Timeline 1977
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1977 Jan 1, The California Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act became effective. The concept originated around 1974. The largest supporter of POBRA was the ACLU. Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law.
(www.porac.org/POBR_ptrfr.htm)(SFC, 2/9/06, p.A1)
1977 Jan 3, Apple Computers incorporated under Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak. In March Apple produced the Apple II, the first pre-assembled, mass-produced PC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1977 Jan 6, William Gropper (b.1897), painter and political cartoonist, died. He worked for the radical publications "The Masses" and "Art Front."
(SFC, 2/5/97, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gropper)
1977 Jan 8, In Florida Walter H. Scott (64), a former official with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was killed. In 1980 William Claybourne Taylor (b.1949) was indicted for the murder and the shooting of Eugene T. Bailey, a former mayor of Williston, Fla. Taylor posted bond and disappeared until 2016 when he was arrested by federal agents in Reidsville, NC.
(http://tinyurl.com/j86f8z9)(SFC, 7/29/16, p.A6)
1977 Jan 9, The Oakland Raiders beat the Minnesota Vikings in the Super Bowl 32-14 at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. Quarterback Ken Stabler (1945-2015) led the SF Bay Area team to victory.
(SFC, 12/21/01, WB p.G16)(SFC, 12/28/01, WB p.G7)(SFC, 7/10/15, p.A1)
1977 Jan 10, The crater walls of Congo’s Nyiragongo volcano fractured, and a lava lake drained in less than an hour. The lava flowed down the flanks of the volcano at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour on the upper slopes, overwhelming villages and killing at least 70 people.
(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Nyiragongo)
1977 Jan 11, France set off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a Palestinian suspected of involvement in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 1999 Mohammed Oudeh, aka Abu Daoud, published an autobiography in France in which he admitted to playing a mastermind role in the 1972 Munich hostage episode.
(AP, 1/11/98)(SFC, 6/14/99, p.A14)
1977 Jan 12, Anti-French demonstrations took place in Israel after Paris released Abu Daoud, responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9801/12/)
1977 Jan 12, Henri-Georges Clouzot (b.1907), French film director and producer, died. His films included “Les Diaboliques" (1955) and “La Verite" (1960).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Georges_Clouzot)
1977 Jan 17, The TV sitcom “Busting Loose" began with Adam Arkin and ran for 24 episodes.
(SFC, 2/13/08, p.B7)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0192884/)
1977 Jan 17, Gary Gilmore (b.1940), convicted for two murders he committed in Utah, was shot by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first US execution in a decade. In 1979 Norman Mailer authored his Pulitzer Prize winning book: “The Executioner’s Song," the story of Gary Gilmore.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gilmore)(AP, 1/17/98)(Econ, 11/17/07, p.103)
1977 Jan 17, In Argentina Abel Madariaga last saw his wife, a surgeon who treated the poor in a Buenos Aires suburb, being pushed into a Ford Falcon by army officers dressed as civilians as she walked to a train. He and Silvia Quintela (28) were members of the Montoneros, a leftist group targeted for elimination by government death squads. Quintela gave birth to a son the couple had planned to name Francisco in July 1977, while imprisoned in the Campo de Mayo, one of the notorious clandestine torture centers in suburban Buenos Aires. A military intelligence officer, Victor Alejandro Gallo, brought the baby, his umbilical cord still attached, home to his wife, Ines Susana Colombo. Silvia disappeared shortly thereafter. In 2010 Abel was reunited with his son and Gallo was arrested on suspicion of illegal adoption.
(AP, 2/24/10)
1977 Jan 19, In one of his last acts of office, President Ford pardoned Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American who had been suspected of being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose" [see Sep 25, 1948].
(AP, 1/19/00)(AH, 10/02, p.28)
1977 Jan 20, President Jimmy Carter was sworn in and then surprised everyone as he walked from the U.S. Capitol to the White House.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1977 Jan 20, George Bush left office as director of the CIA.
(SFEC, 1/16/00, Par p.2)
1977 Jan 21, US President Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders as long as they had not been involved in violent acts. Carter also urged 65 degrees as the maximum heat in homes to ease the energy crisis.
(AP, 1/21/98)(HN, 1/21/99)(HNQ, 11/13/99)
1977 Jan 23, The TV mini-series "Roots," based on the Alex Haley novel, began a record breaking eight night broadcast on ABC.
(AP, 1/23/98)(HN, 1/23/99)
1977 Jan 23, Ireland set its fishing zone at 200 miles.
(http://tinyurl.com/3atw5c)
1977 Jan 27, The Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests.
(AP, 1/27/98)
1977 Jan 28, A heavy blizzard began in Eastern Canada and the US. It claimed as many as 100 lives. This was the only blizzard declared a natural and national disaster by the American and Canadian governments. In 1978 Erno Rossi authored “White Death: Blizzard of ’77."
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gRb_MuUgg)(www.whitedeath.com/)
1977 Jan 29, Freddie Prinze (b.1954), American comedian and TV actor, shot himself and died. His work included the TV show “Chico & the Man" (1974-1977).
(http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0697905/)
1977 Feb 4, In Illinois 11 people were killed when two cars of a Chicago Transit Authority train fell off elevated tracks after a collision with another train.
(AP, 2/4/02)
1977 Feb 5, Julius Nyerere and Aboud Jumbe set up the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party following the merger of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), which were the sole operating parties in mainland Tanzania and the semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar respectively.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chama_Cha_Mapinduzi)(Econ, 10/24/15, p.44)
1977 Feb 6, Queen Elizabeth (b.1926) marked her Silver Jubilee. It culminated in June with the official "Jubilee Days," held to coincide with the Queen's 1953 coronation.
(HN, 2/6/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II)
1977 Feb 9, The TV series “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams" premiered with Dan Haggerty (1942-2016) as Grizzly Adams. It was based on the 1974 movie, which was based on the book by Charles Sellier Jr.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0075525/)
1977 Feb 11, A 20.2-kg lobster was caught off Nova Scotia. This was the heaviest known crustacean to date.
(www.canadiangold.ns.ca/funfacts.asp)
1977 Feb 15, W. Sebok discovered asteroid #2491.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroids/2401%E2%80%932500)
1977 Feb 16, Janani Luwum, the Anglican archbishop of Uganda, and two other men were killed in what Ugandan authorities said was an automobile accident.
(AP, 2/16/98)
1977 Feb 18, The space shuttle Enterprise, sitting atop a Boeing 747, went on its maiden "flight" above the Mojave Desert.
(AP, 2/18/98)
1977 Feb 18, In Nigeria soldiers from the army of Gen'l. Obasanjo raided Kalakuta, the communal home of singer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Fela's mother (77) was thrown from a 2nd-story window and later died from her injuries. The compound was burned and a fire brigade was prevented from reaching the site. Fela wrote the song "Coffin for Head of State" to describe how he and his followers carried her coffin to present it to Gen'l. Obasanjo.
(WSJ, 2/24/99, p.A1,10)
1977 Feb 21, In NYC 74 Unification Church couples were wed.
(www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Topics/U-Stuff/BLSS-HST.htm)
1977 Feb 24, Pres. Carter announced the US was cutting off all military aid to Ethiopia because of its human rights violations. The unstated reason was the US desire to cooperate with Saudi Arabia to lure Somalia from the Soviet camp, an effort which was ultimately successful.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Politics/africa.html)
1977 Feb 28, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (b.1905), African-American comedian, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Anderson_(comedian))
1977 Mar 1, The US 200-mile fishery conservation zone went into effect. The US extended its territorial waters out to 200 miles to stop fishing by boats of foreign nations.
(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=6865)(NH, 5/96, p.61)
1977 Mar 2, Bette Davis (1908-1989) became the 1st woman to receive Life Achievement Award.
(www.worldofquotes.com/history/3_2/7/index.html)
1977 Mar 2, Future Tonight Show host Jay Leno debuted with host Johnny Carson.
(www.lvol.com/bios/e136.html)
1977 Mar 2, The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a strict code of ethics.
(AP, 3/2/00)
1977 Mar 2, Libya amended its constitution and changed its name from The Libyan Arab Republic to The Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahirya.
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dr_ibrahim_ighneiwa/libyans.htm)
1977 Mar 4, A 7.4 earthquake in Romania killed about 1,570 people and was felt across southern and eastern Europe.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Bucharest_Earthquake)(AP, 3/4/98)(SFC, 4/28/99, p.A15)
1977 Mar 5, President Carter took questions from 42 telephone callers in 26 states on a network radio call-in program moderated by Walter Cronkite.
(AP, 3/5/98)(www.presidentialtimeline.org/html/timeline.php?id=39)
1977 Mar 7, Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin met with Pres. Carter in Washington.
(www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/campdavid25/campdavid25_photos.phtml)
1977 Mar 7, Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party won elections.
(www.storyofpakistan.com/articletext.asp?artid=A142)
1977 Mar 8, The U.S. Army announced that they had conducted 239 open-air tests of germ warfare.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1977 Mar 9, Pres. Carter proposed an end to travel restrictions to Cuba, Vietnam, N. Korea and Cambodia effective as of March 18.
(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=7139)
1977 Mar 9, Admiral Stansfield Turner took office as head of the CIA under Pres. Carter.
(www.espionageinfo.com/Cou-De/DCI-Director-of-the-Central-Intelligence-Agency.html)
1977 Mar 9, About a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims invaded three buildings in Washington D.C., killing one person and taking more than 130 hostages. The siege ended two days later.
(AP, 3/9/98)
1977 Mar 9, Activist Elisabeth Kaesemann (30), a German sociologist, was abducted in Argentina. Her bullet-riddled body was later found dumped on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
(www.hrw.org/reports/2001/argentina/argen1201-08.htm)
1977 Mar 10, The rings of Uranus were discovered.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1977 Mar 10, E. Power Biggs (b.1906), English organist and composer (CBS), died in, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Power_Biggs)
1977 Mar 11, More than 130 hostages held in Washington, D.C., by Hanafi Muslims were freed after ambassadors from three Islamic nations joined the negotiations.
(AP, 3/11/98)
1977 Mar 12, The Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed Rose Elizabeth Bird (40) as California’s 25th chief justice and the 1st woman to sit on the state’s Supreme Court. She was sworn in on March 26.
(SFC, 3/8/02, p.G8)
1977 Mar 12, Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, outspoken in his defence of the poor, was shot more than dozen times along with an elderly man and a teenager by a right-wing death squad in rural El Salvador while they were riding in a jeep. In 2020 the Vatican said the pope had approved a decree recognizing that Rutilio Grande and two lay Salvadorans were killed "in hatred of the faith".
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
1977 Mar 12, Egypt's Anwar Sadat pledged to regain Arab territory from Israel.
(http://tinyurl.com/37jrq9)
1977 Mar 13, Jan Patocka (b.1907), Czech philosophy professor and one of the three founding spokesmen of “Charter 77," died following a grueling 11-hour interrogation.
(Econ, 12/31/11, p.32)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Pato%C4%8Dka)
1977 Mar 14, Fannie Lou Hamer (b.1917), Mississippi civil rights champion, died. She had helped register black voters when doing so put her own life in danger. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
(SFC, 10/6/12, p.A5)( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer)
1977 Mar 15, The U.S. House of Representatives began a 90-day test to determine the feasibility of showing its sessions on television.
(AP, 3/15/97)
1977 Mar 16, US president Carter pleaded for a Palestinian homeland.
(http://tinyurl.com/39b9fc)
1977 Mar 16, In Lebanon Kamal Jumblatt (60) was killed. He was the leader of Lebanon’s Druze community, a member of the Lebanese Parliament and a Socialist-nationalist supporter of Palestinians. Jumblatt was assassinated by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which he had legalized as interior minister some years earlier.
(Econ, 11/28/09, p.49)(http://tinyurl.com/yzgycku)
1977 Mar 17, Marin County pharmacist Fred Mayer started the first Condom Day at UC Berkeley.
(SFC, 3/18/98, p.A16)
1977 Mar 18, In SF Paul Gaer transformed Al’s Transbay Tavern on Fourth St. into the Hotel Utah Saloon. The structure dated back to 1908 and in 2007 marked its 30th anniversary.
(SFC, 3/15/07, 96H p.4)
1977 Mar 18, Marien Ngouabi, the military president of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), was assassinated.
(AP, 3/18/07)
1977 Mar 18, The Vietnamese "discovered" and returned to the US the remains of Bruce C. Ducat. For eleven years, Ducat, alive or dead, was a prisoner of war.
(www.pownetwork.org/bios/b/b107.htm)
1977 Mar 20, Voters in Paris chose former French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac to be the French capital's first mayor in more than a century.
