October 1976


The following events occurred in October 1976:

October 1, 1976 (Friday)

  • Hurricane Liza killed more than 600 people in Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, striking the resort city of La Paz, Baja California Sur where 350 people died, and another 280 in the surrounding area.
  • The U.S. state of California became the first in the United States to grant terminally ill hospital patients the right to the "living will", where they could opt to withdraw life-sustaining procedures if there was no hope of recovery. Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law after it had passed both houses of the California state legislature.
  • U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz was reprimanded by President Gerald Ford, after racist jokes and remarks that Butz had made against African-American people, were printed in the magazine New Times. Ford summoned Butz to the White House for "a rare public upbraiding of a Cabinet official" and Butz apologized to the lone black U.S. Senator, Edward Brooke. While most newspapers avoided quoting the joke directly, the statement was described as saying that black people wanted "only three things" and that "The things were listed, in order, in obscene, derogatory and scatological terms."
  • The alcohol industry in the United States switched to the metric system in identifying the volume of liquor. Notably, the fifth,, was replaced by the 750 mL bottle and the pint bottle was replaced by the 500 mL bottle.
  • Born: Nasir al-Wuhayshi, Yemen-born terrorist and leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula

October 2, 1976 (Saturday)

  • Argentina's President Jorge Rafael Videla narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by guerrillas who had planted a time-bomb beneath the reviewing stand at the heavily guarded Campo de Mayo Army Base near Buenos Aires. Videla reviewed a parade of the base's troops and made a speech to mark "Army Communications Day", then left the area to inspect a display at a nearby building. Five minutes after the ceremonies ended and the reviewing stand had emptied, the bomb exploded, destroying the stand and the area on which the president had been standing. General Videla, who had continued living on the base after being installed as president, had preceded a speech by the base commander, General Jose Catan, who told the assembled soldiers that the Argentine armed forces were winning the battle against left-wing opponents and said that "the guerrillas have given up trying to attack military bases," a few minutes before the bomb exploded.
  • Danny Thompson, a shortstop for baseball's Texas Rangers, played his final game, after having played for four seasons with leukemia. He died on December 10.
  • Born:
  • *Anita Kulcsár, Hungarian women's handball national team line player; in Szerencs
  • *Alexander Sevastian, Russian-born Canadian accordionist; in Minsk, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union
  • Died:
  • *Mary Poonen Lukose, 90, Indian gynecologist and former Surgeon General of the Kingdom of Thiruvithamkoor
  • *Gladys Leslie, 81, American silent film actress
  • *R. C. Anderson, 93, English historian

October 3, 1976 (Sunday)

October 4, 1976 (Monday)

October 5, 1976 (Tuesday)

October 6, 1976 (Wednesday)

  • One month after the death of Mao Zedong, the new Communist leadership placed "the Gang of Four" — Mao's widow Jiang Qing, Communist Party Deputy Chairman Wang Hongwen, Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Chunqiao, and the party's chief propaganda leader, Yao Wenyuan — under arrest, effectively bringing an end to the Cultural Revolution that had started ten years earlier in the People’s Republic of China. After two weeks without comment on rumors, the Chinese government confirmed the arrest of the group in the newspaper Jenmin Jih Pao. Confirmation of the arrest was not disclosed until the next day when the newspapers first quoted Chairman Hua Guofeng first referred to them as the Gang of Four. The cause of arrest was described in posters placed on walls in Beijing, which related that a gunman had shot at a convoy of cars earlier in the day in an attempt to assassinate Communist Party Chairman Hua Guofeng, and the gunman confessed that he had been hired by the widow of Chairman Mao.
  • All 73 people on Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 were killed when a bomb, placed by anti-Fidel Castro terrorists, exploded after the plane took off from Bridgetown in Barbados. The DC-8 had been loaned to Cubana Airlines by Air Canada and was flying from Guyana to Cuba, with stops at Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the pilot reported to the control tower that there had been an explosion on the plane and that he was attempting to return to Bridgetown, but plunged into the Caribbean Sea short of the return. Two men were arrested in Trinidad the next day after it was found that they had boarded Flight 455 at Trinidad, then got off the flight without luggage and flew back the same day. Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo were both employees of a company in Venezuela, "Commercial Industrial Investigations", that was staffed by Cuban exiles. The Venezuelan government then arrested five of that company's staff on October 15.
  • In Thailand, student protesters were killed by right-wing paramilitary troops and government forces at Thammasat University in Bangkok, while protesting the return of the nation’s former dictator, General Thanom Kittikachorn. The massacre led to the return of the military government.
  • In San Francisco, during his second televised debate with Jimmy Carter, U.S. President Gerald Ford made a key error on national television when he declared that "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration." At the time, the nations between West Germany and the Soviet Union were occupied by Soviet troops and under control of Communist regimes that followed the guidance of the U.S.S.R.'s Communist Party.
  • Born:
  • *Freddy García, Venezuelan baseball pitcher in the U.S. major leagues, 2001 American League ERA leader; in Caracas
  • *Karen Dokhoyan, Armenian soccer football centre back with 48 appearances for the men's national team; in Yerevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union
  • Died: Gilbert Ryle, 76, English philosopher, author of the 1949 book ''The Concept of Mind''

