April 1977

April 1, 1977 (Friday)

• Brazil's President, Ernesto Geisel, announced in a nationally televised speech that he was shutting down the Brazilian Congress indefinitely, and that he would rule by decree until new political measures could be implemented. The move came after Geisel's proposed constitutional amendment for judicial reform failed to win a two-thirds majority.
• The United States Senate voted, 86 to 9, to adopt a Code of Ethics. For the first time, members were required to give full public disclosure of their income and their assets and liabilities.
• The white-minority ruled African nation of Rhodesia ended its ban against black Africans from whites only hotels, restaurants, bars and nightclubs.
• Born: Vitor Belfort, Brazilian mixed martial artist, winner of the 1997 "UFC 12" Ultimate Fighting Championship; in Rio de Janeiro

  April 2, 1977 (Saturday)

• Red Rum, described as "the 'wonder horse' of steeplechase racing" won a record third Grand National at Aintree Racecourse in the UK.
• General Joachim Yhombi-Opango became the new President of the People's Republic of the Congo after being designated by the ruling 11-man military council to succeed President Marien Ngouabi, who had been assassinated on March 18.
• Australia's top-level circuit for professional soccer football, the 14-team National Soccer League, played its first games, with franchises coast-to-coast in four states and the Australian Capital Territory. There were 2 teams in Adelaide, 2 in Brisbane, one in Canberra, 3 in Melbourne, and 5 in Sydney. The results of the two opening matches were West Adelaide SC 3, Canberra City FC 1, and South Melbourne FC 2, Sydney Olympic FC 0. John Kosmina of West Adelaide, a member of the Australian national team, scored the NSL's first goal.
• Born:
• * Nicki Pedersen, Danish motorcycle rider and World Championship winner in 2003, 2007 and 2008; in Odense
• * Michael Fassbender, German-born Irish film actor, known for 12 Years a Slave; in Heidelberg, West Germany

  April 3, 1977 (Sunday)

• A group of 22 Libyan Army officers were publicly hanged in Tripoli and in Benghazi after being sentenced to death for their attempt on August 13, 1975, to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi and his ruling Revolutionary Command Council. Within two weeks, 49 people had been hanged.
• At Medeo in the Kazakh SSR, speed skater Viktor Lyoskin of the Soviet Union broke the world record for fastest 10,000 meter race. His time of 14 minutes, 34.33 seconds would stand for almost three years until being bested in the 1980 Winter Olympics by Eric Heiden.
• Born: Chael Sonnen, American mixed martial artist, promoter and commentator, in Clackamas County, Oregon
• Died:
• *Pierre-Marie Théas, 82, French Roman Catholic bishop, recognized as one of the Righteous among the Nations for his efforts to protect Jews in France during the Nazi German occupation of France
• *Wilhelm Boger, 77, convicted Nazi German war criminal for his atrocities at the Auschwitz concentration camp, died at the Bietigheim-Bissingen prison in West Germany, 18 years after his 1959 arrest and subsequent sentencing to life imprisonment.

  April 4, 1977 (Monday)

• The crash of Southern Airways Flight 242 in the U.S. killed 63 of the 85 people on board, along with nine people on the ground, after the pilot attempted to make an emergency landing on Georgia State Highway 92. The twin-engine DC-9 jet was flying from Huntsville, Alabama to Atlanta and encountered hail and lightning that shut down both its engines before going down near the town of New Hope, Georgia. The pilot's last statement to the Atlanta control tower, made at 4:18 in the afternoon, was "We're putting it on a highway. We're down to nothing."
• Tornadoes killed 21 people in the U.S. state of Alabama, 17 in the Smithfield Homes housing project in western Birmingham. The same weather system brought heavy rains to the Appalachian regions of Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia, creating massive floods that had mixed with unmelted snow in the mountainous area.
• In Spain, the Spanish Democratic Union and the Christian Democratic People's Party merged to form the Partido Demócrata Cristiano in advance of the June 15 parliamentary elections. The new party aligned itself with the Union of the Democratic Centre coalition of parties headed by Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez.
• Sweden's Prime Minister Thorbjorn Falldin announced that the nation's currency, the krona, was being devalued by 6%, and that the national sales tax was being raised from 18.65% to 21.65%. To combat the inflation from the devaluation, Falldin announced a price-freeze.
• In a non-binding referendum in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, residents of the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard voted overwhelmingly to secede from the state. The vote was reaction to a proposed revision of legislative districts of Massachusetts that would have deprived the islands of their own state representative, as part of reducing the number of state representatives from 240 to 160. State legislative approval would have been required to allow the islands to join another state.
• Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 was given its first public performance, premiering at the Royan Festival in the French département of Charente-Maritime.