(AP, 3/20/97)
1977 Mar 20, Premier Indira Gandhi lost her election in India.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1977-3/1977-03-20-CBS-2.html)
1977 Mar 22, President Carter proposed the abolition of the Electoral College.
(HN, 3/22/97)
1977 Mar 22, Indira Gandhi revoked emergency rule and resigned as PM of India.
(http://tinyurl.com/32tg72)
1977 Mar 24, Morarji Desai, head of the Janata Party, became prime minister of India.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_India)
1977 Mar 25, In Argentina political writer Rodolfo Walsh was murdered one day after writing the “Open Letter to the Military Junta" on the first anniversary of the military coup. He had reported on tortures, mass killings, and thousands of disappearances. In 2011 Alfredo Astiz (59), a former navy spy known as "the Angel of Death," was convicted in the kidnapping and disappearing of Rodolfo Walsh.
(http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3170)(AP, 10/26/11)
1977 Mar 25, Philippines’ President Marcos, on March 25, 1977, signed Presidential Proclamation No. 1628 forming an autonomous region in Southern Philippines.
(http://www.armm.gov.ph/armm-history/)
1977 Mar 26, Elvis Costello released his 1st record "Less Than Zero."
(www.pugetsoundradio.com/forum/b-radiohistory/m-1174918300/)
1977 Mar 27, A KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashed into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife. 583 people were killed with 54 survivors.
(SSFC, 10/17/04, p.B7)(AP, 3/27/07)
1977 Mar 28, In the 49th Academy Awards "Rocky," Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway won.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/49th_Academy_Awards)
1977 Apr 1, The U.S. Senate followed the example of the House by adopting a stringent code of ethics requiring full financial disclosure and limits on outside income.
(AP, 4/1/02)
1977 Apr 1, Richard Booth proclaimed Hay-on-Wye, Wales, an independent kingdom with himself as king and his horse as prime minister. The Oxford graduate had opened a 2nd hand bookstore in the town in 1961.
(SSFC, 5/25/03, p.C8)(Econ, 12/24/05, p.84)
1977 Apr 4, Egyptian Pres Anwar Sadat held his 1st meeting with President Jimmy Carter.
(www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/diary/1977/d040477t.pdf)
1977 Apr 5, In San Francisco a group of 100 people, many with disabilities, began a 26-day sit-in protest at San Francisco’s Federal Offices. Grip bars in toilets were among their demands.
(https://tinyurl.com/y2kclvjr)(Econ., 12/12/20, p.31)
1977 Apr 5, A group of Chilean military men in London announced the formation of a "Front of Democratic Forces of Chile in Exile." Another similar group was formed in Brussels and shortly later in East Berlin.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)
1977 Apr 6, Jaime Estevez spoke from a Moscow broadcast that the purposes of 3 newly formed Soviet-backed entities was to lead the fight for the overthrow of the fascist junta in Chile.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)
1977 Apr 6, The Seattle Kingdome opened and the Mariners lost to the Angels 7-0. The Seattle Mariners baseball team were created following the 1970 departure of the 1-year-old Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee.
(SFC, 2/18/02, p.B6)(WSJ, 4/7/99, p.B1)
1977 Apr 7, Pres. Carter stopped the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel rods in order to discourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1977 Apr 7, The RAF gunned down Siegfried Bubeck, a West German federal prosecutor, his driver, Wolfgang Goebel, and the guard Georg Wurster. In 2009 police, using new DNA evidence, arrested Verena Becker (57), a former German leftist terrorist on suspicion of involvement in the slayings. Becker had been arrested a month after the ambush, following a shootout with police. Prosecutors at the time did not have enough evidence to try her on charges of involvement in the Buback slaying, but convicted her of armed robbery and attempted murder stemming from the shootout. She was sentenced to life in prison. In 1989 she was pardoned of those charges by German Pres. Richard von Weizsaecker and released from prison. In 2010 Becker was charged with 3 counts of murder for her alleged role in the fatal 1977 ambush.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A8)(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 4/21/10)
1977 Apr 8, Israel premier Rabin resigned as prime minister due to a bank account scandal after it was revealed that his wife, Leah, had illegally maintained a foreign currency account containing about $3,000 in the United States.
(SFEC, 4/21/97, p.D4)(http://i-cias.com/e.o/rabin_yz.htm)
1977 Apr 11, Jacques Prevert (b.1900), French poet (La puil et le beau), died.
(http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Pr%C3%A9vert)
1977 Apr 14, Computer enthusiasts gathered for the 1st West Coast Computer Faire at the SF Civic Auditorium. An estimated 20-30 thousand American homes had computers.
(SFC, 4/12/02, p.G6)
1977 Apr 15, In Argentina some 20 armed men broke into the home of journalist Jacobo Timerman. He was seized and held for over a year with beatings, electrical shocks and solitary confinement.
(SFC, 11/12/99, p.D6)
1977 Apr 16, Jim Warren (1936-2021) and Bob Reiling staged the first West Coast Computer Faire. The 2-day event, where the Commodore Pet and Apple II were introduce, drew nearly 13,000 people to the San Francisco Civic Auditiorium.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Computer_Faire)(SSFC, 12/5/21, p.F1)
1977 Apr 19, Alex Haley received a special Pulitzer Prize for his book "Roots."
(HN, 4/19/99)
1977 Apr 20, The film "Annie Hall" premiered. Diane Keaton starred in the Woody Allen film Annie Hall. It was rated #31 by the Amer. Film Inst. in 1998.
(www.variety.com/profiles/Film/main/24544/Annie%20Hall.html?dataSet=1)(SFC, 1/9/97, p.E1)
1977 Apr 20, The US Supreme Court, in Wooley v. Maynard, said car owners could refuse to display state mottoes on license plates. The Court ruled that "Live Free or Die" may be covered on NH license plates.
(AP, 4/20/07)
1977 Apr 21, The musical play "Annie" opened on Broadway, the 1st of 2,377 performances. Laurie Beechman (d.1998) made her debut in the show based on the “Little Orphan Annie" comic strip. Beechman later played Grizabella for 5 years in “Cats."
(SFC, 3/10/98, p.A17)(AP, 4/21/08)
1977 Apr 22, Simon Peres became premier of Israel under Pres. Ephraim Katzir. Peres served until June 21. He served again as premier from 1984-1986, and 1985-1996.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres)
1977 Apr 23, Dr. Allen Bussey completed 20,302 yo-yo loops in Waco, Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco,_Texas)
1977 Apr 26, NY's famed disco Studio 54 opened. It closed in March, 1986.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_54)
1977 Apr 27, Bloody riots took place in Soweto, South Africa.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1977 Apr 28, US regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act were signed. Americans with physical disabilities had begun staging protests at federal buildings in San Francisco, LA and Washington DC. The SF protest grew to 150 people and lasted 25 days.
(SFC, 5/1/97, p.A20)(http://tinyurl.com/3xje8f)
1977 Apr 28, Andreas Baader and members of Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the "Red Army Faction," were jailed for life after a trial lasting nearly 2 years in Stuttgart, Germany.
(http://www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1977.html)
1977 Apr 28, In Italy the Red Brigades assassinated Fulvio Croce, the president of the Turin Bar Association.
(http://tinyurl.com/ywxupv)
1977 Apr 29, Donald Evans (b.1945), American artist, died in a fire in the Netherlands. His work included the creation of postage stamp series for imaginary countries.
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.D10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Evans_(artist))
1977 Apr 30, In Argentina 14 women whose children had disappeared went to the Plaza de Mayo to demonstrate their cause. Police said they could not stay there so they began to walk around the pyramid in the center of the plaza. In 2006 they completed their 1,500th and last demonstration [see Dec 1977].
(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.E3)
1977 Apr, Pres. Carter named Montana Senator Mike Mansfield (1903-2001) ambassador to Japan. Mansfield had planned to retire but held the post for 10 years.
(SFC, 10/6/01, p.E1)
1977 May 4, A large tornado swept through Pleasant Hill, Mo., hitting the city’s high school and grade school. Only minor injuries occurred due to superb tornado warnings and drills.
(SFC, 5/4/09, p.D8)
1977 May 5, In San Francisco the Steinhart Aquarium’s fish roundabout opened at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.
(SFC, 7/16/16, p.C1)
1977 May 5, In Texas Joe Campos Torres (23), a Mexican-American Vietnam War veteran arrested on a disorderly conduct charge, was beaten to death by Houston police officers. Two of the six officers were later convicted of misdemeanor negligent homicide and fined $1 and sentenced to probation.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Joe_Campos_Torres)(AP, 6/28/21)
1977 May 5, Ludwig Erhard (b.1897)), German minister of Economic Affairs (CDU), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Erhard)
1977 May 7, Seattle Slew (d.2002) won the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.
(AP, 5/7/04)
1977 May 8, The trial of Pieter Menten (b.1899), a former Dutch SS officer and art collector, began in Amsterdam. He was convicted and sentenced to 15 years, but the sentence was reduced to 10 years in 1980.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9805/08/)(http://tinyurl.com/2n79xl)
1977 May 9, Pink Floyd opened a 2-night stand at the Oakland Coliseum.
(http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/dt/pink-floyd-concert/2923-5541.html)
1977 May 9, James Jones (b.1921), US writer (From Here to Eternity), died. His work included the pre-WW II novel "From Here to Eternity." His daughter later wrote the novel "A Soldier’s Daughter never Cries," which was made into a film with Kris Kristofferson as James Jones.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jjones.htm)(SFEC, 7/12/98, Par p.17)
1977 May 10, Patti Hearst was sentenced to 5 years’ probation for her role in the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) crime spree May 16-17, 1974. She still faced a 7-year sentence for armed robbery.
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.G7)
1977 May 10, Actress Joan Crawford (69) died in New York of liver cancer.
(AP, 5/10/97)(SFC,12/17/97, p.D6)
1977 May 12, Pink Floyd performed the first quadrophonic concert in London.
(SC, Internet, 10/12/97)
1977 May 14, Capt. Robert Nairac (29), an underground British soldier, was abducted from a border pub by an IRA gang, taken across the border into a Republic of Ireland forest, and shot through the head. In 2008 the Police Service of Northern Ireland press office confirmed the arrest of Kevin Crilly (57), an IRA veteran, on suspicion of involvement in Nairac's killing. On April 1, 2011, Crilly was acquitted of all charges against him.
(AP, 5/20/08)(AP, 4/1/11)
1977 May 16 Five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling atop the Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.
(AP, 5/16/97)
1977 May 16, In Mali former Pres. Modibo Keita (1915-1977) died in prison. His reputation was rehabilitated in 1992 following the overthrow of Moussa Traore and subsequent the election of president Alpha Oumar Konare. A monument for Modibo Keita, was dedicated in Bamako on June 6, 1999.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modibo_Ke%C3%AFta)
1977 May 17, The state Assembly voted 54-23 to restore the death penalty. Gov. Jerry Brown pledged to veto the bill. It had passed the Senate 29-10.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.G8)(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A16)
1977 May 17, Menachem Begin's Likud-party won election in Israel.
(http://begincenterdiary.blogspot.com/2007/05/another-avner-article-great-emancipator.html)
1977 May 19, David Frost, British talk-show host, extracted an on-air apology from former Pres. Richard Nixon regarding his role in Watergate.
(www.landmarkcases.org/nixon/nixonview.html)
1977 May 23, Pres. Jimmy Carter presented an environmental message to Congress: "I am directing to make a one-year study of the probable changes in the world’s population, natural resources and environment through the end of the century. This study will serve as the foundation of our longer-term planning. The Global 2000 Report sold 1.5 million copies and pronounced a world that would be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically and more vulnerable to disruption than the world of 1980.
(SFC, 12/31/00, WB p.1)
1977 May 23, The US Supreme Court refused to hear appeals of former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman & John Mitchell in connection with their Watergate convictions.
(AP, 5/23/04)
1977 May 23, The US Supreme Court in Abood v Detroit Board of Education ruled that states could allow unions to collect compulsory fees to support negotiations over workplace matters like wages and benefits.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abood_v._Detroit_Board_of_Education)(Econ, 1/16/16, p.34)
1977 May 23, Moluccan extremists held 105 schoolchildren and 50 others hostage on a hijacked train in Netherlands. The children were released May 27. The siege ended June 11.
(www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=4024)
1977 May 24, In a surprise move, the Kremlin ousted Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny from the Communist Party's ruling Politburo.
(AP, 5/24/97)
1977 May 25, "Brady Bunch Hour" last aired on ABC-TV.
(www.tv.com/the-brady-bunch-hour/show/549/summary.html)
1977 May 25, US performed a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_8.htm)
1977 May 25, Dutch social democratic party won parliamentary election.
(http://electionresources.org/nl/house.php?election=1977)
1977 May 26, George H. Willig scaled the outside of the South Tower of New York City's World Trade Center. He was arrested at the top of the 110-story building.
(AP, 5/26/97)
1977 May 27, The film "Smokey and the Bandit" opened in movie theaters and was the #2 hit of the year behind "Star Wars." It starred Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, Par p.10)(SFC, 10/10/02, p.D9)(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076729/)
1977 May 27, New York City fined "human fly" George H. Willig $1.10 -- one penny for each of the 110 stories of the World Trade Center he scaled the day before.
