January 1976

January 1, 1976 (Thursday)

• All 81 people on Middle East Airlines Flight 438 were killed when a bomb exploded in the forward cargo compartment of a Boeing 720-023B airliner. The Lebanese jet was at an altitude of over Saudi Arabia when the blast happened, and crashed northwest of Al Qaysumah, killing all 81 people on board. Nearly 50 years later, responsibility for the bombing has never been established.
• Venezuela took formal possession of its oil industry, nationalizing the operations of 30 foreign oil companies, including Exxon, Gulf and Mobil, as part of the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A..
• The Australian Defence Force came into existence with the merger under a unified command of the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force.
• Ontario became the first Canadian province to require the mandatory use of seat belts.
• The British colony Tuvalu, formerly the Ellice Islands, obtained its own government after having been established on October 1, 1975, when the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony was dissolved.
• A fire and subsequent panic killed 15 partygoers at the Six-Neuf Club in the Belgium city of La Louviere. After ringing in the year 1976, the crowd was celebrating when the electricity failed in the club. One of the people present used a cigarette lighter to see in the dark and accidentally set plastic holiday decorations on fire.
• The #1-ranked team in college football, the undefeated Ohio State Buckeyes, was upset by the #11 UCLA Bruins, 23 to 10, in the Rose Bowl in the afternoon. The loss, coming more than a week after #2-ranked Texas A&M had lost its two final games of the season, placed the #3-ranked Oklahoma Sooners in position to win the unofficial NCAA championship if they could beat the #5 Michigan Wolverines in the Orange Bowl that evening. The Sooners won, 14 to 6, and were voted #1 by both the AP writers' poll and the UPI coaches' poll the next day.
• Shortly after the new year began, the Liberty Bell was moved to a new location after 223 years at Philadelphia's Independence Hall. The temporary relocation was made to a pavilion from the Hall, deemed too small to handle tourists who would come for the U.S. bicentennial celebration.
• Born: Tank, American R&B and rap singer; in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  January 2, 1976 (Friday)

• The Oklahoma Sooners were named as the unofficial college football national champions in the two "wire service" polls recognized by the NCAA. In the Associated Press poll of sportswriters, Oklahoma received 54½ of the 63 first-place voted the day after their 14 to 6 win in the Orange Bowl, and 21 of the 36 voted in the United Press International poll of coaches.
• The Overseas Citizens' Voting Rights Act was signed into law by U.S. President Gerald Ford after having been passed by Congress, primarily because of the lobbying of Andy Sundberg. Although the new law did not grant voting rights to citizens who were residents of U.S. territories, it did allow the citizens registered to vote in one of the 50 states of the United States to vote in federal elections while temporarily living overseas.
• The financially-ailing Denver Spurs of the World Hockey Association announced their mid-season relocation from the U.S. to Canada, hours before playing a road game against the Cincinnati Stingers. Although the team appeared in their Denver uniforms in their 2 to 1 loss, the scoreboard listed the 13-20-1 team under its new name, the Ottawa Civics. The WHA's Ottawa team would exist for only 13 days and play seven games before being disbanded by the league on January 17.
• Polskie Radio Program IV began broadcasting in Poland.
• The office of High Commissioner of the British Western Pacific Territories was abolished.
• Sheffield Cablevision, one of five community cable television experiments authorised by the UK's Minister for Posts and Telecommunications in 1972, closed down because of lack of funds.
• Ted Marchibroda, who accomplished one of the most remarkable turnarounds in sports history by leading the Baltimore Colts to the Eastern Division title, was named United Press International American Football Conference coach of the year for 1975.

  January 3, 1976 (Saturday)

• All 61 people on Aeroflot Flight 2003 were killed, along with one person on the ground, when the airliner crashed shortly after takeoff from Moscow. Upon takeoff from Vnukovo Airport, the Tupolev Tu-124V entered thick clouds. At the same time, the airplane's artificial horizon instruments failed, and the crew lost its spatial orientation. Banking 95 degrees, the airliner entered a dive from an altitude of and impacted west of the airport and crashed seconds later. In accordance with practices at the time, the Soviet Union's media did not mention the accident, and refused to confirm or deny that it had happened since only Soviet citizens were on the aircraft. The news reached the West on January 14 from "informed Soviet sources."
• Gale-force winds of up to swept across Western Europe, killing 55 people including 26 in the UK, 12 in West Germany, and 17 in other nations).
• In the same storm, the East German coaster Capella sank off Schiermonnikoog, Netherlands, with its crew of 11, and the British ship Carnoustie went down with its 8-member crew.
• Born: Angelos Basinas, Greek soccer football midfielder on the national team; in Chalkida

