Timeline 1976
Return to home
1976 Jan 1, NBC
replaced the peacock logo.
(www.classicthemes.com/50sTVThemes/themePages/nbcLivingColor.html)
1976 Jan 1, In California the
Moscone Act, which relaxed marijuana laws, went into effect.
(www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/moscone/summary.htm)
1976 Jan 3, Pres. Gerald Ford
signed the American Folklife Preservation Act. San Francisco Folklorist
Aaron Green (1917-2009) had lobbied Congress for the passage of the
bill.
(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=6021)
1976 Jan 4, "Candide" closed at
Broadway Theater in NYC after 740 performances.
(www.sondheim.org/php/news.php?id=1675)
1976 Jan 6, Ted Turner purchased
the Atlanta Braves for reported $12 million.
(www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/S-Z/Turner-Ted-1938.html)
1976 Jan 7, Eleanor Helin of
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. discovered the first near Earth asteroid
which she named Aten. The orbits of these asteroids lie mostly inside
that of the Earth and could at some date collide with the Earth.
(SFC, 2/1/97,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_F._Helin)
1976 Jan 8, Chou En-lai (78),
Chinese premier (1949-1976), died in Beijing.
(AP, 1/8/98)
1976 Jan 10, Howlin’ Wolf, blues
singer born as Chester Arthur Burnett (b.1910), died. In 2004 James
Segrest and Mark Hoffman authored “Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and
Times of Howlin’ Wolf.”
(SSFC, 7/4/04, p.M6)(www.britannica.com)
1976 Jan 12, Dame Agatha Christie
(b.1890) (Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan), English mystery
writer, died in Wallingford, England. She also wrote romances under the
name Mary Westmacott, but is remembered for her 66 mystery novels. Her
work with mystery novels, particularly featuring detectives Hercule
Poirot or Miss Marple, have given her the title the “Queen of Crime”
and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the
development of the mystery novel. Two of her most famous novels might
be Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and Death on the Nile (1937).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie)(SFC,12/26/97, p.C22)(AP,
1/12/98)
1976 Jan 13, Argentina ousted a
British envoy in dispute over Falkland Islands War.
(HN, 1/13/99)
1976 Jan 14, "Bionic Woman," with
Lindsay Wagner, debuted on ABC (later NBC).
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0073965/)
1976 Jan 15, Sara Jane Moore was
sentenced to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President
Ford in San Francisco.
(AP, 1/15/98)
1976 Jan 17, "I Write the Songs"
by Barry Manilow (b.1944) hit #1.
(http://tinyurl.com/36ufh8)
1976 Jan 21, Leonid Brezhnev and
Henry Kissinger met to discuss Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT).
(HN, 1/21/99)
1976 Jan 21, The supersonic
Concorde jet was put into service by Britain and France.
(AP, 1/21/98)
1976 Jan 22, A PLO bank robbery in
Beirut netted a world record $20-50 million.
(www.lebaneseforces.com/blastfromthepast001.asp)
1976 Jan 23, Paul Robeson
(b.1898), black athlete, lawyer, singer, died in Philadelphia. Lloyd L.
Brown later wrote the biography "The Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey
Now." His granddaughter Susan Robeson in 1981 wrote "The Whole World in
His Hands: A Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson."
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A26)(WSJ, 4/9/98,
p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson)
1976 Jan 26, The SF Chronicle
reported that Mother Jones magazine would debut in Feb. 4 of its 6
editors were from Ramparts magazine. The 25th anniversary issue of
Mother Jones was stocked with 124 pages of ads.
(SFC, 1/26/01, WBb p.4)(SFC, 4/19/01, p.B2)
1976 Jan 27, "Laverne &
Shirley," a spin-off from "Happy Days," premiered on ABC TV. It starred
Penny Marshall as Laverne De Fazio and Cindy Williams as Shirley
Feeney. The show ran to 1983.
(SFC, 7/21/99, p.C3)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0074016/)
1976 Jan 30, The play "Streamers”
by David Rabe (b.1940) premiered at the Long Wharf Theater in New
Haven, Connecticut.
(SFEC, 5/30/99, DB
p.37)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streamers)
1976 Jan 30, George Bush became
the 11th director of the CIA replacing William E. Colby. Bush revived
the reputation of the organization and left it Jan 20, 1977.
(SFEC, 1/16/00, Par p.2)(http://tinyurl.com/2mm8r9)
1976 Jan 30, The U.S. Supreme
Court banned spending limits in campaigns, equating funds with freedom
of speech.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1976 Jan 31, Ernesto Miranda,
famous from the Supreme Court ruling on "Miranda Rights," was stabbed
to death in Arizona.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1976 Jan, The Federal Hourly
Minimum Wage was set at $2.30 an hour.
(http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/blminwage.htm)
1976 Jan, In SF Robert Swanson
(1947-1999), a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, first met with Herb
Boyer, a molecular biologist and co-discoverer of recombinant DNA. The
10 minute appointment extended to a few hours and the 2 men proceeded
to found Genentech. Genentech was founded with $10,000 per month
funding for R&D with Kleiner Perkins as the largest investor.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.B1)(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)(SFC,
12/7/99, p.D4)(WSJ, 12/14/99, p.A22)
1976 Jan, The entire Picasso
exhibit in the Palace of the Popes at Avignon, France, was stolen. This
event led the International Foundation for Art Research to form the Art
Loss Register. Picasso is the artist listed with the most stolen works.
(WSJ, 12/30/94, A-6)
1976 Feb 1, "Rich Man, Poor Man"
mini-series premiered on ABC TV.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074048/)
1976 Feb 1, In San Francisco over
1,000 people took part in the Continental Walk for Peace and Social
Justice led by comedian Dick Gregory and Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy.
(SFC, 1/26/01, WBb p.4)
1976 Feb 1, Werner C. Heisenberg
(b.1901), physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1932), died in Germany. In
1993 Thomas Powers authored "Heisenberg’s War," in which he argued that
Heisenberg destroyed the German atomic project from within. Niels Bohr
later countered the argument with personal documentation.
(SFC, 2/7/02,
p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg)
1976 Feb 2, Susan LeFevre (21)
escaped from a Michigan prison, where she was serving a 10-year
sentence for a heroin conviction. In 2008 she was arrested in San
Diego, where she lived as a suburban mother under the name Marie Walsh.
In 2009 LeFevre (54) was released from prison in Michigan.
(http://quintessentialprocrastinator.blogspot.com/2008/08/susan-lefevre.html)(SFC,
5/19/09, p.A5)
1976 Feb 3, In Nigeria Gen.
Murtala Ramat Muhammed (1938-1976) proclaimed Abuja as the new federal
capital. It was founded to replace Lagos and became the official
capital in 1991.
(SFC, 11/23/06,
p.A28)(www.datelineafrica.org/stories/200802130370.html)
1976 Feb 4, The Winter Olympics
opened in Innsbruck, Austria. Ice dancing joined the program for the
1st time.
(StuAus, April '95, p.95)(SSFC, 2/17/02, p.A19)
1976 Feb 4, A 7.9 earthquake hit
Guatemala and Honduras. Some 23,000 Guatemalans, mostly Mayan Indians,
were killed. It destroyed 58,000 houses in the capital and 300
villages.
(NG, 6/1988, p.785,797)(SFEM, 6/13/99, p.8)(AP,
2/4/01)
1976 Feb 6, Vince Guaraldi
(b.1928), jazz pianist, died in Menlo Park, Ca. He wrote "Cast Your
Fate to the Wind" and composed for the Charley Schulz "Peanuts" cartoon
specials.
(SFEC, 10/18/98, DB
p.44)(www.imdb.com/name/nm0345279/)
1976 Feb 11, Lee J. Cobb (b.1911),
actor (12 Angry Men, On the Waterfront), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0002011/)
1976 Feb 12, Sal Mineo (b.1939),
American film and theater actor, was stabbed to death in Los Angeles
while coming home from a play rehearsal.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, Z1
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal_Mineo)
1976 Feb 13, Lily Pons (b.1898),
French, US soprano, opera diva (Met Opera), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Pons)
1976 Feb 13, In Nigeria Gen'l.
Muhammad in the ruling junta was killed in a coup attempt and his
deputy, Gen'l. Olusegun Obasanjo, was named president.
(SFC, 2/22/99, p.A10)(SFC, 3/2/99,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olusegun_Obasanjo)
1976 Feb 15, In Los Angeles
Elizabeth McKeown (67) was beaten, raped and strangled. A young
homicide detective found her body 3 days later in a car trunk. In 2009
John Floyd Thomas Jr. (72), an insurance claims adjuster, was arrested
based on DNA evidence. A series of attacks stopped in 1978, the year
Thomas went to prison for the rape of a Pasadena woman.
(AP, 5/1/09)(SFC, 9/24/09, p.D3)
1976 Feb 18, Pres. Gerald Ford
signed an executive order prohibiting US officials from plotting or
engaging in political assassination. The order was later broadened by
Presidents Carter and Reagan. Ford issued Executive Order 11905
to clarify U.S. foreign-intelligence activities. In a section of the
order labeled "Restrictions on Intelligence Activities," Ford concisely
but explicitly outlawed political assassination. It became effective on
March 1.
(www.ford.utexas.edu/LIBRARY/speeches/760110e.htm#assassination)
1976 Feb 18, The Tigray People’s
Liberation Front (TPLF) issued a manifesto to secede from Ethiopia.
(SFC, 6/24/99,
p.A14)(www.abugidainfo.com/?p=3393)(http://tinyurl.com/2j2pxf)
1976 Feb 19, Britain slashed
welfare spending.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1976 Feb 20, Kathryn Kuhlman
(b.1907), American religious leader and faith healer, died in Tulsa,
Oklahoma.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Kuhlman)
1976 Feb 22, Sandra Camille found
her husband, David Stegall, a Dallas dentist, dead with slashed wrists
and a bullet in the left temple. Sandra collected insurance and
re-married 2 years later to Bobby Bridewell, who died of cancer 2 years
later. After 2 more years Sandra married Alan Rehrig (29). He was found
shot dead in 1985, and Sandra again collected insurance. Sandra
embarked on a series of frauds and in 2007 at age 62 was held in North
Carolina pending investigations into her past.
(SFC, 7/6/07, p.B9)
1976 Feb 24, Republican Gerald
Ford won the New Hampshire primary over Ronald Reagan 50.1 to 48.6%.
Democrat Jimmie Carter won over Mo Udall and Birch Bayh 28.7 to 23 to
15.3%.
(SSFC, 1/25/04,
p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_primary)
1976 Feb 24, H. Allen Smith
(b.1907), author, TV host (Armchair Detective), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Allen_Smith)
1976 Feb 24, Cuba's revised
socialist constitution went into effect. Article 88 of this year’s
Cuban Constitution said any citizen who collects the signatures of at
least 10,000 registered voters can petition the National Assembly for a
referendum on any subject.
(http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/news/aa041300a.htm)(WSJ, 5/13/02,
p.A1)
1976 Feb 25, The U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that states may ban the hiring of illegal aliens.
(HN, 2/25/98)
1976 Feb 26, US performed a
nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/tests/USA-ntests3.html)
1976 Feb 27, The final meeting
between Mao tse Tung and Richard Nixon took place.
(www.nybooks.com/articles/2173)
1976 Feb, Swine flu broke out at a
US Army base in New Jersey. Pres. Ford announced a National Swine Flu
Immunization Program a month after the virus was identified. In 1982
Richard E. Neustadt and Harvey V. Fineberg authored “The Epidemic That
Never Was.”
(WSJ, 11/28/05, p.B1)
1976 Mar 1, The US Intelligence
Oversight Board was created as part of Pres. Ford’s Feb 18 Executive
Order 11905. It was made up of private citizens and designed to ferret
out illegal spying activities. In 2008 Pres George W. Bush issued an
executive order that stripped the board of much of its authority.
(SSFC, 3/16/08, p.A4)
1976 Mar 1, The Maze Prison opened
in Northern Ireland. Its 8 H-shaped blocks were designed to hold 800
prisoners. It closed in 2000.
(SFEC, 10/1/00,
p.D14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_(HM_Prison))
1976 Mar 2, The musical revue
Bubbling Brown Sugar" opened at ANTA Theater in NYC for 766
performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbling_Brown_Sugar)
1976 Mar 2, Bob Lurie (b.1929),
real estate magnate, led a group to acquire ownership of the San
Francisco Giants baseball club. Lurie closed the $8-million transaction
with Arizona cattleman Arthur "Bud" Herseth as his 50-50 partner.
(www.stadiumforrent.com/sfr/sfr-ch23a.html)
1976 Mar 3, Pierre Moliniere
(b.1900), French artist and photographer, shot himself to death rather
than face prostate surgery and a reduced sex life.
(WSJ, 11/22/96,
p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Molinier)
1976 Mar 3, Mozambique closed its
border with Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).
(http://tinyurl.com/3c8j7u)
1976 Mar 4, Pan Am was the first
airline charged with criminal negligence in a crash.
(HN, 3/4/98)
1976 Mar 5, The British pound fell
below the equivalent of $2 for the first time.
