May 1976

Month of 1976 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following events occurred in May 1976:

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May 6, 1976: Earthquake in Italy kills 978 people (pictured: damage in Venzone from the quake)
May 4, 1976: Commuter train wreck in Netherlands kills 24 people

May 1, 1976 (Saturday)

May 2, 1976 (Sunday)

May 3, 1976 (Monday)

  • Eleven people were killed when a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 300 operated by de Havilland Canada suffered the failure of its No. 2 engine on takeoff from Monze Airport in Zambia and crashed one kilometer (0.6 mile) beyond the end of the runway.[21]
  • A Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) Boeing 747, nicknamed the Clipper Liberty Bell by the airline, completed its round the world airplane flight in a record 46 hours and 50 seconds, landing back in New York slightly less than two days after it departed. The flight, which bested the previous record by more than 16 hours, would have had a better time except for a two-hour delay in Tokyo because of an airport workers' strike.
  • A time bomb, strapped to a motorbike, injured 33 passers-by and bystanders on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem.[22][23]
  • The Wings Over America tour[24] by Paul McCartney's band opened in Fort Worth, Texas, the first time McCartney had performed in the United States since The Beatles' 1966 concert at Candlestick Park.[25]
  • Swimmer Linda McGill of Australia became the first person to swim completely around the perimeter of Hong Kong Island, a total distance of almost 28 miles (45 km), finishing in 17 hours and six minutes.[26] Her unofficial record would stand for more than 41 years until November 11, 2017, when it would be bested by Simon Holiday, with a new mark of 12 hours and 32 minutes.
  • Attorneys, jurists and other members of the legal profession in India boycotted court to observe "Bar Solidarity Day" as a protest against the suspension of civil rights during the government of Indira Gandhi.
  • British commercial diver Anthony Dobson drowned after his umbilical became fouled during his ascent from a dive in the North Sea. The umbilical pulled Dobson out of the dive basket while it was being raised to the surface by the construction and pipelaying barge Orca.[27]
  • Died: Minerva Teichert, 87, American painter and mural artist

May 4, 1976 (Tuesday)

  • A train wreck in the Netherlands killed 24 people when Stoptrein 4116, a commuter train operating locally in the Rotterdam metro area, was struck head-on by the international Rhine Express D-train 215. Train 4116, in turn, was knocked into another commuter train, 4125. All 24 dead were in the forward carriage of 4116, killing 24 people and seriously injuring another five.[28][29]
  • Spain's third major daily newspaper, El País ("The Nation") began publication.
  • The first LAGEOS (Laser Geometric Environmental Observation Survey) satellite was launched, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the United States.[30][31]
  • Liverpool won England's Football League championship on the final day of play of the 1975-76 season, with a 3 to 1 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers for a record of 23 wins and 14 draws (60 points), one ahead of Queens Park Rangers, which had earlier beaten Leeds United 2 to 0 to finish the season with 24 wins and 11 draws (59 points). Earlier in the season, Liverpool and defeated Queens Park Rangers, 2 to 0.
  • The unsuccessful Broadway musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue made the first of seven performances, opening at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. Despite music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, the musical closed four days later on May 8.
  • Born: Anza, South African-Japanese singer and actress; as Ōyama Anza, in Cape Town.[32]

May 5, 1976 (Wednesday)

Haroldo Conti, desparecido

May 6, 1976 (Thursday)

  • A 6.5 magnitude earthquake killed 978 people in Italy, and injured 2,400, while leaving 157,000 homeless. The epicenter was the town of Gemona del Friuli in the Province of Udine in north-eastern Italy,[38][39]
  • Restaurants in the Soviet Union capital of Moscow began "meatless Thursdays" under a Communist Party-approved campaign to "help improve the food pattern of Muscovites" an experiment in conserving the supply of meat with the possibility of having the Thursday ban extended nationwide and to markets. Because of a poor grain harvest in 1975, the output of meat had dropped by 11% in the spring of 1976 in comparison to the same period the year before. Restaurants were allowed to substitute fish in place of beef and chicken on Thursdays.[40]
  • The United Arab Emirates Armed Forces was created, bringing under one command the individual military forces of the seven individual emirates, which had been linked as allied members of the UAE Federal Armed Forces.
  • Died: Koka Subba Rao, 73, former Chief Justice of India

May 7, 1976 (Friday)

May 8, 1976 (Saturday)

May 9, 1976 (Sunday)