(AP, 5/27/97)
1977 May 27, Angolan authorities accused what they described as the "fractionistas" or "splitters" of staging an attempted coup. Members of the group said they did no such thing; rather they had organized a mass demonstration and a takeover of the radio station to call people on to the streets of Luanda, in order to pressurize President António Agostinho Neto to clean up his government. Mr Neto called in loyal sections of the army, supported by Cuban troops, and a massacre began. Thousands, including many of the country's young intellectuals and party activists, were imprisoned, tortured and killed. In January 2018, 24 of the now adult children of some of the disappeared set up an association of orphans, named M27.
(AP, 9/6/20)
1977 May 28, 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Ky.
(AP, 5/28/97)
1977 May 29, Danny Gerard, TV and film actor, was born in Mount Vernon, NY.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0313944/)
1977 May 29, Janet Guthrie (b.1938) became the 1st woman to drive in the Indianapolis 500. Her autobiography, "Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle," was published in 2005.
(www.janetguthrie.com/biofr.htm)(www.nascar.com/2002/kyn/women/02/02/Guthrie/)
1977 May 29, The NBC 24 hour News & Information Service ended on radio.
(http://pdxradio.net/feedback/messages/995/2265.html?1096520101)
1977 May 29, USSR performed a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk, USSR.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_8.htm)
1977 May 29, Goddard Lieberson (b.1911), composer and president of Columbia Records (1956-1971), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddard_Lieberson)
1977 May 30, Paul Desmond (b.1924), jazz alto saxophonist, died in NYC.
(http://musicbase.h1.ru/PPB/ppb2/Bio_224.htm)
1977 May 31, The trans-Alaska oil pipeline, formally proposed in 1969, was completed after three years of work. Alaska's Senator Mike Gravel (1930-2021) had seized the issue in 1973 by proposing legislation that would exempt the project from any further court intervention under the National Environmental Policy Act.
(AP, 5/31/97)(NY Times, 6/27/21)
1977 May, Larry Ellison and Robert Miner founded Oracle Corp. in Belmont, Ca., after they persuaded the CIA to let them pick up a lapsed contract for a special database program.
(SFC, 5/20/02, p.A13)
1977 May, Gary Nardino (1935-1998) became the president of Paramount Television and inherited the hits "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley."
(SFC, 2/3/98, p.A15)
1977 May, In Singapore Lee Kuan Yew (b.1923) won a barely contested bi-election as his People’s Action Party won every seat in the legislature. Lee then moved against journalists and human rights activists who had irritated him during the campaign.
(SFC, 9/21/02, p.A18)(http://rulers.org/indexl2.html)
1977 Jun 1, The Soviet Union formally charged Jewish human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky with treason. In 1978 he was convicted and imprisoned. In 1986 he was released to the West.
(AP, 6/1/97)
1977 Jun 2, New Jersey Gov. Brendan T. Byrne signed a law allowing casino gambling in Atlantic City.
(http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3864697)
1977 Jun 2, Forrest Lewis (b.1899), American TV and film actor, died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0507189/)
1977 Jun 3, Roberto Rossellini (b.1906), Italian director, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Rossellini)
1977 Jun 5, The first Apple II personal computers went on sale.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II)
1977 Jun 5, In the Seychelles France Albert Rene (b.1935) seized power in a coup. He continued as president to 2004. This day became marked as Liberation Day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France-Albert_Ren%C3%A9)(SFC, 9/4/01, p.B1)(SSFC, 6/1/14, p.P3)
1977 Jun 6, The Washington Post reported that the US had developed a neutron bomb.
(http://piurl.com/5B)
1977 Jun 6, The US Supreme Court tossed out automatic death penalty laws.
(http://supreme.justia.com/us/431/633/case.html)
1977 Jun 7, Anita Bryant led a successful crusade against Miami gay rights law.
(http://thecastro.net/parade/parade/parade.html)
1977 Jun 8, Some 5,000 marched through downtown to protests an anti-gay rights vote in Miami. Voters in Dade County had repealed a gay-rights ordnance.
(SFC, 6/8/02, p.G8)
1977 Jun 8, The final run of the Paris to Istanbul Orient Express, begun in 1883, took place.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient_Express)
1977 Jun 8, Protocols I and II were added to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. They prohibited environmental damage during int’l. and internal armed conflict. Protocol I prohibited "widespread, long-term and severe damage to the environment." Guerrilla warfare was affirmed as a legitimate means of conflict by the Geneva Conventions in 1977, when prisoner of war status was extended to guerrilla fighters.
(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)(www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/93.htm)
1977 Jun 10, James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee with six others; he was recaptured Jun 13.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1977 Jun 11, ELO’s "Telephone Line" reached #7 in the US, giving the band its first gold single.
(http://private.peterlink.ru/vlad/dates70.htm)
1977 Jun 11, Seattle Slew (d.2002 at 28) won the Belmont Stakes, capturing the Triple Crown.
(AP, 6/11/97)(WSJ, 5/8/02, p.A1)
1977 Jun 11, A 20-day hostage drama in the Netherlands ended as Dutch marines stormed a train and a school held by South Moluccan extremists. Six gunmen and two hostages on the train were killed.
(AP, 6/11/97)
1977 Jun 12, "Pippin" closed at Imperial Theater in NYC after 1944 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippin_(musical))
1977 Jun 13, James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, was recaptured following his escape three days earlier from a Tennessee prison.
(AP, 6/13/00)
1977 Jun 15, The first general election in Spain since 1936 resulted in victory for the UCD (Union of Democratic Centre).
(HN, 6/15/99)
1977 Jun 16, Werner von Braun (65), German-born Nazi and American rocket scientist (V1/V2), died of smoking. In 2005 Bob Ward authored “Dr. Space," a biography of von Braun.
(www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/braun.html)(WSJ, 6/16/05, p.D8)
1977 Jun 16, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was named president of the USSR, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.
(AP, 6/16/98)(HN, 6/16/98)
1977 Jun 19, Pope Paul VI proclaimed a 19th-century Philadelphia bishop, John Neumann, the first male US saint.
(AP, 6/19/07)
1977 Jun 20, The 1st oil of the Alaska pipeline began to flow south 799 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. It reached Valdez on Jul 28.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/pipelinefacts.html)
1977 Jun 21, HR Haldeman, former White House chief of staff, entered prison.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1977-6/)
1977 Jun 21, Menachem Begin became Israel's sixth prime minister at the head of a Likud coalition. He became Likud’s first prime minister and continued to 1983.
(AP, 6/21/97)(WSJ, 4/29/98, p.A22)(Econ, 7/28/12, SR p.8)
1977 Jun 22, Walt Disney’s film “The Rescuers" was released.
(www.bcdb.com/bcdb/cartoon.cgi?film=40&cartoon=The%20Rescuers)
1977 Jun 22, John N. Mitchell became the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up. He was released 19 months later. Maurice Stans (d.1998 at 90), Nixon’s commerce secretary and fund-raiser, was indicted with Mr. Mitchell for perjury and conspiracy involving a $200,000 contribution by Robert Vesco, but were acquitted by a jury.
(AP, 6/22/97)(SFC, 4/15/98, p.C3)
1977 Jun 23, The Brazil congress legalized divorce with a constitutional amendment, despite opposition from Roman Catholic Church. The amendment would be signed into law by President Ernesto Geisel.
(www.wiwomensnetwork.org/chrontwo1.html)
1977 Jun 24, The IRS revealed that Pres. Jimmy Carter paid no taxes in 1976.
(www.kipnotes.com/James%20E.%20Carter.htm)
1977 Jun 26, In Columbia, Tenn., 42 people were killed when a fire sent toxic smoke pouring through the Maury County Jail.
(AP, 6/26/97)
1977 Jun 27, The US Supreme Court struck, in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, down state laws and bar association rules that had prohibited lawyers from advertising their fees for routine services.
(AP, 6/27/08)
1977 Jun 27, Illinois reinstated capital punishment.
(http://tinyurl.com/y5tlmltz)
1977 Jun 27, The Republic of Djibouti gained independence from France with Hassan Gouled as the first president.
(SFC, 12/28/02, p.A6)(AP, 6/27/07)(Econ, 3/22/08, p.55)
1977 Jun 27, H.E. Lee Kuan Yew, the PM of Singapore, formally opened the Fourth Meeting of the ASEAN Economic Ministers which was held in Singapore on 27-29 June 1977.
(www.aseansec.org/1287.htm)
1977 Jun 28, The US Supreme Court allowed Federal control of Nixon tapes and papers.
(www.kipnotes.com/James%20E.%20Carter.htm)
1977 Jun 28, In Albania Koco Plaku, an engineer, was executed following a closed-door trial two years after he was arrested in 1975. He had been convicted of "sabotage" and "espionage" over fishing hooks given to him by a Russian friend. He was among more than 5,000 executed during the communist era in Albania.
(AFP, 5/07/19)
1977 Jun 30, President Jimmy Carter announced his opposition to the B-1 bomber.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1977 Jun 30, SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), the regional defense organization created to protect members from communist expansionism, formally ended. The organization had been created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty on Sep. 8, 1954, in response to events in Korea and Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos). It members were Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Pakistan withdrew in 1968 and France withdrew financial support. SEATO had one final exercise on Feb. 20, 1976, formally ending a little over a year later.
(HNQ, 4/2/01)
1977 Jun, In Florida the Elderhostel site at Eckerd College was founded. It was an education program for vacationing seniors.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.T12)
1977 Jul 2, Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born author, died in Switzerland. In 1996 a 3-volume collection of his prose work was issued by the Library of America. In 1999 Kurt Johnson and Steven Coates authored "Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius."
(WSJ, 4/22/99, A20)(SFEC, 10/17/99, BR p.4)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nabokov.htm)
1977 Jul 3, Raymond Damadian produced the 1st image of a human chest using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In 1970 he found that cancer cells could be distinguished from healthy tissues using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).
(Econ, 12/6/03, TQp.15)
1977 Jul 5, Pakistan's army under Gen Mohammad Zia ul-Haq seized power. The civilian government was ousted by the military and martial law was imposed.
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.B3)(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)(www.ppp.org.pk/history.html)
1977 Jul 7, Sir Michael Tippett (1905-1998), British composer, premiered his 4th opera "The Ice Break," which featured a race riot and a psychedelic sequence.
(www.michael-tippett.com/operaintroibreng.htm)
1977 Jul 11, The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a White House ceremony.
(AP, 7/11/97)
1977 Jul 11, The CRAY 1-A was delivered to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). This was Cray Research's first official customer, paying US$8.86 million ($7.9 million plus $1 million for the disks).
(www.cisl.ucar.edu/computers/gallery/cray/cray1.jsp)
1977 Jul 11, In Argentina Bishop Carlos Horacio Ponce de Leon (b.1914) died in a car accident while driving with Victor Oscar Martinez to deliver evidence of junta crimes to the Vatican’s representative. The evidence disappeared.
(SFC, 4/21/11, p.A2)(http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Horacio_Ponce_de_Le%C3%B3n)
1977 Jul 12, President Carter defended Supreme Court decisions limiting government payments for poor women's abortions, saying, "There are many things in life that are not fair."
(AP, 7/12/97)
1977 Jul 13, A 25-hour power blackout hit the New York City area and looters rampaged in the city after lightning struck upstate power lines. Some 9 million people were affected.
(TMC, 1994, p.1977)(AP, 7/13/97)(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A7)
1977 Jul 14, US House Resolution 658 established a permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
(http://intelligence.house.gov/Faqs.aspx)
1977 Jul 20, A flash flood hit Johnstown, Pa., killing more than 80 people and causing $350 million worth of damage.
(AP, 7/20/08)
1977 Jul 20, The UN Security Council voted to admit Vietnam to the world body.
(AP, 7/20/07)
1977 Jul 22, In Iowa John Schweer, a retired white police officer, was murdered. In 1978 Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, both black men, were wrongfully convicted and served 25 years in prison before they were freed in 2003. Both men filed suits in 2005 against prosecutors and police officers of Council Bluffs. In 2012 a jury failed to reach a verdict and a judge declared a mistrial.
(http://tinyurl.com/9xeb75v)(SFC, 10/29/12, p.A6)(SFC, 12/15/12, p.A7)
1977 Jul 22, In China Deng Xiaoping was named vice-premier.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1977 Jul 22, The Chinese painter, Pan Yu-liang (b.1895), died in Paris. The 1997 biographical film "The Painter" (La Peintre) was based on her biography by Shi Nan.
(SFC, 8/20/97, p.A1)(www.chinadaily.com.cn/photo/2006-11/14/content_732470.htm)
1977 Jul 23, A jury in Washington, D.C., convicted 12 Hanafi Muslims of charges stemming from the hostage siege at three buildings the previous March.
(AP, 7/23/98)
1977 Jul 23, In Sri Lanka Junius Richard Jayewardene (1906-1996) was elected prime minister. Immediately thereafter, he drew up a national constitution which created an Executive Presidency with drastic and unchecked powers, and, on its adoption into law, became, in 1978, the first Sri Lankan Executive President.
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junius_Richard_Jayewardene)
1977 Jul 27, Lee Miller (b.1907), American photographer, died of cancer in Sussex, England. As a young woman in Paris she moved in with Man Ray, American-born surrealist painter and photographer. In 2005 Carolyn Burke authored “Lee Miller: A Life."