October 7, 1976 (Thursday)

October 8, 1976 (Friday)

October 9, 1976 (Saturday)

October 10, 1976 (Sunday)

  • Hsieh Tung-min, governor at the time of the Taiwan Province of Nationalist China was seriously injured by a letter bomb that had been hidden inside a book in the package. The explosive had been sent by Wang Sing-nan, a 35-year-old Taiwanese native and opponent of the ruling Kuomintang. Hsieh's left hand was amputated as a result of his injuries. Hsieh, leader of the Taiwan Provincial Government that encompassed 70 percent of the island, was the first Taiwanese native. Wang was sentenced to life imprisonment but would be released in 1990, and would later serve as a leader of the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan's parliament, the Legislative Yuan.
  • White South African rugby players Daniel "Cheeky" Watson and his brother, Valence Watson, defied South Africa's apartheid laws that prohibited mixed race sports teams, and played as teammates of the 13 black players on the KwaZakhele Rugby Union team in a match against the South Eastern Districts Rugby Union team. The next day, eight white rugby players participated with black players on two teams in a match at Port Elizabeth, leading South Africa's Minister of Sports, Piet Koornhof, to threaten prosecution.
  • Born:
  • *Bob Burnquist, Brazilian-born American skateboard champion; in Rio de Janeiro
  • *Shane Doan, Canadian ice hockey right winger with 21 consecutive seasons for the NHL Phoenix Coyotes from 1996 to 2017
  • Died: Silvana Armenulić, 37, and her sister Mirjana Bajraktarević, 25, popular Bosnian Yugoslavian singers, were killed in an automobile accident along with the conductor of the Radio Belgrade orchestra, Miodrag "Rade" Jašarević, 60. The three were traveling back to Belgrade from Aleksandrovac and were passing through the village of Kolari when Jašarević crashed into a truck coming the other direction.

October 11, 1976 (Monday)

October 12, 1976 (Tuesday)

  • The People's Republic of China announced that Prime Minister Hua Guofeng would be the successor to Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, the most powerful position in China. Hua was also the chairman of the Military Commission that governed the armed forces of the world's most populous nation, giving him "a combination of authority that no other Chinese leader, including Mao", had ever held.
  • All 95 people aboard Indian Airlines Flight 171 were killed when the Sud Aviation Caravelle jet crashed while attempting to make an emergency landing while trying to return to Mumbai after its number 2 engine failed. The flight had been bound for Chennai with 89 passengers and six crew when a compressor disc failed, fuel lines were severed, and the engine caught fire and plunged to the ground seconds before it would have reached the runway. The flight data recorder was recovered by a fisherman who had found it in his net.
  • The experimental Sikorsky S-72, a combination of helicopter and fixed-wing airplane developed by NASA and the U.S. Army, made its first flight. The hybrid aircraft was not accepted for general use and only two were developed.
  • Born:
  • *Xulhaz Mannan, Bangladeshi journalist and gay rights activist; in Dhaka
  • *Zazon, French actress and filmmaker; in Paris

