September 1976

September 1, 1976 (Wednesday)

• The proposed Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India was introduced to give a legal basis for the dictatorial powers of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by repealing many of the democratic provisions of the original constitution. The bill would be passed by the Lok Sabha on November 2, 1976, and by the Rajya Sabha on November 11, with assent given on December 18, to go into effect on January 3, 1977.
• Advertising for cigarettes and tobacco products was banned on Australian television and radio as new laws went into effect. On the same day, Canada's postal rates increased 25 percent, with the cost of mailing a first class letter rising from 8 cents to 10 cents.
• Aparicio Méndez, a jurist, was inaugurated as the civilian President of Uruguay after being appointed to a five-year term by the COSENA that ruled the South American nation. Among the first acts by Mendez as President was to issue a decree cancelling the rights of thousands of people associated with political parties prior to the military coup, including recently deposed president Juan Maria Bordaberry.
• The parliament of the Republic of Ireland narrowly voted to reinstitute the national state of emergency, at the request of Prime Minister Liam Cosgrave, after having been approved, 70 to 65 in the Dail Eirann and 35 to 18 in the Irish Senate. The emergency decree by Cosgrave allowed prisoners to be detained up to seven days without the filing of charges. Before taking effect, the legislation still had to be approved by the president of Ireland, but after inaction for nearly three weeks, President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh announced on September 19 that he was going to postpone signing the bill. Ó Dálaigh signed the bill on October 16 after Ireland's Supreme Court ruled the legislation to be constitutional, then gave his resignation on October 22.
• The new session of the Mexican Congress began as the 64 members of the Senate of the Republic and the 231 members of the Chamber of Deputies. All but one Senator and 41 of the 231 deputies were members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
• U.S. Representative Wayne Hays, a Democrat who had represented Ohio in Congress for almost 28 years, resigned after having been implicated in a scandal for his affair with Elizabeth Ray, whom he had hired as a secretary and clerk solely for her sexual services. The Washington Post had broken the story on May 23, quoting Ray as saying "I can't type, I can't file, I can't even answer the phone."
• Born:
• *Ivano Brugnetti, Italian race walker and 2004 Olympic gold medalist; in Milan
• *Marcos Ambrose, Australian V8 Supercar racing champion; in Launceston, Tasmania
• Died:
• *General Khademul Bashar, 41, Chief of Staff of the Bangladesh Air Force, was killed in an airplane crash while on his way to the inauguration of the new Flying Instructors School at Tegjaon. He and his pilot were killed when the aircraft, a new Airtourer, crashed on landing.
• *C. E. Stevens, 71, British professor at Oxford University and classicist

  September 2, 1976 (Thursday)

• U.S. President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11935, requiring that U.S. government employees had to be American citizens before being employed. The action followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision, in the case of Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong, that the U.S. Civil Service Commission could not issue regulations prohibiting non-citizens from being employed.
• Voting was held in Barbados for the 24-seat House of Assembly, and Prime Minister Errol Barrow's Democratic Labour Party lost its 18 to 6 majority and control of the government. The Barbados Labour Party, led by Tom Adams, won 11 seats and a 17 to 7 majority, with Adams taking office as the new Prime Minister the next day.
• The first Canada Cup ice hockey tournament, between the national teams from Canada, Czechoslovakia, Finland, the Soviet Union, Sweden and the United States, each playing each other once, followed by a championship series between the two teams with the best records, opened with a game in Ottawa between Canada and Finland. Canada won, 11 to 2. Over the next nine days, games would be played in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Philadelphia, Winnipeg, and Quebec City, with the best 2-of-3 series starting on September 13.
• Born:
• *Marchy Lee, Hong Kong Formula racing car driver, 2002 Audi R8 LMS Cup champion; in Hong Kong
• *Erin Hershey Presley, American TV actress and soap opera star; in Seattle

  September 3, 1976 (Friday)

• The Viking 2 lander, launched from Earth on September 10, 1975, touched down at Utopia Planitia on Mars, about west of the crater Mia at 22:58 UTC and took color photos of the planet's surface starting on September 5. It would operate until April 12, 1980.
• A crash killed all 68 people on a chartered Venezuelan Air Force jet. The Lockheed C-130 Hercules, during a heavy rainfall, struck a hillside, during its approach to the Terceira Island Airport in the Azores. Most of the victims had been part of the choir at the Central University of Venezuela and were flying from Bermuda to Spain for a tour and a scheduled appearance in Barcelona.
• Both Christian and Muslim factions in the Lebanese Civil War agreed not to fire at each other in the vicinity of the presidential palace in Beirut, so that repairs could be made in time for the inauguration of Elias Sarkis as the new president.
• The Convention on the International Maritime Satellite Organization was signed at London, creating the INMARSAT, the International Maritime Satellite Organization. The treaty would enter into force on July 16, 1979.
• Four journalists for the Fresno Bee of Fresno, California, were jailed for contempt of court after refusing to reveal the identity of a confidential source who had leaked grand jury testimony about a public official charged with bribery. The four men— investigative reporters Joe Rosato and William K. Patterson, ombudsman James H. Bort Jr. and managing editor George F. Gruner— spent 15 days in jail rather than break the promise of confidentiality. Judge Hollis G. Best, who had sent the journalists to jail, ruled that they could be released and told reporters, "I am persuaded that the newsman's ethic is a moral principle."
• FC Dinamo Tbilisi, the third place regular season finisher, won the soccer football championship tournament of the USSR, the Soviet Cup, defeating Ararat Yerevan, 3 to 0, before a crowd of 45,000 at Lenin Central Stadium at Luzhniki in Moscow. Dinamo Tbilisi had been the third-place finisher in the 16-team Champions League and Yerevan second place. Dynamo Moscow, the '76 regular season champion, had been eliminated in the quarterfinals on July 3.
• Born:
• *Chamath Palihapitiya, Sri Lankan-born Canadian venture capitalist, founder and CEO of Social Capital, Inc.; in Colombo
• *Vivek Oberoi, Indian film actor and two time Filmfare Award winner; in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh state
• *Arjan Bajwa, Indian film actor and Stardust Award winner; in Delhi

