BRITAIN AND THE WORLD SINCE 1953
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| Deaths exceeded live births in England & Wales for first time since records began in 1837 | |
| Jan5 | Khmer Rouge promulgated a new constitution in Cambodia, renaming it Democratic Kampuchea. |
| Jan7 | The SAS are sent into South Armagh by the UK government. The element of suprise is lost as the move is made public by the Prime Minister Harold Wilson |
| Jan12 | The novelist Agatha Christie dies |
| Jan15 | The Roman Catholic Church condemns sex outside of marriage and states that homosexuality can never be condoned |
| Jan21 | Concorde enters supersonic passenger service |
| The 270,000 ton Olympic Bravery tanker runs aground off the French coast. In the largest shipwreck recorded the tanker eventually broke in two on March 13th | |
| Jan27 | The trial of SLA member Patty Hearst begins |
| In an amateur riders race at Ayr racecourse, Muriel Naughton becomes the first woman jockey to compete under National Hunt rules | |
| Feb7 |
Joan Bazely became the first woman football referee of an all-male match at Croydon, and Diana Thorne became the first woman jockey to win under National Hunt Rules on Ben Ruler at Stratford. |
| Mar16 | Harold Wilson resigns as Prime Minister and is replaced by Jim Callaghan. Callaghan had earlier defeated Michael Foot 176 - 137 to become Labour leader |
| Mar17 | Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is retried (Bob Dylan's "Hurricane) |
| Mar19 | Princess Margaret seperates from the Earl of Snowdon, after 16 years of marriage |
| Paul Kossoff former lead gituarist with the band Free dies of a heart attack whilst aboard a plane. He was 26 years old | |
| Mar20 | Patti Hearst is found guilty of assisting her kidnappers in a SLA armed robbery |
| Mar29 | Eight Ohio National Guardsmen indicted for killing four Kent State students |
| Mar31 | New
Jersey Supreme Court ruled that coma patient Karen Anne
Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. (Quinlan, who remained comatose, died in 1985.) |
| Apr6 | Ex-Film Producer and Aircraft Designer Howard Hughes dies at the age of 71 from kidney failure. |
| Apr13 | An explosion in an ammunition factory in Lapua Finland kills 40 people |
| Apr17 | June and Vicky Melling see what they describe as an "owlman" over Mawnan Old Church in Cornwall - the first sighting of such an apparition |
| Apr30 | Elizabeth Taylor divorces Richard Burton for the second time |
| May9 | Ulrike Meinhof hangs herself in Stuttgart-Stennheim prison. Many believe that the suicide was in fact a murder |
| Jun1 | UK and Iceland end the Cod War |
| Jun16 | Soweto |
| Jun20 | Carol Fugate,Charles Starkwether accomplice("Badlands") is paroled |
| Jun27 | Palestinian extremists hijacked an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They eventually took it to Entebbe, Uganda, where a daring raid by Israeli commandos stormed it on July 4. |
| Jul2 | North and South Vietnam were reunited as one country with Hanoi as the capital. Saigon is renamed Ho Chi Minh City |
| Jul4 | The Israeli Raid on Entebbe frees the Israeli hostages |
| Jul7 | 21st modern Olympic games opens in Montreal |
| Jul10 | A chemical plant at Seveso near Milan suffers a severe chemical accident that leads to a widespread evacuation |
| Viking 1 lands on Mars | |
| Jul17 | East Timor becomes a province of Indonesia |
| Jul21 | British ambassador to the Irish Republic, Christopher Ewart-Biggs, was killed by a bomb placed under his car outside his home. |
| Jul27 | Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Uganda, the first time in 30 years that a British government had taken such a drastic step against another country |
| Aug5 | World Motor Racing Champion Niki Lauda suffers serious burns in the German Grand prix |
| Aug 6 | Drought Act 1976 comes into force |
| Former UK Postmaster General John Stonehouse begins a seven year sentence for fraud | |
| Aug14 | 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women demonstrate for peace in Northern Ireland. The Peace Movement is founded but soon disintegrates into rivalries and bitterness. Meanwhile the violence carrys on. |
| Sep3 | The unmanned U. S. Spacecraft Viking II landed on Mars and took the first pictures of the planet's surface. |
| Sep18 | Mao Tse Tung dies |
| Oct25 | Gov Wallace grants full pardon to Clarence Norris, last known survivor of 9 Scottsboro Boys who were convicted in 1931 rape trial |
| Oct26 | Transkei becomes the first of South Africa's "homelands" to gain independence |
| Nov2 | Former Georgia Gov Jimmy Carter (Democrat) defeats incumbent Gerald R Ford (Republican) in race for Presidency |
| Dec3 | Abba play the Royal Albert Hall in London |
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Last Updated 19/09/06 10:06