1976

1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar).

align="center" colspan=2 | Years:
1973 1974 1975 - 1976 - 1977 1978 1979

align="center" colspan=2 | Decades:
1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s

align="center" | Centuries:
19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Events

January-February

January 12 - UN Security Council votes 11-1 to admit the Palestinian Liberation Organization
January 15 - Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison
January 16 - Trial against jailed members of the Red Army Faction begins in Stuttgart, West Germany
January 18 - The Scottish Labour Party is formed
January 21 - The first commercial Concorde flight took off.
January 27 - The trial of SLA member Patty Hearst begins. She is found guilty of robbery on March 20
February 4 - In Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000.
February 4 - 1976 Winter Olympics open in Innsbruck, Austria
February 11 - Clifford Alexander Jr is confirmed as 1st African-American Secretary of US Army.
February 20 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands
February 24 - Cuba's current constitution enacted.
February 27 - Western Sahara declares independence

March

March 1 - Merlyn Rees ends Special Category Status for those sentenced for crimes relating to the civil violence in Northern Island
March 3 - Fleetwood Mac records Rumours, which will be a blockbuster album in 1977
March 9-11 - Two coal mine explosions claim 26 lives at the Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scotia Mine, Letcher County, Ky
March 17 - Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is retried
March 20 - Patty Hearst is found guilty of armed robbery of a San Francisco bank
March 24 - Argentina military forces depose president Isabel Peron
March 27 - The first 4.6 miles of the Washington, DC subway system opens
March 31 - New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Anne Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985

April-May

April 1 - Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
April 4 - Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigns as leader of Cambodia and is placed under house arrest
April 5 - British prime minister Harold Wilson resigns and is replaced by Jim Callaghan
April 5 - Large crowds lay wreaths at Beijing's Monument of the Martyrs in commemoration of the death of Premier Zhou Enlai. Poems against the Gang of Four are also displayed. This was followed by a police crackdown and became known as the Tiananmen Incident.
April 13 - An explosion in an ammunition factory in Lapua, Finland kills 40
April 16 - In India the minimum age for marriage is raised to 21 years for men and 18 years for women; it is to curb population growth
April 25 - Portugal's new constitution enacted
May 9 - Ulrike Meinhof of RAF is found hanging in an apparent suicide in her cell in Stuttgart-Stannheim prison
May 11 - President Gerald Ford signs Federal Election Campaign Act
May 24 - Washington, DC Concorde service begins

June

June 1 - UK and Iceland end the Cod War
June 5 - Teton Dam collapses in southeast Idaho in the U.S., killing 11 people.
June 14 - the trial begins at Oxford Crown Court of Donald Neilson, the killer known as the Black Panther.
June 16 - Soweto riots in South Africa mark the beginning of the end of apartheid
June 27 - Palestinian extremists hijack an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos storms it on July 4

July

July 2 - North Vietnam and South Vietnam united to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam - a Communist country
July 3 - Supreme Court of the United States rules on Gregg v. Georgia and decides that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment
July 4 - United States Bicentennial
July 4 - Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda's Entebbe Airport; one Israeli and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in raid.
July 7 - German left-wing terrorists Monika Berberich, Gabriella Rollnick, Juliane Plambeck and Inge Viett escape from Lehrterstrasse maximum security prison in West Berlin
July 10 - Explosion in Seveso, Italy, kills a large number of people
July 16-20 - Albert Spaggiari and his gang break into the vault of the Societe Generale Bank in Nice, France
July 17 - The 1976 Summer Olympics begin in Montreal, Canada.
July 17 – East Timor is declared the 27th province of Indonesia
July 19 - Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
July 20 - Viking program: The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars
July 21 - A bomb kills Christopher Ewart, British ambassador to the Irish Republic
July 27 - United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with Uganda
July 28 - Earthquake flattens Tangshan, China, killing 242,769 people, and 164,851 people are heavily injured
July 29 - In New York City, the "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag killing one and seriously wounding another in the first of a series of attacks that terrorized the city for the next year.
July 31 - NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1