(AP, 3/5/98)
1976 Mar 5, Britain gave up on the
Ulster talks and decided to retain rule in Northern Ireland
indefinitely.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1976 Mar 9, A ski cable car,
running from Cavalese to the Alpe Cermis in the Italian Alps, crashed
to the ground due to a mechanical failure and killed 42 skiers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalese_cable-car_disaster_%281976%29)
1976 Mar 13, In California a jury
convicted 4 Black Muslims for 3 murders and 4 assaults out of a total
of 23 Bay Area crimes that included 14 murders. Jessie Lee Cooks, Larry
Craig Green, Manuel Moore and J.C.X. Simon were given life sentences.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W22)
1976 Mar 14, Busby Berkeley
(b.1895), US film director and choreographer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby_Berkeley)
1976 Mar 16, British PM Harold
Wilson announced his resignation in London. He was succeeded in April
by home secretary James Callaghan (1912-2005).
(HN, 3/16/98)(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)(Econ, 3/18/06,
p.11)
1976 Mar 19, Buckingham Palace
announced the separation of Princess Margaret and her husband, the Earl
of Snowdon, after 16 years of marriage.
(AP, 3/19/97)
1976 Mar 20, Newspaper heiress
Patricia Hearst was convicted of armed robbery for use of a firearm in
the San Francisco Hibernia Bank holdup. In Sept she was sentenced to 7
years in prison.
(AP, 3/20/97)(HN, 3/20/98)(SFC, 2/4/99, p.A8)
1976 Mar 23, The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted in 1948,
went into effect three months after the 35th nation ratified it.
(www.unhchr.ch/html/menu6/2/fs2.htm)
1976 Mar 24, In Argentina the
military overthrew the government of Isabel Peron. Gen. Jorge Rafael
Videla led the military coup. Jose Siderman, a Jewish businessman, was
forced with death threats to leave the country. He filed suit in the US
in 1982 in the first trial of a foreign government for human-rights
abuses and won a default settlement. Argentina won a reversal in an
appeals court but in 1996 Argentina dropped opposition to the suit.
(SFC, 9/14/96, p.A9)(AP, 3/23/97)(SFC,
6/10/98, p.A10)
1976 Mar 24, Argentine Sen.
Guillermo Vargas Aignasse disappeared on the day of a military coup. In
2008 an Argentine court convicted retired Gens. Antonio Bussi and
Luciano Menendez for the murder of the senator and sentenced them to
life in prison. They were found guilty of kidnapping, torturing and
murdering.
(AP, 8/29/08)
1976 Mar 24, Bernard Law
Montgomery (b.1887), British general, defeated Rommel, died.
(HC,
10/10/98)(www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/montgomery_bernard.shtml)
1976 Mar 26, Paul McCartney and
Wings released "Wings at the Speed of Sound" album.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_at_the_Speed_of_Sound)
1976 Mar 26, In 2006 an NSA
transcript from this day indicated that US Sec. of State Henry
Kissinger was informed in the meeting by then-Assistant Secretary for
Latin America William D. Rogers, that if the Argentine military regime
succeeded (March 24 coup), it would make a "considerable effort to
involve the United States — particularly in the financial field."
Kissinger, the NSA's transcript further stated, responded, "Yes, but
that is in our interest."
(AP, 3/24/06)
1976 Mar 27, Washington, D.C.
opened its subway system.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1976 Mar 30, Israel killed 6
Palestinians protesting land confiscation.
(www.balad.org/index.php?id=138)
1976 Mar 31, The New Jersey
Supreme Court allowed the removal of the respirator that assisted Karen
Ann Quinlan, who had been comatose since Apr 15, 1975. Quinlan, who
remained comatose, died Jul 11, 1985.
(SFC, 12/12/96, p.C8)(AP, 3/30/97)
1976 Apr 1, Stephen Wozniak and
Steven Jobs founded Apple Computer. They incorporated Jan 3, 1977.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer)
1976 Apr 1, Max Ernst (b.1891),
German-French surrealist painter, sculptor, died in Paris.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Ernst)
1976 Apr 1, Pakistan’s PM Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto appointed Zia-ul-Haq as Chief of Army Staff, ahead of a
number of more senior officers.
(www.elections.com.pk/candidatedetails.php?id=6887)
1976 Apr 5, Tom Stoppard's "Dirty
Linen," premiered in London.
(www.donshewey.com/theater_reviews/dirty_linen.html)
1976 Apr 5, Reclusive billionaire
Howard Hughes died in Houston at age 72. In 1993 Charles Higham
authored “Howard Hughes: The Secret Life.” In 1996 Peter Harry Brown
and Pat H. Broeske authored "Howard Hughes: The Untold Story." Hughes
had hired a coterie of Mormons to take care of his confidential
business. These included Frank William Gay (1920-2007), who led Hughes’
Summa Corp. from 1970-1978.
(AP, 4/5/97)(SFC, 10/21/00, p.A24)(WSJ, 5/26/07,
p.A6)
1976 Apr 5, James Callaghan became
PM of England. He served until May 4, 1979.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Callaghan)
1976 Apr 7, Robert A. Swanson
(d.1999 at 52), a venture capitalist, and Herb Boyer, a UCSF molecular
biologist and co-discoverer of gene-splicing in 1973, incorporated
Genentech Inc. They planned to use gene splicing to create a genre of
medicines.
(SFC, 5/28/96, p.B1)(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)(SSFC,
4/1/01, p.B1)
1976 Apr 7, China's leadership
deposed Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and appointed Hua Kuo-feng
(Guofeng) prime minister and first deputy chairman of the Communist
Party.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1976 Apr 9, Phil Ochs (b.1940),
American protest singer and musician, committed suicide.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ochs)
1976 Apr 11, In Cambodia Khmer
Rouge leader Khieu Samphan (b.1931) succeeded Prince Sihanouk as
premier. In 1979 he was succeeded by Heng Samrin.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khieu_Samphan)(Econ,
1/12/08, p.52)
1976 Apr 13, The US Federal
Reserve began issuing $2 bicentennial notes. The last $2 series was
discontinued in 1966 after low production and the concomitant
unpopularity of the bill resulted in insufficient use.
(http://wcdc42.com/2dollar/economic_reviews.html)(HN, 4/13/98)
1976 Apr 13, In Morocco
Abdennaceur Bnouhachem's work as a left-wing student activist came to
an abrupt end when plain clothed security officers cornered him in the
street and bundled him into an unmarked van. He was tortured and spent
9 years in prison. Years later he was awarded 1 million dirhams
($114,500) for his ordeal, but said the money will not erase his
memories.
(Reuters, 7/13/06)
1976 Apr 14, In San Francisco a
bomb exploded at 1 California St. on the 17th floor of the Mutual
Benefit Life Building. The Red Guerrilla Family was suspected.
(SFC, 4/13/01, WBb p.3)
1976 Apr 15, Gerald L.K. Smith
(b.1898), a leader of the “Share Our Wealth” movement and founder of
the America First Party (1943), died in Arkansas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_L._K._Smith)
1976 Apr 15 In Argentina Floreal
Avellaneda (14), the son of a Communist trade union leader of Greater
Buenos Aires, was kidnapped from his house with his mother, by an Army
contingent looking for his father. On May 14, 1976, Floreal’s corpse
was found on the coast of Montevideo, Uruguay, hands and feet bound and
with signs of torture. Iris Pereyra, the boy’s mother, was released
after three years. In 2009 former general Santiago Omar Riveros (86)
and 4 others were found guilty of involvement in the boy’s murder.
(www.cidh.oas.org/annualrep/87.88eng/chap5.htm)(AP,
8/12/09)
1976 Apr 21, Full-scale testing of
the swine flu vaccine began in Washington, D.C.
(AP, 4/21/06)
1976 Apr 22, Director Ingmar
Bergman (1918-2007) actress Bibi Anderson announced they were leaving
Sweden because of harassment by Swedish tax officials.
(www.coolquiz.com/trivia/history/index.asp?hdate=04.22)
1976 Apr 26, Pan Am began non-stop
flights between NYC and Tokyo.
(www.wingnet.org/rtw/rtw006hh.htm)
1976 Apr 27, Jimmy Carter clinched
the Democratic presidential nomination by beating Henry “Scoop” Jackson
and Morris Udall in the Pennsylvania primary.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/timeline/index.html)(Econ, 4/12/08, p.31)
1976 May 1, Kawika Kapahulehua
(d.2007 at 76), leading a 15-man crew on a double-hulled boat with
sails, departed Hawaii to Tahiti. Organizer and anthropologist Ben
Finney wanted to prove the trip was possible. The Hokulea reached
Tahiti after 34 days despite issues of ethnicity raised by part of the
crew.
(SFC, 5/28/07, p.D3)
1976 May 1, Alexandros Panagoulis
(b.1939), Greek politician and poet, died in a car crash possibly
rigged by his enemies. He became famous for his attempt to assassinate
dictator George Papadopoulos on 13 August 1968, and also for the
torture that he was subjected to during his detention.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandros_Panagoulis)
1976 May 4, Australian PM Malcolm
Fraser announced that "Waltzing Matilda" would serve as his country's
national anthem at the upcoming Olympic Games.
(AP, 5/4/06)
1976 May 5, In Sri Lanka the TNT
was renamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known
as Tigers.
(www.dailynews.lk/2009/05/19/fea02.asp)
1976 May 6, An earthquake struck
Italy’s northern region at Friuli-Venezia Giulia, affecting 11 villages
near the Austrian and Yugoslav borders. The earthquake killed more than
1,000 people in a 3,300-square-mile area and left 80,000 homeless.
(http://tinyurl.com/dvzp6)(SFC, 12/17/05, p.F1)
1976 May 8, McKendree Robbins Long
(b.1888), Southern gothic painter and evangelical preacher, died in
North Carolina. His work included: "Apocalyptic Scene With Philosophers
and Historical Figures," and "The Fifth Angel Opens the Bottomless Pit."
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.D6)(www.tfaoi.com/aa/3aa/3aa457.htm)
1976 May 9, Ulrike Meinhof
(b.1934), co-leader of the Baader-Meinhof gang, committed suicide in
German prison.
(SFC, 1/10/01, p.A8)(WSJ, 4/3/09,
p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrike_Meinhof)
1976 May 11, Alvar Aalto (b.1898),
Finnish architect, died. A show in 1998 featured his work and an
accompanying book was published that covered his Nordic classicism of
the 1920s to the completion of his Finlandia Hall in Helsinki in 1971.
(WSJ, 7/28/00,
p.W11C)(www.imdb.com/name/nm2043227/bio)
1976 May 13, In game 6 the NY Nets
beat the Denver Nuggets in 9th & final American Basketball
Association (ABA) championship, 4 games to 2.
(www.remembertheaba.com/New-York-Nets.html)
1976 May 15, Samuel Eliot Morison
(b.1887), US historian (Admiral of Ocean Sea), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Eliot_Morison)
1976 May 18, Zelmar Michelini and
Hector Gutierrez, prominent Uruguayan lawmakers, were seized from their
homes in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Their bullet-riddled bodies were
found days later along with those of suspected rebels suspected
guerrillas William Whitelaw and Rosario Barredo.
(AP, 11/17/06)
1976 May 19, The US Senate
established congressional oversight over the CIA with the permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
(SFC, 9/17/97, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/3cc2yh)
1976 May 19, In San Francisco
Jenny Read (b.1945), an Episcopal sculptor, was raped and murdered
while working on a sculpture of St. John of the Cross in Potrero Hill.
In 2009 police using DNA evidence arrested and charged James Lee
Mayfield (63), a registered sex offender with her murder.
(SFC, 6/18/04, p.F4)(SFC, 8/11/09, p.C1)
1976 May 21, A bus on I-680 in
California crashed after crossing the Benicia-Martinez Bridge, plunged
21 feet, and rolled upside down. 28 Yuba City High School students and
one adult were killed. There were 22 survivors.
(SFC, 5/20/96, p.A-20)
1976 May 24, The SF Chronicle
published the 1st installment of "Tales of the City" by Armistead
Maupin.
(SFC, 5/1/01,
p.A1)(www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/27/sunday/main3756171.shtml)
1976 May 24, Britain and France
opened trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington. This was the 1st
commercial supersonic transport (SST).
(AP, 5/24/97)
1976 May 24, In France 2
California wines won a tasting event over several French classics for
the 1st time. Stephen Spurrier, English owner of a wine shop and wine
school in Paris, held a competition tasting of French and American
wines. The best white wine was a 1973 Napa Valley Chardonnay from
Chateau Montelena. The best red wine was a 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon from
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Winemaker Miljenko Grgich created the Napa
Chardonnay that beat French wines in the legendary Paris Tasting. In
2005 George M. Taber authored “Judgement of Paris,” an account of the
1976 tasting.
(SFC, 5/29/96, ZZ1 p.4)(SSFC, 1/21/01, p.T8)(WSJ,
5/24/01, p.A20)(SFC, 6/16/05, p.F4)
1976 May 25, US Representative
Wayne L. Hays (Democrat, Ohio) admitted to a "personal relationship"
with Elizabeth Ray, a committee staff member who claimed she’d received
her job in order to be Hays’ mistress.
