May 1976

May 1, 1976 (Saturday)

• Italy's President Giovanni Leone dismissed both houses of the Legislatura della Repubblica Italiana and scheduled the first nationwide elections since 1972, to be held on June 20 and 21.
• Demonstrations broke out across the Occupied Palestinian territories during International Workers' Day.
• In one of the closest elections in Australian history, conducted in the state of New South Wales for the 98-seat Legislative Assembly, control was decided by margins of less than 75 votes in each of two electoral districts, Gosford and Hurstville. The Australian Labor Party, led by Neville Wran, won both seats, gaining a 50 to 48 majority over the ruling Liberal/Country Coalition. The Gosford seat was captured by 74 votes out of less than 30,000 cast, while former rugby union star Kevin Ryan defeated incumbent Tom Mead by 44 votes out of 30,566 cast.
• Former California Governor Ronald Reagan, a challenger to incumbent U.S. President Gerald Ford for the Republican Party presidential nomination, won a large victory over Ford in voting in Texas in the quest for that state's 96 delegates. Reagan won the Indiana and Georgia primaries three days later, prompting questions of whether President Ford would be denied a nomination.
• The West African nation of Togo created the Togolese National Navy, with two patrol boats to guard its of seacoast and to protect the harbor of the nation's capital, Lomé.
• Southampton F.C., defeated Manchester United in a 1 to 0 upset to win England's soccer football championship tournatment, the FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium.
• At Hampden Park in Glasgow, Rangers beat Heart of Midlothian F.C., 3 to 1, to win the Scottish Cup soccer football championship of Scotland.
• The Kentucky Derby was won by Bold Forbes, ridden by Angel Cordero, in front of a crowd of 115,387 people at Churchill Downs in Louisville.
• Track and field athlete Mac Wilkins broke the world record for the discus three consecutive times in a single event at San Jose, California, with throws of, and.
• The popular British heavy metal band Iron Maiden made its debut, playing at St. Nick's Hall in Poplar, East London, before beginning regular performances at the Cart and Horses Pub in Maryland Point, Stratford.
• Died:
• *Alexandros Panagoulis, 36, Greek poet, dissident, and member of the Hellenic Parliament since 1974, was killed in a car accident after being run off the road by another vehicle. Panagoulis had attempted to assassinate dictator Georgios Papadopoulos in 1968, and released after the restoration of democracy in 1974. According to three witnesses, Pangoulis attempted to pass a slower car in front of him at high speed, lost control and skidded on wet pavement into a wall.
• *Michael Gartenschläger, 32, former East German political prisoner who had escaped to West Germany in 1971, and then returned three times, was shot and killed as he attempted to cross back into West Germany from the border city of Büchen.

  May 2, 1976 (Sunday)

• At least 15 highway workers and bystanders in Colombia were killed, and 20 others hurt, when they were buried by an avalanche while standing on a highway west of Fresno in the Tolima Department. Many in the group had been passengers on buses that had been traveling between the town of Fresno and the city of Manizales, while others had been clearing Colombia's Highway 50 from a smaller landslide that had happened earlier in the morning. Another 20 were reported missing.
• The Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN was first activated as an improved particle accelerator for physics research. It would lead to "the first great scientific discovery of CERN" in January 1983 when the W and Z bosons were found.
• The German cargo ship Nordhuk ran aground off Eilean Trodday in the Inner Hebrides and was wrecked. All twelve crew were rescued by the Stornoway Lifeboat.
• Died: Dan Bankhead, 55, the first African American pitcher in Major League Baseball, died of cancer one day before his 56th birthday. Bankhead, who had played for the Birmingham Black Barons and the Memphis Red Sox in the Negro American League, pitched four innings for the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 26, 1947, and in three other games in the season.

  May 3, 1976 (Monday)

