March 1976

March 1, 1976 (Monday)

• The House of Commons of the United Kingdom voted, 249 to 139, to make the wearing of seat belts mandatory in the UK for drivers and passengers in the front seat of a motor vehicle.
• In the United Kingdom, Home Secretary Merlyn Rees announced that Special Category Status for those sentenced for scheduled terrorist crimes relating to the civil violence in Northern Ireland, introduced in 1972, would be phased out, in accordance with the recommendations of the Gardner Committee.
• The Norwegian drilling rig Deep Sea Driller ran aground off Bergen, breaking off a leg and killing six crew members. It would later be repaired and returned to service.
• The Association of Tennis Professionals began issuing its rankings of individual men who were the best in doubles play, after having ranked singles play for men beginning on August 23, 1973. Bob Hewitt of South Africa became the first player named as #1 in doubles. At the time, Jimmy Connors of the U.S. continued to be listed by the ATP as the #1 ranked male player in the world. The Women's Tennis Association, which had Chris Evert ranked as the #1 individual, would not make doubles player rankings until 1984.

  March 2, 1976 (Tuesday)

• A TAM – Transporte Aéreo Militar IAI Arava 201 on a military flight crashed in the Bolivian jungle, killing 19 of the 22 people on board. The plane's wreckage was found two days later.
• Steam locomotive train service ended permanently in Japan after more than a century, as the last steam engine, a Japanese National Railways D51 was retired.
• Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter temporarily lost his front-runner status in the race for the 1976 Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. presidential election, as U.S. Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington won the Massachusetts Primary, finishing ahead of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama and Congressman Morris K. Udall of Arizona. Carter finished in fourth place. In the Republican primary, U.S. President Ford won uncontested, although one-sixth of the voters cast a write-in ballot for former California Governor Ronald Reagan.

  March 3, 1976 (Wednesday)

• Police in Spain fired into a crowd of Basque demonstrators in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque region, killing five and wounding 150. The National Police Corps used tear gas against striking workers, before it began firing.
• Carlsbad Skatepark, the first facility in the U.S. state of California to be designed for skateboarding, opened in the San Diego suburb of Carlsbad, California.
• Born: Natalia Kukulska, Polish pop music singer; in Warsaw

  March 4, 1976 (Thursday)

• The Maguire Seven, members of a family resident in West Kilburn, London, UK, were found guilty of possessing explosives used in IRA terrorist activity; their sentences would eventually be reversed in 1991.
• Winegrowers in the French village of Arquettes-en-Val rioted over the importation of "cheap Italian and Spanish wines" by France, and fought a gun battle with police that killed one civilian and one policeman; 29 people were injured, most of them police. The funeral for Emile Pouytes, a 52-year old winemaker who was killed in the gunfight, was attended by 10,000 people. The policeman killed was Captain Joel Ligoff.
• The United States Senate narrowly voted, 47 to 46, to reject a resolution that would have declared the 1974 U.S. Senate race for Oklahoma in doubt, clearing the way for Henry Bellmon, a Republican, to begin a second term, after nine Democrats join the Senate's 37 Republican Senators. Oklahoma had had only one U.S. Senator since January 1975 because of doubts over whether Bellmon or Democrat Ed Edmondson had won the race.
• In the first criminal indictment of an airline on charges relating to an accident, a federal grand jury in New York brought charges against Pan American World Airways and four other companies for the November 3, 1973 crash of a Boeing 707 cargo plane, in which the three-man crew was killed.
• The United Nations Statistics Division announced that the number of people on Earth would reach a population of almost eight billion by the year 2010 if the present 1.9% annual growth rate continued, more than double the population of 3,890,000,000 reported for 1974. In the 35 years that followed, the growth rate would be slowed somewhat by increased education on and availability of contraception, and the United Nations Population Fund would record the world's population at 6.9 billion people in 2010, with recognition of reaching 7,000,000,000 people as of October 31, 2011 and a forecast of 2027 as the year to top eight billion people.
• The Medal of Honor was presented to three American officers who had been prisoners of war during the Vietnam War, U.S. Navy Vice Admiral James Stockdale, U.S. Air Force Captain George "Bud" Day, and, posthumously, to U.S. Air Force 2nd Lieutenant Lance Sijan.
• Born: Mohsen Namjoo, Iranian film score composer; in Torbat-e Jam, Razavi Khorasan Province
• Died: Walter H. Schottky, 89, German physicist

  March 5, 1976 (Friday)