(AP, 5/25/00)
1976 May 26, Martin Heidegger
(b.1889), German philosopher (Holzweg), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger)
1976 May 28, Pres. Ford signed the
Medical Device Amendments which established a product approval process
overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the authority
to regulate medical devices. Sales of silicone breast implants, already
on the market, were allowed to continue without proof of safety.
(WSJ, 4/9/96, p.B-1)(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A8)(WSJ,
4/13/05, p.A3)
1976 May 31, Martha Mitchell, the
estranged wife of former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, died in New
York.
(AP, 5/31/97)
1976 May, In Argentina Monica
Mignone (24) was arrested at her family home and never seen again. Her
father Emilio Mignone (d.1998), founding rector of a university in
Lujon, became a leader of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights. He
also founded the Center for Legal and Social Studies. He wrote
"Dictatorship and the Church," in which he criticized the inaction of
the church during the "dirty war."
(SFC, 12/26/98, p.A23)
1976 Jun 2, Gen’l. Juan Jose
Torres (b.1920), ousted as president of Bolivia in 1971, was kidnapped
by a death squad in Argentina and killed. He was a victim of the Condor
Plan, a South American military pact between Argentina, Brazil,
Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay to exchange intelligence information and
help each other hunt down suspected leftists.
(SFC, 11/23/99,
p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Jos%C3%A9_Torres)
1976 Jun 2, Great-Britain &
Iceland terminated their codfish war. It was agreed that only 24
British vessels would be allowed in the 200 mile zone and four
conservation areas would be completely closed to the British.
(www.kwintessential.co.uk/articles/article/Iceland/Cod-War-in-Iceland/527)
1976 Jun 2, Alan Dewitt (b.1921),
film and TV actor, died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0223195/)
1976 Jun 3, Britain presented to
the US the oldest known copy of the Magna Carta.
(www.magnacharta.org/enews82000.htm)
1976 Jun 5, The Teton Dam in Idaho
burst catastrophically and water blasted through a narrow canyon and
onto Sugar City. It released nearly 300,000 acre feet of water, then
flooded farmland and towns downstream with the eventual loss of 14
lives, directly or indirectly, and with a cost estimated to be nearly
$1 billion.
(AP,
6/5/00)(www.geol.ucsb.edu/faculty/sylvester/Teton%20Dam/welcome_dam.html)
1976 Jun 6, Jean Paul Getty
(b.1892), US oil magnate, billionaire, died. He left $1.2 billion as an
endowment for a museum and art activities around the world.
(SFC, 7/15/96,
p.D2)(http://wapedia.mobi/en/J._Paul_Getty)
1976 Jun 9, James A. Farley
(b.1888), US Postmaster General (1932-1940), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Farley)
1976 Jun 12, In Uruguay the
military ousted Pres. Juan Maria Bordaberry (b.1928). Uruguay remained
under the control of a right-wing dictatorship until 1985. In 2006
Bordaberry was arrested for the murder of opposition leaders in 1976.
(AP, 11/16/06)(http://tinyurl.com/yczxw5)(Econ,
12/16/06, p.38)
1976 Jun 13, Don Bolles, Arizona
Republic investigative reporter, died as a result of injuries suffered
when a bomb blew up his car 11 days earlier. He had been working on an
alleged Mafia story at the time of his death.
(AP, 6/13/04)
1976 Jun 16, U.S. Ambassador
Francis E. Meloy, Jr. (b.1917) was murdered along with his associate
Robert Waring, an American economic advisor. The two had been en route
to a meeting with Lebanese president-elect Elias Sarkis when they were
abducted by Muslim guerillas in Beirut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_E._Meloy,_Jr.)
1976 Jun 16, In South Africa white
police gunned down teenagers Hector Pieterson and Hastings Ndhlovu and
caused a nationwide riot that left 700 people dead. Students at Morris
Isacson High School in Soweto had marched to protest a new rule that
called for Afrikaans as the medium of instruction.
(SFC, 6/15/96, p.C12)(USAT, 7/9/04, p.10D)
1976 Jun 18, Scientist confirmed
Einstein’s equivalence principle in the experiment called Gravity Probe
A. They confirmed that clocks in gravitational fields of differing
strengths do not keep the same time.
(NH, 3/05, p.55)
1976 Jun 19, Bette Midler's
concert at the Cleveland Music Hall became HBO's premiere "Standing
Room Only" presentation.
(www.allbusiness.com/services/motion-pictures/4921414-1.html)
1976 Jun 19, The US Viking 1 went
into Martian orbit after a 10-month flight from earth.
(www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/Mars/exploration.html)
1976 Jun 25, Imogen Cunningham,
photographer, died at age 93.
(SFC, 6/22/01, WBb p.8)
1976 Jun 25, John Herndon Mercer
[Johnny Mercer] (b.1909), songwriter, died. He was buried in
Boneventure Cemetery in Savannah, Ga. In 2004 Gene Lees authored the
biography “Portrait of Johnny.”
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T5)(HN, 11/18/00)(WSJ, 11/26/04,
p.W4)
1976 Jun 26, The CN Tower in
Toronto, at this time the world’s tallest free-standing structure (553
meters), opened to the public.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CN_Tower)
1976 Jun 27, An Air France Airbus
flight AF139, from Tel Aviv to Paris, was hijacked shortly after
departing Athens and taken to Uganda.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France)
1976 Jun 28, The first women
entered the U.S. Air Force Academy.
(HN, 6/28/98)
1976 Jun, US ambassador Robert C.
Hill cautioned Argentina’s new government over wholesale violations of
human rights. Sec. of State Henry Kissinger responded: “In what way is
it compatible with my policy?”
(SFC, 10/1/04,
p.A18)(www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/01kissinger.html)
1976 Jul 2, The US Supreme Court
ruled to allow states to resume capital punishment. The Supreme Court
ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel or unusual.
(SFC, 1/9/97, p.A4)(AP, 7/2/97)
1976 Jul 2, North and South
Vietnam were officially reunified.
(HN,
7/2/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War)
1976 Jul 3, Shane Lynch, Irish
singer (Boyzone), was born in Dublin, Ireland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Lynch)
1976 Jul 3, Israel launched its
daring mission to rescue 103 passengers and Air France crew members
being held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda by pro-Palestinian hijackers.
(AP, 7/3/97)
1976 Jul 4, The nation held a
200th anniversary party across the land in celebration of America's 200
years of independence. President Ford made stops in Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and New York, where
more than 200 ships paraded up the Hudson River in Operation Sail.
(TMC, 1994, p.1976)(IB, 12/7/98)(AP, 7/4/01)
1976 Jul 4, The National Museum of
American Jewish History opened in Philadelphia. It was established to
tell the story of the American Jewish experience.
(SFC, 7/3/08,
p.E15)(www.ushistory.org/tour/tour_jewish.htm)
1976 Jul 4, The Ramones, a US punk
rock group managed by Danny Fields and Linda Stein (1945-2007), held a
concert in England that sparked the young British punk scene.
(SFC, 11/2/07, p.E2)
1976 Jul 4, Jonathan Netanyahu,
brother of Benjamin, led and was killed in an Israeli raid called
Operation Thunderball that rescued the [105] hostages held at Entebbe
Airport in Uganda. The raid was by Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite
counter-terrorist unit led by Muki Betser, and it freed all but 3 of
the 104 Israeli and Jewish hostages and crew of an Air France jetliner
seized by pro-Palestinian hijackers. A total of 45 Ugandan soldiers
were killed during the raid. The events are described by Muki Betser
and Robert Rosenberg in "Secret Soldier, The True Life of Israel’s
Greatest Commando." The hijacking was linked to Carlos the Jackal, aka
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Entebbe)(AP,
7/4/97)(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)
1976 Jul 5, In SF the body of
Wanda Baun (19), a prostitute, was found dead. She had been stabbed
over 50 times. In 2007 Darrell Sweigart was convicted of 2nd degree
murder after DNA evidence linked to the murder. He was already serving
a 25 year to life sentence for rape and robbery.
(SFC, 7/4/07, p.B3)
1976 Jul 6, US Naval Academy
admitted women for the first time in its history with the induction of
81 female midshipmen.
(www.usna.edu/VirtualTour/150years/1970.htm)
1976 Jul 7, The 1st female cadets
enrolled at the West Point Military Academy in NY. West Point Military
Academy admitted 119 women out of a class of 1367. Four years later 62
women graduated.
(www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=5159)(SFEC,
2/16/97, p.A12)
1976 Jul 8, A volcano erupted on
Guadeloupe and frightened the capital, Basse-Terre. A phreatic eruption
of the Soufriere volcano cracked open the summit dome
(www.ipgp.jussieu.fr/~beaudu/soufriere/smithsonian76.html#sean_0109)
1976 Jul 9, Uganda asked UN to
condemn Israeli hostage rescue raid on Entebbe.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1976-7/1976-07-09-NBC-18.html)
1976 Jul 10, There was an
explosion at a factory in Seveso, Lombardy, Italy, owned by ICMESA with
a Swiss parent company. It produced a cloud of Dioxin which settled
over several adjacent communities. The people exposed became
nauseated, experienced eye and throat irritations, developed burn-like
sores on exposed skin, headaches, dizziness and diarrhea -- the same
symptoms recorded by exposed Vietnamese and Cambodian
populations. In the next two days, small animals in the area
began to die. The contamination led to a high incidence of birth
defects.
(www.theveteranscoalition.org/educational_material/agent_orange.htm)(WSJ,2/12/97,
p.A8)
1976 Jul 12, Edward Charles
Allaway, a campus janitor, killed 7 people in a library at California
State Univ. at Fullerton. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity
and was confined at a state mental hospital.
(SFC, 12/22/01,
p.A5)(www.spock.com/Edward-Charles-Allaway)
1976 Jul 13, The Green Peace
500-ton James Bay, a converted Canadian minesweeper, set out from the
SF Bay to thwart Japanese and Russian whale hunters in Hawaiian water.
(SFC, 7/13/01, WBb p.6)
1976 Jul 14, Jimmy Carter won the
Democratic presidential nomination by an overwhelming margin at the
party's convention in New York City.
(AP, 7/14/97)
1976 Jul 14, Canada abolished the
death penalty.
(SFC,10/18/97,
p.A13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Canada)
1976 Jul 15, 4:15 p.m. School
Children in Chowchilla, CA. were kidnapped by 3 young men, Richard (22)
and James Schoenfeld (24) and Newhall Woods (24). The 26 children were
herded into a moving van that was buried in a quarry near Livermore,
Ca. and held for $5 million ransom. The children escaped after 16 hours
and their captors were captured within 2 weeks. The men were sentenced
to life in prison. Richard Schoenfeld turned himself in after 6 days.
James was captured in Menlo Park and Woods was captured in Vancouver.
(SFC, 7/14/96, zone 1 p.1)(AP, 7/15/97)(SFC,
12/3/98, p.A30)
1976 Jul 15, Indonesia passed a
law providing for annexation of East Timor, which the President of
Indonesia signed on 17 July. East Timor became the 27th province of the
Republic of Indonesia. The act was not recognized by the UN.
(G&M, 1/31/96,
p.A-9)(www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/timor-bkg.htm)
1976 Jul 17, The Summer Olympics
opened in Montreal. In 1998 it was revealed that 143 members of the
East German team had taken performance-enhancing drugs.
(WSJ, 7/15/96, p.B1)(WSJ, 10/21/98, p.A1)
1976 Jul 20, Hank Aaron hit his
755th and final home run off the California Angels' Dick Drago at
Milwaukee County Stadium.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Aaron)
1976 Jul 20, US Air Force
Brigadier General Harry Aderholt lowered the American flag for the last
time at Military Assistance Command Thailand headquarters on Bangkok’s
Sathorn Road.
(www.nationmultimedia.com/sunday/20060709/)
1976 Jul 20, The Viking I robot
spacecraft made a successful, first-ever landing on Mars and began
taking soil samples.
(AP, 7/20/97)(HN, 7/20/98)
1976 Jul 21, "Legionnaire's
Disease" struck in Philadelphia, Pa. 29 people died from the disease.
The disease was first identified after an outbreak at the Bellevue
Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. It was identified as Legionella
pneumophila and found to infest water systems in general and the hotel
ventilation system in this case.
(OGA, 11/24/98)(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-17)
1976 Jul 23, Mario Soares (b.1924)
became Prime Minister of Portugal.
(SFC, 4/19/00,
p.A10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1rio_Soares)
1976 Jul 25, Edwin Moses (b.1955),
American track star, won an Olympic Gold Medal In Montreal in the
400-meter hurdles.
(http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00016369.html)
1976 Jul 27, John Lennon was
granted a green card for permanent residence in US.
(http://beatlesnumber9.com/usvjohnlennon.html)
1976 Jul 27, Air Force veteran Ray
Brennan became the first person to die of so-called "Legionnaire’s
Disease" following an American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
(AP, 7/27/00)
1976 Jul 27, Kakuei Tanaka, former
PM (1972-1974) of Japan, was arrested for accepting a bribe from the US
Lockheed Corp. Tanaka was convicted in 1983 but continued to fight the
charges. A. Carl Kotchian (d.2008 at 94), a Lockheed salesman, had
testified that Lockheed had paid $12.6 million in bribes to Japanese
businessmen and government officials.