  January 4, 1976 (Sunday)

• A team from the Soviet Union lost to a National Hockey League team for the first time in Super Series '76, with two Soviet teams and eight U.S. and Canadian NHL teams playing a total of eight games, as the Buffalo Sabres defeated the Wings of the Soviet Union team of Moscow, 12 to 6.
• A bus crash killed 19 people and injured 38 in South Africa. The bus ran off of the road and fell into the Umtawalumi River in the Natal province.
• Mark Edmondson defeated John Newcombe to win the Australian Open in tennis.
• The 1976 New Zealand Grand Prix was held at the Pukekohe Park Raceway and was won by Ken Smith.
• Born: August Diehl, German film actor; in West Berlin, West Germany

  January 5, 1976 (Monday)

• Television was introduced to South Africa for the first time in that nation's history, more than 25 years after it had been introduced in most of the industrial nations of the West, as the South African Broadcasting Corporation began its first nationwide broadcasts. Prime Minister John Vorster, whose government had opposed TV broadcasting for years, came on the air to launch the inaugural night's offering on SATV, starting with the first part of the miniseries documentary The World at War, followed by an episode of The Bob Newhart Show. "I must confess that as a person I am not overenthusiastic about television. But I am pleasantly surprised so far with the quality of test transmission," Vorster told reporters earlier in the day. Initially, South African TV was limited to five hours in the evening from 7 p.m. to midnight, with half of the programming in English and half in Afrikaans.
• "No-fault divorce" went into effect in Australia as the Family Law Act 1975 took effect nationwide, eliminating the previous requirement that specific reasons for dissolution of the marriage had to be proven. On the first day, 200 applications for divorce were filed in the Melbourne registry office of the Family Court of Australia, and 80 were filed in Adelaide, while only 32 were filed in Sydney. The only requirement was that, after a 12-month separation, there was no reasonable prospect of reconciliation and that the marriage was irretrievably broken.
• The Pol Pot regime proclaimed a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea, providing for a "Kampuchean People's Representative Assembly" of 250 members "consisting of 150 farmers, 50 workers and 50 soldiers", and guaranteed employment for all people, with the state owning all means of production. Regarding human rights in the totalitarian regime, speech and religion were protected as long as they did not "contribute to the destruction of a democratic Kampuchea" in the opinion of the ruling government.
• In Northern Ireland, near Whitecross, terrorists massacred 10 Protestant textile workers who were being transported home on a bus at the end of the workday. Eleven people were ordered off of the bus, lined up against a wall, and shot with machine guns, in apparent retaliation for the earlier murder of five Roman Catholics by Protestants in Ulster. The South Armagh Republican Action Force took responsibility for the killing.
• The U.S. state of California assessed a $4,200,000 fine against the American Motors Corporation for violations of the state's anti-pollution laws regarding motor vehicle equipment.
• Died:
• *John A. Costello, 84, Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland from 1948 to 1951
• *Malcolm "Mal" Evans, 40, English roadie who set up the concerts for The Beatles from 1963 until their breakup, was shot and killed by Los Angeles police after pointing an air rifle at them during a confrontation.
• *Károly Takács, 65, sports shooter who won two gold medals, despite a disability, at the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games

  January 6, 1976 (Tuesday)

• The popular French television program 30 millions d'amis, a weekly children's show about pet care, made its debut on the TF1 ''Télévision française'' network. The show would run for 40 years before ending in 2016.
• In the U.S. state of Hawaii, a group of indigenous Hawaiian Islanders carried out "Operation Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana" in order to stage a mock invasion to reclaim Kahoolawe, the smallest of the eight main islands that make up the state, and to retake it from the exclusive use of the United States Navy. After setting out from the island of Maui, a group of nine people, later called "The Kaho'olawe Nine", made a successful landing, while a larger group was stopped when their boat was intercepted by a Navy patrol boat. Three other members of PKO died when their boat overturned in severe weather.
• The Soviet satellite Kosmos 725 re-entered the Earth's atmosphere after eight months in orbit.
• Died: Louis F. Edelman, 75, American film and TV producer