1977

Events

January

• January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group.
• January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire.
• January 11 – The first episode of Finnish children's TV show Pikku Kakkonen is aired on Yle TV2.
• January 17 – 49 marines from the and are killed as a result of a collision in Barcelona harbour, Spain.
• January 18
• * Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.
• * Australia's worst railway disaster at Granville, a suburb of Sydney, leaves 83 people dead.
• * SFR Yugoslavia Prime minister Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• January 19 – An Ejército del Aire CASA C-207C Azor plane crashes into the side of a mountain near Chiva, on approach to Valencia Airport in Spain, killing all 11 people on board.
• January 20 - Jimmy Carter is sworn in as the 39th President of the United States after defeating Gerald Ford in the 1976 election.
• January 23 – Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India calls for fresh elections to the Lok Sabha, and releases all political prisoners.
• January 24 – The Massacre of Atocha occurs, during the Spanish transition to democracy.

  February

• February 2 – The Congress Party of India, led by Indira Gandhi, splits with Jagjivan Ram and other senior leaders, forming Congress for Democracy. This party later merges with the Janata Party.
• February 3 – In northern Japan a blizzard piles snow on rooftops, causing many to collapse killing at least 31 people.
• February 4 – Eleven CTA commuters are killed when an elevated train derails from the Loop in central Chicago, United States.
• February 7 – The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 24 to dock with the Salyut 5 space station.
• February 18
• February 23 – Óscar Romero, an outspoken opponent of violence, becomes Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador.
• February 28 – Queen Elizabeth II opens the New Zealand Parliament in person, after Parliament is summoned for a special short session to allow her to deliver the Speech from the Throne.

  March

• March 4 – The 1977 Vrancea earthquake in the Vrancea Mountains of Romania kills over 1,500 people.
• March 8 – The Australian parliament is opened by Elizabeth II in her capacity as Queen of Australia.
• March 9 – Hanafi Siege: Approximately a dozen armed Hanafi Movement members take over 3 buildings in Washington, D.C., killing 1 person and taking 149 hostages.
• March 10 – The rings of Uranus are discovered.
• March 12 – The Centenary Test between Australia and England begins at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
• March 19 – Results of elections to the Indian Parliament are declared. Indira Gandhi's Congress Party is routed by the opposition Janata alliance.
• March 21 – Prime Minister Indira Gandhi withdraws the state of emergency which was implemented on June 25, 1975.
• March 27 – Tenerife disaster: A collision between KLM and Pan Am Boeing 747s at Tenerife, Canary Islands, kills 583 people. This becomes the deadliest accident in aviation history.

  April

• April 2 – Horse racing: Red Rum wins a record third Grand National at Aintree Racecourse in the UK.
• April 4 – Southern Airways Flight 242 crashes on a highway in New Hope, Georgia, United States, killing 72 people.
• April 7 – German Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light near his home in Karlsruhe. The "Ulrike Meinhof Commando" later claims responsibility.

• April 9 – Spain legalizes the Communist Party of Spain, which had been outlawed since 1939.
• April 11 – London Transport's Silver Jubilee AEC Routemaster buses are launched.
• April 17 – Belgian prime minister Leo Tindemans' Christian Social Party gains eight seats in the lower house in parliamentary elections.
• April 18 – An annular solar eclipse was visible in Africa, and was the 29th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 138.
• April 24 – In northern Bangladesh, a cyclone kills 13 people and injures about 100 others.
• April 28 – A federal court in Stuttgart, West Germany, sentences Red Army Faction members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe to life imprisonment.
• April 30 – The Cold War between Cambodia and Vietnam evolves into the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.

  May

• May 1 – The Taksim Square massacre in Istanbul results in 34 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
• May 12 – Portugal and Israel establish diplomatic relations.
• May 14 – An IAS Cargo Boeing 707 airplane crash in Lusaka, Zambia, kills all six on board.
• May 16 – A 20-passenger S-61L topples sideways at takeoff from the roof of the Pan Am Building in Midtown Manhattan. Four passengers are killed by the turning rotors and a woman at street level is killed by a falling blade.
• May 17 – The Likud Party, led by Menachem Begin, wins the national elections in Israel.
• May 23
• * Scientists report using bacteria in a lab to make insulin via gene splicing.
• * Moluccan terrorists take over a school in Bovensmilde, northern Netherlands, and a passenger train on the Bovensmilde–Assen route nearby at the same time. The children are released on May 26. On June 11, Dutch Royal Marines storm the train, and six terrorists and two hostages are killed.
• May 25 - Star Wars is released in the United States by director George Lucas, It immediately became a major pop culture phenomenon, and became a major box office hit for the next 6 years.
• May 27
• * The 1977 Aeroflot Ilyushin 62 airplane crash in Cuba kills 69 people.
• * A demonstration and coup attempt in Angola takes place. Thousands are killed by the government and Cuban forces.
• May 28 – The Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, United States, is engulfed in fire; 165 are killed inside.
• May 29 – Indianapolis 500: A. J. Foyt becomes the first driver to win the race four times.