(www.international.ucla.edu/eas/restricted/lockheed.htm)(Jap. Enc.,
BLDM, p. 216)(SFC, 12/24/08, p.B7)
1976 Jul 28, Eldon Joersz set a
world air speed record of 3,530 kph near Beale AFB in California.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record)
1976 Jul 28, In China a 7.8-8.2
earthquake in the northern city of Tangshan killed at least 242,000
people, according to an official estimate.
(AP, 7/28/97)(SFC, 1/8/00,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangshan_earthquake)
1976 Jul 31, "Sugar" Ray Charles
Leonard (b.1956), American boxer, won an Olympic gold medal in Montreal.
(http://dcboxing.blogspot.com/2008/03/1976-olympic-final-sugar-ray-leonard-vs.html)
1976 Jul, China completed the
construction of a railway between Tanzania and Zambia.
(Econ, 2/7/04,
p.45)(www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ziliao/3602/3604/t18009.htm)
1976 Aug 1, Liz Taylor had her 6th
divorce when she re-divorced Richard Burton.
(www.ibdb.com/person.asp?id=21815)
1976 Aug 1, Trinidad & Tobago
became a republic.
(http://library2.nalis.gov.tt/Default.aspx?PageContentMode=1&tabid=79)
1976 Aug 2, Fritz Lang (b.1890),
Austrian-born, German and American film director, died in Beverly
Hills. His work included "Metropolis," "M," and "The Big Heat."
(WSJ, 4/3/00,
p.A46)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Lang)
1976 Aug 3, Valeri Sablin, Soviet
Navy officer, was executed for mutiny. He was a character in the
1990 Hollywood film “Hunt for Red October.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Sablin)
1976 Aug 6, Thailand and Vietnam
established diplomatic relations.
(WSJ, 3/5/97,
p.A16)(www.vietnamembassy.or.th/relations.html)
1976 Aug 6, Gregor Piatigorsky
(b.1903), Russian cellist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Piatigorsky)
1976 Aug 7, Scientists in
Pasadena, Calif., announced that the Viking 1 spacecraft had found the
strongest indications to date of possible life on Mars.
(AP, 8/7/97)
1976 Aug 9, John Roselli (b.1905),
Chicago mobster hired by the CIA to kill Castro, was found murdered.
His decomposing body was found in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum floating
in Dumfounding Bay near Miami, Florida. Roselli had been strangled and
stabbed and his legs were sawed off.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Roselli)
1976 Aug 10, In South Africa Jimmy
Kruger, minister of justice and police, recommended killing
anti-apartheid demonstrators at a cabinet meeting.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A12)(http://tinyurl.com/2678bd)
1976 Aug 12, Syrian backed
Christian militias completed their siege of the Tell al-Za'tar
Palestinian camp in Lebanon leaving some 2000 people killed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_al-Zaatar_massacre)
1976 Aug 14, Some 10,000 Northern
Ireland women demonstrated for peace in Belfast.
(http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch76.htm)
1976 Aug 15, Former SS Colonel
Herbert Kappler dramatically escaped from prison hospital in Rome with
the aid of his wife and taken to Germany.
(http://tinyurl.com/yvulbh)
1976 Aug 17, William Redfield
(b.1927), film and TV actor, died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0714835/)
1976 Aug 18, Two U.S. Army
officers were killed in Korea's demilitarized zone as a group of North
Korean soldiers wielding axes and metal pikes attacked U.S. and South
Korean soldiers. Major Arthur G. Bonifas was attacked and beaten to
death by North Korean soldiers as he attempted to cut down a poplar
tree in the DMZ.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.T8)(AP, 8/18/02)
1976 Aug 19, President Ford
narrowly won the Republican presidential nomination over Ronald Reagan
at the party's convention in Kansas City. The convention was called to
order by Mary Louis Smith, chair of the Republican National Committee
and the first woman to organize and call to order the convention of a
major US political party. In 2005 Craig Shirley authored “Reagan’s
Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It all.”
(AP, 8/19/97)(SFEC, 8/24/97, p.D8)(WSJ, 2/2/05,
p.D10)
1976 Aug 22, EPA scientists
reported that they had discovered plutonium in the ocean sediment off
the SF coast and radioactive cesium leaking from containers 120 miles
east of Ocean City, Md. Some 62,000 steel drums of nuclear waste were
dumped into the oceans from 1946-1970.
(SFC, 8/17/01, p.WB6)
1976 Aug 22, Oskar Brusewitz
(b.1929), East German Lutheran vicar, died after having set himself on
fire on August 18 to protest the repression of religion.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Br%C3%BCsewitz)
1976 Aug 24, In Buenos Aires a
government task force kidnapped Marcelo Gelman (20) and his pregnant
wife Maria Claudia Garcia Irureta (19). Marcelo was shot and killed 2
months later and packed in cement in an oil drum. His wife disappeared
after giving birth in a military hospital in Uruguay. Juan Gelman, the
poet father of Marcelo, later campaigned in search of his grandchild
and authored the book "Not Even God's Feeble Pardon." In 2008 the
granddaughter of Argentine poet Juan Gelman urged Uruguayan courts to
reopen a probe into the 1976 disappearance of her dissident mother,
weeks before her grandfather was scheduled to receive the
Spanish-speaking world's most prestigious literary prize.
(SFC, 12/9/99, p.A16)(AP, 2/27/08)
1976 Aug 26, Prince Bernhard,
husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, agreed to resign his
positions with the Dutch armed forces and industry following severe
criticism of his behavior by a commission of enquiry into a Lockheed
bribery scandal. Bernhard had allegedly received $1.1 million as a gift
from Lockheed.
(RTH, 8/26/99)(SFC, 12/24/08, p.B7)
1976 Aug 27, Transsexual Renee
Richards was barred from competing in US Tennis Open in Forest
Hills, NY.
(www.nytimes.com/packages/html/sports/year_in_sports/08.27.html)
1976 Aug 31, George Harrison
(1943-2001) was found guilty of plagiarizing "My Sweet Lord."
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0365600/bio)(http://nfo.net/calendar/aug31.htm)
1976 Sep 1, U.S. Rep. Wayne L.
Hays, D-Ohio, resigned in the wake of a scandal in which he admitted
having an affair with secretary Elizabeth Ray.
(AP, 9/1/97)
1976 Sep 1, The New Jersey
Meadowlands racetrack opened.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowlands_Sports_Complex)
1976 Sep 3, The unmanned U.S.
spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars to take the first close-up, color
photographs of the planet's surface.
(AP, 9/3/97)
1976 Sep 4, George W. Bush (30),
candidate for US president in 2000, was arrested and pleaded guilty to
driving under the influence of alcohol in Kennebunkport, Maine.
(SFC, 11/3/00, p.A1)
1976 Sep 6, A Soviet pilot landed
his MIG-25 in Tokyo and asked for political asylum in the United States.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1976 Sep 8, Joaquin Zamacois Soler
(b,1894), Spanish composer, died.
(http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaquim_Zamacois_i_Soler)
1976 Sep 9, Mao Tse-tung (82),
Chinese Communist party chairman (1949-76) died in Beijing. "Who
controls a man’s ideas controls the man." In 1965 he launched the
controversial Cultural Revolution, an often-brutal campaign to reform
Chinese society. He was later held responsible for over 70 million
deaths. Mao Zedong’s death triggered a 2-year power struggle. The
Cultural Revolution's chief architects, Mao’s widow (Jiang Qing) and 3
others, the so-called Gang of Four, were jailed. Deng Xiaoping returned
from disgrace and eventually seized power. In 2005 Jung Chang and Jon
Halliday authored “Mao: The Unknown Story.”
(SFEC, 10/7/96, A9)(WSJ, 5/12/98, p.A22)(SSFC,
10/23/05, p.M1)(AP, 9/9/07)
1976 Sep 10, 5 Croatian terrorists
captured a TWA-plane at La Guardia Airport, NY.
(http://nycslav.blogspot.com/2005/11/croatian-terroristsin-new-york.html)
1976 Sep 10, Dalton Trumbo
(b.1905), US novelist and screenwriter, died at age 70. His books
included “Johnny Got His Gun” (1939). He used pseudonyms for a number
of Hollywood screenplays after he was blacklisted as one of the
“Hollywood Ten” by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAtrumbo.htm)
1976 Sep 13, The United States
announced it would veto Vietnam's UN bid.
(AP, 9/13/98)
1976 Sep 16, The Episcopal Church,
at its General Convention in Minneapolis, formally approved the
ordination of women as priests and bishops.
(AP, 9/16/01)
1976 Sep 17, The California
Supreme Court ruled that the Univ. of California’s special admissions
policy giving preference to minority applicants is unconstitutional.
Allan Bakke had claimed he was the victim of reverse discrimination
when he was denied admission to the UC Davis Medical School.
(SFC, 9/14/01, WB p.6)
1976 Sep 17, NASA publicly
unveiled the space shuttle Enterprise at ceremonies in Palmdale, Calif.
(AP, 9/17/97)(HN, 9/17/98)
1976 Sep 18, Rev. Sun Myung Moon
(b.1920) held a "God Bless America" convention.
(www.reverendsunmyungmoon.org/life_biography.html)
1976 Sep 20, Playboy magazine
released an interview in which Democratic presidential nominee Jimmy
Carter admitted he'd "looked on a lot of women with lust." Carter was
interviewed for the November issue of Playboy and he admitted that he
had committed "lust in my heart."
(AP, 9/20/01)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A11)
1976 Sep 21, Benjamin Graham
(b.1894), London-born economist and professional investor, died. He is
known as the father of value investing. His books included “Security
Analysis” written with David Dodd (1934), and “The Intelligent
Investor” (1949). Warren Buffett studied under him at Columbia Univ.
(WSJ, 10/5/06,
p.D5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Graham)
1976 Sep 21, Chilean exile Orlando
Letelier, one time foreign minister to Chilean President Salvador
Allende, was killed when a bomb exploded in his car in Washington D.C.
He was assassinated by order from Chile by Gen’l. Manuel Contreras,
head of the secret police known as DINA. Ronni Moffitt (25), an
American colleague of Letelier, was also killed. Contreras was
convicted of the order in 1993 and sentenced to a 7-year prison term.
In 2000 Gen. Pinochet was linked to the killing.
(SFC, 6/27/97, p.A14)(SFC, 7/1/99, p.C3)(SFEC,
5/28/00, p.A7)(AP, 9/21/01)
1976 Sep 22, Pres. Ferdinand
Marcos of the Philippines signed Presidential Order 1017 "protecting
the Tasaday and other unexplored cultural communities from unauthorized
entry." In 1971 Manuel Elizalde had described the Tasaday on Mindanao
as a lost Stone Age tribe. In 1986 it was reported that the Tasaday
story was a hoax. In 2003 Robin Hemley authored "Invented Eden: The
Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday," in which he confirmed the
Tasaday as a Stone Age tribe.
(SSFC, 6/22/03,
p.M1)(www.lawphil.net/statutes/presdecs/pd1976/pd_1017_1976.html)
1976 Sep 24, US District Judge
William Orrick sentenced newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst to seven
years in prison for her part in a 1974 bank robbery. She was released
after 22 months after receiving clemency from President Carter.
(SFC, 9/21/01, WB p.5)(AP, 9/24/07)
1976 Sep 24, In California Frances
Mays was kidnapped at knifepoint by Richard Allen Davis at the South
Hayward Bart station. She was able to break free and flagged down a
passing patrol car. Harris was caught and served five years. He later
kidnapped Polly Klaas on 10/1/93.
(SFC, 5/16/96, p.A-15)
1976 Sep 28, Muhammad Ali kept his
world heavyweight boxing championship with a close 15-round decision
over Ken Norton at New York's Yankee Stadium.
(AP, 9/28/01)
1976 Sep 29, Britain under PM
Callaghan applied to the IMF for a loan of $3.9 billion.
(http://tinyurl.com/tfu9t)
1976 Sep 30, The US House of
Representatives passed the Hyde Amendment 207-167, with no exceptions
for health or life endangerment, even though a similar but weaker
measure had been voted down two years earlier. Henry Hyde (1924-2007),
freshman Congressman from Illinois, had sponsored the amendment to cut
federal funding for abortions by women on Medicaid.
(Econ, 4/23/05, p.32)(SFC, 11/30/07,
p.A6)(www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue42/Fried42.htm)
1976 Sep, The US stock market
began a 42 month decline of 27%.
(SFC,10/17/97, p.B2)
1976 Oct 4, Barbara Walters made
her debut as the first female nightly network news anchor. She was
hired by ABC-TV, and offered a then-unheard of million dollar a year
salary to co-anchor with veteran Harry Reasoner. But Reasoner was
not pleased with having her there. In addition to their lack of
chemistry, the network's ratings did not improve, and she was replaced
in mid-1978. She joined another ABC show, 20/20, where she had much
greater success.
(http://tinyurl.com/yj2yufw)(www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=99440)
1976 Oct 4, Agriculture secretary
Earl Butz resigned in the wake of a controversy over a joke he'd made
about blacks.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1976 Oct 4, In Gregg v. Georgia,
the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on the death sentence in murder
cases. This restored the legality of capital punishment, which had not
been practiced since 1967. The first execution following this ruling
was Gary Gilmore in 1977.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1976 Oct 5, Researcher Alan
Dickinson warned the British Medical Research council that their human
growth hormone program was susceptible to contamination from infected
pituitary glands.
