Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
Jan
05
On January 5, 1976, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot announces a new constitution changing the name of Cambodia to Kampuchea and legalizing its Communist government. During the next three years his brutal regime was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1 to 2 million Cambodians.
Jan
08
On January 8, 1976, Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow is awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book deals with race relations in the early 1900s, mixing fictional characters with real figures from the era. The book was made into a 1981 movie and a musical in 1997. The book established Doctorow as a major contemporary novelist.
Jan
09
The classic rags-to-riches story got a macho spin in the Oscar-winning Rocky, which was written by its star, Sylvester Stallone, and began filming on January 9, 1976. Stallone had his own rags-to-riches tale: Born in the gritty Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City, he was a juvenile delinquent who was kicked out of a number of schools before he turned 15. After attending high school in Philadelphia and studying drama at the University of Miami, Stallone moved back to New York and later to Los Angeles, with dreams of becoming an actor.
Jan
21
From London’s Heathrow Airport and Orly Airport outside Paris, the first Concordes with commercial passengers simultaneously take flight on January 21, 1976. The London flight was headed to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and the Paris to Rio de Janeiro via Senegal in West Africa. At their cruising speeds, the innovative Concordes flew well over the sound barrier at 1,350 miles an hour, cutting air travel time by more than half.
Jan
23
Feb
12
Actor Sal Mineo is stabbed to death in Hollywood, California. Mineo was parking his car behind his apartment when neighbors heard his cries for help. Some described a white man with brown hair fleeing the scene. By the time they reached Mineo, he was almost dead from a deep wound to his chest. He died minutes later.
Apr
05
May
08
May
15
Patricia Columbo and Frank DeLuca are arrested for the brutal slaying of Columbo’s parents and brother in Elk Grove, Illinois. Twenty-year-old Columbo had left her family home two years earlier to live with DeLuca, a 36-year-old married man. The pair later killed Frank, Mary and Michael Columbo in order to receive the family inheritance, unaware that the Columbos had written Patricia out of their wills years earlier.
Jun
04
Jun
07
The article that inspired the blockbuster movie Saturday Night Fever—"The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," by journalist Nik Cohn—was published on this day in 1976 in the June 7 issue of New York magazine.
Jun
17
On June 17, 1976, the National Basketball Association (NBA) announces a merger with its rival, the American Basketball Association (ABA), and takes on the ABA’s four most successful franchises: the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers, the New York (later Brooklyn) Nets and the San Antonio Spurs.
Jun
27
A factory storekeeper in the Nzara township of Sudan becomes ill on June 27, 1976. Five days later, he dies, and the world’s first recorded Ebola virus epidemic begins making its way through the area. By the time the epidemic is over, 284 cases are reported, with about half of the victims dying from the disease.
Jul
06
In Annapolis, Maryland, the United States Naval Academy admits women for the first time in its history with the induction of 81 female midshipmen. In May 1980, Elizabeth Anne Rowe became the first woman member of the class to graduate. Four years later, Kristine Holderied became the first female midshipman to graduate at the top of her class.
Jul
07
Jul
18
In her Olympic debut at the tender age of 14, Nadia Comăneci becomes the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 in Olympic history. The young Romanian's performance at the Montreal Olympic Games launches her into the international spotlight.
Jul
20
Jul
28
At 3:42 a.m. on July 28, 1976, an earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 magnitude on the Richter scale flattens Tangshan, a Chinese industrial city with a population of about one million people. As almost everyone was asleep in their beds, instead of outside in the relative safety of the streets, the quake was especially costly in terms of human life. An estimated 242,000 people in Tangshan and surrounding areas were killed, making the earthquake one of the deadliest in recorded history, surpassed only by the 300,000 who died in the Calcutta earthquake in 1737, and the 830,000 thought to have perished in China’s Shaanxi province in 1556.
Jul
29
David Berkowitz, later to be known as the “Son of Sam,” pulls a gun from a paper bag and fires five shots at Donna Lauria and Jody Valenti of the Bronx while they are sitting in a car, talking. Lauria died and Valenti was seriously wounded in the first in a series of shootings by the serial killer, who terrorized New York City over the course of the next year.
Jul
30
Aug
27
On August 27, 1976, the United States Tennis Association bars transgender athlete Renée Richards from competing in the U.S. Open as a woman, stating she must pass a chromosomal test. Richards fails the test, sues the USTA and wins the right a year later to compete via a New York Supreme Court ruling.
Sep
09
Sep
17
On September 17, 1976, NASA publicly unveils its first space shuttle, the Enterprise, during a ceremony in Palmdale, California. Development of the aircraft-like spacecraft cost almost $10 billion and took nearly a decade. In 1977, the Enterprise became the first space shuttle to fly freely when it was lifted to a height of 25,000 feet by a Boeing 747 airplane and then released, gliding back to Edwards Air Force Base on its own accord.
Sep
18
Nov
19
Nov
21
On November 21, 1976, Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone as the underdog prizefighter Rocky Balboa, debuts in New York City. The movie, which opened in theaters across the United States on December 3, 1976, was a huge box-office hit and received 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay for the then-little known Stallone. Rocky ultimately took home three Oscars, including one for Best Picture, and made Stallone one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.
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