What happened in 1976

World4

• Jan 27Western Sahara War: The First Battle of Amgala breaks out between Morocco and Algeria in the Spanish Sahara.
• Feb 27The Polisario Front, Western Sahara's national liberation movement, declares independence of the territory under the name "Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic".
• May 24Washington, D.C. Concorde service begins.
• Jun 27G-6 is renamed "Group of 7" (G-7) with the inclusion of Canada.

North America23

• Mar 27The first of the Washington Metro subway system opens.
• MarThe Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is released by Seymour Cray's Cray Research, with the first purchaser being the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
• Apr 1Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in California.
• May 13The Atari video arcade game Breakout is released.
• Jun 26The CN Tower is opened in Toronto, the tallest free-standing land structure opens to the public.
• Jul 20Viking program: The Viking 1 lander successfully lands on Mars.
• Jul 31NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1.
• Aug 7Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
• Sep 3A Lockheed C-130 Hercules of the Venezuelan Air Force crashed near Lajes Field, Azores Islands, Portugal, killing all 68 occupants on board.
• Sep 3Viking program: The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars, taking the first close-up color photographs of the planet's surface.
• Sep 17The space shuttle Enterprise is rolled out of a hangar in Palmdale, California, United States.
• Oct 19The Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 19 years in the United States.
• Nov 21976 United States presidential election: Jimmy Carter narrowly defeats incumbent Gerald Ford, becoming the first candidate from the Deep South to win since the Civil War.
• Nov 3Carrie, an American supernatural horror film directed by Brian De Palma, is premiered in 17 theaters in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area.
• Nov 26Microsoft is officially registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.

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Europe17

• Feb 4The 1976 Winter Olympics begin in Innsbruck, Austria.
• Mar 4The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention is formally dissolved in Northern Ireland, resulting in Direct rule over Northern Ireland by the Government of the United Kingdom in London.
• Mar 9A cable car disaster occurs when a supporting cable breaks in Cavalese, Italy, resulting in 43 deaths.
• Mar 26The Body Shop, the retail chain for skin care products and cosmetics founded by Anita Roddick, opens its first branch in Brighton, England.
• Apr 13The Lapua Cartridge Factory explosion in Lapua, Finland kills 40.
• Apr 25Portugal's new constitution is enacted.
• May 6An earthquake hits the Friuli area in Italy, killing more than 900 people and making another 100,000 homeless.
• May 9Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction is found hanged in an apparent suicide in her Stuttgart-Stammheim prison cell.
• May 24The Judgment of Paris pits French vs. California wines in a blind taste-test in Paris, France. California wines win the contest, surprising the wine world and opening the wine industry to newcomers in several countries.
• Jun 11Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh gathers 126 of the UK's leading engineers at Buckingham Palace to form the Fellowship of Engineering, later to be known as the Royal Academy of Engineering.
• Jun 27Palestinian militants hijack an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda.
• Jul 10Seveso disaster: An explosion at a chemical plant in Seveso, Italy, causes extensive pollution to a large area in the neighborhood of Milan, with many evacuations and a large number of people affected by the toxic cloud.
• Sep 10Zagreb mid-air collision: A British Airways Trident and a Yugoslav DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia (modern-day Zagreb, Croatia), killing all 176 aboard.
• Nov 19Jaime Ornelas Camacho takes office as the first President of the Regional Government of Madeira, Portugal.
• Dec 10The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques.

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Asia13

• Jan 5The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea.
• Apr 5Tiananmen Incident: Large crowds lay wreaths at Beijing's Monument of the Martyrs to commemorate the death of Premier Zhou Enlai. Poems against the Gang of Four are also displayed, provoking a police crackdown.
• Jun 6The Double Six Crash, a plane crash in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, kills everyone on board, including Sabahan Chief Minister Tun Fuad Stephens.
• Jul 2North Vietnam dissolves the Provisional Government of South Vietnam and unites the two countries to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
• Jul 17East Timor is declared the 27th province of Indonesia.
• Jul 19Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
• Jul 28The Tangshan earthquake flattens Tangshan, China, killing 242,769 people, and injuring 164,851.
• Aug 17The 8.0 Moro Gulf earthquake hits off the coast of Mindanao, Philippines, triggering a destructive tsunami, killing between 5,000 and 8,000 people and leaving more than 90,000 homeless.
• Aug 18At Panmunjom, North Korea, two United States soldiers are killed while trying to chop down part of a tree in the Korean Demilitarized Zone which has obscured their view.
• Sep 9Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong dies in Beijing after a series of heart attacks.
• Oct 6Students gathering at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand are massacred, while protesting the return of ex-dictator Thanom Kittikachorn by a coalition of right-wing paramilitary and government forces, triggering the return of the military to government.
• Oct 12The People's Republic of China announces that Hua Guofeng is the successor to Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party following the latter's death on September 9 from a heart attack.
• Nov 6Uttawar forced sterilisations: Mass vasectomy of nearly 800 men of Uttawar village, Palwal district, Haryana during India's Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi.

Middle East3

• Jul 4Entebbe Raid: Israeli airborne commandos free 103 hostages being held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda's Entebbe Airport; Yonatan Netanyahu and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in the raid.
• Oct 19The Battle of Aishiya is fought in Lebanon.
• Nov 241976 Çaldıran–Muradiye earthquake: Between 4,000 and 5,000 are killed in a 7.3 earthquake at Van and Muradiye in eastern Turkey.

Latin America7

• Feb 4The 7.5 Guatemala earthquake affects Guatemala and Honduras with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving 23,000 dead and 76,000 injured.
• Mar 24Argentina military forces depose president Isabel Perón.
• Mar 29The military dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla comes to power in Argentina.
• Aug 1Trinidad and Tobago becomes a republic, replacing Elizabeth II as its head of state with President Ellis Clarke.
• Sep 16Beginning with the Night of the Pencils, a series of kidnappings and forced disappearances followed by torture, rape, and murder of students under the Argentine dictatorship takes place.
• Sep 21Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. by Michael Townley, an agent linked with the National Intelligence Directorate of Chile.
• Oct 6Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 crashes due to a bomb placed by anti-Fidel Castro terrorists, after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados; all 73 people on board are killed.

Africa8

• Feb 13General Murtala Mohammed of Nigeria is assassinated in a military coup.
• Mar 27The South African Defence Force withdraws from Angola and concludes Operation Savannah.
• Jun 16The Soweto uprising in South Africa begins.
• Jun 29Seychelles gains independence from the United Kingdom.
• Jul 27The United Kingdom breaks diplomatic relations with its former colony Uganda in response to the hijacking of Air France Flight 139.
• Aug 9The Selous Scouts of the Rhodesian Army conduct a cross-border raid into Nyadzonya, Mozambique in Operation Eland, an action that led to severe political and diplomatic consequences on Rhodesia.
• Sep 21The Seychelles join the United Nations.
• Oct 26Transkei gains "independence" from South Africa.