(SFEC, 5/21/00, p.A14)
1976 Oct 6, In his second debate
with Jimmy Carter, President Ford asserted in SF that there was "no
Soviet domination of eastern Europe." Ford later conceded he'd
misspoken. Carter charged the Ford administration with excessive
secrecy, immorality and weakness in dealing with the Soviet Union and
Arab nations. Some 3,000 people protested outside the Palace of Fine
Arts.
(AP, 10/6/97)(SFC, 10/5/01, WB p.6)
1976 Oct 6, The so-called "Gang of
Four," Chairman Mao Tse-tung's widow, Jiang Qing, and 3 associates
(Zhang Chunqiao (d.2005), Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen) were arrested
in Peking, setting in motion an extended period of turmoil in the
Chinese Communist Party.
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.B4)(Econ, 5/21/05, p.90)
1976 Oct 6, A Cuban aircraft from
Venezuela with 73 people onboard was blown up on a flight over the
Caribbean. Castro blamed the explosion on the US. Luis Posada Carriles,
a veteran of the Cuban exile’s war against Castro, was charged and
twice acquitted in the bombing. Venezuelan authorities kept him in jail
for 9 years until his escape in 1985 when he settled in El Salvador. In
April, 2005, Posada sought asylum in the US. In May, 2005, declassified
documents were made public that linked Posada to the bombing and
indicated he was on the CIA's payroll for years.
(SFC, 7/9/96, p.A8)(SFC,11/17/97, p.A14)(AP,
4/15/05)(AP, 5/11/05)
1976 Oct 6, In Thailand right-wing
political power-brokers, including Kriangsak Chomanan and Samak
Sundaravej, provoked mobs to lynch left-wing pro-democracy student
protesters at Bangkok's Thammasat University. At least 46 protesters
were killed and hundreds wounded by the police and army. A coup
installed a new military-guided, right-wing government.
(AP, 12/23/03)(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A12)(Econ, 9/6/08,
p.14)
1976 Oct 10, In New Jersey the
Meadowlands' Giant's Stadium opened with an NFL game between the Giants
and Dallas Cowboys.
(www.meadowlands.com/giantsStadiumFAQ.asp)
1976 Oct 11, The US Toxic
Substances Control Act became law with an effective date of January 1,
1977.
(www.epa.gov/compliance/civil/tsca/tscaenfstatreq.html)
1976 Oct 12, It was announced in
China that Hua Guo-feng had been named to succeed the late Mao Tse-tung
as chairman of the Communist Party.
(AP, 10/12/01)
1976 Oct 14, Deborah Gardner (23)
was stabbed (22 times) to death in Tonga by Dennis Priven (24), a
fellow Peace Corps volunteer. In 2004 Philip Weiss authored “American
Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps.”
(http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/467/2024230.html)
1976 Oct 15, In the first debate
of its kind between vice-presidential nominees, Democrat Walter F.
Mondale and Republican Bob Dole faced off in Houston.
(AP, 10/15/97)
1976 Oct 15, Carlo Gambino
(b.1902), US gangster, died at his summer home in Long Island.
(www.gambino.com/bio/carlogambino.htm)
1976 Oct 15, French-Argentine
citizen Marianne Erize (22) was kidnapped and disappeared. In 2008
retired army major Jorge Antonio Olivera was arrested for the "forced
disappearance, kidnapping and torture" of Erize when Olivera was a
lieutenant in the 22nd Mountain Infantry Regiment. In August 2000,
Olivera was detained in Italy at the request of French authorities, but
was freed after presenting what was later found to be a falsified death
certificate saying Erize had died on Nov. 11, 1976 — 26 days after
being illegally detained.
(AP, 11/4/08)
1976 Oct 19, Pres. Ford signed the
US Copyright Act of 1976, effective as of January 1, 1978. It declared
unpublished materials to be in the public domain when the records are
100 years old or when the creator of the records has been dead for
fifty years, whichever date comes first. The act also declared that
records created before January 1, 1978 enter the public domain in 2002,
provided that they are over 100 years old or the creator of the records
has been dead 50 years.
(SAA,
4/19/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976)
1976 Oct 20, 76 people died when
the Norwegian tanker Frosta collided with the ferryboat George Prince
on the Mississippi River north of New Orleans.
(AP, 10/20/06)
1976 Oct 21, Saul Bellow won the
Nobel Prize for literature, the first American honored since John
Steinbeck in 1962.
(AP, 10/21/01)
1976 Oct 22, Pres. Ford signed S.
3091, the National Forest Management Act of 1976.
(WSJ, 2/25/97,
p.A22)(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=6516)
1976 Oct 25, Gov. Wallace of
Alabama granted full pardon to Clarence Norris, the last known survivor
of 9 Scottsboro Boys who were convicted in a 1931 rape.
(http://shs.westport.k12.ct.us/jwb/Collab/CivRts/ScottsBoys.htm)
1976 Oct 25, Raymond Queneau
(b.1903), Parisian surrealist, died. His work included the prewar novel
"Les Enfants du Limon." In 1998 it was translated to English as
"Children of Clay."
(SFEC, 8/2/98, BR
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Queneau)
1976 Oct 28, Former Nixon aide
John D. Ehrlichman entered a federal prison camp in Safford, Ariz., to
begin serving his sentence for Watergate-related convictions.
(AP, 10/28/97)
1976 Oct, Mairead Corrigan Maguire
was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace for her efforts to stop
bloodshed in Northern Ireland.
(SFC, 10/8/99, p.A12)
1976 Oct, Dr. Carleton Gajdusek
shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for proving the existence of a
certain kind of virus. In 1996 he was arrested for on charges of
molesting a teenage boy whom he brought from Micronesia to live with
him in Maryland.
(SFC, 4/4/96, p.A-3)
1976 Oct, Burton Richter of
Stanford and Samuel Ting of MIT won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Their
work with the SPEAR machine revealed the Psi-particle, a subatomic
object that lasts for a tiny fraction of a second. It confirmed that
protons and neutrons were composed of smaller quarks.
(SFC, 10/10/96, p.A1)(SFC, 5/1/97, p.A7)(SFC,
11/24/98, p.A20)
1976 Nov 2, Former Georgia Gov.
(James Earl) Jimmy Carter defeated Republican incumbent Gerald R. Ford,
becoming the 39th president and the first from the Deep South since the
Civil War.
(AP, 11/2/97)(HN, 11/2/98)
1976 Nov 2, Voters in California
rejected Prop. 14, an initiative that proposed to add to the state
constitution the funding provisions and rights of organizers (UFW) to
enter farm fields to talk to workers. Opposition to the initiative was
run by the Dolphin Group, an influential lobbying firm.
(SFEM, 4/13/97, p.28)
1976 Nov 2, Tom Tancredo was
elected to Colorado’s state house as a member of a group called “The
Crazies” due to their fervent opposition to taxes.
(www.tancredo.org/info/tom_tancredo_bio.html)(Econ,
4/8/06, p.36)
1976 Nov 2, New Jersey voters
approved gambling for Atlantic City.
(NG, 8/04, p.96)
1976 Nov 2, In Utah Orrin Hatch
defeated 18-year incumbent Senator Frank Moss.
(SFC, 2/3/03, p.B4)
1976 Nov 2, In West Virginia’s
race for governor Democrat Jay Rockefeller (b.1937) defeated former
Gov. Cecil Underwood (1956-1960). Rockefeller was re-elected in 1980.
(SFC, 11/25/08,
p.B4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Rockefeller)
1976 Nov 6, Benjamin L. Hooks was
chosen executive director of the NAACP, the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People, succeeding Roy Wilkins.
(AP, 11/6/97)
1976 Nov 7, NBC began airing the
movie “Gone with the Wind” on TV. It showed over two nights due to its
length. The event was the highest-rated television event of the season.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_in_American_television)
1976 Nov 9, Smokey the Bear (26)
died at the Washington DC National Zoo.
(www.capitanlibrary.org/research/smokey-bear.htm)
1976 Nov 9, The UN General
Assembly approved ten resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa,
including one characterizing the white-ruled government as
"illegitimate."
(AP, 11/9/00)
1976 Nov 10, The Utah Supreme
Court gave the go-ahead for convicted murderer Gary Gilmore to be
executed, according to his wishes. The sentence was carried out the
following January.
(AP, 11/10/97)
1976 Nov 11, Alexander Calder
(78), US sculptor, died. He invented the mobile as a new format for
sculpture. He also designed toys , jewelry, some wallpaper and
decorated DC-8s for Braniff Airlines. David Bourdon (d.1998 at 63)
wrote a study of Calder in 1980.
(SFC,11/15/97, p.C1,6)(SFC, 4/4/98, p.A24)(MC,
11/11/01)
1976 Nov 11, In Argentina
journalist Claudio Adur (26) disappeared. This marked the beginning of
a large number of journalists who disappearing following the March
military coup.
(www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16842)
1976 Nov 15, Rene Levesque's
"Parti Quebecois" won elections in Quebec. The pro-independence Parti
Quebecois first came to power.
(SFC, 10/3/98,
p.A21)(www.cbc.ca/news/background/parti_quebecois/)
1976 Nov 15, A Syrian peace force
took control of Beirut, Lebanon. The Arab League gave Syria a
peacekeeping mandate.
(HN, 11/15/98)(SFC, 4/27/05, p.A8)
1976 Nov 18, Man Ray (b.1890),
American Dada artist, died. He was born as Emmanuel Radnitsky in
Philadelphia and spent much of his time in France.
(WSJ, 12/2/96,
p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Ray)
1976 Nov 18, Spain's parliament
approved a bill to establish a democracy after 37 years of
dictatorship.
(AP, 11/18/97)
1976 Nov 19, Patty Hearst was
freed on $1.5 million bail. She returned to her family’s home at 1001
California St.
(HN, 11/19/98)(SFC, 11/16/01, WB p.G4)
1976 Nov 19, George Harrison
(1943-2001) released his album "Thirty Three & 1/3."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Three_%26_1/3)
1976 Nov 22, Comic strip "Cathy,"
by Cathy Guisewhite, made its debut.
(www.suite101.com/article.cfm/cartoonists/66531)
1976 Nov 22, Phillip Garrido
kidnapped Katie Hall in South Lake Tahoe and drove her to Reno, where
he raped her at a storage unit. Garrido was convicted in 1977 and
sentenced to 50 years in prison. He was paroled in 1988. In 1993 He
kidnapped Jaycee Lee Dugard (11) in South Lake Tahoe and kept her in
Antioch, Ca., until his arrest in 2009.
(SFC, 9/2/09, p.A15)
1976 Nov 22, Britain adopted the
Race Relations Act with sweeping anti-racial laws, but the laws did not
extend to Northern Ireland. The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE)
was formed to enforce the new laws banning racial discrimination.
(SFC, 6/30/96, A11)(Econ, 5/15/04, p.57)(Econ,
12/2/06, p.59)
1976 Nov 23, Andre Malraux
(b.1901), author (Conquerors) and French Minister of Culture
(1958-1969), died.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/malraux.htm)
1976 Nov 23, The Thai government
returned 26 refugees to Cambodia saying that they are a threat to the
national security. The government said some 70,000 refugees in Thailand
who escaped Communist rule in other Indochina states, including 10,000
Cambodians, would also not be permitted to stay.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1976 Nov 28, In San Francisco Bill
Graham presented the Band and guests in "The Last Waltz" at Winterland
plus a turkey dinner for the capacity crowd. The last concert of The
Band took place at Winterland and was made into a film by Martin
Scorsese that included Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond and Muddy Waters.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 6/28/98, DB p.52)
1976 Nov 28, Elvis Presley
preformed a concert at the Cow Palace in Daly City, Ca.
(www.elvispresleymusic.com.au/pictures/1976_nov_28.html)
1976 Nov 28, Rosalind Russell
(b.1907), film and stage actress, died in Beverly Hills, Ca.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Russell)
1976 Dec 1, Sex Pistols used
profanity on TV, and got branded as "rotten punks."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Pistols)
1976 Dec 3, Fidel Castro was
elected president of Cuba.
(WSJ, 8/5/06, p.A9)
1976 Dec 4, Benjamin Britten
(b.1913), English composer, died.
(WSJ, 7/26/99, p.A21)
1976 Dec 6, Democrat Tip O’Neill
was elected speaker of the House of Representatives. He went on to
serve the longest consecutive term as speaker.
(HN, 12/6/00)
1976 Dec 6, War criminal Pieter
Menten was arrested in Zurich.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1976 Dec 7, The UN Security
Council endorsed Kurt Waldheim (1918-2007) of Austria for a 2nd 5-year
term as UN Secretary-General.
(www.worldofquotes.com/history/12_7/6/index.html)
1976 Dec 11, Hungarian art forger
Elmyr de Hory (b.1906) died of a lethal overdose of barbiturates in
Ibiza, Spain. The 1969 book "Fake" by Clifford Irving was about De Hory
and both Irving and de Hory were featured in the 1975 Orson Welles film
"F" for Fake.
