1976
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s
Years: 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 - 1976 - 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981
Events
- February 11 - Clifford Alexander Jr is confirmed as 1st African-American Secretary of US Army.
- February 24 - Cuba's current constitution enacted.
- April 1 - Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
- May 11 - President Gerald Ford signs Federal Election Campaign Act
- April 25 - Portugal's new constitution enacted
- June 6 - Soweto riots in South Africa mark the beginning of the end of apartheid
- July 2 - North Vietnam and South Vietnam united to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
- July 3 - United States Supreme Court rules that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment
- July 4 - American bicentennial
- July 4 - Israeli airborne commandos attack Uganda's Entebbe Airport and free 103 hostages being held by pro-Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane; one Israeli and several Ugandan soldiers are killed in raid
- July 20 - Viking 1 Lander lands on Mars
- July 28 - Earthquake flattens Tangshan, China, killing an estimated 242,000 people
- September 3 - Viking 2 Lander lands on Mars
- Summer Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada
- Military Junta in power in Argentina.
- September 17 - Space Shuttle Enterprise rolled out
- September 21 - Seychelles joins the United Nations
- November 2 - Jimmy Carter defeats Gerald R. Ford in the U.S. presidential election
- December 1 - Angola joins the United Nations
- December 1 - Infamous Bill Grundy incident, wherin UK punk group the Sex Pistols cause a storm of controversy and outrage by swearing on national television [1]
- December 15 - Samoa joins the United Nations
- December 30 - The Smothers Brothers play their last show (Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas).
- First laser printer introduced by IBM - the IBM 3800
- Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, invented by Seymour Cray
- California's sodomy law repealed.
- The term memetics first proposed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene.
- Toronto Blue Jays created
- CN Tower built in Toronto
- Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 20 years
- Diffie-Hellman cryptography proposed
Art, Culture & Fashion
Births
- January 3 - Jason Marsden, actor.
- February 11 - Brice Beckham, actor.
- September 7 - Shannon Elizabeth, actress.
- September 11 - Ludacris, rap singer.
- October 4 - Alicia Silverstone, actress.
- Judit Polgar, best woman chess player in history.
Deaths
- January 8 - Zhou Enlai, Premier of China
- January 12 - Agatha Christie, english mystery writer.
- January 23 - Paul Robeson, American actor, singer, writer and political and civil rights activist
- January 30 - Mance Lipscomb, popular singer.
- February 1 - Werner Heisenberg, physicist
- February 11 - Lee J Cobb, actor.
- February 11 - Alice Allen, actress.
- February 11 - Charlie Naughton, actor.
- March 17 - Luchino Visconti, italian theatre and cinema director.
- September 9 - Mao Zedong, Chinese leader
- Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction commits suicide
- August 4 - First outbreak of Legionnaire's disease kills 29 at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia
- September 21 - Orlando Letelier assassinated in Washington, D.C. by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet
- December 4 - Benjamin Britten, composer
- Martin Heidegger, German philosopher
- Bernard Montgomery, British field marshal
- Carl Benjamin Boyer, American mathemetician and historian of mathematics
Sport
- January 18 - Super Bowl X Pittsburgh Steelers (21) def. Dallas Cowboys (17)
- Niki Lauda's famous accident occurred during the German Formula 1 GP at Nurburgring.