| 1950–1980 | UK [television] | Watch With Mother, a series for young children featuring favourite characters such as Andy Pandy, the Flowerpot Men, Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, and the Woodentops, is shown on British television. |
| 1970–1979 | USA [statistics and demography] | There are over 4 million immigrants to the USA in the period 1970–79, coming mainly from Asia and the Americas. |
| 1970–1979 | USA [statistics and demography] | The number of one-parent families in the USA increases 79%, representing one in five of all families. |
| 1971–1978 | USA, North America, Asia, Europe, South America, Africa [statistics and demography] | Immigration patterns in the USA: 38% from North America (Mexico, Caribbean); 35% from Asia; 19% from Europe; 6% from South America; and 2% from Africa. |
| 15 January 1974 - 12 July 1984 | USA [television] | The situation comedy Happy Days, about family life in the 1950s, premiers on US television and runs for 11 seasons. |
| 11 September 1974 - 21 March 1983 | USA [television] | Little House on the Prairie, a popular television drama based on the classic series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, starts on US television. It chronicles the Ingalls family's struggles in the American West in the 1870s. |
| 1975–1979 | UK [television] | Fawlty Towers, a comedy series starring John Cleese as the rude and disaster-prone Torquay hotelier Basil Fawlty, is shown on British television. It also stars Connie Booth, Prunella Scales, and Andrew Sachs. |
| 1975 | USA [United Nations] | The United Nations (UN) declares 1975 International Women's Year. |
| 1975 | USA [statistics and demography] | Out of 34,083 doctors' degrees awarded in the USA, 7,266 are to women. |
| 1975 | Africa, Asia, South America, Central America, North America, Europe, USSR [statistics and demography] | The percentage of government seats held by women is 4% in Africa; 13% in Asia; 3.4% in Latin America; 3.6% in North America; 13% in Europe; and 32% in the USSR. |
| 1975 | USA [statistics and demography] | Women outnumber men in the USA for the first time due to longer life spans for women, who live an average of eight years longer than men. |
| 1975 | USA [statistics and demography] | The average female worker in the USA earns 57% of what the average male earns. Average annual salaries of female faculty members in universities are about $4,000 lower than those of men at the same institution. |
| 1975 | UK [women's rights] | Britain's birthrate falls to 12.2 per 1,000, the lowest rate since 1933. |
| 1975 | England [zoology] | British scientist Derek Brownhall produces the first clone of a rabbit, in Oxford, England. |
| 1975 | world [biology] | The gel-transfer hybridization technique for the detection of specific DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) sequences is developed; it is a key development in genetic engineering. |
| 1975 | USA, Czechoslovakia [cinema and film] | The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is released in the USA. It is directed by the Czech film-maker Miloš Forman and stars Jack Nicholson. The film will be only the second in Academy Award history, after Frank Capra's 1934 comedy It Happened One Night, to win Academy Awards in all the major categories: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. |
| 1975 | USA [computing] | The first ‘personal computer’, the Altair 8800, is marketed in the USA; it has no keyboard or screen but uses toggle switches to input data and flashing lights for output. |
| 1975 | USA [companies and organizations] | Bill Gates, aged 19, and friend Paul Allen Gardiner, found Microsoft. It becomes the biggest seller of computer software in the world and makes Gates a billionaire before he is 30. |
| 1975 | Kenya [anthropology] | Kenyan field worler Bernard Ngeneo discovers a Homo erectus skull at Koobi Fora, Kenya, which is estimated to be 1.7 million years old; discovered in the same stratum as Australopithecus boisei, it puts an end to the single species hypothesis, the idea that there has never been more than one hominid species at any point in history. |
| 1975 | USA [anthropology] | US anthropologist Donald Johanson and his team at Hadar in Ethiopia discover the ‘first family’ – the remains of at least 13 Australopithecus afarensis individuals of varying ages, estimated to be 3.2 million years old. |
| 1975 | Colombia [fiction] | The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez publishes his novel El otoño del patriarca. An English translation, The Autumn of the Patriarch, is published in 1977. |
| 1975 | USA [food and drink] | The first ‘drive-thru’ McDonald's hamburger restaurant is opened. |
| 1975 | India [health and medicine] | Birth control becomes a priority in India; abortion is legalized and the government launches campaigns advocating sterilization for both sexes. |
| 1975 | USA [law and government] | The Internal Security Committee of the US House of Representatives, formerly known as the Un-American Activities Committee, is abolished. |
| 1975 | UK [legislation] | The Sex Discrimination Act in Britain, introduced in stages, outlaws discrimination in employment or education on grounds of sex or marital status. |
| 1975 | UK [everyday life] | Adopted children in Britain over the age of 18 are granted the right to have information about their natural parents. |
| 1975 | Italy [memoirs] | The Italian writer Primo Levi publishes his collection of meditations and recollections Il sistema periodico/The Periodic Table. |
| 1975 | USA [consumer products] | Gillette of Boston, Massachusetts, launches the first disposable razors, made of plastic. |
| 13 February 1975 | Cyprus [political events] | Northern Cyprus declares its separate existence as the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus. |
| 14 February 1975 | England [births and deaths] | P G Wodehouse, English novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and lyricist, creator of Jeeves, the archetypal gentleman's gentleman, dies in Southampton, Long Island, New York (93). |
| 24 February 1975 | Bangladesh [law and government] | Bangladesh introduces a presidential government and becomes a one-party state under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. |