(Econ, 12/3/05, p.81)(http://tinyurl.com/9zcyr)
1977 Jul 28, Roy Wilkins turned over leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to Benjamin L. Hooks (d.2010 at 85). Hoods continued as executive director to 1992. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor in 2007.
(AP, 7/28/00)(SFC, 4/16/10, p.C8)
1977 Jun 28, The 1st Prudhoe Bay oil of the Alaska pipeline reached the port of Valdez as construction of the Trans-Alaskan pipeline was completed.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/pipelinefacts.html)
1977 Aug 1, Francis Gary Powers (b.1929), US U-2 pilot, died in fiery helicopter crash. In 2012 he was awarded a Silver Star for his 2-year imprisonment by the Soviets following the downing of his U-2 spy plane in 1960.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gary_Powers)(SFC, 6/16/12, p.A4)
1977 Aug 1, In Uruguay teacher Julio Castro disappeared. His remains were identified in 2011 using DNA tests.
(AP, 12/1/11)
1977 Aug 3, Radio Shack issued a press release introducing the TRS-80 computer. 25 existed and within weeks thousands were ordered.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80)
1977 Aug 3, Archbishop Makarios (b.1913), president of Cyprus, died.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A26)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makarios)
1977 Aug 4, President Carter signed a measure establishing the Department of Energy.
(AP, 8/4/97)
1977 Aug 4, In San Francisco some 50 elderly tenants of the International Hotel in Chinatown were forcefully evicted by police as thousands of protestors filled the streets. The structure was demolished in 1979 and a hole occupied the site. In 2004 city officials declared a 2-block corridor on Kearny as “Manilatown" as construction rose on 14-story Int’l. Hotel Senior Residences. In 2007 Estella Habal authored “San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement."
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.A30)(SFC, 8/1/97, p.A25)(eyewitness)(SFC, 6/8/01, WBa p.6)(SFC, 7/24/02, p.A17)(SFC, 7/28/04, p.B1)(SSFC, 8/19/07, p.M1)
1977 Aug 7, "Shenandoah" closed at Alvin Theater in NYC after 1,050 performances.
(www.angelfire.com/stars/scottbakula/Theatrecredits.html)
1977 Aug 10, US and Panama negotiations for a Panama Canal Zone treaty, begun on February 15, were completed [see Sep 7].
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrijos-Carter_Treaties)
1977 Aug 10, Postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested in Yonkers, NY, accused of being the "Son of Sam" gunman responsible for six slayings and seven woundings. Berkowitz was sentenced to six consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences.
(AP, 8/10/07)
1977 Aug 11, The California legislature restored the death penalty.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.G8)(www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=48)
1977 Aug 12, The space shuttle Enterprise passed its first solo flight test by taking off atop a Boeing 747, separating and then touching down in California's Mojave Desert.
(AP, 8/12/97)
1977 Aug 12, NASA launched the High Energy Astronomy Observatory 1 into Earth orbit. It continued operating until January 9, 1979.
(http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/heao1/heao1.html)
1977 Aug 15, Police in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, found Mary Parsh (58) and her daughter, Brenda (27), lying nude side by side on a bed at home, their hands tied behind their backs. Each had been shot in the head. In 2007 Timothy Krajcir (63), a graduate from Southern Illinois with a degree in law enforcement, confessed to their rape and murder and at least 4 more. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 1982 killing of a Southern Illinois University Carbondale student, Deborah Sheppard. and, in addition, was charged with five counts of murder and three counts of rape against women in the Cape Girardeau, Missouri, area from 1977 to 1982. In 2008, Krajcir pleaded guilty and was sentenced to another 40 years in prison for the 1978 killing of Marion resident Virginia Lee Witte.
(AP, 12/12/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Krajcir)
1977 Aug 16, In San Francisco some 16 thousand kids paid $6.50 apiece to watch the Kiss concert at the Cow Palace.
(SFC, 7/22/17, p.C1)
1977 Aug 16, Elvis Presley (b.1935), The "King" of rock-n-roll, died in the upstairs bedroom suite at Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tenn. of a drug overdose at 42. Elvis died of heart failure after years of substance abuse. In 1994 Peter Guralnick published "Last Train to Memphis," the first of a 2-part biography on Elvis. In 1998 Guralnick published "Careless Love." More than 150 books were in print on Elvis in 1997. In 1998 Ernest Jorgensen published "Elvis Presley: A Life in Music. The Complete Recording sessions."
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Par p.7)(SFEC, 8/3/97, DB p.33)(AP, 8/16/97)(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.D7)(WSJ, 1/7/98, p.W1)
1977 Aug 18, In South Africa Steve Biko and Peter Jones were picked up by police at Grahamstown. They were arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967. Biko suffered a major head injury while in police custody, was chained to a window grille for a day and died on Sep 12.
(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko)
1977 Aug 19, Comedian Groucho Marx died in Los Angeles at age 86. In 1996 Steven Stolier authored "Raised Eyebrows." In 2000 Stefan Kanfer authored "Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx." Simon Louvish authored "Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers."
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.A26)(AP, 8/19/97)(WSJ, 5/12/00, p.W8)(SFEC, 6/25/00, Par p.16)
1977 Aug 20, The song "Best of My Love", by the Emotions, topped the US pop charts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_My_Love_(The_Emotions_song))
1977 Aug 20, The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. It was scheduled to pass Jupiter and Saturn.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(MofE, 1978, p.41)(AP, 8/20/97)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)
1977 Aug 23, The Gossamer Condor 2 flew the first figure-of-eight, a distance of 2,172 meters winning the first Kremer prize at Minter Field in Shafter, California. It was built by Dr Paul B. MacCready and piloted by amateur cyclist and hang-glider pilot Bryan Allen.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Condor)
1977 Aug 23, Marxist philosopher Rudolf Bahro was imprisoned in German DR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bahro)
1977 Aug 27, "Chicago" closed at 46th St Theater in NYC after 947 performances.
(www.curtainup.com/chicago.html)
1977 Aug 28, Ralph Samuelson (b.1904), the acknowledged father of water skiing, died on Pine Island, Minnesota.
(ON, 8/12, p.12)( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Samuelson)
1977 Aug 30, Terrorists bombed a PG&E substation in Sausalito, Ca. Power was cut off for 6,000 customers and storm drains were flooded with some 3,200 gallons of coolant oil.
(SFC, 8/30/02, p.E2)
1977 Aug 31, Ian Smith, espousing racial segregation, won the Rhodesian general election with 80% of overwhelmingly white electorate's vote.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia_general_election%2C_1977)
1977 Aug, The Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party constituted itself as "The General Staff of Revolution."
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)
1977 Aug, Japan’s PM Fukuda visited 5 ASEAN nations and in Manila promised SE Asia that Japan forever renounced aggression against its neighbors. This became known as the Fukuda doctrine.
(Econ, 12/15/07, p.52)(www.jimin.jp/jimin/english/history/chap8.html)
1977 Sep 1, Ethel Waters (b.1896), African-American blues and jazz vocalist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Waters)
1977 Sep 2, Italian journalist Indro Montanelli (1909-2001) was shot in the legs by the Red Brigades. In 1969 he acknowledged having had a 12-year-old Eritrean bride during Italy’s colonial occupation in the 1930s. Montanelli was one of Italy’s most revered journalists, honored by the Vienna-based International Press Institute in 2000 as among the 50 World Press Freedom Heroes.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indro_Montanelli)(AP, 6/14/20)
1977 Sep 3, The "Mary Tyler Moore Show" was last broadcast on NBC-TV.
(www.sitcomsonline.com/themarytylermooreshow.html)
1977 Sep 3, In Cyprus Spyros Kyprianou (1932-2002) was elected president with no opposition in order to serve the remaining term of Archbishop Makarios.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyros_Kyprianou)
1977 Sep 3, Japan's Sadaharu Oh hit his 756th HR to surpass Hank Aaron's total.
(www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Sadaharu_Oh)
1977 Sep 4, The Golden Dragon Massacre occurred in San Francisco’s Chinatown. 5 people were killed and 11 wounded, none of them gang members, during a shootout between the rival Wah Ching and Joe Boys. Four men were convicted. In 1999 Bill Lee, a former gang member, published "Chinese Playground," a memoir of his experiences in the 60s and 70s. Assailant Curtis Tam was released in 1991 after he testified against two others. In 2015 assailant Melvin Yu was paroled. Peter Ng remained in prison in Vacaville. Tom Yu, the chief plotter and not at the scene, was up for parole in 2017.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A18)(SFEC, 5/2/99, BR p.6)(SSFC, 9/3/17, p.A14,15)
1977 Sep 5, The United States launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft two weeks after launching its twin, Voyager 2.
(AP, 9/5/97)
1977 Sep 5, West German industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer was kidnapped in Cologne by members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Schleyer was later killed by his captors. Schleyer was the president of the German Employers Federation.
(AP, 9/5/97)(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A1)
1977 Sep 7, Pres. Carter and Gen'l. Torrijos signed the Panama Canal treaties (the Torrijos-Carter Treaties) in Washington, DC. The 2 treaties abrogated the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty of 1903 and called for the US to eventually turn over control of the waterway to Panama. The US Southern Command was scheduled to withdraw to new Miami headquarters by the end of 1999. The US agreed to clean up its bases before turning them over. The deal was negotiated by Sol Linowitz (d.2005).
(AP, 9/7/97)(WSJ, 3/21/05, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrijos-Carter_Treaties)
1977 Sep 7, Convicted Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy was released from prison after more than four years.
(AP, 9/7/97)
1977 Sep 8, Zero Mostel (b.1915), Brooklyn-born stage and film comedian, died of a heart attack.
(SFC, 12/30/99, p.E3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Mostel)
1977 Sep 9, Mary Ann Quigley (17) was killed near War Memorial Park in Santa Clara, Ca. In 2006 Richard Armand Archibeque (47) was arrested for her rape and murder based on DNA evidence. They had been classmates at Santa Clara High School.
(SFC, 12/30/06, p.B2)
1977 Sep 10, Convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, became the last person to date to be executed by the guillotine in France.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Z1 p.6)(AP, 9/10/97)
1977 Sep 11, Lou Ellen Burleigh (21) of Walnut Creek, Ca., went missing. Roger Kibbe was later identified as a suspect confessed to her rape and murder. In 2009 Kibbe, who had become known as the I-5 strangler, was convicted of her murder and that of 5 others. In 2011 remains of Burleigh were found in a dry riverbed near Lake Berryessa.
(SFC, 6/28/11, p.C6)
1977 Sep 11, In South Africa Steve Biko was found by a guard to be semiconscious and foaming at the mouth. A doctor ordered him transported to a prison hospital in Pretoria.
(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.A9)
1977 Sep 12, Robert Lowell (b.1917), US poet (Near the Ocean), died of a heart attack in NYC. In 2003 Frank Bidart and David Gewanter edited "Robert Lowell: Collected Poems." In 2005 Saskia Hamilton edited “The Letters of Robert Lowell."
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rlowell.htm)(SSFC, 7/13/03, p.M6)(Econ, 7/25/05, p.73)
1977 Sep 12, In South Africa Steven Biko died while under police custody. He headed the Black Consciousness Movement and was the country’s best known political dissident. He was detained and held in Port Elizabeth and later driven naked in a truck 700 miles to Pretoria where he died in a prison cell. In 1997 the five police officers involved in his detention filed for amnesty. They were retired Col. Harold Snyman, retired Lt. Col. Gideon Nieuwoudt, Ruben Marx, Johan Beneke, and then Capt. Daantjie Siebert. In 1999 former Detective Sgt. Gideon Nieuwoudt was denied amnesty because he denied any crime. This killing was the breaking point and led to international protests and a UN imposed arms embargo.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A7)(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.A9)(AP, 9/12/97)(SFEC, 1/10/99, p.A23)(MC, 9/12/01)
1977 Sep 13, General Motors introduced 1st US diesel auto, the Oldsmobile 88.
(http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/09/today-in-hist-2.html)
1977 Sep 13, Kilauea volcano began erupting in Hawaii.
(http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/gallery/kilauea/erz/kiai.html)
1977 Sep 13, Leopold Stokowski (b.1882)), conductor, died in Hampshire, England. He was the founder of the New York City Symphony and The American Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the music for and appeared in Disney’s Fantasia.
(WSJ, 8/6/97, p.A12)(AP, 9/13/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Stokowski)
1977 Sep 16, Maria Callas, "our century’s greatest singer," the American-born prima donna famed for her lyric soprano and fiery temperament, died in Paris at age 53. In 1998 EMI packaged her entire catalog on 70 compact disks.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.D1)(AP, 9/16/97)(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A16)
1977 Sep 18, Cosmos, a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite, was launched. It fell onto Northern Canada on Jan. 24, 1978.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.A1)
1977 Sep 20, The first wave of Southeast Asian "boat people" arrived in San Francisco under a new U.S. resettlement program.