(SFC, 7/29/99,
p.E6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory)
1976 Dec 12, QB Joe Namath played
his last game as a NY Jet. In 2004 Mark Kriegel authored “Namath: A
Biography.”
(www.newyorkjets.com/history)(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.M3)
1976 Dec 16, President Jimmy
Carter appointed Andrew Young as Ambassador to the United Nations.
(HN, 12/16/98)
1976 Dec 16, The US government
halted its swine flu vaccination program following reports of paralysis
apparently linked to the vaccine.
(AP, 12/16/01)
1976 Dec 16, Marjorie Mitchell, a
nurse at Napa State Hospital testified that a man, later identified as
Richard Allen Davis, awakened her in the early hours and clubbed her
with a fire poker.
(SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-21)
1976 Dec 18, "A Star is Born,"
with Barbra Streisand, premiered.
(www.superseventies.com/1977_3singles.html)
1976 Dec 20, Hazel Frost testified
that she left a Napa restaurant and bar and that Richard Allen Davis
jumped into her car and held a shotgun to her neck. She managed to roll
out of the car a grabbed a gun loaded with birdshot from under her seat
and fired in the direction that she thought Davis was running. Davis
had escaped from Napa State Hospital after he faked a suicide attempt
in the Alameda County Jail.
(SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-21)
1976 Dec 20, Chicago Mayor Richard
J. Daley died at age 74. In 2000 Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor
authored the biography: "American Pharaoh."
(AP, 12/20/97)(WSJ, 5/24/00, p.A24)
1976 Dec 20, Israel's PM Yitzhak
Rabin resigned.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1976-12/1976-12-20-ABC-10.html)
1976 Dec 21, Russel Wright
(b.1904), American designer, died. His American Modern dinnerware was
manufactured by Steubenville Pottery from 1939 to about 1959.
(SFC, 8/10/05,
p.G4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russel_Wright)
1976 Dec 21, The
Liberian-registered tanker Argo Merchant ran aground near Nantucket
Island, spilling millions of gallons of oil into the North Atlantic.
(AP, 12/21/97)
1976 Dec 23, In Japan Takeo Fukuda
was chosen as the 8th LDP President and formed his cabinet in the midst
of high public expectations for the Party's revitalization and the
country's economic recovery.
(www.jimin.jp/jimin/english/history/chap8.html)
1976 Dec 25, Some 100 Moslems,
returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, died when their boat, the
Egyptian SS Patria, sank in the Red Sea.
(HN,
12/25/98)(www.emergency-management.net/ship_acc.htm)
1976 Dec 27, The Oakland Raiders
defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 24-7 and won a trip to the Super Bowl
for the 1st time since 1967.
(SFC, 12/21/01, WB p.G16)
1976 Dec 28, In Albania the
People’s Assembly approved a new constitution and the country became a
"people's socialist republic."
(http://bjoerna.dk/dokumentation/Albanian-Constitution-1976.htm)
1976 Dec 30, Governor Carey of New
York pardoned seven inmates to close the book on the Attica uprising.
(HN, 12/30/98)
1976 Romare Bearden created the
monotype "Vampin (Piney Brown Blues)," with watercolor additions. A
monotype refers to a painting made on a nonabsorbent surface that is
transferred by a press onto a one time print.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, BR p.7)
1976 In California Bulgarian
artist Christo Javacheff created his artwork "Running Fence," a
24.5-mile-long white nylon fence/curtain draped across Marin and Sonoma
counties. The fence cost $3 million and lasted for 2 weeks.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.A16)(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A24)
1976 Claes Oldenburg (b.1929),
Swedish-born American artist, constructed a 41-foot "Trowel I"
for the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands by. He also made
"Typewriter Eraser."
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.82)(SFC, 10/26/96, p.B1)
1976 A 45-foot-tall, giant steel
"Clothespin" was constructed at the Plaza of the City Hall of
Philadelphia by Claes Oldenburg. He made his graphic "Soft Screw in
Waterfall."
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.83)(SFC, 9/1/97, p.E4)(SFEC,
10/5/97, BR p.4)
1976 Georgia O’Keefe published her
autobiography in Painting with the help of Juan Hamilton. She was
legally blind by this time.
(WSJ, 7/31/97, p.A16)
1976 Robert Ardrey wrote "The
Hunting Hypothesis."
(NH, 11/96, p.12)
1976 Paul Bowles (1910-1999),
American-born composer and writer who lived in Tangier, Morocco, wrote
his short story Allal. In 1996 three of Bowles’ stories were made into
a film titled "Halfmoon" by Frieder Schlaich and Irene von Alberti.
Bertolucci had earlier transferred his novel "The Sheltering Sky" into
film. A biography of Bowles by Millicint Dillon, "You Are Not I: A
Portrait of Paul Bowles" was published in 1998.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p. C3)(SFEC, 4/5/98, BR
p.3)(www.paulbowles.org/bowlesbiography.html)
1976 A.I. Dagg and J.B.
Foster published "The Giraffe: Its Biology, Behavior and Ecology."
(NH, 5/96, p.56)
1976 "The Selfish Gene" by Richard
Dawkins was published. Here he launched the archetypal "meme," defined
as a unit of cultural transmission. It described how ideas mimic the
behavior of genes and propagate by leaping from brain to brain. In 2009
Fern Elsdon-Baker authored “The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins
Rewrote Darwin’s Legacy.”
(NH, 5/96, p.13)(Wired, 2/98, p.118)(Econ, 7/25/09,
p.81)
1976 John Dean, council to Richard
Nixon and songbird during the congressional investigation, wrote about
Watergate in his book "Blind Ambition."
(SFC, 9/17/96, p.B8)
1976 Joan Erikson, psychologist,
wrote "Activity, Recovery and Growth." She underscored the benefits of
occupational therapy.
(SFC, 8/9/97, p.A19)
1976 Jean Gimpel authored "The
Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages."
(WSJ, 12/23/99, p.A18)
1976 Alex Haley published "Roots,"
based on his search of his African ancestry. It won a Pulitzer Prize
and was made into a TV mini-series.
(SFC, 4/25/98, p.A3)
1976 Malachi Martin (d.1999 at
78), an Irish-born former Jesuit, published "Hostage to the Devil," an
account of the possession and exorcism of 5 Americans.
(SFC, 7/30/99, p.D8)
1976 William H. McNeill authored
“Plagues and Peoples,” a history of human society with microscopic
agents of disease as the main protagonists.
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)
1976 Ernst Kitzinger (1912-2003),
a foremost historian of Byzantine, early Christian and early medieval
art, authored "Byzantine Art in the Making."
(SFC, 2/10/03, p.B4)
1976 Loretta Lynn, country singer,
authored "Coal Miner’s Daughter."
(SFEC, 7/30/00, Par p.14)
1976 Norman Maclean (1902-1990)
published "A River Runs Through It and Other Stories." It was a story
about fly fishing in Montana. Recorded books put out a cassette version
in 1993 with other stories that included "Logging and Pimping and ‘Your
Pal, Jim’," and "USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the
Sky."
(RB,
1993)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Maclean)
1976 James Michener published
"Sports in America."
(SFC,10/17/97, p.A12)
1976 A German edition of the
diaries of Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880-1942) was published. In
1999 Philip Payne published an abridged version "Diaries 1899-1942."
(SFEC, 1/31/99, BR p.9)
1976 The Nomadic Sisters published
"Loving Women," a sex manual by, for and about women with explicit
drawings.
(SFC, 2/27/98, p.A3)
1976 Harold Parrot, a Brooklyn
Dodgers road secretary, published "The Lords of Baseball."
(SFC, 8/24/98, p.A3)
1976 Tibor Scitovsky (1910-2002),
American economist, authored "The Joyless Economy," an indictment of
bourgeois society.
(SFC, 6/8/02,
p.A25)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibor_Scitovsky)
1976 The book "Splendid Survivors:
San Francisco's Downtown Architectural Heritage" was published.
(SFC, 7/4/03, p.E7)
1976 The children’s fiction "Roll
of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred Taylor (b.1943) was published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR
p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Taylor)
1976 William W. Warner (1920-2008)
authored “Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay.”
It became a national bestseller and won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for
nonfiction.
(SFC, 4/30/08,
p.B9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_W._Warner)
1976 Joseph Weizenbaum wrote
"Computer Power and Human Reason." He described here his program called
ELIZA that demonstrated a conversation between a patient and a computer
posing as a psychiatrist.
(I&I, Penzias, p.144)
1976 Elizabeth Williams (d.1997 at
65) wrote "Notes of a Feminist Therapist."
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A14)
1976 Raymond Williams authored
“Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society.”
(WSJ, 4/26/08, p.W9)
1976 Hatten Yoder (1921-2003),
geology expert, authored "Generation of Basaltic Magma."
(SFC, 8/16/03,
p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatten_Yoder)
1976 "The Linguistic Atlas of
England" was published.
(NH, 6/96, p.10)
1976 Sam Shepard wrote his play
"The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife." He also
wrote "Curse of the Starving Class."
(WSJ, 2/14/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 4/30/97, p.A12)
1976 The film “The Message” by
Syrian-American producer Moustapha Akkad (d.2005) told the story the
Prophet Mohammad and the emergence of Islam.
(SFC, 11/24/05, p.E2)
1976 "Charlie’s Angels" with
Cheryl Ladd, Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and David Doyle (1930-1997)
began on TV and ran until 1981. Aaron Spelling (d.2006) produced the
show.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.C3) (SFC, 6/24/06, p.A2)
1976 The TV show "What's
Happening!!" began and ran to 1979. It was a comedy about 3 high school
students who hung out together.
(SFC, 12/13/99, p.A26)
1976 French composer Pierre Boulez
(b.1925) wrote "Messagesquisse." Boulez had studied under Messiaen.
(SFC, 1/31/03,
p.D2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Boulez)
1976 John Corigliano (b.1938),
American composer, composed his "Etude Fantasy."
(WSJ, 7/2/98,
p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Corigliano)
1976 Composer Philip Glass and
director/designer Robert Wilson collaborated on their production of
"Einstein on the Beach" at the NY Met.
(SFC, 12/30/99, p.E1)(Econ, 7/22/06, p.82)
1976 Henryk Gorecki (b.1933),
Polish composer, wrote his "Third Symphony."
(SFC, 12/30/99, p.E1)
1976 French composers Gerard
Grisey (d.1998 at 52), Michael Levinas and Tristan Murail formed the
group L’Iteneraire and pioneered what they called "spectral music."
(SFEC, 11/22/98, p.D10)
1976 Steve Reich (b.1936),
American composer, created a near-symphonic masterpiece with his "Music
for 18 Musicians."
(SFC, 12/30/99, p.E1)
1976 The B-52 band formed in
Athens, Georgia. Cindy Wilson, Keith Strickland, Fred Schneider, Kate
Pierson and Ricky Wilson formed the band following a rum-buzzed jam
session.
(SSFC, 8/10/03, p.C10)
1976 Benjamin Orr (d.2000 at 53)
and Ric Ocasek, natives of Ohio, formed their band "The Cars" in Boston.
(SFC, 10/6/00, p.D5)
1976 The Eagles recorded their hit
song "Hotel California."
(SFC, 1/14/98, p.D3)
1976 Fleetwood Mac released its
"Rumours" album which achieved multiplatinum status.
(SFC, 1/14/98, p.D3)
1976 Katy Moffatt,
singer-composer, went on the road as the opening act for bluesman Muddy
Waters.
(WSJ, 10/8/96, p.A20)
1976 The Ramones punk rock group
released their 1st album "Ramones." Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Hyman) died in
2001 at age 49.
(SFC, 4/17/01, p.C2)
1976 Vicki Sue Robinson (d.2000 at
46), pop-gospel singer, had a hit with "Turn the Beat Around." It
became a signature anthem of the disco era.
(SFC, 5/3/00, p.A24)
1976 Johnnie Taylor (d.2000 at 62)
had a hit with his song "Disco Lady."
(SFC, 6/2/00, p.D5)
1976 The rock band U2 initially
formed in Dublin when Larry Mullen Jr. posted a message on a high
school bulletin board asking for fellow musicians to form a band. Paul
Hewson, David Evans, Adam Clayton and Dick Evans responded to the ad
and it was at this stage along with Larry Mullen Jr. that the band
'Feedback' was formed.
(WSJ, 12/28/04,
p.D8)(http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~omzig/u2_the_band.htm)
1976 Claude Vivier, a
French-Canadian composer, composed "Siddartha," a 30 minute orchestral
piece written on commission from the CBC.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, DB. p.31)(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D7)
1976 The Detroit Renaissance
Center designed by John Portman was opened. It cost $357 million.
(WSJ, 10/11/96, p.B1)
1976 The Episcopal Church opened
its priesthood to women.
(SFC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.7)
1976 The Michael Ochs Archive, a
collection of popular music artists, went commercial.
(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A20)
1976 The Cult Awareness Network
(CAN) was founded for parents whose children had joined unconventional
religious groups. It later lost a suit brought against it by the Church
of Scientology and was forced into bankruptcy. The Church of
Scientology in 1996 proceeded to buy up its records in public auction.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C15)
1976 The Smithsonian National Air
and Space Museum opened in Washington, DC.