October 13, 1976 (Wednesday)

  • Eighty-eight bystanders were killed when a Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano Boeing 707 crashed into a house, a school and a soccer field after failing to gain sufficient speed during its takeoff from Santa Cruz in Bolivia. A spokesman for the Bolivian Air Force said that most of the students had gone home for lunch but that at least 60 had remained inside the building. The jet, being used as a cargo plane and staffed by a crew of three, was returning to Miami after delivering livestock and clipped the tops of large trees from the end of the runway, "crashed through a line of people waiting to buy kerosene for cooking from a street vendor", gone through the school and through a field where two groups of students were practicing outside a local stadium for a soccer football game, then impacted the stadium wall, setting a fire in a locker room that caused eight students to die of asphyxiation. The impact came at 1:32 in the afternoon.
  • The United States Commission on Civil Rights released the report, Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States: An Uncertain Future, providing documentation that Puerto Ricans in the United States had a poverty rate of 33 percent in 1974, up from 29 percent in 1970, the highest of all major ethnic minorities in the U.S. The study did not include Puerto Rico itself, which was a U.S. territory.

October 14, 1976 (Thursday)

October 15, 1976 (Friday)

October 16, 1976 (Saturday)

  • A ceasefire in the fighting in Lebanon, requested by the government of Saudi Arabia, went into effect after discussions with Syria's President Hafez al-Assad and the Palestinian Liberation Organization's Yasser Arafat.
  • For the first time, crowds in the People's Republic of China demonstrated against Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, who had died five weeks earlier. Protesters were seen in Shanghai carrying effigies of Madame Qing and three others who had orchestrated the purges of the Cultural Revolution— Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen, collectively described as the Gang of Four. The organized event appeared to signal "indications that China's new authorities were preparing a campaign to discredit the so-called leftist leaders."
  • The Republic of Ireland's President, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, signed the Emergency Powers Bill into law after waiting for the Ireland Supreme Court to determine whether the law would be constitutional.
  • Tony Franklin, a kicker for Texas A&M University, set a record for the longest field goal in modern college football history when he made a kick of 65 yards during a 24 to 0 win over Baylor. His achievement, made at 2:20 in the afternoon lasted only 20 minutes. At 2:40 p.m., Ove Johansson of Abilene Christian University kicked a 69-yard field goal at the homecoming game in a 17 to 0 win over visiting East Texas State. After 45 years, Johansson's distance has not been matched or surpassed.
  • The Soviet space capsule from the Soyuz 23 made an emergency return to Earth after a malfunction prevented it from docking with the orbiting Salyut 5 space station, and made the first "splashdown" in Soviet crewed space flight history, coming down in Tengiz Lake in the Kazakh SSR at 8:46 Moscow time, only 48 hours after it had been launched into orbit. The two cosmonauts, Lieutenant Colonels Vyacheslav Zudov and Valery Rozhdestvensky both arrived safely. All other Soviet space missions returned to Earth by parachuting onto dry land.
  • The Panamanian freighter Don Emilio was seized in U.S. territorial waters by the U.S. Coast Gauard cutter Sherman and found to have a cargo of narcotics estimated to be worth $134,000,000.
  • Baseball's World Series opened in Cincinnati with the first game in which a National League team used the designated hitter, which had been in place in the American League since 1973. The Cincinnati Reds defeated the New York Yankees, 5 to 1, in Game 1 of the best-4-of-7 series. The Reds' Dan Driessen appeared as the first National League designated hitter.

