1976

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]	The number of one-parent families in the USA increases 79%, representing one in five of all families.
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.
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.
1976	USA, UK [television]	With the launch of videocassette recorders on the market by Sony and JVC, television advertising rates are hit, as viewers can now choose not to view commercials.
1976	USA [technology]	US chemist Stephanie Kwolek develops Kevlar, a plastic fibre as strong as steel; it is used to make bulletproof vests, boat-shells, and tyres.
1976–1981	UK, USA [television]	The Muppet Show, featuring sketches and songs by Jim Henson's puppets – including Kermit and Miss Piggy – is shown on British and US television.
1976	USA [radio]	The popularity of CB (citizens-band) radio in the USA leads to a record 656,000 licence applications a month; CB code phrases also filter through to everyday life.
1976	USA [social theory]	US cultural historian Shere Hite publishes The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality.
1976	USA [space exploration]	The US spacecraft Viking 1 and Viking 2 (launched in 1975) soft-land on Mars (20 July, 7 August). They make meteorological readings of the Martian atmosphere and search for traces of bacterial life which prove inconclusive.
1976	USA [art]	The Bulgarian-born artist Christo (Javacheff) creates Running Fence, 40 km of fabric stretched across a valley in California.
1976	USA [cinema and film]	The home video cassette recorder is introduced into the US market, with two incompatible models. The Japanese electronics company Sony markets the Betamax system, released in 1975, and fellow Japanese electronics company Japanese Matsushita Corporation (JVC) markets the Video Home System (or VHS), which eventually dominates the trade.
1976	USA [computing]	Computer networking begins in offices when Wang Laboratories introduces a word processor located on a central computer that can be shared by various terminals.
1976	USA [companies and organizations]	With $1,500, Stephen Jobs and Stephen Wozniak begin making computer prototypes in a California garage – the start of Apple Computers.
1976	USA [economic conditions]	The median price for a single-family home in the USA reaches $38,100.
1976	USA [fiction]	The US writer Alex Haley publishes his novel Roots. Documenting the history of a family of black Americans of African origin through seven generations, it becomes a phenomenal success as a book and a TV series. It will win a Pulitzer prize in 1977.
1976	UK [legislation]	The Race Relations Act in Britain, introduced in stages, makes the inciting of racial hatred an offence and in 1977 establishes the Commission for Racial Equality.
1976	France [opera]	The opera Einstein on the Beach by the US composer Philip Glass is first performed, in Avignon, France. The text is by Robert Wilson.
1976	USA [plays]	The play California Suite, by the US writer Neil Simon, is first performed, at the Eugene O'Neill Theater in New York City.
1976	Austria [plays]	The play Audience, by the Czech writer and politician Václav Havel, is first performed, in Vienna, Austria.
1976	USA [poetry]	The US writer James Merrill publishes his poetry collection Divine Comedies, which wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977.
12 January 1976	England [births and deaths]	Agatha Christie, English playwright and author of detective novels, dies in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England (85).
21 January 1976	UK, France [aircraft]	The British-French supersonic airliner Concorde begins a regular passenger service across the Atlantic; it is the world's first scheduled supersonic passenger service.
21 January 1976	UK, Bahrain, France, Brazil [aircraft]	Two Concorde aircraft make their first commercial flights, from London, England, to Bahrain and from Paris, France, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
31 January 1976	world [statistics and demography]	The population of the world reaches 4 billion.
February 1976	UK [companies and organizations]	Frank Chapman opens Loch Rannoch Highland Club in Perthshire, Scotland, the first time-share property development in Britain.
15 March 1976	France [banking and finance]	The French franc is forced out of the European currency ‘snake’ (system of exchange rates).
14 April 1976	Morocco, Mauritania [political events]	Western Sahara is divided between Morocco and Mauritania.
16 April 1976	India, Pakistan [diplomacy]	India and Pakistan normalize diplomatic relations for the first time since the 1971 war over the independence of East Pakistan as Bangladesh.
1 June 1976	Iceland, UK [diplomacy]	The ‘Cod War’ between Iceland and Britain ends after mediation by Norway, and a 200-mile fishing limit is agreed.
28 June 1976	Seychelles [decolonization]	The Seychelles gain their independence within the Commonwealth.
July 1976	Romania, Canada [Olympic Games]	At the Montreal Olympics, the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comeneci scores the first ever maximum 10.00 marks at the Olympics, and then gets four more on the way to winning three gold medals and one silver.
July - August 1976	Poland, Canada [Olympic Games]	At the Montreal Olympic Games, Polish athlete Danuta Rosani is the first track and field athlete to test positive for anabolic steroids since the drugs were banned in 1975.
2 July 1976	Vietnam [political events]	North and South Vietnam are formally reunified.
14 July 1976	Spain [political events]	The ban on political parties in Spain is lifted.
28 July 1976	China [natural disasters]	An earthquake in Tangshan, China, measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale levels nearly every building and kills 242,000 people. It is the worst earthquake in modern history.
1 August 1976	Trinidad and Tobago [decolonization]	Trinidad and Tobago, having achieved independence from Britain in 1962, gain the status of republic within the Commonwealth.
4 August 1976	UK [cricket]	The Marylebone Cricket Club in London, England, allows a women's cricket match to be played on its Lord's ground for the first time in its 190-year history. England defeats Australia in a limited overs match.
25 August 1976	France [law and government]	Jacques Chirac resigns suddenly as prime minister of France and is succeeded by Raymond Barre.
28 August 1976	USA [chemistry]	Indian-born US biochemist Har Gobind Khorana and his colleagues announce the construction of the first artificial gene to function naturally when inserted into a bacterial cell.
9 September 1976	China [births and deaths]	Mao Zedong, Chinese Marxist theorist who was chair of the People's Republic of China 1949–59 and chair of the Chinese Communist Party 1949–76, dies in Beijing, China (83).
19 September 1976	Sweden [elections]	The Swedish general election ends 40 years of government by the Social Democrats.
19 September 1976	Rhodesia [political events]	Ian Smith, the prime minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), accepts the principle of majority rule in his country.
6 October 1976	Thailand [political events]	A military coup in Thailand seizes control from Prime Minister Seni Pramoj.
7 October 1976	China [political events]	Hua Guofeng succeeds Mao Zedong as Chinese premier. The ‘Gang of Four’, including Mao's widow, are arrested and denounced for plotting to take power.
11 October 1976	UK [television]	For the first time there are more colour than black and white TV licences in Britain.
25 October 1976	South Africa [political events]	The black homeland of Transkei, South Africa, becomes nominally independent.
2 November 1976	USA [elections]	In the US presidential election, the Democratic candidate, Jimmy Carter, defeats the Republican, President Gerald Ford, with 297 electoral college votes to 241. Democrats retain majorities in the House (292-143) and Senate (68-31).
14 November 1976	USA [cinema and film]	The televising of Gone With the Wind attracts the highest audience for a film ever in the USA, with more than 33 million viewers.
26 November 1976	Italy [Catholicism]	Catholicism ceases to be the state religion of Italy.
5 December 1976	Central African Republic [law and government]	Jean-Bédel Bokassa, head of state of the Central African Republic, proclaims his country an empire and himself its emperor.
16 December 1976	UK [legislation]	Legislation is passed permitting all-day pub opening (from 11 in the morning to 11 at night) in Scotland.

1976 (redirected from September 1976)

1976

1976
(redirected from September 1976)