(SFC, 11/26/99, p.A5)
1976 The Int’l. Society for Humor
Studies was founded.
(SFEC, 6/28/98, p.A18)
1976 The Great American Smokeout,
organized by the American Cancer Society, was first held in California.
(SFEM, 7/14/96, p.32)
1976 Navaho weavers wove the
largest Navaho rug in the world. The 800-pound rug measured 38x26 feet
and used 25 different Navaho styles.
(SFC, 10/11/97, p.A7)
1976 Charlie Rose, a US democrat
from North Carolina, founded the Congressional Clearinghouse on the
Future. It was to be an in-house think tank intended as an antidote to
the institutional short-termism of Congress.
(Wired, Dec. '95, p.154)
1976 Bennigan’s, an Irish-themed
restaurant was founded in Atlanta. During the 1990s it expanded across
the country and became part of the Metromedia Restaurant Group. In 2008
Metromedia filed for bankruptcy.
(WSJ, 7/30/08, p.B1)
1976 Clint Murchison Jr., owner of
the Dallas Cowboys, visited Miami for the Super Bowl and stopped for
ribs at a restaurant owned by Tony Roma (d.2003). He enjoyed the foods
so much that he purchased the majority of US franchise rights. In 2003
the chain had grown to over 250.
(SFC, 6/14/03, p.A21)
1976 The American Basketball
Association disbanded. Four of the teams, Indiana, San Antonio, Denver
and New Jersey joined the NBA. The owners of the Spirits of St. Louis
negotiated a deal to collect one-seventh of their NBA TV money in
perpetuity. Terry Pluto later authored "Loose Balls," a
definitive book on the ABA.
(WSJ, 2/22/99, p.B1)
1976 The Tampa Bay Buccaneers
football expansion team began playing and lost their first 26 games.
(WSJ, 1/10/97, p.A1)
1976 The first official
synchronized skating competition was held in Ann Arbor, Mich.
(SFC, 2/23/09, p.E7)
1976 Baruch S. Blumberg of NASA
Ames Astrobiology Inst. won the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology.
(SFC, 10/8/01, p.A17)
1976 Pres. Ford suspended nuclear
reprocessing under the fear that terrorist groups might steal plutonium
from American plants to manufacture bombs. Pres. Carter made the
decision permanent in 2007.
(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.A9)
1976 A US congressional commission
found that Pres. Nixon had authorized $10 million for a covert CIA
mission to get rid of Allende in Chile. Papers to this effect were
declassified in 1998.
(SFC, 10/22/98, p.A12)
1976 The US Congress asked the
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to find land that might qualify for
wilderness protection. It found 3.2 million eligible acres in Utah.
(Econ, 8/23/03, p.26)
1976 J. Howard Marshall II
(d.1995), Texas oil tycoon and alumnus of Haverford College, Pa.,
pledged $4 million to Haverford. In 1994 Marshall married Playboy
Playmate Anna Nicole Smith (26) and by his death had donated less than
$2 million to the college.
(WSJ, 7/24/03, p.A1)
1976 US Congress passed the
Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act. It extended US
territorial waters to 200 miles offshore.
(GQ, Summer ‘96, p.22)(WSJ, 11/25/97, p.A1)
1976 A typical American CEO earned
36 times as much as the average worker. By 2008 average CEO pay
increased to 369 times that of the average worker.
(SFC, 4/29/08, p.E2)
1976 Robert Lucas, economist at
the Univ. of Chicago, explained how unanticipated inflation eroded the
real value of wages. In 1995 Lucas won the Nobel Prize in Economic
Science.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.68)
1976 The Alaska Permanent Fund was
created after oil was discovered on the North Slope. Residents of over
a year received an annual dividend from the fund.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.A7)
1976 In California Jim Kepner
(d.1997 at 74), historian and gay-rights pioneer, co-founded the One
Institute, an educational outfit. He wrote for One magazine, the
nation’s first openly "homophile" publication. He created the Int’l.
Gay and Lesbian Archives and his early writings: "Rough News, Daring
Views" were to be published shortly after his death.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.C10)
1976 In California the Mendocino
Land Trust was founded to save property from development.
(SFC, 2/4/02, p.B1)
1976 California’s Gov. Brown
appointed Yoritada "Yori" Wada (d.1997 at 80), director of the SF
Buchanan YMCA, to the UC Board of Regents. Mr. Wada was the first Asian
American regent in the history of UC.
(SFC, 12/4/97, p.C8)
1976 California’s Supreme Court
legalized palimony in a 43-page decision won by Michelle Triola Marvin
against actor Lee Marvin.
(SFC, 11/26/99, p.D9)
1976 S.I. Hayakawa, former
president of SF State College, was elected to the US Senate.
(SFC, 2/2/98, p.A20)
1976 Rose Ann Vuich (d.2001 at 74)
of Dinuba, Ca., began serving as the state’s 1st female senator.
(SFC, 9/1/01, p.A15)
1976 Hamilton Air Force Base in
Novato, Ca., was decommissioned. The area was later approved for
development as a planned community, Hamilton Landing, with 950 homes in
6 neighborhoods set for completion in 2000.
(SFC, 11/4/98, Z1 p.4)(SFEC, 3/14/99, p.C4)
1976 California filed its first
enforcement action against Stauffer Chemicals, owners of the Iron
Mountain mine near Redding.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1976 Stauffer Chemical Co. sold
the Iron Mountain mine to Ted Armand, a Sacramento businessman, who
planned to use the tailings for fertilizers. Armand claimed that he was
not informed of any environmental issues.
(SFEC,11/2/97, p.A13)
1976 California appropriated
$250,000 to preserve the old Chinese detention center on Angel Island.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.7)
1976 Ravenswood Winery was founded
in Sonoma and went public in 1999. In 2001 it was sold to New York’s
Constellation Brands for $148 million.
(SFC, 4/12/01, p.B6)
1976 The Tao House in Danville,
former residence of playwright Eugene O'Neill, was declared a national
historic site.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, Z1p.1)
1976 The Humboldt nuclear power
plant was shut down after an earthquake fault was discovered running
beneath it. In 1999 the California PUC was expected to approve the
decommissioning of the plant for 2002.
(SFC, 10/28/99, p.C4)
1976 The trial for the 14 Zebra
murders (1973-1974) occurred in SF. Four men received life in prison
under Superior Court Judge Karesh.
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.E2)
1976 In San Francisco US District
Judge Sam Conti sentenced Nicholas Sand to 15 years in federal prison
for distributing LSD through the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. He was an
associate of Timothy Leary and LSD guru Stanley Owsley. Sand went
underground after being released on bail and was picked up in 1996 in
Vancouver, BC, under the name David Roy Shepard. He was sentenced to an
additional 5 years in 1999 for fleeing the country.
(SFC, 1/23/99,
p.A17)(www.serendipity.li/dmt/nsand/sfchron.htm)
1976 San Mateo County, Ca.,
rebuilt the military housing by the PG&E plant east of Cow Palace
in Daly City with a housing complex of 150 units called Midway Village.
The units stood over toxic soil from PG&E that was used by the
military during WW II as land fill. Dirt and groundwater in the area
contained polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PNAs), a known carcinogen.
No soil tests were conducted.
(SFC, 3/10/98, p.A14)(SFC, 1/5/00, p.A12)(SFC,
1/19/00, p.A4)
1976 An area of 420,000 acres in
California’s Joshua Tree National Monument was designated a national
wilderness area.
(Sp., 5/96, p.64)
1976 Massachusetts moved its
primary from late April to early March. New Hampshire reacted by moving
the due date to February and then to late January.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.D6)
1976 Section 936 provided US firms
operating in Puerto Rico with tax-free income. It helped to stimulate
industrialization and infrastructure development on the island. However
it skewed investment towards technologies that were too advanced for
Puerto Rico’s stage of development. On August 20, 1996 the U.S.
Congress repealed Section 936 of the US Internal Revenue Code, with a
clause that retains its benefit for ten years of existing corporations.
Section 30A was created to substitute Section 936.
(http://welcome.topuertorico.org/glossary/index.shtml#936)(Econ,
5/27/06, p.26)
1976 Celestine Tate Harrington
(d.1998 at 42), a NYC deformed entertainer, won the right to raise her
own daughter when she demonstrated her ability to change a diaper using
her mouth. She was born stunted due to a botched abortion attempt by
her teenage mother.
(SFC, 2/28/98, p.A19)
1976 Vermont Gov. Tom Salmon
granted the Abenaki Indians recognition. The following year a new
governor rescinded recognition.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.J7)
1976 William M. Batten became
chairman of the NYSE. He ran the exchange to 1984.
(WSJ, 4/14/07, p.A6)
1976 The 1st CRAY-1 supercomputer
was installed at Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico for a 6-month
trial.
(www.cisl.ucar.edu/computers/gallery/cray/cray1.jsp)(WSJ, 3/2/00, p.B8)
1976 Jim Goodnight co-founded
software-maker SAS on the campus of the Univ. of North Carolina. By
2007 the company was a leader in business intelligence software and the
world’s largest privately owned software maker.
(Econ, 12/1/07, p.84)
1976 Entenmann’s based in New
York, the nation’s largest baked goods company, went public. In 1978 it
was sold to Warner-Lambert for $243 million.
(www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/26/Warner-Lambert-Co.html)(SFEC,
9/30/96, p.A23)
1976 Charles Gibson (d.2006), an
ordained minister, founded the Gibson Glass Co. in Milton, W. Va. The
company was in business for one year when Gibson returned to the
pulpit. He re-opened the business in 1983 and it became best known for
cruets.
(SFC, 12/12/07, p.G5)
1976 Mobil Corp. bought Marcor and
its Montgomery Ward unit.
(WSJ, 12/29/00, p.A3)
1976 W. Richard Goodwin
(1924-1996), CEO of Johns Manville Corp., resigned. The company
manufactured asbestos fibers.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.A13)
1976 Dorothy Schiff (1903-1989)
sold the New York Post, founded in 1801, to Rupert Murdoch, Australian
media tycoon, for $30 million.
(WSJ, 4/7/07, p.P10)(www.ketupa.net/murdoch2.htm)
1976 Cadillac rolled out the El
Dorado, the biggest 4-wheel drive car in the world.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1976 Industry experts in 1996
picked the 1976 Chevrolet Vega as the number 4 worst American-made car
and the 1976 AMC Pacer as the number 10 worst American-made car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1976 Utah Int’l. Inc., under
Edmund Littlefield, merged with General Electric in a $2.2 billion
deal, the largest to date. The Utah company had built the Hoover Dam.
(SFC, 11/2/01, p.D6)(SFC, 10/4/06, p.A15)
1976 Whooping cough, caused by
Bordatella pertussis, reached an all-time low of 1,010 in the US
following universal childhood vaccination programs.
(SFC, 12/15/05, p.B5)
1976 US scientists at the NIH
isolated a poison from the skin of the Ecuadorian frog called
Epibpedobates tricolor and found that an extract from it could block
pain 200 times more effectively than morphine.
(SFC, 1/2/98, p.A6)
1976 J. Michael Bishop and Harold
E. Varmus discovered a family of genes, oncogenes, in chickens, that
helped scientists understand how cancer develops. They won the 1989
Nobel Prize in medicine for their work. In 1998 Robert A. Weinberg
published "One Renegade Cell," a primer on the discovery of oncogenes.
(SFEC, 10/8/96, A9)(SFC, 2/6/98, p.A1)(WSJ,
11/25/98, p.A16)
1976 Positron Emission Tomography
(PET), a body scanning technology, first came on the market. Dr. Michel
Ter-Pogossian of St. Louis led a group that built the first successful
prototypes between 1972-1974. In 1998 PET technology was combined with
computed tomography (CT scans). PET/CT scanners hit the market in 2001.
(Econ, 6/10/06, Survey p.23)
1976 The Electronic Information
Exchange System (EIES), an electronic conferencing system, was built at
the New Jersey Inst. of Technology.
(Wired, 5/97, p.101)
1976 Gary Kildall separated out
the parts of CP/M version 1 that addressed the specific format of the
diskettes, and placed them in a separate module he called the BIOS, for
Basic Input/Output System. That way, the system could easily be adapted
to new hardware without having to rewrite or even revise the complex
heart of the software.
(http://museum.sysun.com/museum/cpmhist.html)
1976 The 6502 microprocessor by
MOS Technologies was introduced and later used in the Apple II personal
computer.
(TAR, 1996, p.22)
1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin
Hellman introduced public key cryptography in a groundbreaking paper.
(Wired, 9/96, p.216)
1976 H. Taylor Howard (d.2002 at
70) built a homemade satellite dish to capture TV signals. HBO refused
to accept payment for his interceptions. He went on to found Chaparral
Communications Inc. in San Jose.
(SFC, 11/19/02, p.A23)
1976 Scientists drilling off the
coast of Guatemala brought up cores with nodes that sputtered and
hissed and left just a puddle. They were hydrates, a combination of
water and methane.
(NH, 5/97, p.26)
1976 A crystal of beryl, 59 feet
long and almost 12 feet across, was found in Madagascar. It weighed 187
tons.
(SFEC, 9/15/96, Z1 p.5)
1976 San Jose State Prof. John
Sperling launched the for-profit Univ. of Phoenix with $26k in personal
savings. It was founded to cater to the need of working adults.