(AP, 9/20/97)
1977 Sep 21, After weeks of controversy over past business and banking practices, President Carter's embattled budget director, Bert Lance, resigned.
(AP, 9/21/97)
1977 Sep 24, ABC launched the TV series “The Love Boat." The series continued to 1986 with Gavin MacLeod as the commander of the Pacific Princess.
(www.tvland.com/shows/loveboat/main.jhtml)(SSFC, 3/9/08, p.D3)
1977 Sep 26, Sir Freddie Laker began his cut-rate "Skytrain" service from London to NY. Laker airways collapsed into bankruptcy in 1982.
(SSFC, 2/12/06, p.B8)(www.cnn.com/almanac/9709/26/)
1977 Sep 26, Israel announced a cease-fire on Lebanese border.
(HN, 9/26/99)
1977 Sep 27, Japan Airlines Flight 715, a DC-8, crashed into a hill in bad weather while attempting to land at the Kuala Lumpur Subang Airport. 34 people, including 8 of the 10 crew members and 26 of the 69 passengers, were killed when the aircraft broke on impact.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines)
1977 Sep 28, The Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines plane over India. The Douglas DC-8, en route from Paris to Haneda Airport in Tokyo with 156 people on board, stopped in Mumbai, India. After taking off from Mumbai, five armed JRA members hijacked the aircraft and ordered it flown to Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Japanese government freed 6 imprisoned members of the group and paid $6 million in ransom. On October 2 the hijackers released 118 passengers and crewmembers. The remaining hostages were freed later.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines)
1977 Sep, In Philadelphia Helen "Holly" Maddux, a Bryn Mawr College graduate from Tyler, Texas, was murdered and stuffed into a steamer trunk for 18 months until her body was discovered. Ira Einhorn, "hippie guru" was arrested for the murder in 1979 but released on bail. He fled to hide in France. Fred Maddux, Holly's father, committed suicide in 1988. Einhorn was convicted in absentia in 1993. In June,1997, he was arrested in France. A French court ruled against extradition and released Einhorn. Einhorn was arrested in 1998 under a new extradition warrant. The events were broadcast as a TV crime story in 1999 titled "The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer." In 1999 The French Supreme Court ruled that Einhorn should be returned to the US. In 1999 a civil suit ordered Einhorn to pay $907 million to the Maddux family. Einhorn was extradited to the US in 2001. he was convicted of murder Oct 17, 2002.
(SFC, 6/17/97, p.A2)(SFC,12/5/97, p.A17)(SFC, 9/22/98, p.A3)(WSJ, 5/3/99, p.A20)(WSJ, 5/12/99, p.A23)(SFC, 5/28/99, p.D3)(SFC, 7/29/99, p.A8)(SFC, 7/20/01, p.A14)(SFC, 10/18/02, p.A7)
1977 Oct 3, In India Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was arrested for political corruption. She was released the next day.
(http://tinyurl.com/2xq3bt)
1977 Oct 5, Seamus Costello (b.1939), founder of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), was shot to death by an Irish Republican Army member in Dublin.
(AP, 10/11/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Costello)
1977 Oct 8, In Missouri Joseph Paul Franklin (1950-2013), a white supremacist who targeted blacks and Jews, killed Gerald Gordon in a sniper shooting at the Richmond Heights Brith Shalom synagogue.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Paul_Franklin)(SFC, 11/21/13, p.A10)
1977 Oct 12, The US government passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which required banks to serve their entire community. The intent was to ensure that adequate loans were made to low and moderate income neighborhoods and that those areas had access to bank branches and other banking services.
(www.newrules.org/finance/cra.html)
1977 Oct 12, The US Supreme Court ruled that communities have a right to prevent commuters from parking in residential neighborhoods.
(SFC, 10/11/02, p.E7)
1977 Oct 12, US Supreme Court heard arguments in the "reverse discrimination" case of Allan Bakke (35), a white student denied admission to U of California Med School.
(www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1977/1977_76_811/)
1977 Oct 13, A Lufthansa Boeing 737, bound for Frankfurt, was hijacked by Palestinians shortly after take-off. The plane is diverted to Rome's Fiumicino Airport. Almost all of the passengers are German vacationers. "This is Captain Martyr Mohammed speaking," announces one of the hijackers to the Rome air-traffic controllers. "The group I represent demands the release of our comrades in German prisons [see Oct 18].
(www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1977.html)
1977 Oct 14, Bing Crosby (b.1903), singer and actor, died on a golf course outside Madrid at age 74. In 2001 Gary Giddins authored "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: The Early Years: 1903-1940."
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)(AP, 10/14/97)(SSFC, 1/21/01, DB p.33)
1977 Oct 18, The New York Yankees won Game 6 and the World Series as Reggie Jackson hit 3 homeruns for the 8-4 win.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_World_Series)
1977 Oct 18, In West Germany 3 Baader-Meinhof gang members killed themselves in prison. Gudrun Ensslin (b.1940), a founding leader of the Red Army Faction (RAF), died in prison. Ensslin's life story was later fictionalized in the film “Marianne and Juliane" (1981). This date was later used as a title by artist Gerhard Richter in a 1988 suite of 15 pictures. He created the series of paintings titled "October 18, 1977" regarded by many as a "eulogy or requiem" for the Baader-Meinhof group. In 1985 Stefan Aust authored “The Baader-Meinhof Complex." In 2009 Aust published an updated version titled Baader-Meinhof: the Inside Story of the R.A.F."
(WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A19)(WSJ, 3/1/02, p.A11)(WSJ, 4/3/09, p.A15)(Econ, 5/30/09, p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudrun_Ensslin)
1977 Oct 18, West German commandos stormed a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner that was on the ground in Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages and killing three of the four hijackers, Palestinians of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In 1996 Suhaila al-Sayeh was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a German court.
(SFC, 11/20/96, p.A17)(AP, 10/17/07)
1977 Oct 19, The body of West German industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, who had been kidnapped by left-wing extremists, was found in the trunk of a car in Mulhouse, France.
(AP, 10/19/97)
1977 Oct 19, The supersonic Concorde made its first landing in New York City.
(AP, 10/19/97)
1977 Oct 20, David Mamet's play, "Life in the Theater," opened in NYC. It was first produced in Chicago at the Goodman Theater's Stage Two, opening February 3, 1977.
(www.theatrewesternsprings.com/Actives/archives/LifeTheatre/LifeInTheTheatre.htm)
1977 Oct 20, Three members of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd were killed in the crash of a chartered plane near McComb, Miss.
(AP, 10/20/97)
1977 Oct 20, A bloodless military coup was staged in Thailand. Kriangsak Chomanan was appointed prime minister, Thailand's 15th since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.
(AP, 12/23/03)(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A12)
1977 Oct 22, In West Virginia the New River Gorge Bridge was opened to traffic.
(www.officialbridgeday.com/facts.html)
1977 Oct 26, The experimental space shuttle Enterprise glided to a bumpy but successful landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
(AP, 10/26/97)
1977 Oct 26, James Castle (b.1899), Idaho-born self-taught deaf artist, died in Boise.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Charles_Castle)(SFC, 2/27/10, p.E3)
1977 Oct 27, James M. Cain (b.1892), member of the "hard-boiled" school of crime fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, died in Maryland. Three of his novels, “The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1934), “Double Indemnity" (1936), and Mildred Pierce" (1941), were made into classics of the American screen.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cain)
1977 Oct 28, The US Congress passed Int'l. Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). This authorized the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the US. Pres. Carter signed the legislation on Dec. 28.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Economic_Powers_Act)
1977 Oct, Pakistan’s Gen. Zia ul-Haq (1924-1988) announced the postponement of the electoral plan and decided to start an accountability process of the politicians.
(www.storyofpakistan.com/person.asp?perid=P020&Pg=2)
1977 Oct, Spain's government and the oppositon signed agreements on economic measures known as the Moncloa Pacts, named for Adolfo Suarez Gonzalez's official residence where leaders the major political parties met and agreed to share the costs of, and the responsibility for economic reforms.
(http://countrystudies.us/spain/25.htm)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.37)
1977 Nov 4, Former CIA director Richard Helms was sentenced for withholding information on CIA operations in Chile.
(SFC, 9/17/97, p.A3)
1977 Nov 5, Guy Lombardo (b.1902), Canada-born orchestra leader, died in Houston, Texas.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0518456/)
1977 Nov 6, San Francisco marijuana smokers held "A Day on the Grass" smoke-in at the Civic Center as the 59th Veterans Day Parade took place.
(SFC, 11/1/02, p.E7)
1977 Nov 6, In Georgia, USA, 39 people were killed when an earthen dam burst, sending a wall of water through Toccoa Falls Bible College.
(AP, 11/6/97)
1977 Nov 8, In San Francisco 154 candidates ran for 11 district seats for the Board of Supervisors. Voters elected all 6 incumbent Board of Supervisors: Robert Gonzales, Gordon Lau, Dianne Feinstein, John Molinari, Quentin Kopp and Ronald Pelosi; newcomers on the city’s first district-elected board included Harvey Milk, Carol Ruth Silver, Dan White, Lee Dolson and Ella Hill Hutch. Dan White, former police officer, was forced to resign from his job as a firefighter the next month.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.A25)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)(SFC, 11/7/02, p.E2)(SSFC, 2/28/10, p.E2)
1977 Nov 12, New Orleans elected its first black mayor, Ernest "Dutch" Morial, the winner of a runoff.
(AP, 11/12/07)
1977 Nov 13, The comic strip "Li'l Abner" appeared in newspapers for the last time as creator Al Capp (1909-1979) retired. He had started the strip 1934.
(AP, 11/13/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li'l_Abner)
1977 Nov 14, Swami Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna Hindu sect, died. He passed succession to 11 separate disciples.
(SFC, 2/13/01, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._C._Bhaktivedanta_Swami_Prabhupada)
1977 Nov 15, Pres. Jimmy Carter welcomed the Shah of Iran to Washington, DC.
(http://tinyurl.com/2rhmfk)(www.kipnotes.com/James%20E.%20Carter.htm)
1977 Nov 15, Megumi Yokota (13) disappeared after school in Niigata, Japan. It was later suspected that she, and possibly 9 others, had been kidnapped by North Korea. Shigeru Yokota (d.2020) found out 20 years later that his daughter had been abducted to North Korea. In 2002 N. Korea admitted the kidnapping. In 2014 Yokota's parents spent several days with their 26-year old granddaughter, Kim Eun Gyong, in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megumi_Yokota)(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.A25)(SFC, 9/18/02, p.A10)(Reuters, 3/16/14)(AP, 6/6/20)
1977 Nov 16, Oksana Baiul, Ukraine figure skater (Olympic-gold-1994), was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oksana_Baiul)
1977 Nov 17, The "Elephant Man," by Bernard Pomerance (b.1940), premiered in London.
(www.answers.com/topic/1977)
1977 Nov 19, The Libyan flag was adopted, after Libya left the Federation of Arabs Republic, which consisted of Libya, Egypt and Syria.
(www.worldflags101.com/l/libya-flag.aspx)
1977 Nov 19, Egyptian Pres. Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel. Peace talks began in the Middle East with Sadat going to Israel.
(TMC, 1994, p.1977)(AP, 11/19/97)
1977 Nov 19, A cyclone and tidal wave hit Andhra Pradesh, India. Entire villages were submerged by tidal waves with an estimated 10-20 thousand people killed.
(www.emergency-management.net/cyclone.htm)(SFC, 11/1/99, p.A11)(AP, 11/21/02)
1977 Nov 20, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to address Israel's parliament.
(AP, 11/20/97)
1977 Nov 21, The 1st commercial flight of the Anglo-French Concorde jet was from London to Bahrain.
(www.britishairways.com/concorde/faq.html#4)
1977 Nov 22, Regular passenger service between New York and Europe on the supersonic Concorde began on a trial basis.
(AP, 11/22/97)
1977 Nov 24, Greeks announced the discovery of the tomb of King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1977 Nov 28, "Elvis", the stage musical, starring P.J. Proby, Shakin' Stevens, and Timothy Whitnall playing The King at three different stages of his life, opened in London.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/forevershakin/concerts/1977-79ElvisMusical/)
1977 Nov 28, "The Honeymooners Christmas," directed by Jackie Gleason, aired on TV.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0445437/)
1977 Nov 28, Trevor Bardette (b. 1902), American film and TV actor, died. His over 172 movies and seventy-two TV appearances included Old Man Clanton in Wyatt Earp.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Bardette)
1977 Nov 30, Terence Rattigan (b.1911), English playwright, died. In 1997 Geoffrey Wansell wrote his biography.
(SFC, 6/23/97, p.E3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Rattigan)
1977 Nov, The Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded with headquarters in Los Angeles as an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust.