  June

• June 5 – A bloodless coup installs France-Albert René as President of the Seychelles.
• June 15 – Spain has its first democratic elections, after 41 years of Francoist Spain.
• June 21 – Bülent Ecevit, of CHP forms the new government of Turkey.
• June 25 – The 1977 Rugby League World Cup culminates in Australia's 13–12 victory over Great Britain at the Sydney Cricket Ground before about 24,450 spectators.
• June 27
• * Djibouti receives its independence from France.
• * Constitution for the Federation of Earth is adopted by the second session of the World Constituent Assembly, held at Innsbruck, Austria.
• June 30 – The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization is permanently disbanded.

  July

• July 1
• * The East African Community is dissolved.
• * The Championships, Wimbledon – Virginia Wade wins the women's singles title in the centenary year of the tournament, Wade's first and only Wimbledon title and her third and final Grand Slam title overall; she remains the last British woman to win the singles title at Wimbledon.
• July 5 – General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq overthrows Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.
• July 9 – The Pinochet dictatorship in Chile organises the youth event of Acto de Chacarillas, a ritualised act reminiscent of Francoist Spain.
• July 10 – A temperature of, a record for continental Europe, is recorded in Greece.
• July 13
• * Somalia declares war on Ethiopia, starting the Ethio-Somali War.
• * New York City is affected by a complete electricity blackout lasting through the following day that results in citywide looting and other criminal activity, including arson.
• July 21–24 – The Libyan–Egyptian War, sparked by a Libyan raid on Sallum, begins.
• July 21 – Süleyman Demirel, of AP forms the new government of Turkey ).
• July 22 – The purged Chinese Communist leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power nine months after the "Gang of Four" was expelled from power in a coup d'état.
• July 27 – The Soviet Politburo orders Boris Yeltsin to demolish the Ipatiev House, where Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family were shot in 1918. Yeltsin later refers to this as a barbarian act.
• July 30 – Left-wing German terrorists Susanne Albrecht, Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar assassinate Jürgen Ponto, chairman of the Dresdner Bank in Oberursel, West Germany.

  August

• August 4 – U.S. president Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
• August 9 – The military-controlled government of Uruguay announces that it will return the nation to civilian rule through general elections in 1981 for a president and Congress.
• August 12 – The NASA Space Shuttle, named Enterprise, makes its first test free-flight from the back of a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.
• August 15
• * The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the Wow! signal for a notation made by a volunteer on the project.
• * Nazi war criminal Herbert Kappler escapes from the Caelian Hill military hospital in Rome.
• August 17 – The Soviet icebreaker Arktika becomes the first surface ship to reach the North Pole.
• August 20 – Voyager program: The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
• August 26 – The National Assembly of Quebec passes the Charter of the French Language making French the official language of the Canadian province of Quebec.

  September

• September 4 – The Golden Dragon massacre, involving rival Chinatown gangs, takes place in San Francisco, United States. Five are killed.
• September 5
• * Voyager program: Voyager 1 is launched after a brief delay.
• * German Autumn: Employers Association President Hanns Martin Schleyer is kidnapped in Cologne, West Germany. The kidnappers kill three escorting police officers and his chauffeur. They demand the release of Red Army Faction prisoners.
• September 7 – Torrijos-Carter treaties: Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The U.S. agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.
• September 8 – Interpol issues a resolution against the copyright infringement of video tapes and other material, which is still cited in warnings on opening pre-credits of videocassettes and DVDs.
• September 10 – Murderer Hamida Djandoubi is the last person executed by guillotine in France and the last legal beheading in the Western world.
• September 15 – Optical fiber is first used to carry live telephone traffic, as an Italian company in Turin, Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecomunicazioni begins operation of two telephone exchanges.
• September 18 – Courageous, skippered by Ted Turner, sweeps the Australian challenger Australia in the 24th America's Cup yacht race at Newport, Rhode Island.
• September 19
• * Under pressure from the Carter Administration, President of Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza Debayle lifts the state of siege in Nicaragua.
• * North Korean agents abduct Yutaka Kume from Noto Peninsula starting the North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens.
• September 20 – The Petrozavodsk phenomenon is observed in the Soviet Union and some northern European countries.
• September 28 – The Porsche 928 debuts at the Geneva Motor Show.