August

August 1 - the Carribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago becomes a republic, replacing Queen Elizabeth II with an elected president as their Head of State.
August 2 - A gunman murders Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr, and injures Priscilla Davis and Gus Gavrel in an incident at Priscilla's Mansion at Mockingbird Lane in Fort Worth, Texas. T. Cullen Davis, Priscilla's husband and one of the richest men in Texas, was tried and found innocent for Andrea's murder. He was later found innocent of a plot to kill several people, including Priscilla and a judge, and a wrongful death lawsuit. Cullen went broke afterwards
August 4 - First outbreak of Legionnaire's disease kills 29 at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia
August 5 - Racing Champion Niki Lauda suffers serious burns in the German Grand prix
August 6 - Former UK Postmaster General John Stonehouse is sentenced for seven years for fraud
August 7 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars
August 14 - 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women demonstrate for peace in Northern Ireland
August 18 - In North Korea at Panmunjom, two US soldiers are killed while trying to chop down part of a tree in the DMZ which had obscured their view

September-October

September 3 - Viking program: The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars takes the first close-up, color photos of the planet's surface
September 6 - Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido in Japan and requests political asylum from the United States
Military Junta in power in Argentina.
September 17 - Space Shuttle Enterprise rolled out.
September 21 - Seychelles joins the United Nations.
September 21 - Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
October 12 - The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to the late Mao Tse-tung as chairman of Communist Party of China
The Damned release New Rose in October 1976-First ever single released / marketed as "punk rock".
October 19 - Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 20 years in the United States
October 22 - Cearbhall Dlaigh, fifth President of Ireland, resigns following accusations by the Minister for Defence.
October 25 - Full pardon given to Clarence Norris, last known survivor of the Scottsboro Boys.

November-December

November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Rudolph Ford to become first candidate from deep south to win since the Civil War.
November 15 - First Megamouth Shark is discovered off Oahu in Hawaii
November 26 - Little known company Microsoft is officially registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.
December 1 - Angola joins the United Nations
December 3 - Patrick Hillery is elected unopposed as the sixth President of Ireland.
December 15 - Samoa joins the United Nations

Unknown dates

First laser printer introduced by IBM - the IBM 3800
Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, invented by Seymour Cray
California's sodomy law repealed.
The term memetics first proposed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene.
Toronto Blue Jays created
CN Tower built in Toronto - The tallest free standing land structure.
Diffie-Hellman cryptography proposed
Plans to move the Nigerian capital from Lagos to Abuja are approved.

Year in topic

1976 in film

March 22 - Filming begins on George Lucas' Star Wars science fiction film. In one of the best business decisions in film history, Lucas cuts his directing fee by $500,000 to gain ownership of merchandising and sequel rights
November 21 - Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone
All the President's Men
Taxi Driver
Carrie
Network
The Omen
Don's Party
Caddie
''
''The Devil's Playground
''Eliza Fraser

1976 in literature
1976 in music

December 8 - The Eagles releases one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, Hotel California
Bjrk's musical career begins
The Clash form
The Damned form & release New Rose in October 1976-First ever single released / marketed as "punk rock".
Graffiti artist Lee Quinones begins painting large, intricate murals in New York City; along with Quinones, hip hop artists (rappers, DJs and breakdancers) begin to expand the boundaries of the art form
Beginning of Punk rock movement

1976 in rail transport

December 26 - The second American Freedom Train tour, powered by the newly restored Southern Pacific 4449 steam locomotive, officially ends in Miami, Florida

1976 in sports
1976 in television

January 17 - The Blues Brothers make their debut on NBC's Saturday Night Live
April 24 - Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels makes on on-air offer to pay the Beatles $3000 to reunite on the show. Lennon and McCartney were apparently watching the show together in New York and considered walking down to the studio to accept the check.
May 22 - Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels raises his previous offer to The Beatles from $3000 to $3,200.
December 1 - Infamous Bill Grundy incident, wherein UK punk group the Sex Pistols cause a storm of controversy and outrage by swearing on television
The Olympics, broadcast from Montreal, draw an estimated 1 billion viewers worldwide.
The Sonny and Cher Show premieres