(www.moreorless.au.com/heroes/wiesenthal.html)
1977 Nov, In Argentina Hilda Palacios, Humberto Brandalisi, Carlos Laja and Ruben Cardozo were kidnapped. Prosecutors later said they were taken to the clandestine prison and torture center known as La Perla on the outskirts of Cordoba and killed the following month. Their bodies were then dumped in the street to make it look like they died in a shootout with officials. In 2008 former army chief Luciano Benjamin Menendez (81) was convicted of kidnapping, torturing and killing the left-wing militants. He was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 5/27/08)(AP, 7/24/08)
1977 Dec 4, Neil Simon's "Chapter Two," premiered in NYC.
(http://web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/simon.html)(http://tinyurl.com/yvtv65)
1977 Dec 4, Jean-Bedel Bokassa (1921-1996), ruler of the Central African Empire, crowned himself emperor in a ceremony duplicating the coronation of Napoleon. It was believed to have cost more than $100 ($25) million. Bokassa was deposed in 1979.
(AP, 12/4/97)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-B%C3%A9del_Bokassa)
1977 Dec 6, SF FBI agents arrested James "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno (64), a reportedly leading West Coast Mafia figure.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1977 Dec 7, Peter Carl Goldmark (b.1906), Hungarian-born engineer, died in the US. He developed the first commercial color television and the long-playing phonograph record. Goldmark's LP records were introduced by Goddard Lieberson (1911-977), who later became president of Columbia Records (1956-1971 and 1973-1975).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carl_Goldmark)
1977 Dec 8, In Argentina Leonie Duquet, a French nun, was abducted in a commando-style operation by state security agents. Alice Domon, another French nun, was abducted later this month, but her remains were never recovered. They were killed after befriending mothers of detained dissidents, who were among the first victims of a crackdown on dissent against the 1976-83 dictatorship. In 2011 an Argentine court charged three former police officers with killing five women, including Duquet and Domon, during the country's 1976-1983 "dirty war" by throwing them out of an airplane while still alive. In 2011 Alfredo Astiz (59), a former navy spy known as "the Angel of Death," was convicted in the disappearances of French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet.
(AP, 12/9/07)(AFP, 6/3/11)(AP, 10/26/11)
1977 Dec 9, In LA Laker forward Kermit Washington punched Houston Rocket forward Rudy Tomjanovich during a basketball game. In 2002 John Feinstein authored "The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever."
(SSFC, 12/8/02, p.M3)
1977 Dec 9, Clarice Lispector (b.1920), Ukraine-born Brazilian-Jewish writer, died in Brazil. From 1952-1959 she lived in the US. Her books included “The Passion According to G.H" (1964). In 2009 Benjamin Moser authored “Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector)
1977 Dec 10, In Argentina Azucena Villaflor, along with mothers Esther Ballestrino de Careaga and Maria Eugenia Ponce de Bianco, were kidnapped by state security agents. In 2005 Investigators recovered the remains of Villaflor and 2 colleagues at a rural cemetery. Villaflor had founded the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the legendary protest group against Argentina's Dirty War. In 2011 Alfredo Astiz (59), a former navy spy known as "the Angel of Death," was convicted in the disappearance of Azucena Villaflor.
(AP, 7/8/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azucena_Villaflor)(AP, 10/26/11)
1977 Dec 10, On UN Human Rights Day, the Soviet Union placed 20 prominent dissidents under house arrest, cutting off telephones and threatening to break up a planned silent demonstration in Moscow’s Pushkin Square.
(HN, 12/10/98)
1977 Dec 12, Dr. Grethe Rask (b.1930) from Denmark died of Pneumocystis carinii. She had done research in Africa. Her symptoms had been manifesting in Dec 1976 and she was hospitalized in Africa. In November 1977 after a brief recovery, she decided it was time to go home to die. A colleague saw the wasting, and did an autopsy, where P. carinii was found. She is believed to be one of the first documented cases of probable AIDS infection.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grethe_Rask)
1977 Dec 14, The film "Saturday Night Fever," starring John Travolta, premiered in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Fever)
1977 Dec 14, The South African government eased job restrictions on blacks.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1977 Dec 15, Charles Finley sold his Oakland A’s baseball team to Marvin Davis for a reported $12.5 million. A lease with the Oakland Coliseum was still a problem.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.E8)
1977 Dec 16, The movie "Saturday Night Fever," starring John Travolta as a Brooklyn disco dancer, opened in wide release.
(AP, 12/16/07)
1977 Dec 18, Cyril Ritchard (b.1897), Australia-born actor, died. He was awarded a Tony in 1955 for Supporting Actor in the musical “Peter Pan."
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0728509/bio)
1977 Dec 19, Pres. Jimmy Carter signed into law the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The act made it a crime for a US citizen to pay bribes to win contracts abroad. The Lockheed Corp. had bribed Japanese officials for business contracts and caused a furor that brought down the Tokyo government and inspired the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the US.
(SFC, 4/8/96, p.A-8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act)
1977 Dec 20, Bodies of women began to wash up on a beach in southern Argentina. They were among the leaders of the "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo" representing relatives of thousands of disappeared. The US soon learned that the ruling junta was responsible. The Carter administration went on to authorize $120 million in military sales and approved over 30 training slots for Argentine officers at US military installations.
(SFC, 12/17/02, p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Domon)
1977 Dec 22, Steve Cauthen (b.1960), Kentucky-born jockey, won his 355th race at age 16 setting a new earnings record.
(www.liketelevision.com/liketelevision/tuner.php?channel=357&format=tv&theme=history)
1977 Dec 22, Thomas Helms (26) climbed to the edge of the observation deck on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building, and jumped intending to kill himself on the streets 1000s of feet below. He only fell twenty feet before landing on a narrow ledge on the 85th floor. Helms suffered no major injuries but was knocked unconscious for half-an-hour--adequate time for an emergency crew to bring him safely inside.
(www.funtrivia.com/en/Humanities/Architecture-1944.html)
1977 Dec 22, Three dozen people were killed when a 250-foot-high grain elevator at the Continental Grain Co. plant in Westwego, La., exploded.
(AP, 12/22/97)
1977 Dec 25, Israeli PM Menachem Begin met Egyptian Pres. Sadat (1918-1981) in Egypt.
(www.washington-report.org/backissues/1098/9810083.html)
1977 Dec 25, Comedian Sir Charles Chaplin died in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland at age 88. In 2006 Richard Schickel edited “The Essential Chaplin."
(AP, 4/16/00)(WSJ, 6/23/06, p.W6)
1977 Dec 30, Ted Bundy (1946-1989), serial killer, escaped from jail in Colorado. His absence was not noticed until the next day. He was re-captured in Florida on February 15, 1978, after 3 more murders.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy)
1977 Dec 26, In Brazil law #6,515 established the Divorce Act.
(www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Brazil.htm)
1977 Dec 31, "Bubbling Brown Sugar" closed at ANTA Theater NYC after 766 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbling_Brown_Sugar)
1977 Dec 31, Cambodia broke relations with Vietnam.
(HN, 12/31/98)
1977 Dec, In California Richard Phillips of Orange County murdered contractor Bruce Bartulis in Madera County. Phillips had enlisted Bartulis and another contractor in a plot to smuggle cocaine and provide stolen insulation and was convicted of murder in 1980. In 2013 the US Supreme Court refused to reinstate a death sentence against Phillips (63).
(SFC, 4/30/13, p.C2)
1977 Dec, In Chicago a gang of burglars decided to break into the home of Tony Accardo (d.1992), one of the most powerful men in organized crime history, and rob his basement vault. 6 men Accardo blamed for the heist were swiftly hunted down and murdered.
(AP, 6/18/07)
1977 Dec, In South Africa journalist Donald Woods received a package containing children’s t-shirts laced with acid. His young daughter was badly burned and he blamed South African authorities.
(Econ, 11/6/10, p.74)
1977 Artist Walter De Maria (1935-2013) created “The Lightning Field," a land-art piece in New Mexico consisting of 400 polished stainless steel poles arranged in a rectangular array 1 km long and 1 mile wide. It was later considered a key creation in the Earthworks movement.
(SFC, 7/29/13, p.C3)
1977 Christopher Alexander and co-authors laid out practical guidelines to urban design in their book “A Pattern Language."
(SFCM, 8/1/04, p.25)
1977 Harvard Prof. Walter J. Bate (1918-1999) authored a biography of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). In 1978 he won a Pulitzer Prize for the book.
(SFC, 7/27/99, p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jackson_Bate)
1977 Wendell Berry (b.1934) authored "The Unsettling of America," a treatise against the industrialization of agriculture.
(SSFC, 6/23/02, p.M6)(SSFC, 3/21/10, p.F5)
1977 Philip Caputo, a former US Marine, wrote "A Rumor of War," one of the best nonfiction books on Vietnam.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.3)
1977 Alfred Chandler, the doyen of business historians, authored “The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business." Here he argues that Adam Smith's famous invisible hand of the market has been supplanted by the "visible hand" of middle management.
(http://tinyurl.com/orew47e)(Econ., 4/18/15, SR p.4)
1977 John Cheever (1912-1982), American writer, authored his novel “Falconer," which soon became a best seller.
(WSJ, 3/7/09, p.W8)
1977 "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" by Eleanor Coerr was published. It was illustrated by Ronald Himler.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1977 Patricia Crone (1945-2015) and Michael Cook authored “Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World." She argued that Islam started as an Arab-Jewish tribal rebellion against Byzantine and Persian empires.
(Econ, 8/1/15, p.78)
1977 John Gregory Dunne (1932-2003) authored his novel "True Confessions." It was about the Black Dahlia case, a 1947 murder in Los Angeles.
(SFC, 1/1/04, p.A23)(SFC, 1/2/04, p.D3)
1977 Gloria Emerson (1929-2004), Vietnam war correspondent, authored “Winners & Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses, and Ruins From a Long War," based on interviews with people involved in the Vietnam War.
(SFC, 8/6/04, p.B7)
1977 Timothy Findley (d.2002), Canadian writer, authored his novel "The Wars," which contrasted social struggles in Toronto with trench horrors in WW I.
(SFC, 6/22/02, p.A18)
1977 David Hackett Fischer authored “Growing Old in America."
(WSJ, 9/14/04, p.B1)
1977 Honey Bruce Friedman (1927-2005), former wife of Lenny Bruce, authored “The Life and Loves of Lenny’s Shady Lady."
(SFC, 9/19/05, p.B3)
1977 Stephen Jay Gould wrote his first technical book: "Ontogeny and Phylogeny."
(NH, 2/97, p.69)
1977 German writer Gunter Grass (1927-2015) authored his novel “The Flounder."
(Econ., 4/18/15, p.86)
1977 Fred Hirsch authored “The Social Limits to Growth."
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.35)
1977 Howard Lamar edited "The Reader’s Encyclopedia of the American West." In 1998 his updated “New Encyclopedia of the American West" was published.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, BR p.11)
1977 Lawrence Levine (1933-2006), professor of history at UC Berkeley, authored “Black Culture and Black Consciousness: African American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom."
(SFC, 10/28/06, p.B6)
1977 Hal Lindsey wrote "The Late, Great Planet Earth."
(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A4)
1977 Dr. Stephen J. Mathes (d.2007), reconstructive surgeon, authored “Clinical Atlas of Muscle and Musculocutaneous Flaps. In 2007 he produced an 8-volume text on plastic surgery.
(SFC, 12/20/07, p.B5)
1977 Albert Morse (1939-2006), SF intellectual property lawyer and representative of cartoonist R. Crumb, published “The Tattooists."
(SSFC, 1/29/06, p.B7)
1977 Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), Irish born writer and philosopher, authored "The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists." In 1994 Murdoch was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. In 1998 her husband, John Bayley, published "Elegy for Iris."
(WSJ, 2/17/98, p.A20)
1977 US Navy Rear Adm. Richard O’Kane (1911-1994) authored “Clear the Bridge: The War Patrols of the U.S.S. Tang."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_O%27Kane)
1977 Roger and Nancy Olmstead and Allen Pastron authored “San Francisco Waterfront."
(SFC, 1/25/14, p.C2)
1977 Arvid Pardo of Malta published "The New International Order and the Law of the Sea with Elisabeth Mann Borgese.
(SFC, 7/19/99, p.A22)
1977 V.S. Naipaul, Trinidad born writer, authored “India: A Wounded Civilization," recounting his travels there in 1975.
(WSJ, 4/4/09, p.W8)
1977 Arthur J. Quinn (d.1997 at 54) wrote "Hell With the Fire Out," a re-creation of the Modoc War fought in Siskiyou County, Ca., in 1872-1873.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A20)
1977 Carl Sagan (1934-1996) authored "Dragons of Eden." In 1978 he won a Pulitzer Prize for the book.
(SFC, 12/21/96, p.A1)
1977 Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016), American constitutional lawyer and conservative activist, authored “The Power of the Positive Women."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly)(Econ, 9/17/16, p.86)
1977 Daniel Schorr (53), CBS journalist, authored "Clearing the Air," a memoir that included a secret report on covert US government operations in other nations. In 2001 an updated edition was published titled: "Staying Tuned."
(SSFC, 8/5/01, DB p.63)
1977 George Shultz and Kenneth Dam, economic officials in the Nixon administration, authored “Economic Policy Beyond the Headlines."