• For the first time in history, the value of the British pound sterling was worth less than two United States dollars. At 2:39 in the afternoon, the milestone was crossed on the London Stock Exchange and as of closing, the worth of £1.00 was $1.975.
• On the final day of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the composition of the ruling Communist Party Politburo was changed by vote of the Central Committee. The most notable alteration was the removal of the Soviet Minister of Agriculture, Dmitry Polyansky, from the 15 full members of the Politburo, apparently because of the failure of the 1975 grain harvest. New full members, both promoted from candidate member status, were General Dmitry Ustinov and 53-year-old Leningrad Party Secretary Grigory Romanov, raising the number of Politburo members to 16.
• Mohamed Lamine Ahmed was named as the first head of government for the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic, declared in February by Polisario Front guerrillas who were fighting for independence of the area, recently annexed by Morocco after the withdraw of Spanish colonial forces.
• With the inflation rate in Argentina now equivalent to 240% per annum, the government of the South American republic announced a new devaluation of the Argentine peso. Formally valued at 76 pesos to a dollar, the new rate was 250 pesos.
• Toni Innauer of Austria set a world record for the longest ski jump, at in West Germany at Oberstdorf. Two days later, he broke his own world record with a jump of.

  March 6, 1976 (Saturday)

• All 111 people on board Aeroflot Flight 909 were killed when the airplane crashed while flying from Moscow to the Armenian SSR capital at Yerevan. The Ilyushin Il-18 jet crashed at night near Verkhnyaya Khava in the Soviet Union after an electrical fault caused the failure of several major instruments, including the compass, the main gyroscopes and the autopilot, causing the crew to lose control.
• Wilfred Benitez, a 17-year-old American high school student, won the World Boxing Association light welterweight championship when he defeated Antonio Cervantes in a bout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, becoming the youngest professional boxing world champion in history.
• Nigerian Army Lieutenant Colonel B. S. Dimka, was arrested after a three week-long manhunt and charged with treason for the February 13 assassination of President Murtala Muhammed and the attempted overthrow of the government. He would be executed on May 15.
• The South African Grand Prix took place at the Kyalami circuit near Johannesburg, and was won by Niki Lauda.
• Died: Maxie Rosenbloom, 68, American light heavyweight boxing champion 1930 to 1934, later a TV actor

  March 7, 1976 (Sunday)

• India's government released opposition leader Charan Singh, who had been under house arrest for more than eight months since Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared a state of emergency. Singh would later become the Prime Minister of India for a brief period in 1979 and 1980.
• Eight high school students from Minster, Ohio, were killed and four injured when a car plowed into them while they were walking on a road in Mercer County. The dead and injured had been among 50 students from Minster High School who had been traveling together in several cars to go to a dance.
• The nucleus of Comet West, which had made its closest approach to the Sun on February 25, split into two fragments while being observed from the Earth by astronomers, apparently having been affected by the Sun's gravitational field.
• Born:
• *Brittany Daniel and Cynthia Daniel, American TV and film actresses known as the stars of the Fox and UPN television series Sweet Valley High; in Gainesville, Florida
• *Roman Sakin, Russian sculptor; in Kursk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
• Died:
• *Wright Patman, 82, the oldest member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Congressman for Texas since 1929.
• *General Nam Il, 60, Vice Premier of North Korea and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a car accident
• *Jacques Duboin, 97, French economist who pioneered the theory of "distributive economy"
• *Ivan Borkovský, 78, Ukrainian-born Czechoslovakian archaeologist

  March 8, 1976 (Monday)

• A meteor shower of over 100 extraterrestrial objects took place over China with large meteorites falling over an area of in the Jilin province in Manchuria, with one weighing, the largest ever to have been observed during its descent.
• Researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City announced that asbestos fibers been discovered in nine of 19 brands of baby powder and body powder made from talc. According to the research team, ZBT Baby Powder and four body powders concentration of asbestos fibers ranging from 8% to 20%, and one powder taken off the market, Bauer & Black Baby Talc, had a 15% concentration.
• South Korea's President Park Chung-hee ordered the arrest of two of his most vocal critics, Kim Dae-jung and former Foreign Minister Jeong Il-hyeong, after both had signed a declaration a week earlier calling on President Park to restore democracy, free political prisoners, and then to resign. In a statement, the government declared that "By publicly agitating for the subversion of the Government, they have infringed upon the basic constitutional order."
• Several hundred thousand workers in Spain's Basque provinces walked off of their jobs in the largest protest in Spain since the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939. One Spanish news agency estimated that 325,000 laborers walked off of their jobs in the provinces of Álava, Guipuzcoa, Vizcaya and Navarre.
• Three construction workers were killed while preparing for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal while working on the Olympic Stadium, when a concrete slab broke from its supporting cables and caused them to fall to their deaths. A construction accident the year before had killed another construction worker.
• Born: Freddie Prinze Jr., American film actor, in Los Angeles
• Died:
• *Pauline de Rothschild, 66, American fashion designer
• *Alfonso Gatto, 66, Italian poet and author
• *Romer Zane Grey, 66, American film animator and author