October 17, 1976 (Sunday)

October 18, 1976 (Monday)

  • Police in the predominantly Muslim city of Muzaffarnagar, in Uttar Pradesh state, fired into a crowd of demonstrators protesting compulsory sterilization and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's suspension of democracy in India, at least 25 people protesting against compulsory sterilization were killed when Uttar Pradesh police fired into the crowd.
  • Ford Motor Company launched mass production of its smallest car up to that time, the high mileage Ford Fiesta, produced at its plant at Almussafes near Valencia in Spain.
  • Police in Moscow arrested 13 Soviet Jewish dissidents, refuseniksor otkazniks who had spent five days in a "sit-in" protest at the reception room for the Communist Party Central Committee, transported them by bus to a location at the edge of the capital city, then released them. When the dissidents returned the next day, the bus drove them to a location more than from city limits, then beat them before letting them go. The occupation had taken place in an office that granted exit visas, which had been denied to the dissidents and their families, and began after the group was refused a request for a written statement of how long they would have to wait before they could leave the country. On October 25, Soviet authorities arrested 30 Jewish activists who had been planning to go into the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, including physicist Mark Azbel, cyberneticists Victor Brailovsky and Alexander Lerner, and chess grandmaster Anatoly Shcharansky.
  • Died:
  • *Paul Schmidt, 78, German aeronautical engineer who helped develop the pulsejet for use in German V-1 missiles during World War II
  • *Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, 84, Italian Archbishop Emeritus of Bologna and cardinal within the Roman Catholic Church.
  • *Count Ossie, 50, Jamaican band leader and Rastafari music drummer, was killed in an auto accident.

October 19, 1976 (Tuesday)

October 20, 1976 (Wednesday)

  • Seventy-eight passengers and crew on the U.S. ferryboat MV George Prince were killed when the boat strayed into the path of the Norwegian oil tanker Frosta and was capsized. The collision occurred at 6:20 in the morning as the ferry was transporting workers, most of whom were in their vehicles with the windows rolled up, from Destrehan, Louisiana to the other side of the Mississippi River to their jobs in Luling. There were only 18 survivors. An autopsy on the ferryboat's captain, who was nearing the end of a long shift, showed him to have a blood alcohol content of 0.09 percent, slightly under the limit of legal intoxication under Louisiana law.
  • Argentine soccer football star Diego Maradona made his professional debut at the age of 15, ten days before his 16th birthday, playing for the Argentinos Juniors of the top division of Argentine football, in a game against Talleres de Córdoba. He remains the youngest ever player in the Primera Division. On November 14, the future World Cup star scored his first professional goal in a game against the San Lorenzo team of Mar del Plata.
  • Jean-Bédel Bokassa, President of the Central African Republic and raised a Roman Catholic, announced his conversion to Islam, changing his name to Salah Eddine Ahmed Bokassa. Forty-six days later, he would declare the republic to be a monarchy and proclaimed himself to be Emperor Bokassa the First of the Central African Empire.
  • The Hartford Times, a 159-year-old evening newspaper that had been published in Hartford, Connecticut since 1817, put out its final issue, that included " its own front‐page obituary edged in black" and called the Times "a newspaper strangled by litigation" after its previous owner had sued the Gannett Company for fraud in the 1973 purchase of publication rights. At one time, the Times had the largest circulation of Hartford papers and almost twice as many subscribers as the rival Hartford Courant.
  • Born:
  • *Plamen Goranov, Bulgarian photographer and dissident, the first of six people who set themselves on fire to protest the regime in 2013; in Varna
  • *Somaya El Khashab, Egyptian actress and singer; in Alexandria
  • Died:
  • *Jane Duncan (pen name for Elizabeth Jane Cameron, 66, Scottish author of children's books, best known for her "My Friends" series of 19 books
  • *Vladimir Kudashov, 58, Soviet war hero

October 21, 1976 (Thursday)

October 22, 1976 (Friday)

  • Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh resigned as President of Ireland after being publicly insulted by Paddy Donegan, the Minister for Defense for his delay in signing legislation restoring a state of emergency within the Republic of Ireland, and after the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of Ireland's parliament had defeated a motion calling for Prime Minister Liam Cosgrave to fire Donegan. Specifically, Donegan had said on October 18 that the president was "a thundering disgrace", and the motion in the Dail failed, 58 to 63. New elections to replace Ó Dálaigh were set for November 24. Donegan would be demoted to the lesser post of Minister of Lands on December 2 by Prime Minister Liam Cosgrave, and replaced by Cosgrave who appointed himself as Defense Minister.
  • Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej approved a new civilian government to serve Prime Minister Thanin Kraivichien, dominated by the military and by right-wing politicians, including the first two women cabinet members in the kingdom's history. The king also signed a new constitution into law. Admiral Sangad Chaloryu, the chairman of the 24-member military junta that led the overthrow of Prime Minister Seni Pramoj, was named the Minister of Defense.

October 23, 1976 (Saturday)

October 24, 1976 (Sunday)

  • A fire set by an arsonist killed 25 people and injured 24 others at the Puerto Rican Social Club at 1003 Morris Avenue in the Bronx in New York City, after a fire broke out at 2:15 in the morning. The blaze, set in the only stairwell in the building spread within less than two minutes in the dance hall at the club, and nearly all the victims were found at the windows at the front of the building, dead of asphyxiation. The door to the fire escape had been locked from the inside. Jose Angelo Cordero, who led the attack, and Hector Lopez, who ignited the fire, both pleaded guilty to murder and Francisco Mendez, who spread gasoline in the stairwell, was found guilty of 25 counts of murder.
  • Race car driver James Hunt of the United Kingdom won the Formula One World Championship by just one point when Niki Lauda of Austria was forced out of the Japanese Grand Prix— the 16th and final race of the season— because of heavy rain. Going into the race, Lauda had 68 points and Hunt had 66; the next highest competitor, Jody Scheckter of South Africa, had only 49 points and was mathematically eliminated from the championship. Hunt finished in third place at the Fuji Speedway, earning 3 points. Because of weather conditions that had left the track wet, the organizers debated whether to run as scheduled or to postpone the race to the next day. After the race started, four of the drivers withdrew, including Lauda, who quit after two laps and later commented, "my life is worth more than a title." Down 66 to 68, Hunt needed to finish at least in 4th place to be co-champion; his third-place finish gave him 3 points for the 69 to 68 victory.
  • Hua Guofeng was formally acclaimed as the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and successor to Mao Zedong, who had died on September 7. The announcement was made in the Party's newspaper Jenmin Jih Pao and Chinese army newspaper Chiehfang Jih Pao, and reported that the decision had been made by the party's Politburo on October 7.
  • Born: Mallika Sherawat, popular Indian Bollywood film actress; in Moth Rangran, Haryana state

October 25, 1976 (Monday)

October 26, 1976 (Tuesday)

  • Transkei, a poor section on the coast of South Africa created for the relocation of black African members of the white-minority ruled nation’s Xhosa people, was declared an independent nation. Kaiser Matanzima, the new Prime Minister of Transkei, accepted the documents of independence from South Africa's President Nicolaas Diederichs in a ceremony at the Transkeian capital, Umtata. Botha Sigcau was appointed as the nominal President of Transkei. The legitimacy of Transkei, the first bantustan or "black homeland" to be set aside for black majority rule, was not recognized by the rest of the world. The United Nations General Assembly voted unanimously to request member nations not to deal with Transkei, with one vote of abstention by the United States, which had already stated that it would not recognize Transkei. Transkei and the three other bantustans would cease to exist on April 27, 1994, when South Africa's new constitution took effect to institute democratic rule with a black majority government.
  • The Soviet Union launched Ekran, its first geosynchronous satellite, to permit direct satellite television.
  • Law enforcement officers from the sheriff's department in Catoosa County, Georgia, killed five of seven lions who had been set free by a vandal from a private zoo near Ringgold, Georgia, the night before. During their rampage, the lions "killed four dogs, a cow and a pet wolf". One was recaptured, while another, a lioness, remained free until the next day, when it was killed while charging at one of the deputies.
  • Born:
  • *Jeremy Wotherspoon, Canadian speed skater, world champion in spring skating 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2003, and in the 500 meter world championship in 2003, 2004 and 2008; in Humboldt, Saskatchewan
  • *Florence Kasumba, Ugandan-born actress; in Kampala
  • Died:
  • *Aldo Vera Serafin, 43, Cuban exile and former director of intelligence for the Cuban police agency, was killed in a drive by shooting while walking on a sidewalk in San Juan, Puerto Rico,
  • *Arrigo Benedetti, 66, Italian journalist and news magazine editor