(Econ, 3/27/10, p.86)(http://tinyurl.com/yzvuumj)
1977 Prof. Gordon Willey (1913-2002) authored "The Origins of Maya Civilization."
(SFC, 5/2/02, p.A27)
1977 John Guare wrote his play: "Landscape of the Body." "It saw life as prey to grotesque violence, of incident and of language."
(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-11)
1977 The musical "I Love My Wife," a tale of wife-swapping, opened on Broadway. Cy Coleman composed the music.
(SFC, 11/20/04, p.B6)
1977 Len Frank (1936-1996) and co-partner John Retsek began to co-host "The Road Show," the first call-in car radio program that grew from a local 60 minute program to a 2-hour show syndicated nationally.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.B2)
1977 The first SF Lesbian & Gay International Film Fest was held.
(SFC, 5/29/96, p.E1)
1977 The ABC series “Eight Is Enough" began and continued to 1981. It featured Dick Van Patten as widowed father Tom Bradford and Betty Buckley as his new wife Abby.
(SFC, 6/24/15, p.D7)
1977 The TV series "Shogun" was first shown.
(SFEM, 6/29/97, p.4)
1977 Jimmy Buffett (b.1946) recorded "Margaritaville."
(SSFC, 4/28/02, Par p.22)
1977 Kenny Rogers made a hit with his song "Lucille."
(SSFC, 5/20/01, Par p.22)
1977 The British punk group Clash released its 1st single "White Riot."
(SFC, 12/24/02, p.A2)
1977 The British group Sex Pistols ushered in an era of punk rock. The band was originally composed of Johnny Rotten, Glen Matlock, Steve Jones and Paul Cook. Sid Vicious replaced Matlock by the time of the Winterland concert in SF.
(SFC, 6/9/96, DB p.34)
1977 The rock band Kiss went on their Love Gun tour and were named by a Gallup poll as the most popular band in the US. Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss and bass guitar thunder god Gene Simmons were the other founding members. They became an int’l phenomenon.
(SFC, 7/5/96, DB, p.40)(SFC, 8/29/96, p.B1)
1977 The rock band INXS was formed in Perth, Australia. Lead singer Michael Hutchence committed suicide in 1997 at a Sydney hotel.
(SFC,11/24/97, p.A21)
1977 The Village People recorded the song "YMCA."
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.E4)
1977 Marcia Tucker (1940-2006) established the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC on 5th Ave. at 14th Street.
(SFC, 10/20/06, p.B8)
1977 The Alfred P. Murrah Building was put up in Federal Plaza in Oklahoma City. It was bombed on April 19, 1995 and 169 people were killed including 19 children and 600 injured.
(WSJ, 1/4/96, p.A-8)
1977 Calvin Klein (b.1942) elevated blue jeans to a fashion sensation by stitching his name on the back pockets.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Klein_%28fashion_designer%29)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
1977 Chinese cooking, tennis, aerobics, CB radio and Evangelicals rose in popularity.
(TMC, 1994, p.1977)
1977 The first Spoleto Festival USA was held in Charleston, South Carolina. It was founded by Gian Carlos Menotti, who directed it till 1993.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A12)
1977 Bertram Carnow (1922-1996) founded the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health.
(SFC, 11/12/96, p.B2)
1977 Pablo Heising (1945-2006) helped found the Haight Street Fair in San Francisco in an effort to recall the 1967 Summer of Love. He then ran the fair for 29 years and came to be called the mayor of Haight Street.
(SFC, 1/16/07, p.B5)
1977 The Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation was founded in San Francisco.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, zone 1 p.3)
1977 Jan Mitchell established the Jan Mitchell Prize for the History of Art. It funded a $15,000 annual prize for an outstanding book in English or translation that contributes to the "study and understanding of the visual arts."
(WSJ, 2/24/98, p.A20)
1977 Charles Sporck, CEO of Nat’l. Semiconductor, helped found the Semiconductor Industry Assoc.
(WSJ, 11/7/96, p.B1)
1977 The TransAfrica lobby group was founded to press the US political establishment on matters concerning Africa and the Caribbean. Randall Robinson in 1998 published "Defending the Spirit" a memoir of his efforts in the organization.
(WSJ, 2/9/98, p.A16)
1977 Julian Levi (1909-1996), professor of law, was awarded the Rockefeller Public Service award for his work stabilizing racially changing neighborhoods.
(SFC, 10/18/96, A23)
1977 James Michener (1907-1997), American writer, was awarded the Presidential medal of Freedom.
(SFEC, 10/27/96, Par p.6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Michener)
1977 Patsy Paugh was crowned Miss West Virginia. In 2006 Patsy Ramsey (b.1956), former Miss West Virginia (1977) and mother of JonBenet Ramsey (1990-1996), died in Roswell, Ga., following a long battle with ovarian cancer.
(SSFC, 6/25/06, p.A2)(www.marquette.edu/org/axd/history.htm)
1977 Amnesty International (b.1961), a human rights organization founded by Peter Benenson (1921-2005), won a Nobel Prize.
(HN, 5/28/98)(Econ, 3/5/05, p.85)
1977 Sir Neville Mott (1906-1996) shared the Nobel Prize with Philip Anderson and John van Vleck for research on the behavior of electricity in non-crystalline or so-called "disordered" materials.
(SFC, 8/11/96, p.D5)
1977 Ilya Prigogine (d.2003 at 86), Russian-born Belgian chemist, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
(SFC, 5/31/03, p.A20)
1977 Rosalyn Yalow (b.1921), American medical physicist, together with Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
(AP, 10/5/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalyn_Sussman_Yalow)
1977 Vicente Aleixandre (1898-1984), Spanish poet, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
(AP, 10/8/09)
1977 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) drafted rules regarding currency exchange rates following the collapse of the int’l. gold standard and the fixed-exchange-rate system (1971).
(WSJ, 6/19/07, p.A4)
1977 The Log Cabin Republicans, a California group of gay conservatives, formed to oppose the Briggs Initiative, an unsuccessful 1978 ballot initiative that attempted to ban gay teachers from schools.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_Cabin_Republicans)(SSFC, 6/20/21, p.E4)
1977 Pres. Jimmy Carter announced plans for a neutron bomb that would cancel out Soviet military superiority in tanks.
(WSJ, 1/9/95, A-10)
1977 The first LLC (limited liability company) statute was enacted by Wyoming. It was a legal entity hybrid between a corporation and a partnership that provided limited liability to all owners while passing income and losses to all owners.
(Hem, 6/96, p.38)
1977 The US Mail service began Express Mail in response to private competition.
(SFC, 6/7/97, p.A6)
1977 The US Federal Office of Management and Budget revised the race groups for the national census.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A1)
1977 In the US the traditional eagle-side quarter was again issued following the 2-year Bicentennial colonial drummer issue.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)
1977 The US Congress passed the surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act to help solve problems with abandoned mines.
(WSJ, 6/4/03, p.A1)
1977 The US Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was meant to bring financial services to the poor by requiring banks to meet their credit needs in the areas they serve.
(Econ, 5/6/06, p.76)
1977 The US Congress gave the Federal Reserve a dual mandate of stable prices and full employment.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.113)
1977 The US government set up a Nazi crimes unit. A single, centralized unit was created in the Justice Department with the mandate to investigate and prosecute individuals accused of concealing their Nazi past in order to obtain a visa allowing them to enter the United States. The investigative unit was first a part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and was later incorporated into the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.
(http://tinyurl.com/2de24b)(SSFC, 4/4/10, Par. p.4)
1977 The US federal government ordered General Electric to dismantle its nuclear reactor in Pleasanton, Ca. Nuclear fuel research continued.
(SFC, 12/25/03, p.A8)
1977 Christopher Boyce was convicted of espionage. He had gained access to CIA communications during his job at TRW and sold classified documents to the Russian Embassy in Mexico City. His story was told in the 1985 film "The Falcon and the Snowman." Boyce was paroled in 2003.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A2)
1977 Roman Polanski, film director, was accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old model at the home of Jack Nicholson. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and left the country on bail to film "Hurricane" in Tahiti, and then fled to Paris.
(SFC, 10/2/97, p.E3)
1977 The US Army restored the Medal of Honor to Dr. Mary Walker. She had been awarded the medal in 1865 for her work as a field doctor in the civil war. In 1917 a congressional select committee had revoked it.
(SFC, 7/17/96, p.E10)
1977 The US introduced lethal injections as a more humane alternative to other forms of capital punishment.
(Econ, 4/28/07, p.70)
1977 A controversial theory on the JFK assassination was published in the Baltimore Sun. Howard Donohue, a ballistics expert, claimed that an accidental shot by agent George W. Hickey hit JFK in the back of the head when Hickey stumbled trying to return fire on the initial attacker. The story was then put into the book "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK" (1992) by Bonar Menninger.
(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A9)
1977 The US Sec. of Transportation, William T. Coleman, under Pres. Carter mandated the installation of airbags in new cars.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A15)
1977 Donald Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.
(The Guardian, 1/29/21)
1977 The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) was founded in Berkeley, Ca. In 2008 it expanded and reinvented itself as a multimedia news producer.
(Econ, 7/9/11, SR p.14)
1977 California banned the pesticide DBCP after men working at a San Joaquin County chemical plant were found to be sterile. In 1979 the US EPA prohibited the use of DBCP nationwide, but export remained legal.
(SFC, 9/25/08, p.B3)
1977 Rose Ann Vuich became California’s 1st female state senator.
(SSFC, 10/10/04, p.E1)
1977 San Francisco Postmaster Lim Poon Lee (d.2002) established a post office at 867 Stockton St., in Chinatown. In 2009 US Congress voted to name the office in honor of Lee.
(SFC, 11/5/09, p.C2)
1977 The Teamsters Union under Frank Fitzsimmons gave up their efforts to sign up California farm field workers and accepted the UFW Union as the union for field workers.
(SFEM, 4/13/97, p.6)
1977 In Eureka Eric Hollenbeck acquired the old 1904 condemned power plant and started a logging and sawmill business with $300. He began gathering old logging and woodworking tools and developed what came to be the Blue Ox Museum. He later took on at-risk students and planned a campus for 100 students by fall, 2001.
(SFEC, 7/30/00, p.C10)
1977 Gene Benedetti (1919-2006) purchased the Petaluma Cooperative Creamery in northern California and turned it into Clover Stornetta Farms Inc. He and Lee Levinger hatched the idea for Clo the Cow, an advertising mascot.
(SFC, 1/14/06, p.B5)
1977 Bill Niman (32) and Orville Schell purchased 200 acres in Bolinas, Ca., to run cattle, starting their Niman-Schell ranch. They operated under the assumption that meat could be raised naturally, humanely and sustainably. The partners split in 1997 and the business became known as the Niman Ranch. In 2007 Hilco became the chief investor and in 2009 Niman withdrew from the operations, which never turned a profit.
(SSFC, 2/22/09, p.A1)
1977 SF toughened its fire code. State deadlines gave the city’s high-rises until July 1980 to comply.
(SFC, 11/18/05, p.F2)
1977 In San Francisco the residential treatment for young women atop Mount St. Joseph, run by the Catholic Sisters of Charity, closed. Land at the former orphanage had been used for years to board horses. The land was then sold to a developer.
(SFC, 7/24/13, p.D6)
1977 The open-air Larkspur Ferry Terminal, designed by Jacques de Brer (1936-2006), opened near San Quentin State Prison. He later designed the 280 Metro Center in Colma (1986).
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.B5)(http://tinyurl.com/mr868)
1977 Fred Cody (d.1983) and wife Patricia Cody (d.2010) sold their Berkeley-based Cody’s bookstore business to Andy Ross.
(SFC, 10/6/10, p.C5)
1977 The famous 400-year-old Jeffrey pine on Sentinel Dome in Yosemite, Ca., died due to a severe drought. In 2003 the tree collapsed.
(SFC, 8/19/03, p.A1)
1977 In California the Marble Cone fire burned 177,866 acres of trees and brush.
(SFC, 9/20/99, p.A22)
1977 California public health officials ramped up school vaccination enforcement following a measles outbreak in Los Angeles.
(SSFC, 9/26/21, p.A17)
1977 Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus resigned to become the Pres. Carter’s secretary of the Interior Department.
(SSFC, 3/27/17, p.C3)
1977 US Rev. Leon H. Sullivan (d.2001 at 78) drafted guidelines (the Sullivan Principles) to help persuade American companies to treat their workers in South Africa the same way as in the US.
(SFC, 4/26/01, p.A6)
1977 Emma Crapser (92) was killed in her Poughkeepsie, NY, apartment. In 1983 Dewey Bozella (b.1959) was convicted of her grisly murder on the testimony of two convicted criminals and served 26 years in prison before being finally in 2009 after the nonprofit Innocence Project intervened and turned over evidence that had been suppressed during his trial.
(AP, 10/12/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Bozella)
1977 AT&T installed the 1st fiber optic cable.
(WSJ, 10/26/00, p.A12)
1977 BankAmericard, Chargex, Barclaycard, Carte Bleue, and all other licensees united under the new name, "Visa", which retained the distinctive blue, white and gold flag. NBI became Visa U.S.A., and IBANCO became Visa International.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_(company))
1977 The S.S. Kresge Co. under CEO Robert Dewar (d.2000 at 77) was renamed Kmart after its flagship discount store operation.