  • All 17 people on an Imperial Iranian Air Force Flight ULF48 were killed when one of the left wing engines of the Boeing 747 was struck by a lightning bolt as the aircraft was making its approach to Madrid on a flight from Tehran. The explosion that followed caused the entire left wing to fall off of the 747, and the airplane crashed.[51][52]
  • Died:
    • Ulrike Meinhof, 41, West German terrorist and co-founder (with Andreas Baader of the Red Army Faction, commonly called the ""Baader-Meinhof gang". Meinhof was found hanged in her prison cell at the Stammheim Prison in Stuttgart.[53][54]
    • Jens Bjørneboe, 55, Norwegian novelist and playwright, hanged himself in his home on the island of Veierland.
    • Harvey Fite, 72, American sculptor, died after his riding lawnmower ran over a 12-foot high cliff while he was working on the landscape of his sculpture Opus 40.[55]
    • Otto Kerner Jr., 67, former Governor of Illinois and the first U.S. federal judge to have been sent to prison, died of cancer shortly after his release.

May 10, 1976 (Monday)

  • In the U.S., radio news commentator Paul Harvey began the popular daily radio segment The Rest of the Story, consisting of little-known facts about well-known people or events, with a format of not revealing the subject of the script until the very end, and closing with the catchphrase "And now you know...the rest of the story."[56][57] The series would continue for almost 40 years until Harvey's passing in 2005.
  • Jeremy Thorpe resigned as leader of the United Kingdom's Liberal Party following growing criticism from a scandal.[58] He was temporarily replaced by his predecessor, Jo Grimond.
  • What two physicists referred to as "the first movie of atoms in action" was shown to reporters at a press conference at the University of Chicago. Albert Crewe and Michael Isaacson, both at the university, showed the 30-second clip which was made with a scanning electron microscope at a magnification of 10,000,000 and photographed "uranium atoms placed on a specimen of carbon one-fifth of a millionth of an inch thick". Crewe said that the motion was unexpected but showed an interaction between the uranium atoms and the carbon.[59]
  • Died:
    • Elias Aslaksen, 88, Norwegian Christian cleric who had led the growth of the Brunstad Christian denomination to an organization of more than 200 congregations worldwide.
    • John Murray, South African jurist and Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia from 1955 to 1961.

May 11, 1976 (Tuesday)

  • A tanker truck carrying more than 7,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia fell from a freeway in Houston, Texas and ruptured. In addition to the driver, who died of his injuries, six people were killed and 200 others were injured by the ammonia gas.[60] The driver was reportedly speeding and following a car in front of him too closely, then crashed through a guardrail and plunged to a ramp below.[61]
  • Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act were signed into United States law by President Gerald Ford.[62]
  • Bolivia's Ambassador to France, Joaquin Zenteno Alaya, was assassinated by a gunman while standing underneath a railroad bridge. A spokesman for a group calling itself the International Che Guevara Brigade took responsibility for the killing, and stated that Zenteno had been targeted for his role as the Bolivian Army general in charge of the Santa Cruz region where Che Guevara had been captured and killed in 1967. "[63] Zenteno had served as Foreign Minister of Bolivia from 1964 to 1966
  • Died: Alvar Aalto, 78, Finnish architect and designer[64]

May 12, 1976 (Wednesday)

Orlov[65]
  • Soviet physicist and dissident Yuri Orlov held a press conference in Moscow and announced the formation of the Moscow Helsinki Group in order to monitor and report on his nation's compliance with pledges of protecting the human rights of Soviet citizens, made in the Helsinki Accords of August 1, 1975. [66] Orlov would be arrested on February 10, 1977, after disobeying orders from the Soviet government to disband the group.
  • U.S. President Gerald Ford and Soviet Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev initialed a treaty that set limits on the size of underground nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes, but both sides postponed formal ceremonies that had been planned for May 13.[67]
  • All 39 crew of the Spanish tanker Urquiola were killed when the vessel exploded and caught fire in A Coruña harbour.[68]
  • FC Bayern Munich of West Germany defeated AS Saint-Étienne of France, 1 to 0, to win the European Cup at Hampden Park in Glasgow before a crowd of almost 50,000.
  • Died:

May 13, 1976 (Thursday)

May 14, 1976 (Friday)