(SFC, 2/16/02,
p.A15)(https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/)(Econ, 9/10/05, Survey p.19)
1976 Americans legally bet some
$17.3 billion.
(WSJ, 10/15/98, p.A20)
1976 A movement against climate
modification culminated in an international convention that foreswore
hostile use of "environmental modification techniques. The int’l.
community banned the use of environmental modification techniques such
as cloud seeding and Agent Orange.
(SFC, 8/11/00,
p.A15)(www.aip.org/history/climate/RainMake.htm)
1976 Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi set
up the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), which invested heavily in
real estate abroad. At the same time the government tightened control
of property at home. By 2006 the fund had accrued an estimated $200-500
billion.
(WSJ, 10/21/05, p.A10)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.45)
1976 Four members of a Spanish
family were killed in Rosario, Argentina. Pres. Gen’l. Leopoldo
Galtieri was later accused of being responsible by a Spanish court. In
1999 Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon named former Argentine Pres.
Leopoldo Galtieri in an indictment along with 95 other military
officers, who presided over the "Dirty War" (1976-1983).
(SFC, 1/1/98, p.A14)(SFC, 11/3/99, p.C3)
1976 Australia’s federal
government passed legislation granting Aboriginal ownership to large
parts of the Northern Territory, kicking off a new movement to reclaim
traditional lands.
(AP, 1/30/08)
1976 Australian athletes won 5
medals, none of them gold, in the Montreal Olympics.
(WSJ, 9/21/00, p.A8)
1976 In Bangladesh Muhammad Yunus
began his micro-loan program and founded the Grameen Bank. Small loans
were initially made to groups of five women who supported one another.
(Wired, 2/98, p.67)
1976 Italian carmaker Fiat began
manufacturing cars in Brazil.
(Econ, 11/15/08, SR p.6)
1976 In Britain the Society of
West End Theater Awards were founded. They were renamed to the Lawrence
Olivier Awards in 1984.
(SFC,2/17/97, p.D6)
1976 Britain began offering tax
breaks to owners of important works of art. Inheritance taxes were
spared in exchange for periodic viewing.
(WSJ, 9/16/99, p.A28)
1976 In Cambodia Nhem Ein,
photographer, was assigned by the Khmer Rouge to the Tuol Sleng
interrogation center called S-21. He proceeded to methodically
photograph all the prisoners who arrived before they were tortured and
executed.
(WSJ, 9/16/97, p.A20)
1976 Lotfi Mansouri was appointed
the general director of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto.
(SFC, 2/2/99, p.A11)
1976 The Development Bank of
Central African States (BDEAC) was established and included six members
of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa: Cameroon, the
Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
(AP, 9/23/09)
1976 Gen. Augusto Pinochet
commenced that Carretera Austral project, an effort to connect the
northern Chile to southern Aisen province.
(SFCM, 10/3/04, p.30)
1976 Chile departed the Andean
Community trade block. In 2006 it planned to rejoin.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.30)
1976 Victor Diaz Lopez, former
leader of Chile’s Communist Party, was picked up the DINA, the secret
police of dictator Augusto Pinochet. In 2007 the former leader of the
DINA’s Lautaro Brigade confessed to murdering Victor Diaz in 1977.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.39)
1976 In China the Triangle Group,
a tire maker, was founded by the local Weihai government. In 2008 it
was scheduled to become a publicly owned company.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.72)
1976 Spyros Kyprianou became
president of the Cyprus House of Representatives.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A26)
1976 In Czechoslovakia the Plastic
People of the Universe band was arrested by the Communist government.
At a public trial 2 band members were sentenced and imprisoned for 1
1/2 years.
(WSJ, 7/22/98, p.A12)(SFEC, 3/7/99, DB p.35)
1976 Georg Frey (b.1902), Bavarian
clothing manufacturer, died. He assembled a collection of 90,000
beetles from around the globe before his death in this year. As a
wealthy businessman, Frey was able to create (in 1950) his own
Coleoptera museum, the Museum G. Frey, which has long been recognized
as the world's largest and most extensive private collection of beetles.
(WSJ, 8/17/95,
p.B-1)(http://www-museum.unl.edu/research/entomology/workers/GFrey.htm)
1976 Rabbits were imported to
Iceland from Spain about this time. Some were later released into the
wild and began to compete with the native puffin birds, which breed in
burrows.
(WSJ, 8/4/06, p.A1)
1976 India’s PM Indira Gandhi
chose K. R. Narayannan to serve as ambassador to Beijing.
(AP, 7/25/98)(SFC, 11/10/05, p.B8)
1976 Govindappa Venkataswamy
(1918-2006), Indian eye surgeon, opened the Aravind Eye Hospital in
Madurai, Tamil Nadu state. His low cost eye-care system catered to the
poor and grew to become one of the largest eye-care systems in the
world.
(WSJ, 8/5/06, p.A6)
1976 Armed uprisings began in
Indonesia’s Aceh province. Hasan di Tiro launched the Free Aceh
Independence Movement (GAM).
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.A30)(SFEC, 12/5/99, p.A26)(SFC,
4/20/02, p.A8)
1976 IRA soldier Pat McGeown
(1956-1996) was arrested for the bombing of Belfast’s Europa Hotel in
1975.
(SFC, 10/5/96,
p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_McGeown)
1976 Jimmy Smythe was accused of
the attempted murder of an off-duty prison guard in Belfast. He was
sentenced to 20 years in prison.
(SFC, 7/4/96, p.A20)
1976 The wolves of Italy received
official protection.
(NH, 12/96, p.52)
1976 In Jamaica John Issa,
businessman, founded the SuperClubs Int’l. Ltd.
(WSJ, 7/25/97, p.B1)
1976 Japan completed a nuclear
power plant in Fukui prefecture.
(Econ, 8/14/04, p.54)
1976 Amnesty International
received Netherlands’ Erasmus-prize.
(www.nndb.com/honors/622/000165127/)
1976 In Nigeria, Africa, a fungus
afflicting corn plants (the downy mildew of maize) began spreading. By
1993 seven states in Nigeria were affected.
(WSJ 6/21/95, p.A-22)
1976 In the Philippines a World
Bank Conference was held and thousands of squatters around Manila were
forcibly moved out of sight.
(SFC, 11/18/96, p.A12)(http://tinyurl.com/yv4tka)
1976 In the Philippines the last
execution until 1999 was made.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A12)
1976 Philippine student Yobie
Benjamin was arrested and jailed for helping lead protests at the Univ.
of the Philippines against the dictatorship of Pres. Ferdinand Marco.
Benjamin spent 9 months in jail. He later established himself as an
entrepreneur and created GoodStorm, an e-commerce company, that was
sold to Zazzle.com in 2008. GoodStorm sold products on behalf of
nonprofit organizations.
(SSFC, 10/18/09, p.A14)
1976 The Summit of leading
industrial nations was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The addition of
Canada let it be called the Group of Seven or G-7.
(SFC, 6/20/97, p.A16)
1976 Nadia Comaneci of Romania
scored 7 perfect 10s in gymnastics at the summer Olympics in Montreal.
(NG, 8/04, Geographica)
1976 The Isle of Eigg, Scotland,
was sold to Keith Schellenberg, an industrial heir, for $375,000. He
sold it in 1995 for $2.3 million to the German artist Marlin
Eckhardt. Eckhardt put the isle up for sale in 1996 as he was in
debt and unable to sell his "pictures from the world beyond matter,"
produced by igniting paint on a fireproof canvas.
(SFC, 8/29/96, p.A14)
1976 South Africa's Surgeon
General, Major N.J. Nieuwoudt, hired Dr. Wouter Basson to work for the
SADF's medical military unit known as the 7th SAMS Battalion. Under Dr.
Basson, head of the chemical and biological and weapons program, black
prisoners were killed by injections. In 2000 Johan Theron, a former
special forces officer, testified how he flung the victim’s corpses
from an airplane into the Atlantic between 1979 and 1987. Theron and
Gen. Fritz Loots had decided that there were too many guerrillas of the
South West African People’s Organization in the prison camps.
(SFC, 5/5/00,
p.A18)(www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/south_africa/2.html)
1976 Human type footprints were
found at Laetoli, Tanzania. In 1978-79 Mary Leakey’s team excavated the
75-foot long trail of 47 footprints most likely made by
Australopithecus afarensis.
(www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A944336)(PacDisc, Spring
‘96, p.2)
1976 Thailand’s King Bhumibol
Adulyadej showed sympathy to the forces of the establishment who
believed that students and other liberal forces were leading the
country into chaos. In response the military again took the reins of
power.
(AP, 12/19/05)
1976 In the Ukraine an 86-pound
topaz crystal was found in the central Zhytomyr region. In 1997 it was
stolen from a Kiev museum.
(SFC, 2/1/97, p.A15)
1976 In Venezuela Carlos Lanz and
5 others kidnapped an American executive and held him captive for the
next 3½ years. Lanz later served time for military rebellion. In
2004 Pres. Chavez appointed Lanz to devise a plan for economic
self-sufficiency for workers in cooperatives.
(WSJ, 12/24/04, p.A1)
1976 Sahrawis of Western Sahara
proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
(Econ, 8/28/04, p.76)
1976 In Zaire (later Congo) the
Ebola virus was discovered and named after a river there. The Ebola
virus was 1st identified in western Sudan and the nearby region of
Congo. The virus can stop blood from clotting causing patients to
bleed. An outbreak of the Ebola virus killed 280 people, most of whom
were infected by reused syringes and needles.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.A5)(SFC, 1/8/02, p.A6)
1976 Rhodesian (Zimbabwe) guerilla
leaders Joshua Nkomo, exiled in Zambia, and Roger Mugabe, in
Mozambique, merged their guerrilla armies in a pact that held until
1979.
(SFC, 7/2/99, p.D6)
1976-1979 David H. Barnett, former CIA agent, pleaded
guilty in 1980 to spying for the Soviet Union over this time while
based in Indonesia. He admitted to exposing the identities of 30 US
agents.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)
1976-1979 In Britain James Callahan served as Prime
Minister.
(SFC, 12/7/96, p.A8)
1976-1979 In Nigeria Gen’l. Olusegun Obasanjo ruled
as head of state. He relinquished the presidency after an election and
was jailed by Abacha in 1995 for treason.
(SFC, 6/16/98, p.A10)
1976-1981 Joe Pistone, FBI agent, infiltrated the
Bonanno family. His testimony later helped jail more than 120 mobsters.
(SFC, 5/10/04, p.A4)
1976-1982 In Mexico Jose Lopez Portillo served as
president. It was an era marked by anti-guerrilla campaigns,
ultra-nationalist foreign policies, and state-dominated protectionist
economics.
(SFC, 11/28/98, p.C2)
1976-1982 A center-right government led Sweden.
(Econ, 9/15/07, p.66)
1976-1983 In Argentina in 1998 prosecutors identified
4 ex-military men as holders of Swiss bank accounts pillaged from
political prisoners of this era. Former Gen’l. Antonio Bussi, former
Sergeant Carlos Vega, former Lt. Alfredo Astiz, and Col. Roberto
Roualdes (d.1995), were cited.
(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A11)
1976-1983 In 1998 Emilio Massera, a former Argentine
junta admiral, was arrested for his role in stealing babies from killed
leftists during the "dirty war." In 1999 former Pres. And Gen'l.
Reynaldo Bignone was also arrested for his role in the baby thefts.
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.A1)(SFC, 1/21/99, p.A14)
1976-1983 Mass killings marked these years known as
Argentina’s “Dirty War” period. At least 9,000 people, suspected by the
government of being leftist dissidents, were arrested, tortured and
never seen again. In 1997 Adolfo Scilingo, a former naval officer,
testified in Spain that as many as 1,500 Argentine navy officials
participated in death flights, where people were hurled into the ocean.
In 1998 Marguerite Feitlowitz published “A Lexicon of Terror,” covering
the “Dirty War.” In 2000 an Italian court convicted 7 Argentine
officers in absentia for kidnapping and killing Italian citizens in the
“dirty war.” The military and police operated about 10 detention
centers during the dictatorship in La Plata, a city of universities
south of Buenos Aires where the crackdown's toll on college students
was particularly severe.
(SFC, 10/10/97, p.D2)(SFC, 7/1/98, p.A8)(WSJ,
12/7/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/08)
1976-1987 Pham Van Dong headed the reunified Vietnam.
(SFC, 5/3/00, p.A24)
1976-1991 In Lebanon there was a 15 year civil war
with no government and no army to control lawless groups.
(SFC, 2/19/96, p.A8)
1976-1996 Venezuela’s political establishment
accumulated a growing control over the country’s assets.
(WSJ, 6/7/96, p.A15)
1976-1998 Chicago’s Gautreaux Assisted Housing
Program helped more than 25,000 voluntary participants move to more
than 100 communities throughout the metropolitan area, roughly half to
integrated suburbs and half to integrated neighborhoods in the city.
(www.bpichicago.org/pht/gautreaux.html)
1976-2005 Household saving in Japan began to fall
from a peak this year of 23% of disposable income to around 6% in 2005.
(Econ, 9/24/05, Sur. p.12)
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