1976

Events

January

• January 2 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force.
• January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea.
• January 18 – Full diplomatic relations are established between Bangladesh and Pakistan 5 years after the Bangladesh Liberation War.
• January 27
• * The United States vetoes a United Nations resolution that calls for an independent Palestinian state.
• * Western Sahara War: The First Battle of Amgala breaks out between Morocco and Algeria in the Spanish Sahara.

  February

• February 4
• * The 1976 Winter Olympics begin in Innsbruck, Austria.
• * The 7.5 Guatemala earthquake affects Guatemala and Honduras with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX, leaving 23,000 dead and 76,000 injured.
• February 9 – The Australian Defence Force is formed by unification of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force.
• February 13 – General Murtala Mohammed of Nigeria is assassinated in a military coup.
• February 24 – Cuba's constitution of 1976 is enacted.
• February 26 – The Spanish Armed Forces withdraw from Western Sahara.
• February 27 – The Polisario Front, Western Sahara's national liberation movement, declares independence of the territory under the name "Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic".

  March

• March – The Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is released by Seymour Cray's Cray Research, with the first purchaser being the Energy Research and Development Administration in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
• March 1
• * U.K. Home Secretary Merlyn Rees ends Special Category Status for those sentenced for scheduled terrorist crimes relating to the civil violence in Northern Ireland.
• * Bradford Bishop allegedly murders five of his family members in Bethesda, Maryland. The crime goes undiscovered for 10 days and the suspect is never caught. From 2014 to 2018 he is on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
• March 4
• * The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention is formally dissolved in Northern Ireland, resulting in Direct rule over Northern Ireland by the Government of the United Kingdom in London.
• * The Maguire Seven are found guilty in London of possessing explosives for use by the Provisional Irish Republican Army and subsequently jailed for 14 years; their convictions were overturned in 1991.
• March 9 – A cable car disaster occurs when a supporting cable breaks in Cavalese, Italy, resulting in 43 deaths.
• March 9–11 – Two coal mine explosions claim 26 lives at the Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scotia Mine, in Letcher County, Kentucky.
• March 16 – 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 in 1974.
• March 24
• * Argentina military forces depose president Isabel Perón.
• * A general strike takes place in the People's Republic of the Congo.
• March 26
• * The Body Shop, the retail chain for skin care products and cosmetics founded by Anita Roddick, opens its first branch in Brighton, England.
• March 27
• * The South African Defence Force withdraws from Angola and concludes Operation Savannah.
• * The first 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 patient in a persistent vegetative state in the Karen Ann Quinlan case 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 in California.
• * Conrail is formed by the U.S. government, to take control of 13 major Northeast Class-1 railroads that have 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.
• * The Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect is first reported by British astronomer Patrick Moore.
• April 2 – Norodom Sihanouk is forced to resign as Head of State of Kampuchea by the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot and is placed under house arrest.
• April 3 – The Eurovision Song Contest 1976 is won by Brotherhood of Man, representing the United Kingdom, with their song Save Your Kisses for Me.
• April 5
• * James Callaghan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• * 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.
• * Segovia prison break: in Spain's largest prison break since the Spanish Civil War, 29 political prisoners escape from Segovia prison.
• April 12
• * The 1976 West Bank local elections were held.
• April 13
• * The Lapua Cartridge Factory explosion in Lapua, Finland kills 40.
• * The United States Treasury Department reintroduces the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson's 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration.
• 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 19 – A violent F5 tornado strikes around Brownwood, Texas, injuring 11 people. Two people were thrown at least by the tornado and survived uninjured.
• April 21 – The Great Bookie Robbery in Melbourne, Australia: Bandits steal A$1.4 million in bookmakers' settlements from Queen Street, Melbourne.
• April 25 – Portugal's new constitution is enacted.
• April 29 – Sino-Soviet split: A concealed bomb explodes at the gates of the Soviet embassy in China, killing four Chinese. The targets were embassy employees, returning from lunch, but on this day they had returned to the embassy earlier.

  May

• May 1 – Neville Wran becomes Premier of New South Wales.
• May 4
• * The first LAGEOS is launched.
• * A train crash in Schiedam, the Netherlands, kills 24 people.
• May 6 – An earthquake hits the Friuli area in Italy, killing more than 900 people and making another 100,000 homeless.
• May 9 – Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction is found hanged in an apparent suicide in her Stuttgart-Stammheim prison cell.
• May 11
• *U.S. President Gerald Ford signs the Federal Election Campaign Act.
• * An accident involving a tanker truck carrying anhydrous ammonia takes place in Houston, Texas, resulting in the deaths of 7 people.
• May 13 – The Atari video arcade game Breakout is released.
• May 16 – The Montreal Canadiens sweep the Philadelphia Flyers in four games to win the Stanley Cup in ice hockey.
• May 21 – The Yuba City bus disaster, the second-worst bus crash in U.S. history, leaves 28 students and one teacher killed.
• May 24
• * Washington, D.C. Concorde service begins.
• * The Judgment of Paris pits French vs. California wines in a blind taste-test in Paris, France. California wines win the contest, surprising the wine world and opening the wine industry to newcomers in several countries.
• May 25 – U.S. President Gerald Ford defeats challenger Ronald Reagan in 3 Republican presidential primaries: Kentucky, Tennessee and Oregon.
• May 30 – Indianapolis 500 automobile race: Johnny Rutherford wins the shortest race in event history to date, at 102 laps or.
• May 31 – Syria intervenes in the Lebanese Civil War in opposition to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which it has previously supported.