Tamil Eelam claimed portion of Sri Lanka, in green
Route of the TransAmerica Trail
  • The TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, the first bicycle touring route in the U.S. designated to run from coast to coast, was inaugurated as part of the Bikecentennial celebrations during the 200th year of independence of the United States. The 4,228 mi (6,804 km) route runs through ten states from Astoria, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia, crossing Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky.
  • In Paris, a gunman shot and killed Jacques Chaine, the president of France's second-largest bank, Crédit Lyonnais. Chaine had been driven to his office on the Boulevard des Italiens and was getting out of his car when he was shot in the chest by a 22-year-old shipyard welder, Jean Bilski. Bilski shot Chaine's wife and then killed himself with a gunshot to the head.[73]
  • NASA announced that it would accept applications for 30 additional astronauts to fly on "United States—European space shuttle project involving 200 flights starting in 1980", with eligibility open to women and to foreign scientists, including those from the Soviet Union.[74]
  • Born: Martine McCutcheon, English TV actress and singer; in Hackney, London.
  • Died: David Fenbury, 60, Australian government official and retired Secretary of Home Affairs, died of injuries from being struck by a bus while walking

May 15, 1976 (Saturday)

  • All 52 people aboard Aeroflot Flight 1802 were killed after the Antonov An-24 propeller plane suffered a mechanical failure following its takeoff from Vinnytsia in the Ukrainian SSR on a flight to Moscow. At an altitude of 5,700 metres (18,700 ft) the airplane suddenly went into a tailspin after its rudder jammed, and the force of the propellers began losing blades. The plane crashed about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv.[75]
  • Nigerian Army Colonel B. S. Dimka and six convicted co-conspirators in his attempted coup d'état on February 13, were publicly executed by a firing squad at the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison in Lagos.[76] Colonel Joseph Gomwalk, Dimka's aide, was executed in the same group.
  • Born: Anuj Sharma, Indian film, stage and television actor; in Bhatapara, Madhya Pradesh state, later the state of Chhattisgarh.
  • Died: Samuel Eliot Morison, 88, American history writer described as "the undisputed Grand Old Man of American Historians."[77]

May 16, 1976 (Sunday)

May 17, 1976 (Monday)

  • France's President Valery Giscard d'Estaing arrived for a state visit to the United States, landing at Andrews Air Force Base as a passenger in a Concorde, marking the first time that the supersonic airplane had come to the U.S.; Giscard's flight came one week before the Concorde would inaugurate commercial service in Washington.[84] Two days later, Giscard flew on the Concorde to Texas and landed in Houston.[85]
(lower right corner) Emmy-winning comedians Moore and Knight
  • The Emmy Awards ceremony for achievement in U.S. prime time television were handed out at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles. The hosts were John Denver and Mary Tyler Moore (who won the award for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series" and whose popular sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show won "Outstanding Comedy Series"). Her co-stars Betty White and Ted Knight won the awards for best supporting actress and best supporting actor in a comedy series. NBC's Saturday Night won the award for "Outstanding Variety Series" in its first season.[86]
  • Adventurer Tim Severin and a crew of four departed in a leather boat from Tralee in Ireland's County Kerry, as part of an effort to prove that the 6th-century monk Saint Brendan of Clonfert could have, as Irish legend has it, traveled to North America more than nine centuries before Christopher Columbus. The 36 ft (11 m) long vessel, named the Brendan, was "made of the hides of 42 oxen" with a sail made of goat skins and set to retrace the route referred to in The Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot, of a voyage said to have been made in the year 565.[87][88]
  • The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) launched BBC Radio Highland in the Scottish city of Inverness, providing the first regular Scottish Gaelic language programming for roughly 60,000 native speakers of the language in the United Kingdom. The service will be superseded by the launch, in 1985, of BBC Radio nan Gàidheal.
  • Born: Wang Leehom, American-Taiwanese singer-songwriter, actor, producer, and film director; in Rochester, New York
  • Died: Charles Stepney, 45, American songwriter and record producer, from a heart attack

May 18, 1976 (Tuesday)

May 19, 1976 (Wednesday)

May 20, 1976 (Thursday)

The Montreal Biosphere in flames
  • The acrylic bubble of the Montreal Biosphere, designed by Buckminster Fuller for Expo 67, was destroyed by a fire when a welder's torch ignited the structure during remodeling[94] in what one author would describe as "the death of an idea and a system of construction that had gripped the imagination of architects in the modern era."[95] The steel frame survived, and the Biosphere buildings inside would be remodeled and reopened in 1990, albeit without the transparent panels.
A GAMBIT-3 spy satellite
  • One of the American GAMBIT-3 reconnaissance satellites failed to reach orbit after being launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and was lost as it returned to Earth. Although the National Reconnaissance Office had predicted the impact zone in South Africa, the remains of the satellite came down over England, and crashed on a farm 75 miles (121 km) north of London. Five months later, a U.S. technician for Aerospace Corporation heard about the rumors and found that the remains of GAMBIT-3 number 35 were housed in a laboratory at the Royal Air Force Base at Farnborough in Hampshire, which returned the components to the Americans.[96]
  • Mobutu Sese Seko, the President of Zaire (now the Republic of Congo), gave official endorsement the concept of kleptocracy — the practice of public officials stealing tax money for personal use — in a speech at a stadium before 70,000 people and millions of listeners. Mobutu, who "personally spent on average more than 35 percent of the national budget on himself" during the 1970s and 1980s, told the crowd "If you want to steal, steal in a nice way, but if you steal too much to become rich overnight you will soon be caught."[97]
  • Born: Ramón Hernández, Venezuelan baseball player; in Caracas[98]
  • Died:

May 21, 1976 (Friday)

  • The worst school bus crash in U.S. history killed 29 of the 53 people on board, all but one of them students in the choir of Yuba City High School.[100] Near Martinez, California, the bus broke through a guardrail and plunged off of an elevated exit ramp from Interstate 680 and fell 22 feet (6.7 m), landing on its roof and crushing the bus down to the level of the seats. The other 24 people on board, including the driver, survived but were seriously injured.[101] The National Transportation Safety Board would conclude a year later that the bus driver had failed to monitor the air-brake pressure and didn't put on an emergency brake "because he did not know the location of the emergency air lever." Other factors were a failure to discover and replace an old air-compressor drive belt, the lack of a sign to warn drivers of the steep ramp, and a poorly designed ramp curb. [102]
  • Don Juan de Borbón, at one time the heir to the Spanish throne until 1931, when his father King Alfonso XIII was dethroned, returned to Spain for the first time in more than 40 years. Don Juan, who lived in exile in Portugal, was welcomed by his son King Juan Carlos I in Madrid, and the two then dined at a private lunch at the Palace of Zarzuela.[103]
  • Five prominent Tamil members of the parliament of Sri Lanka were arrested on charges of sedition after distributing leaflets, including Appapillai Amirthalingam, who would be acquitted in 1977 and become Leader of the Opposition in Parliament.
  • The University of Kragujevac was founded in Yugoslavia in the city of Kragujevac, SR Serbia.
  • The "Famous Fire" in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, destroyed seven downtown structures, damaged more than 12 others, and started fires in at least 10 homes.[104]
  • Died: Torbert Macdonald, 58, U.S. Representative for Massachusetts since 1955, died of cancer.[105]

May 22, 1976 (Saturday)

  • The parents of coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan, who had become a symbol for the "right to die" movement, had their daughter removed from life support after being granted the right to do so by the New Jersey Supreme Court.[106] To the surprise of most people, Quinlan no longer required the ventilator to keep her alive and was able to breathe on her own. She would survive for nine more years before her death on June 11, 1985, at the age of 31.[107]
  • The last major confrontation of the "Cod Wars" between the fleets of Iceland and the United Kingdom took place when the Royal Navy frigate HMS Leander rammed the Icelandic Coast Guard vessel ICGV Ver, with both ships sustaining damage.[108] A week later, the British government announced that it was ordering the flotilla of Royal Navy frigates out of the area while an agreement to end the seven-month-long conflict was being negotiated.[109]
  • The Pennsylvania Opera Theater in Philadelphia, which dedicated itself to presenting rarely-performed English language operatic works and new compositions, staged its first performance, reviving Otto Nicolai's 1849 operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor.[110] TPOT would close in 1993 because of financial difficulties.
  • Died: Oscar Bonavena, 33, the heavyweight boxing champion of Argentina, was shot by security guard Willard Ross Brymer, who was later convicted of manslaughter.[111] The confrontation between Bonavena and Brymer took place after Bonavena got into an argument with the owner of the legalized brothel at the Mustang Ranch near Reno, Nevada.

May 23, 1976 (Sunday)

May 24, 1976 (Monday)

Cardinal Sin [121]
  • At a ceremony in Vatican City, 21 Roman Catholic clerics were elevated to the rank of Cardinal by Pope Paul VI, who had announced his intentions on April 27. Among those made cardinals were Trinh Nhu Khue, the Archbishop of Hanoi, who had been appointed without being publicly identified because of concerns that he would be persecuted, although Vietnam's Communist government permitted him to accept the honor. František Tomášek of Czechoslovakia, the Archbishop of Prague, would be identified by name in 1977. Jaime Sin, the Archbishop of Manila, was elevated, prompting jokes in the Philippine press that "Cardinal Sin" had been approved by the Vatican.[122]
  • Elections for the 70-seat National Assembly of Malawi were conducted, with all 70 candidates selected by President Hastings Banda from proposals of up to five candidates for each electoral district.
  • Died:

