born in Dublin, Ireland
February 19 - Jamie Smyth is born in Dublin, Ireland
February 20 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands
February 24 - Cuba's current constitution enacted.
February 27 - Western Sahara declares independence

March

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 9-11 - 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 31 - New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985

April-May

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 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 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

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 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 Greece sinks a Turkish survey ship.

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 heatwave 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 - Explosion in Seveso, Italy, kills a large number of people
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 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 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
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 Demilitarized Zone which had obscured their view

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 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.
September 21 - Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
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 1976 - The Damned release New Rose - the first ever single released / marketed as "punk rock".
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-December

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 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

Unknown dates

Christopher Maier, American murder victim born, died 1997
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
Cuban airliner blown up in flight, killing 73.[1]