August 1976


August 1, 1976 (Sunday)

  • Trinidad and Tobago became a republic, with the Governor-General, Sir Ellis Clarke, becoming the first President. Clarke, who had previously served as the head of state as representative of Queen Elizabeth II, said that he would hold the office of president until the Caribbean island nation could elect a successor.
  • Defending F1 World Champion Niki Lauda suffered extensive burns in an accident in the German Grand Prix that nearly cost him his life. Fellow racer Arturo Merzario of Italy pulled Lauda from the flaming automobile and saved his life.
  • The United Nations High Commission on Refugees arranged for the evacuation of 49 U.S. citizens and their dependents from Vietnam, as the new Communist government allowed a chartered Air France flight from Tan Son Nhut airport near Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok. The group of 23 U.S.-born Americans and 14 spouses and 14 children had been stranded in South Vietnam when Saigon fell to the Communists on April 30, 1975, and most had waited for more than a year for permission to leave. A few of the Americans said that they "had pleaded to no effect to be allowed to stay in Vietnam," while three others had been held in the Chi Hua Prison
  • Syria's Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Ayyubi resigned after almost four years in office, and President Hafez al-Assad appointed Ayyubi's predecessor, retired Major General Abdul Rahman Khleifawi to replace him.
  • In Austria, Vienna's Reichsbrücke collapsed without warning into the Danube River, blocking river traffic and causing almost constant traffic jams within the city. The fall of the bridge, only 42 years old, occurred at around 5:00 in the morning and the structure was not crowded, but the driver of one vehicle was killed. A wider replacement bridge would open two years later, despite original forecasts that there would not be a substitute before 1981.
  • The 1976 Summer Olympics ended in Montreal. Among the events that took place on the final day of competition, Waldemar Cierpinski of East Germany won the marathon. Teófilo Stevenson of Cuba won the heavyweight boxing gold medal in the third round against Romania's Mircea Șimon, and East Germany beat Poland, 3 to 1, to win the soccer competition.
  • The Seattle Seahawks played their first American football game, a preseason contest at the Kingdome against the visiting San Francisco 49ers, and lost 27 to 20. The 49ers had played as the "home team" in Seattle for preseason games six times in the 20 years before the Seahawks were founded.
  • Born:
  • *Iván Duque Márquez, President of Colombia since 2018; in Bogotá
  • *Amar Upadhyay, Indian TV and film actor known for the soap opera Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Molkki; in Ahmedabad, Gujarat state
  • *Nwankwo Kanu, Nigerian soccer football forward for the Nigerian national team which won the 1996 Olympic gold medal, as well as for England's premier league for Arsenal and Portsmouth, and in the Netherlands for Ajax Amsterdam; in Owerri, Imo State

    August 2, 1976 (Monday)

  • A gunman murdered Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr and injured Priscilla Davis and Gus Gavrel, in an incident at Priscilla's mansion in Fort Worth, Texas. T. Cullen Davis, Priscilla's husband and one of the richest men in Texas, was tried and found not guilty for Andrea's murder, involvement in a plot to kill several people, and was exonerated from a wrongful death lawsuit. Cullen went broke afterwards.
  • Alexander Agyeman of Ghana was installed as the traditional ruler of the Akyem people in Ghana's Eastern Region, and crowned as King Osagyefo Kuntunkununku II.
  • Born:
  • *Sam Worthington, English-born Australian film star known for Avatar and Clash of the Titans; in Godalming, Surrey
  • *Nigamananda Saraswati, Indian Hindu monk who went on an ultimately-fatal hunger strike to call attention to the pollution of the Ganges River; in Darbhanga, Bihar state
  • Died:
  • *Fritz Lang, 85, Austrian-born film producer known for Metropolis and The Big Heat.
  • *Monroe J. Rathbone, 76, President of the largest U.S. oil company, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey from 1953 to 1965

    August 3, 1976 (Tuesday)

  • U.S. Congressman Jerry Litton of Missouri won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator, then died in a plane crash while flying to a victory party to celebrate his victory. Litton, his wife and their two children, and the pilot and a co-pilot were on a twin-engine Beechcraft airplane that lifted off from the airport in Chillicothe, Missouri shortly after 9:00 p.m., then crashed 19 seconds later after a crankshaft broke in the left engine. The airplane, which had been chartered to fly to a victory party in Kansas City, plummeted into a soybean field and exploded on impact, killing all six people on board.
  • Valery Sablin, a Soviet Navy officer who had led a mutiny in 1975 on the anti-submarine ship Storozhevoy on November 8, 1975, was executed after being found guilty of treason in a court-martial.
  • Born: Anoop Menon, Indian film actor, screenwriter and director in Malayalam films; in Kozhikode, Kerala state

    August 4, 1976 (Wednesday)