| 15 March 1975 | UK [everyday life] | Military troops are used to clear 70,000 tonnes of rubbish caused by the nine-week strike by refuse collectors in Britain. |
| 15 March 1975 | UK [popular music] | The British heavy metal rock group Led Zeppelin releases the album Physical Graffiti and becomes the first band ever to have six albums in the US chart simultaneously. |
| 30 March 1975 | North Vietnam, South Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | North Vietnamese forces capture Da Nang, South Vietnam's second-largest city. |
| 5 April 1975 | China, Taiwan [births and deaths] | Jiang Jie Shi (Chiang Kai-shek), Chinese statesman, leader of the Nationalist government 1928–49, and then of the Chinese Nationalist government in exile on Taiwan, dies in Taipei, Taiwan (87). |
| 13 April 1975 | Lebanon [political events] | Civil war erupts in Lebanon when clashes between Palestinians and Christian Phalangists outside a church in the capital, Beirut, leave 30 people dead. |
| 17 April 1975 | Cambodia [political events] | Communist Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in Cambodia capture the capital, Phnom Penh, in the civil war between the right-wing government of the Khmer Republic and the National United Front of Cambodia (the former leader Prince Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge). |
| 25 April 1975 | Portugal [elections] | The first free elections in Portugal since the 1920s fail to produce an overall majority. The Socialists under Mario Soares emerge as the largest party. |
| 29 April 1975 | South Vietnam, USA [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | The last US personnel flee the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon (now Ho Ch Minh City), flying by helicopter from the US embassy compound. |
| 30 April 1975 | South Vietnam, North Vietnam [Vietnam War (1954–75)] | President Minh of South Vietnam surrenders the capital, Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), to the North Korean communist forces. |
| 16 May 1975 | Japan, Asia [mountaineering] | Junko Tabei of Japan becomes the first woman to climb Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain. |
| 30 May 1975 | USA [statistics and demography] | Unemployment in the USA reaches 9.2%, the highest rate since 1941. |
| 5 June 1975 | Egypt [political events] | The Suez Canal is reopened by the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, following its eight-year closure because of Arab–Israeli hostilities. |
| 9 June 1975 | UK [radio] | In Britain, the proceedings of the House of Commons are broadcast live on radio for the first time, by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the London Broadcasting Company (LBC). |
| 25 June 1975 | Mozambique, Portugal [decolonization] | Mozambique achieves independence from Portugal, with Samora Machel as president. |
| 5 July 1975 | Cape Verde, Portugal [decolonization] | The Cape Verde Islands gain their independence from Portugal. |
| 6 July 1975 | Comoros, France [decolonization] | The Comoros Islands gain their independence from France. |
| 11 July 1975 | UK [social legislation] | The government imposes general restrictions on pay rises in the public sector in Britain, with those earning more than £8,000 receiving no increase. |
| 12 July 1975 | São Tomé e Príncipe, Portugal [decolonization] | São Tomé e Príncipe gains its independence from Portugal. |
| 15 July 1975 | USA, USSR [space exploration] | The launch of the Soviet spaceship Soyuz 19 signals the start of a joint US–Soviet space mission. US and Soviet astronauts meet in space on 17 July when Soyuz 19 docks with its NASA counterpart, Apollo 18. |
| 1 August 1975 | Europe [space exploration] | The European Space Agency is founded in Paris, France, to undertake research and develop technologies for use in space. |
| 12 August 1975 | New Zealand, Sweden [athletics] | John Walker of New Zealand becomes the first man to run a mile in under 3 minutes 50 seconds, in Gothenburg, Sweden. |
| 31 August 1975 | USA [international organizations] | The International Monetary Fund (IMF) abandons the remaining role of gold in world monetary affairs. |
| 16 September 1975 | Papua New Guinea, Australia [decolonization] | Papua New Guinea gains its independence from Australia and joins the Commonwealth. |
| 23 September 1975 | Israel, Egypt [political events] | Israel and Egypt reach an agreement on an Israeli withdrawal from the Egyptian Sinai peninsula, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967. |
| 15 October 1975 | Iceland, West Germany [political events] | The ‘Cod War’ begins when Iceland increases its territorial waters from 80 km/50 mi to 320 km/200 mi and confronts West German trawlers with gunboats. |
| 22 October - 25 October 1975 | USSR [space exploration] | The Soviet spacecraft Venera 9 and Venera 10, launched on 8 June and 14 June respectively, land on Venus and transmit the first pictures from the surface of another planet. |
| 10 November 1975 | Angola, Portugal [decolonization] | Angola gains its independence from Portugal with Agostinho Neto as president, but civil war breaks out between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). |
| 14 November 1975 | Morocco, Mauritania, Spain [diplomacy] | Spain agrees with Morocco and Mauritania to pull out of the Sahara by February 1976 and to organize consultations about the region's future. |
| 20 November 1975 | Spain [births and deaths] | Francisco Franco, Spanish leader of the right-wing nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War 1936–39, then dictator for life, dies in Madrid, Spain (82). |
| 25 November 1975 | Surinam, Netherlands [decolonization] | Surinam, formerly Dutch Guiana, gains its independence from the Netherlands. |
| 28 November 1975 | East Timor, Portugal [political events] | The Revolutionary Front for the Independence of East Timor (FRETILIN) unilaterally declares East Timor independent from Portugal. |
| 11 December 1975 | USA [weights and measures] | The US Congress passes legislation calling for the voluntary conversion to the metric system in ten years. |
| 20 December 1975 | UK [popular music] | The British pop group Queen promotes its song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, from the album A Night at the Opera, with the first pop video. The video, produced by Bruce Gowers on a £4,500 budget, debuts on the television programme Top of the Pops. |