  April 5, 1977 (Tuesday)

• The 504 Sit-in protests in the U.S. were carried out simultaneously in 10 offices of the federal United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, after HEW Secretary Joseph Califano failed to sign off on regulations (authorized under §504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to provide disabled persons access to buildings and as well as to provide equal treatment under the law. The protests were successful in getting Califano to act on April 28.
• Following a meeting with U.S. President Jimmy Carter in Washington D.C., Egypt's President Anwar Sadat held a press conference at the Blair House, speaking mostly about the opening of a dialogue between the U.S. and Palestinian leaders about a state on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Sadat also indicated, in a statement that went unreported at the time, that he would be willing to make peace with Israel in the near future. An obscure "Israeli journalist", Wolf Blitzer, the Washington correspondent of the Jerusalem Post asked Sadat about an exchange of Egyptian and Israeli reporters, and Sadat replied "I, myself, have no objections to this. But, believe me, our people are not yet ready for this after 29 years of hatred, and four years, and bitterness.. We must take it gradually." Sadat would tell an American journalist, Mark Bruzonsky, that "the question stayed in his mind" after Blitzer had asked it, and explained that "from that suggestion grew the idea of offering to visit Jerusalem to accelerate the process toward a Middle East peace conference at Geneva," an event that would happen on November 19.
• The Grand National Assembly of Turkey voted, 342 to 1, to move the date for parliamentary elections from October to June 5.
• Twenty minutes after the departure of American Airlines Flight 241 from St. Louis to Los Angeles, the number 3 engine fell off of the Boeing 707 as the airplane was carrying 37 passengers and 7 crew. The crew of the American flight was able to guide the plane back to the airport for a safe landing. The engine was found the next day in a pasture west of the airport.
• Born:
• * Jonathan Erlich, Argentine-born Israeli tennis player, doubles winner in the 2008 Australian Open; in Buenos Aires
• * Daniel Majstorović, Swedish footballer and centre back with 50 caps for the Sweden national team; in Stockholm
• *Rupali Ganguly, Indian TV actress and Indian Television Academy Award winner as the star of Anupamaa; in Calcutta
• Died:
• *Carlos Prío Socarrás, 73, President of Cuba 1948 to 1952 until his overthrow by Fulgencio Batista, shot himself in the chest while living in U.S. exile at his home in Miami Beach.
• *A. P. Nagarajan, 49, Indian Tamil cinema film director, died of a heart attack.

  April 6, 1977 (Wednesday)

• A 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck southwestern Iran, killing at least 348 people and destroying 2,100 homes. Hardest hit was the town of Naghan, where 202 people died. The quake came 15 days after a 7.0 tremor on March 22, near Bandar Abbas, that killed 167 people.
• The white minority government of Rhodesia announced that it had started an operation to relocate 250,000 black African residents from rural tribal lands along the Honde River that marked its border with the neighboring nation of Mozambique, and that 17,000 had been placed them in "protected villages". Black nationalist leader Abel Muzorewa described the seven heavily-guarded, fenced "villages" as "concentration camps", in that residents had to return to their villages for a curfew every night.
• U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed legislation that authorized him to reorganize the federal bureaucracy. During his election campaign, Carter had pledged to reduce the number of U.S. government agencies— 2,018 at the time— to no more than 200. Under the law, any proposal submitted to Congress would automatically take effect within 60 days unless either the U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives voted against the change. On the same day, Carter asked Congress to authorize creation of a 2,019th federal agency, the "Agency for Consumer Advocacy".
• The new Seattle Mariners major league baseball team played their first game, losing 7 to 0 to the visiting California Angels at the Kingdome, before a sellout crowd of 57,762 spectators, the largest opening day attendance in MLB history up to that time. The event was also the first indoor baseball game in American League History.
• Merle "Hondo" Chance, an 8-year-old boy, became the 25th and last victim of American serial killer Patrick Wayne Kearney. Chance had last been seen riding his bicycle away from his home in Venice, California. His remains would be found on May 26 by a hiker in the Angeles National Forest.
• Died: Pat Evans, 21, American motorcycle racer, died in a hospital in Bologna, three days after suffering severe head injuries in an accident during a race at the Imola 200 race.