• Eleven people were killed when a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 300 operated by de Havilland Canada suffered the failure of its No. 2 engine on takeoff from Monze Airport in Zambia and crashed one kilometer beyond the end of the runway.
• A Pan American World Airways Boeing 747, nicknamed the Clipper Liberty Bell by the airline, completed its round the world airplane flight in a record 46 hours and 50 seconds, landing back in New York slightly less than two days after it departed. The flight, which bested the previous record by more than 16 hours, would have had a better time except for a two-hour delay in Tokyo because of an airport workers' strike.
• A time bomb, strapped to a motorbike, injured 33 passers-by and bystanders on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem.
• The Wings Over America tour by Paul McCartney's band opened in Fort Worth, Texas, the first time McCartney had performed in the United States since The Beatles' 1966 concert at Candlestick Park.
• Swimmer Linda McGill of Australia became the first person to swim completely around the perimeter of Hong Kong Island, a total distance of almost, finishing in 17 hours and six minutes. Her unofficial record would stand for more than 41 years until November 11, 2017, when it would be bested by Simon Holiday, with a new mark of 12 hours and 32 minutes.
• Attorneys, jurists and other members of the legal profession in India boycotted court to observe "Bar Solidarity Day" as a protest against the suspension of civil rights during the government of Indira Gandhi.
• British commercial diver Anthony Dobson drowned after his umbilical became fouled during his ascent from a dive in the North Sea. The umbilical pulled Dobson out of the dive basket while it was being raised to the surface by the construction and pipelaying barge Orca.
• Died: Minerva Teichert, 87, American painter and mural artist

  May 4, 1976 (Tuesday)

• A train wreck in the Netherlands killed 24 people when Stoptrein 4116, a commuter train operating locally in the Rotterdam metro area, was struck head-on by the international Rhine Express D-train 215. Train 4116, in turn, was knocked into another commuter train, 4125. All 24 dead were in the forward carriage of 4116, killing 24 people and seriously injuring another five.
• Spain's third major daily newspaper, El País began publication.
• The first LAGEOS satellite was launched, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the United States.
• Liverpool won England's Football League championship on the final day of play of the 1975-76 season, with a 3 to 1 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers for a record of 23 wins and 14 draws, one ahead of Queens Park Rangers, which had earlier beaten Leeds United 2 to 0 to finish the season with 24 wins and 11 draws. Earlier in the season, Liverpool and defeated Queens Park Rangers, 2 to 0.
• The unsuccessful Broadway musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue made the first of seven performances, opening at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. Despite music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, the musical closed four days later on May 8.
• Born: Anza, South African-Japanese singer and actress; as Ōyama Anza, in Cape Town.

  May 5, 1976 (Wednesday)

• In the 1976 European Cup Winners' Cup Final at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, R.S.C. Anderlecht of Belgium defeated West Ham United F.C. of England by 4 goals to 2.
• The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development opened in Nairobi with delegates from 150 world nations, with 111 of the poorer nations joining in the conference as the "Group of 77".
• Professor Haroldo Conti, a well-known novelist and screenwriter in Argentina, was arrested in his Buenos Aires apartment after being designated as a subversive agent by the Argentine military government. He was never seen in public again.
• Born : Sage Stallone, American actor and filmmaker, son of Sylvester Stallone; in Los Angeles

  May 6, 1976 (Thursday)

• A 6.5 magnitude earthquake killed 978 people in Italy, and injured 2,400, while leaving 157,000 homeless. The epicenter was the town of Gemona del Friuli in the Province of Udine in north-eastern Italy,
• Restaurants in the Soviet Union capital of Moscow began "meatless Thursdays" under a Communist Party-approved campaign to "help improve the food pattern of Muscovites" an experiment in conserving the supply of meat with the possibility of having the Thursday ban extended nationwide and to markets. Because of a poor grain harvest in 1975, the output of meat had dropped by 11% in the spring of 1976 in comparison to the same period the year before. Restaurants were allowed to substitute fish in place of beef and chicken on Thursdays.
• The United Arab Emirates Armed Forces was created, bringing under one command the individual military forces of the seven individual emirates, which had been linked as allied members of the UAE Federal Armed Forces.
• Died: Koka Subba Rao, 73, former Chief Justice of India

  May 7, 1976 (Friday)

• Lebanese Christian militant Jocelyne Khoueiry and six other women defended a building in Martyrs' Square in Beirut from an attack by 300 Palestine Liberation Organization fighters who had made an attack on the Lebanese capital. Khoueiry shot and killed the expedition leader, causing the PLO militia to flee, and became a heroine in the Lebanese Christian community, later commanding a women's militia of 1,000 people.
• Born:
• *Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, U.S. Navy SEALs commando and Medal of Honor recipient for gallantry during the U.S. War in Afghanistan
• *Stacey Jones, New Zealand professional rugby league star and national team member; in Auckland
• *Sapreet Kaur, American Sikh civil rights activist and director of the U.S. Sikh Coalition; in New Jersey
• Died:
• *Jeanne Toussaint, 89, Belgian-born French custom jewelry designer for the Cartier firm
• *Alison Uttley, 91, English children's writer known for the "Little Grey Rabbit" stories in more than 30 books.