  September 4, 1976 (Saturday)

• Voters in Guam participated in a non-binding referendum about the U.S. territory's future status. Although 24% favored U.S. statehood and 9% wanted Guam to be an independent nation, more than half wanted to remain a U.S. territory with additional autonomy.
• In the worst accident for Canada's small Austin Airways, all nine passengers and the pilot on a DHC-3 Otter seaplane were killed when the aircraft struck power lines and plunged into the Abitibi Canyon near Fraserdale, Ontario. The passengers were on their way to Timmins, Ontario, to discuss electrical planning as part of a tour of Canadian Indian communities and included three provincial officials, three power company representatives, three members of the First Nations group "Treaty No. 9", and a London Free Press reporter. The Otter airplane "received a three-phase burst of 132,000 volts" of electricity from the wires and exploded.
• A group of three Palestinians hijacked KLM Flight 366, a DC-9 airliner with 80 people on board, shortly after its takeoff from the French city of Nice toward Amsterdam. Most of the passengers were returning to the Netherlands from a holidays in Spain and southern France, and after the plane from Málaga landed with 28 Dutch tourists in Paris, 49 more boarded to go to Amsterdam. The aircraft was flown to Tunis and then to Larnaca in Cyprus, then toward Israel before returning to Larnaca where the hostages were released the next day and the hijackers were allowed to go to the Libyan Embassy for asylum and passage to a country of their choice.
• Future U.S. President George W. Bush, the 30-year-old son of CIA Director George Bush, was arrested for drunken driving after being pulled over near the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine. Bush was fined $150 and his Maine driver's license was briefly suspended.
• The 1,500th anniversary of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire was noted by scholars without celebration. On September 4, 476 AD, the last Emperor of Rome, 11-year-old Romulus Augustulus had been forced to abdicate from the throne in Ravenna by Flavius Odoacer, the barbarian commander of the Roman Guard and sent into exile at a resort in Campania on the Bay of Naples and given a pension for the rest of his life.
• Died:
• *George Groves, 74, British-born U.S. audio engineer who became the first "sound man" in motion picture history as the person in charge of providing sound to The Jazz Singer
• *Laco Novomeský, 71, Hungarian-born Czechoslovakian Communist politician jailed in the 1950s after accusations of "bourgeois nationalism", later rehabilitated in the 1960s and promoted to the Party's Central Committee.

  September 5, 1976 (Sunday)

• The Muppet Show was broadcast for the first time on ITV, appearing across Britain at 5:05 pm, with Joel Grey as the first celebrity guest., and released for syndication simultaneously worldwide. Within four months, it would be appearing on TV in 100 nations.
• Comedians Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, who had been the comedy team of Martin and Lewis for ten years until a bitter parting of ways in 1956, were reunited on the nationwide live television broadcast of the annual Labor Day Weekend Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon at the Sahara Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas. The reunion, arranged as a surprise by singer Frank Sinatra, came in the early hours of the telethon, which had started at 6:00 in the evening local time as part of Lewis's fundraising for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. After Sinatra sang a few songs for the fundraiser, he departed from the script and told Lewis "I've got a friend I wanted you to meet," and Martin walked onstage. Reportedly, Martin and Lewis had not spoken to each other in more than 20 years. Sinatra remarked, "Come on, I thought it was about time you guys got together again." The 11th annual telethon set a new record in pledges to the MDA, raising $21,723,813.
• Voting was held in Cyprus for the 35 seats reserved for Greek Cypriots in the 50-member Voulí ton Antiprosópon. No candidates participate in voting for the 15 seats reserved for Turkish Cypriots.
• The first-ever World Professional Skateboard Championships concluded after being held on Saturday and Sunday at the Long Beach Arena in Long Beach, California and sponsored by a skateboard manufacturer, California Free Farmer Company, which provided a total of $20,000 in prize money.
• Born:
• *Carice van Houten, Dutch film and TV actress, 2006 European Film Award winner and multiple winner of the Golden Calf Award and the Rembrandt Award; in Leiderdorp, South Holland
• *Pankaj Tripathi, Indian film actor; in Gopalganj, Bihar state
• Died:
• *Wan Waithayakon, 75, Thai royal prince and diplomat, President of the U.N. General Assembly 1956 to 1957
• *Arthur Gilligan, 81, captain of the English cricket team in 1924 and 1925