October 27, 1976 (Wednesday)

  • Carnegie-Mellon University of Pittsburgh announced that an alumnus of the institution, who requested to remain anonymous, had made a donation of $35,000,000 to be payable upon his death and the death of his wife. In addition to being the largest donation ever to C.M.U., the gift was the second largest by an individual to any university, exceeded only by a $50,000,000 donation made to the University of Virginia.
  • Former U.S. Senator Edward Gurney of Florida was acquitted by a jury on all charges of having lied to a grand jury about his knowledge of a scheme by his employees to collect $400,000 of donations from construction companies in return for favors from the Federal Housing Administration. Senator Gurney, who had resigned at the end of 1974 after being identified in the scandal, had been acquitted in 1975 on charges of perjury and conspiracy.
  • Albert Muwalo, Chairman of the ruling Congress Party and a Minister without Portfolio in the southern African nation of Malawi, was arrested on charges of corruption on orders of Malawi's President Hastings Banda.

October 28, 1976 (Thursday)

October 29, 1976 (Friday)

October 30, 1976 (Saturday)

  • India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi postponed democratic elections that had been scheduled for March 1977 for the 525-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of India's parliament. Law and Justice Minister H. R. Gokhale informed Lok Sabha members that their 5-year terms, which had already been extended for one year with the cancellation of voting set for March 1976, would be extended to seven years and that voting would not take place before March 1978.
  • The Montreal Canadiens had their lone loss at home during the 1976–77 NHL season, falling 4 to 3 to the Boston Bruins. They would finish the regular season with a record of 60 wins, 8 losses and 12 ties and lost only one home game, winning 33 other with six ties. They would lose Game 5 of the NHL playoff semifinals at home, falling to the New York Islanders, 4 to 3, in overtime on May 5, 1977.
  • The television show Mr. T and Tina, starring Pat Morita in the first U.S. TV show to feature a mostly Asian-American cast, was canceled after its sixth show.
  • A deer hunter in Utah discovered the wreckage of a Piper Tri-Pacer airplane that had vanished on March 27, 1963, 13 years earlier. The small airplane and the remains of Harry Ross Jr and UFO researcher Wallace C. Halsey, had crashed into a mountainside near St. George, Utah.
  • Born: Stern John, Trinidanian footballer with 115 caps and 70 goals for the Trinidad and Tobago national team; in Tunapuna
  • Died:
  • *Alfred Landé, 87, German-born American physicist known for his contributions to quantum theory. He is responsible for the Landé g-factor and an explanation of the Zeeman effect.
  • *Sa'id Hormozi, 79, Iranian musician who preserved the radif genre of music.
  • *Daniel Bonade, 80, French clarinet player and composer
  • *Julio Just Gimeno, 82, Spanish politician former Minister of Public Works until his 1937 ouster following the Spanish Civil War.

October 31, 1976 (Sunday)

  • The first VHS recorder and player, the HR-3300 manufactured by JVC, went on sale to the public at electronic stores in Tokyo's Akihabara district. The initial cost of the recorder, invented by JVC engineers Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano, was ¥310,000 Japanese yen. It would go on sale in the United States 10 months later on August 23, 1977, under the name "Vidstar".
  • Died:
  • *Clarence Chamberlin, 82, American aviator, died of complications after receiving the "swine flu" vaccination. On June 4, 1927, Chamberlin became the second pilot to fly an airplane by himself nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean, and the first to take a passenger with him.
  • *Eileen Gray, 98, Irish modern architect