June 1976

June 1, 1976 (Tuesday)

• All 45 people on Aeroflot Flight 418 were killed in a crash in Africa when the Tu-154 jetliner disappeared shortly after taking off from Malabo in Equatorial Guinea, as the first stop in its flight to Moscow after originating in Angola at Luanda. The wreckage was found on the Equatorial Guinean island of Bioko, where it had crashed into Mount San Carlos.
• The United Kingdom and Iceland came to an agreement on North Atlantic Ocean fishing rights that ended the Cod War. While not completely banning British fishing within of Iceland's coast, the territorial waters claimed by Iceland, the agreement did reduce the numbers of fishing trawlers in a day to 24 and barred fishing entirely within of Iceland. The UK did not agree to Iceland's demand to reduce the total amount of cod to no more than 35,000 tons a year.
• Born: Angela Perez Baraquio, American educator who was crowned Miss America 2001 as the first Asian-American to win the pageant; in Honolulu

  June 2, 1976 (Wednesday)

• The most comprehensive search made up to that time for the Loch Ness Monster began with underwater photography with motion sensor cameras, sonars and television cameras beneath the surface of the Scottish lake Loch Ness, located in Inverness-shire in the Scottish Highlands. The American expedition, led by Dr. Robert H. Rines of Boston was financed by the U.S. Academy of Applied Science and by The New York Times. After six months, the expedition "failed to turn up new evidence to explain the mysterious and legendary phenomenon"
• A car bomb, planted by mobsters, fatally injured Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles in Phoenix. Bolles died in a hospital 11 days later on June 13. Bolles, an investigative reporter, had been working on an article about the Mafia infiltration of Arizona's cities and had been invited to a meeting at the Clarendon House Hotel by a towing business owner, John Adamson. While Bolles was in the hotel, the bomb had been placed under the seat of his car, which had been in a parking garage. Phoenix police arrested Adamson soon after Bolles died. Adamson would confess at his trial, seven months later, that he had planted the bomb after being paid $5,800 in cash by a land developer, Max Dunlap, to carry out the crime. In return, Adamson received a sentence of 20 years and 8 months as part of a plea bargain, rather than life imprisonment, with the incarceration to be done outside of the U.S. state of Arizona for Adamson's safety.
• After almost 30 years of independence from the United States, the government of the Philippines opened diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.
• Born: 'Masenate Mohato Seeiso, queen consort of Lesotho as the wife of King Letsie III; as Anna Karabo Motšoeneng in Mapoteng
• Died:
• *Juan José Torres, 56, former President of Bolivia from 1970 to 1971, was kidnapped and murdered by a right-wing death squad at the Buenos Aires suburb of San Andrés de Giles.
• *Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, 79, Egyptian diplomat and, from 1945 to 1952, the first Secretary-General of the Arab League

  June 3, 1976 (Thursday)

• One of the four surviving copies of the 761-year-old Magna Carta arrived in Washington, D.C., and was loaned from the United Kingdom to the United States in honor of the U.S. bicentennial celebrations. Led by the British Lord Chancellor, Lord Elwyn-Jones, a delegation presented the document, to the U.S. Speaker of the House, Carl Albert, and a group of Representatives and Senators. The document, the first charter of personal and political liberty made in England and the inspiration to future charters, had been signed by King John at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. Lord Elwyn-Jones commented, "Peoples not familiar with our ways have thought it paradoxical for the British to be joining in the celebration of the Bicentenary of what was, after all, the loss of the American colonies. They overlook our traditions of compromise. We in fact now regard the events of two centuries ago as a victory for the English-speaking world." Although the loan was for only one year, a gold replica of the document, and its massive protective case made of gold and silver, was given to the Capitol for permanent display.
• Died:
• *Jinvijay, 88, Indian Jainist faith scholar
• *Viggo Kampmann, 65, Prime Minister of Denmark from 1960 to 1962

  June 4, 1976 (Friday)

• The Boston Celtics defeated the Phoenix Suns 128–126 in triple overtime in Game 5 of the NBA Finals at the Boston Garden. In 1997, the game would be selected by a panel of experts as the greatest of the NBA's first 50 years. The game had been tied 95-95 at the end of regulation, then 101-101 and 112-112.
• All 45 people on Air Manila Flight 702 and a truck driver were killed when the Lockheed Electra turboprop crashed on takeoff from Agana at Guam. The aircraft "struck a hill, bounced over a highway and hit a pickup truck" then burst into flame.
• Born: Alexei Navalny, Russian lawyer and politician, jailed opponent of Vladimir Putin and the victim of a poisoning attempt; in Butyn, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR

  June 5, 1976 (Saturday)