  June

• June 1 – The United Kingdom and Iceland end the Third Cod War, with the UK accepting Iceland's extension of its territorial waters to 200 nautical miles in exchange for defined fishing rights.
• June 2
• * A car bomb fatally injures Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles.
• * The Philippine government opens relations with the Soviet Union.
• June 4 – The Boston Celtics defeat the Phoenix Suns 128–126 in triple overtime in Game 5 of the National Basketball Association Finals at the Boston Garden. In 1997, the game is selected by a panel of experts as the greatest of the NBA's first 50 years.
• June 5 – The Teton Dam collapses in southeast Idaho in the US, killing 11 people.
• June 6 – The Double Six Crash, a plane crash in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, kills everyone on board, including Sabahan Chief Minister Tun Fuad Stephens.
• June 12 – Alberto Demicheli, a jurist, is inaugurated as a civilian de facto President of Uruguay after Juan María Bordaberry is deposed by the military.
• June 13 – Savage thunderstorms roll through the state of Iowa, spawning several tornadoes, including an F-5 tornado that destroys the town of Jordan.
• June 16 – The Soweto uprising in South Africa begins.
• 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.
• * General elections are held in Italy, resulting in the best result for the Communist Party in a general election.
• * Czechoslovakia beats West Germany 5–3 on penalties to win Euro 76 when the game ends 2–2 after extra time.
• June 25 – Strikes start in Poland after communists raise food prices; they end on June 30.
• June 26 – The CN Tower is opened in Toronto, the tallest free-standing land structure opens to the public.
• June 27
• * G-6 is renamed "Group of 7" with the inclusion of Canada.
• * Palestinian militants hijack an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda.
• June 29
• * Seychelles gains independence from the United Kingdom.
• * The Conference of Communist and Workers Parties of Europe convenes in East Berlin.

  July

• July 2 – North Vietnam dissolves the Provisional Government of South Vietnam and unites the two countries to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
• 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 overturning the Furman v. Georgia case of 1972.
• * The great heat wave in the United Kingdom, which is currently suffering from drought conditions, reaches its peak.
• July 4
• * The U.S. celebrates its bicentennial, in recognition of the 200th anniversary of the 1776 adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.
• * Entebbe Raid: Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda's Entebbe Airport; Yonatan Netanyahu 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, Maryland.
• July 7
• * German left-wing women terrorists Monika Berberich, Gabriella Rollnick, Juliane Plambeck and Inge Viett escape from the Lehrter Straße maximum security prison in West Berlin.
• * David Steel becomes leader of the UK's Liberal Party in the aftermath of the scandal which forced out Jeremy Thorpe.
• July 10
• * Four mercenaries, three British and one American, are shot by firing squad in Angola, following the Luanda Trial.
• * Seveso disaster: An explosion at a chemical plant in Seveso, Italy, causes extensive pollution to a large area in the neighborhood of Milan, with many evacuations and a large number of people affected by the toxic cloud.
• July 12 – In the United States:
• * California State University, Fullerton massacre: seven people are shot and killed, and two others are wounded in a mass shooting on campus at California State University, Fullerton.
• * Price Club, as predecessor of Costco, a worldwide membership-registration-only retailer, is founded in California.
• July 15
• * Jimmy Carter is nominated for U.S. president at the Democratic National Convention in New York City.
• * Twenty-six Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver are abducted and buried in a box truck within a quarry in Livermore, California. The captives dig themselves free after 16 hours. The quarry-owner's son and two accomplices are arrested for the crime.
• July 16–20 – Albert Spaggiari and his gang break into the vault of the Société Generale Bank in Nice, France.
• July 17
• * The 1976 Summer Olympics begin in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
• * East Timor is declared the 27th province of Indonesia.
• July 18 – 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci earns the first of seven perfect scores of 10 at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
• July 19 – Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
• July 20
• * Viking program: The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.
• * American criminal Gary Gilmore is arrested for murdering two men in Utah.
• July 21 – A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills Christopher Ewart-Biggs, new British ambassador to the Irish Republic, and Judith Cooke, a Northern Ireland Office private secretary, in Dublin; two others are seriously wounded but survive.
• 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 its former colony Uganda in response to the hijacking of Air France Flight 139.
• * Delegates attending an American Legion convention at The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, US, begin falling ill with a form of pneumonia: this will eventually be recognised as the first outbreak of Legionnaires' disease and will end in the deaths of 29 attendees.
• 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 one and seriously wounding another, in the first of a series of attacks that terrorize the city for the next year.
• July 30
• * Bruce Jenner wins the gold medal in the men's decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.
• * In Santiago, Chile, Cruzeiro from Brazil beats River Plate from Argentina and are the Copa Libertadores de América champions in Association football.
• July 31
• * NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1.
• * The Big Thompson River in northern Colorado floods, destroying more than 400 cars and houses and killing 143 people.