  • The government of Sudan executed 81 people who had been summarily tried and convicted of participation in a July 2 attempt to overthrow the government of Jaafar Nimeiry. The next day, an additional 17 people were executed including former Sudanese Brigadier General Mohammed Nur Saeed, who had led the effort involving more than 1,000 troops who had been trained in Libyan camps.
  • Roman Catholic Bishop Enrique Angelelli, of the diocese of La Rioja in Argentina, was assassinated by a group of people in two trucks. As he was returning from a Mass in the city of Chamical with another priest, Father Arturo Pinto, Angelelli's truck was forced off the road at the town of Punta de los Llanos. Pinto survived, but after recovering consciousness, he saw that Bishop Angelelli had been beaten to death. Local police described the death as an accident and closed the case. After the restoration of democracy in Argentina, a new investigation would conclude in 1986 that Angelelli had been murdered on orders from an Argentine Army officer.
  • American serial killer and teenager Montie Rissell murdered the first of five female victims in the Washington, DC suburb of Alexandria, Virginia. After having sex with Aura Gabor, a 26-year-old prostitute who lived in the same apartment complex where he lived, he drowned her in a nearby ravine. In a period of nine months, he would rape 12 women and kill five of them before being arrested on May 18, 1977.
  • The Sun Belt Conference, a group of college basketball in the southeastern United States, was formed by six universities. Only one of the original members, the University of South Alabama, remains in the now 12-member conference.
  • Died: Lord Thomson of Fleet, Canadian-born British publishing mogul who built the Thomson Organization that owned The Times of London

    August 5, 1976 (Thursday)

  • Big Ben, the largest bell within London's Clock Tower of Westminster, failed to ring and the clock stopped at 3:45 in the morning after metal fatigue caused the machinery to stop running. Although the hands of the clock's four faces were soon operating again after the repairs made by Westminster's chief engineer, Geoffrey Buggin, a winding drum fell off, breaking the 110-year-old chiming mechanism. The bells of Big Ben— which had operated regularly since 1859— would be require multiple repairs over the next nine months, but restored in time for the silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth's coronation in May.
  • An explosion at an underground mine in Yugoslavia's Bosnian republic, at Breza, killed 17 of the 118 workers underground. The blast occurred at a depth of.
  • As part of the American Basketball Association–National Basketball Association merger, a dispersal draft was conducted for teams to pick the players who had been under contract for the two ABA franchises which had folded, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis. The Chicago Bulls, who had had the worst record during the 1975–76 NBA season, selected Artis Gilmore of the Colonels as the first pick overall; the Bulls had drafted Gilmore in the seventh round of the 1971 NBA draft. Twelve players were selected overall by the 23 NBA teams, with 11 teams electing not to draft anyone at all.
  • Born:
  • *May Sabai Phyu, Myanmar feminist and human rights activist; in Rangoon, Burma
  • *Napoleon Beazley, American murderer known for being executed for a killing committed as a juvenile; in Grapeland, Texas
  • Died:
  • *Mapetla Mohapi, 28, black South African inmate who was the first person to be detained under Section 6 of the new Terrorism Act, was found dead in his cell, supposedly strangled by a pair of jeans. A purported suicide note was later shown to have been a forgery.
  • *Dr. Fager, 12, American thoroughbred racehorse and 1968 American Horse of the Year, after winning seven major races that year.

    August 6, 1976 (Friday)

  • The Indian state of Maharashtra became the first governmental unit to enact legislation mandating compulsory sterilization of men and women, passing the Family Bill on its third reading and sending it to the President of India for the required assent. The President reacted favorably and sent the bill back to the Maharashtra government with suggested amendments that would be necessary for an enactment, but before the measure could be passed, new elections were called and the legislation was not passed. Under the terms of the bill, "couples with three or more living children" were required "to submit one parent for sterilization or face six months in jail." More specifically, the law obligated men up to the age of 55 to receive a vasectomy "within 180 days of the birth of their third living child", except if a vasectomy would endanger the man's life, in which case a woman up to age 45 would have to submit to a tubal ligation. The national government's incentive program, however, reportedly resulted in a 200 percent increase in sterilizations compared to 1975.
  • Former UK Postmaster General John Stonehouse was sentenced to 7 years' jail for fraud, theft and forgery.
  • Born:
  • *Travis Kalanick, American entrepreneur who co-founded the internet taxi and delivery company Uber in 2009; in Los Angeles
  • *Soleil Moon Frye, American TV actress known as the star of Punky Brewster; in Glendora, California
  • *Melissa George, Australian-born American film and TV actress; in Perth, Western Australia
  • Died:
  • *Gregor Piatigorsky, 73, Russian-born American cellist
  • *Maria Klenova, 77, Soviet Russian marine geologist and Arctic explorer