• In the United States, 11 people were killed in the collapse of the Teton Dam in southeast Idaho. At 7:30 in the morning local time, the first leak appeared and became noticeably worse by 9:30 and two crews with bulldozers were sent to plug the leak. The gap gradually got wider and at 11:55, the earthen dam collapsed and released the pent-up waters of the Teton River into the Snake River Plain. Most of the buildings in Wilford, Idaho were destroyed, and the city of Rexburg was flooded for days.
• Seven people in Northern Ireland were killed in terrorist attacks on two different Belfast pubs. An Irish Republican Army bomb exploded in front of the door of the Times Bar, killing two Protestant patrons; in retaliation, the Ulster Volunteer Force sent four gunmen into the Chlorane Bar, who shot and killed five people—three Catholic and two Protestant. In July, the IRA retaliated for the Chlorane Bar shooting by killing three civilians at Walker's Bar, and the UVF responded by killing six people at the Ramble Inn outside of Antrim. In all, at least 16 persons were killed in the retaliation shootings.
• Dwight Stones of Long Beach State University in the U.S. broke his own world record for the high jump, leaping 7 feet, 7 inches at the NCAA track and field championships in Philadelphia.
• Carl Albert, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, announced that he would retire from Congress at the end of his current term and that he would not seek re-election as a Congressman from Oklahoma. Newspaper columnist Jack Anderson would later say that Albert, whose office had been accused of accepting gifts from South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, had been pressured to retire by House Majority Leader Tip O'Neill.
• Born:
• *Sonalika Joshi, Indian TV actress known for Taarak Mehta's long-running Hindi language situation comedy Ka Ooltah Chashmah ; in Mumbai
• *Aesop Rock, American hip hop recording artist; in Syosset, New York
• Died:
• *María Ruanova, 63, Argentine ballet dancer and choreographer
• *Willy Rösingh, 75, Dutch rower and 1924 Olympic gold medalist

  June 6, 1976 (Sunday)

• A plane crash in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, killed all 11 people on board, including the recently inaugurated chief minister of Sabah, Tun Fuad Stephens, and three of his ministers.
• The Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship, defeating the host Phoenix Suns, 87 to 80, to take the four-game series 4 games to 2.
• Switzerland's most infamous murder was discovered in the town of Seewen in the canton of Solothurn, with bodies of five victims in the family of 80-year-old Anna Westhäuser-Siegrist. The other people killed were Anna's brother Eugen, her sister-in-law Elsa, and her two sons Emanuel and Max, all five shot with a Winchester rifle. The killer would never be found and the statute of limitations for charging anyone with the crime would expire 30 years later.
• Born: Geoff Rowley, English professional skateboarder, co-founder of the Flip Skateboards company and Thrasher magazine Skater of the Year in 2000; in Liverpool
• Died:
• *J. Paul Getty, 83, American oil industry billionaire and one of the world's wealthiest men at the time.
• *Elisabeth Rethberg, 81, German-born American opera soprano
• *David Jacobs, Welsh track and field sprinter and Olympic gold medalist
• *Victor Varconi, 85, Hungarian-born American silent film actor

  June 7, 1976 (Monday)

• In Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, a Croatian nationalist attempted to assassinate Yugoslavian Ambassador Mancillo Vucekovic, but mistakenly wounded Uruguay's Ambassador, Carlos Abdala in a case of mistaken identity.
• The McDonald's hamburger restaurant chain opened its first New Zealand franchise, located in Porirua, a suburb of Wellington.
• Born: Necro, American rap artist; in Brooklyn
• Died:
• *Shigetarō Shimada, 92, convicted Japanese war criminal for his actions as Admiral of the Imperial Navy and as Japan's Minister of the Navy during World War II. Shimada was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1945 but paroled in 1955 after the end of the U.S. occupation.
• *Bobby Hackett, 61, American jazz musician

  June 8, 1976 (Tuesday)

• The final presidential primaries for the 1976 U.S. presidential election were conducted, with voting in the states of California, Ohio and New Jersey. Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter won the Ohio Democratic primary and gained more than 200 delegate votes overall, putting him within 400 votes of the nomination. Carter estimated that he had at least 1,250 of the necessary 1,505 delegates needed for a win on the first ballot and received endorsements from several prominent Democrats the next day, in what The New York Times described as "capping one of the most brilliantly plotted nominations in American political history." In the race for the Republican Party nomination, incumbent U.S. President Gerald Ford had a narrow lead of 105 delegates over former California Governor Ronald Reagan, although the outcome of the nomination depended on "a six-week battle through 11 state conventions."
• The Parole Board of the U.S. state of Nebraska voted, 4 to 1, to release 32-year-old Caril Ann Fugate from prison after she had served almost 18 years in prison for assisting her boyfriend, Charles Starkweather in the murder of 11 people in 1958. Fugate had been 14 years old when she accompanied Starkweather on a murder rampage in Nebraska and Wyoming, and was convicted of first degree murder. Starkweather had been put to death in the electric chair. Fugate was released from the Nebraska Center for Women, in York, Nebraska, on June 20.
• Born: Lindsay Davenport, American professional tennis player, ranked #1 for the WTA and winner of the women's singles at the U.S. Open, French Open and Australian Open between 1998 and 2000; in Palos Verdes, California