May 25, 1976 (Tuesday)

May 26, 1976 (Wednesday)

  • Juan Maino, a Chilean photojournalist and political activist who led the leftist opposition group Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria (MAPU), disappeared after being arrested by agents of Chile's secret police, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA). Maino was picked up by DINA agents at an apartment in Ñuñoa, a suburb of Santiago. Maino and his fellow MAPU members, Antonio Elizondo and Elizabeth Rekas (who had been arrested earlier that day), were never seen again.
  • Police in Paris arrested four of five people who had carried out the 1972 hijacking of Delta Air Lines Flight 841. George Brown, Joyce Brown, Melvin McNair and Jean McNair, all members of the Black Liberation Army, had lived in France since 1973. The two women would be released after being found guilty and given suspended sentences, while the two men would stay in prison until 1981.
  • Born: Alexander Karim, Ugandan-Swedish TV actor and the first black TV star on Swedish television; in Uppsala
  • Died:

May 27, 1976 (Thursday)

May 28, 1976 (Friday)

  • The Medical Device Regulation Act was signed into law by U.S. President Ford, granting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate medical devices that had been prescribed by physicians, with a different standard applied to devices depending on whether an FDA panel classified them as Class I, II or III with Class III being deemed a high risk to the user.[139] Congress had enacted the legislation, which amended the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, after the first reports of injuries to over 900,000 women who had used the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device for contraception.[140] In a speech made after signing the bill, President Ford said "Until today, the American consumer could not be sure that a medical device used by his physician, his hospital, or himself was as safe and effective as it could or should be," and described the law as fixing "the deficiencies that accorded FDA 'horse and buggy' authority to deal with 'laser age' problems".[141]
  • U.S. President Ford at the White House and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev at the Kremlin held simultaneous ceremonies signing the treaty to limit the size of underground nuclear tests during peacetime and providing the first on-site inspection of compliance. The ceremony began at 1500 UTC, 10:00 a.m. in Washington and 6:00 p.m. in Moscow.[142]
  • The International Women's Professional Softball Association (IWPSA), founded by women's tennis champion Billie Jean King, softball star Joan Joyce, and sports entrepreneur Dennis Murphy, made its debut with 10 teams, six of which played in its opening day doubleheaders, starting with the Connecticut Falcons (Meriden CT) beating the host Buffalo Breskis, 1 to 0 [143] followed later by the San Jose Sunbirds defeating The Phoenixbird in Tempe, Arizona,[144] and the San Diego Sandpipers beating the Southern California Gems, 1-0, in San Bernardino, California.[145] The other IWPSA teams were the Chicago Ravens, Michigan Travelers (Detroit), Pennsylvania Liberties (Reading) and the Santa Ana (CA) Lionettes. [146]
  • Born: Maryam Ebrahimi Iranian-born Emmy Award-winning Swedish documentary filmmaker; in Tehran
  • Died:

May 29, 1976 (Saturday)

May 30, 1976 (Sunday)

May 31, 1976 (Monday)

  • Syria began an invasion of Lebanon with a force of 60 tanks and 2,000 Syrian Army troops, beginning 29 years of occupation of the Middle Eastern nation.[157][158]
  • The 37-member "People's Assembly of East Timor", installed by the Indonesian government after Indonesia's invasion of the former Portuguese Timor in 1975, voted unanimously in favor of the "Act of Integration" to make East Timor Indonesia's 27th province, effective July 17.[159]
  • The United Kingdom and Iceland began negotiations in Norway to end the Cod Wars over commercial fishing in North Atlantic Waters, as a nine-member delegation led by British Foreign Secretary Anthony Crossland met in Oslo with a seven-member group led by Icelandic Foreign Minister Einar Augustsson.[160]
  • The Who set a record, recognized by Guinness World Records, for "loudest band", with a measurement of 126 decibels at a concert at The Valley in Charlton, London, breaking the 1972 record of 117 dB set by Deep Purple. Guinness would discontinue the category in 1985 as a matter of public policy because of concerns that permanent hearing damage would result from artists attempting to break the record.
  • Born: Colin Farrell, Irish actor; in Castleknock, Dublin[161]
  • Died:
    • Jacques Monod, 66, French biochemist and 1965 Nobel Prize laureate in medicine [162]
    • Martha Mitchell, 57, American socialite whose controversial remarks, while her husband John Mitchell was U.S. Attorney General, caused controversy during the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon.[163]

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