(SFC, 9/11/00, p.A22)
1977 The Ford F-Series pickup truck became the best-selling vehicle in the US.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1977 Industry experts in 1996 picked the 1977 Lincoln Versailles as the number 8 worst American-made car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1977 Jeep, a division of American Motors, launched a 4-door Cherokee, a forerunner of the SUV boom.
(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
1977 The US stopped importation of the German Volkswagen Beetle because it did not meet safety and emissions standards.
(AP, 8/27/03)
1977 Microsoft was formed as a partnership.
(WSJ, 4/4/00, p.A16)
1977 PepsiCo acquired the Pizza Hut restaurant chain.
(WSJ, 1/24/97, p.B1)
1977 RCA sold a videocassette recorder (VCR) for $1,000.
(WSJ, 11/4/99, p.B6)
1977 Rolling Stone Magazine left San Francisco and moved to Manhattan.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.12)
1977 Yves St. Laurent launched the perfume Opium.
(Econ, 3/6/04, Survey p.11)
1977 Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv published a theory for the compression of information. The theory was extended by Ziv and Aaron Wyner (d.1997 at 58) in 1989. They used algorithms to find common sections in data, and used symbols to represent repetitive data.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A19)
1977 CP/M version 2.2 added expanded disk formatting tables which could allow access to up to 8 (eight) megabytes per drive in up to 8 (eight) total drives. It was version 2.2 that became the megahit that dominated microcomputing almost from its outset.
(http://museum.sysun.com/museum/cpmhist.html)
1977 Xerox PARC in Palo Alto held a "Futures Day" and demonstrated their Alto personal computer and mouse.
(WSJ, 3/16/99, p.A24)
1977 Xerox launched its laser printer.
(WSJ, 3/16/99, p.A24)
1977 The first infection from Cyclospora cayetanensis was reported in the US. It was first named a "cyanobacterium-like body," but in 1993 it was determined to be a protozoan parasite and was renamed.
(USAT, 6/28/96, p.5D)
1977 Ebola was reported to have been transmitted by an accidental needle stick.
(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A6)
1977 Leon Lederman (now director of Fermilab) came upon a fifth quark.
(NG, May 1985, J. Boslough, p. 650)
1977 Ann Moore patented the Snugli baby carrier based on slings she saw used by African women.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1977 Robert Ballard and John B. Corliss dived 9,000 feet into the Galapagos Rift Zone and found previously unknown creatures thriving on bacteria from that depended on sulfur from volcanic vents.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A3,13)
1977 Gunther von Hagens (b.1945), German anatomist, invented the process of plastination in which natural body fluids are replaced by plastic.
(WSJ, 8/5/04, p.D8)
1977 Sir Michael Rutter and Dr. Susan Folstein published the first autism twin study, revealing evidence for a genetic basis for autism.
(http://tinyurl.com/y8ft9klt)
1977 Dr. Frederick Sangar and his lab mapped the entire 5,000 letter genome of a virus called phiX174. Sangar had developed one of the first methods of DNA sequencing. This work led to his 2nd Nobel Prize in 1980.
(Econ, 11/23/13, p.78)
1977 Dr. Elizabeth Williams of Fort Collins, Colorado, classified the endemic chronic wasting disease of local deer as a spongiform disease. It was found to be infectious 2 years later and then spread across to 8 states and Canada. Research later suggested that it could infect people.
(WSJ, 5/24/02, p.A1)
1977 Carl R. Woese, microbiologist, argued that the Archaea branch of life was distinct from the Prokarya and Eukarya.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A21)
1977 The viral disease smallpox was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO). The last case of smallpox, spread by variola virus, was reported in Somalia. Int’l. immunization ceased by 1978 in most countries. In 1997 the related Monkey virus broke out in Zaire.
(SFC, 4/1/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 10/19/01, p.A9)
1977 The manufacture of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) became prohibited in the US, because of evidence they build up in the environment and can cause harmful health effects.
(www.epa.gov/glnpo/bnsdocs/stakeholder98/pcbinus.htm)
1977 The Endangered Species Act (1973) listed the California sea otter as threatened. Their numbers increased slowly until 1995 and then dropped again.
(PacDis, Fall/’96, p.23)(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.C1)
1977 Researchers aboard the deep-sea submersible, Alvin, found an array of unknown and unexpected creatures living beside active volcanic vents in the seafloor in the absence of sunlight and air. Some of the microbes belonged to the group known as Archaea.
(PacDis, Summer ’97, p.4)
1977 In Afghanistan a loya jirga (grand assembly) convened to establish a democratic state.
(SSFC, 12/16/01, p.A3)
1977 Albania’s economy was brought down by a number of pyramid schemes. Vehbi Alimucaj, a businessman known as “the Pharaoh", was arrested and found guilty of stealing $325 million from his fellow citizens.
(Econ, 10/1/16, p.57)
1977 In Argentina Carlos Perez Companac, head of Perez Companac SA, died. His adopted son Goyo manages to steer the company forward.
(WSJ, 12/12/95, p.A-15)
1977 In the Bahamas the People-to-People program was established about this time to help visitors experience a more personal side of the island and its inhabitants.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.T8,9)
1977 The Brazilian film "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands" starred Sonia Braga. It was based on a novel by Jorge Amado.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.T8)
1977 In Brazil Edir Macedo (b.1945) founded The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. In 1990 he bought Rede Record for $45 million. In 2004 Rede Record broadcast network began expanding into the TV market taking on the dominant TV Globo. In 2005 the church founded the PRB political party. By 2007 the Pentecostal congregation had 2 million members and had expanded to over 100 countries.
(SFEC, 9/6/98, p.A19)(Econ, 12/23/06, p.50)(WSJ, 1/5/07, p.A1)(Econ, 1/5/08, p.31)
1977 In England the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) was founded.
(Econ, 6/25/16, p.77)
1977 The BBC began showing "All Creatures Great and Small."
(WSJ, 1/13/00, p.A19)
1977 Sir John Traverner, composer, converted to the Greek Orthodox faith. This marked a turning toward simplicity and serenity in his music.
(WSJ, 3/28/02, p.A18)
1977 Tam Dalyell, British MP for the Scottish constituency of Linlithgow, posed the so-called West Lothian question during the debate on Scottish and Welsh devolution.
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lothian_question)
1977 Britain designated MDMA, the main ingredient in ecstasy, a Class A drug.
(Econ, 8/5/06, p.50)
1977 The Assembly Rooms opened in Derby, England, as a venue for concerts and graduation ceremonies. It replaced an 18th century leisure hall that burned down in 1963. The new building closed after it was damaged by fire in 2014.
(Econ., 10/31/20, p.51)
1977 Bulgaria’s foreign minister Petar Mladenov became a member of the policy-making Politburo.
(SFC, 6/2/00, p.D5)
1977 The East African Community (EAC), founded in 1967, collapsed. In 2000 the regional club was resurrected with six members: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_Community)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.51)
1977 Hun Sen, a Khmer Rouge battalion commander in Cambodia, defected to Vietnam. He became prime minister of Cambodia in 1979.
(Econ, 11/2/13, p.43)
1977 The Canada Human Rights Act was passed and required that men and women be paid the same amount for doing the same work.
(SFC, 7/30/98, p.A12)
1977 Canada declared an exclusive economic zone over fisheries within 200 miles of its coast.
(http://tinyurl.com/3ce6f5)
1977 In Canada English was banned in Quebec.
(SFEC,12/28/97, Z1 p.2)
1977 Innovations made on the NASDAQ stock exchange were incorporated into Canada's CATS, Computer Assisted Trading System. After Canada electronic trading moved to the Paris Bourse and other exchanges such as Brussels and Madrid.
(Hem, 8/95, p.78)
1977 Ernst Zundel (b.1939), German neo-Nazi, founded a small press publishing house in Canada called Samisdat Publishers, which issued such pamphlets as “The Hitler We Loved and Why" and “Did Six Million Really Die?," both prominent documents of the Holocaust denial movement. He wrote under the name of Christof Friedrich. In 2005 he was deported to Germany, where he was charged for inciting racial hatred. In 2007 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
(SFC, 12/9/00, p.A11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Z%C3%BCndel)
1977 Chile’s DINA secret police reporting to Gen. Pinochet was replaced by the National Information Center (Centro Nacional de Información--CNI).
(www.fas.org/irp/world/chile/dina.htm)
1977 China at this time had some 300-odd museums, most of them little more than displays of Communist Party propaganda. By year 2000 the number had grown to over 2,000.
(Econ, 6/16/07, p.49)
1977 Emile Rogier Heier (d.1997 at 55), Belgian-born foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, was released from a Colombian prison. He returned to the US and began his book "Down in Colombia" (2003). He later wrote "Lester Leaps In," a biography of the jazz saxophonist Lester Young.
(SFC, 9/18/97, p.C2)
1977 Joaquim Yhombi-Opango (d.2020) rose to power as Congo-Brazzaville's head of state following the assassination of Pres. Marien Ngouabi. He was ousted in 1979 by Denis Sassou Nguesso.
(ABC News, 4/1/20)
1977 Tassos Papadopoulos (1934-2008), former leader of the Greek Cypriot guerrilla group EOKA, submitted a proposal for a federated Cyprus tying together two distinct zones. The proposal became the basis for all subsequent settlement initiatives.
(AP, 12/12/08)
1977 In Czechoslovakia the 1976 trial of the Plastic People of the Universe band prompted Vaclav Havel and Czech dissidents to draft "Charter 77, a human rights manifesto.
(WSJ, 7/22/98, p.A12)(SFEC, 3/7/99, DB p.35)
1977 Food riots took place in Egypt following higher prices for everything from flour to rice. Kamal Addin Hussein, an independent member of the Egyptian People's Assembly, accused Pres. Sadat of punishing the people. Hussein was voted out of the Assembly for his statements. Sadat soon backed down and cancelled the price hikes.
(SFC, 6/22/99, p.A24)(Econ, 11/12/16, p.46)
1977 In Egypt agricultural engineer Shukri Mustafa became the leader of Takfir wal Hijra. The group began in the 1960s as a splinter group of Muslim Brotherhood, but did not gain international prominence until 1977. The group’s ideology was developed in Egypt, where theorists openly advocated using immigration as a Trojan horse to expand jihad (holy war).
(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takfir_wal-Hijra)
1977 In El Salvador guerrilla activities by the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) intensified amid reports of increased human rights violations by government troops and right wing death squads.
(SSFC, 3/15/09, p.A7)
1977 In France the Georges Pompidou Center, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, opened in Paris.
(SFEC, 4/20/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 2/3/00, p.A24)
1977 The Georges Pompidou Center, designed by British architect Richard Rogers and Italian architect Renzo Piano, opened in Paris.
(SFEC, 4/20/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 2/3/00, p.A24)
1977 France’s 1st nuclear plant, built by Areva, began operations near Colmar. It was rated at 900 megawatts.
(www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1369259,00.html)(Econ, 9/8/07, TQ p.26)
1977 France banned frog fishing to protect the local green and red varieties. Poaching remained a problem.
(WSJ, 4/2/02, p.A1)
1977 Philippe de Villiers (b.1949), French student and later politician, created the Puy du Fou historical theme park in the Vendee region.
(Econ, 10/27/12, p.86)
1977 In East Germany Rudolf Bahro (d.1997 at 62), Marxist reformer, smuggled his book out to the West and was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in prison. He wrote: "The Alternative: A Criticism of the Real Socialism." He was released in 1979 and allowed to resettle in West Germany in 1980.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.B12)
1977 Guatemala’s Pres. Kjell Eugenio Laugerud announced he would not accept US military aid after the Carter administration criticized Guatemala's human rights situation because of forced disappearances, torture and arbitrary executions. It was largely a symbolic gesture, however, since the aid already was appropriated for that year.
(AP, 12/12/09)
1977 Guatemala passed legislation allowing notaries to facilitate adoptions.
(Econ, 8/6/16, p.46)
1977 India had a non-Congress government but it fell before the end of its 5-year term. Democracy was restored following a 2-year emergency and Congress was swept from power.
(WSJ, 4/26/96, p.A-10)(Econ, 6/23/07, p.93)
1977 The Communist Party of India came to power in the state of West Bengal.
(Econ, 8/30/08, p.63)
1977 Coca-Cola left India when the new government ordered it to dilute its stake in an Indian unit and turn over its secret formula. An alternative cola was formulated by bottler Ramesh Chauhan of the Parle Group under the name Thums Up.
(WSJ, 4/29/98, p.B1)
1977 Iran’s Empress Farah Pahlavi (b.1938) inaugurated the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
(Econ, 1/1/11, p.74)(Econ, 12/24/16, p.116)
1977 The Iroquois Indians of North America, or Haudenosaunee as they call themselves, began issuing their own passports.
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.34)
1977 In Irian Jaya Indonesian forces put down an uprising. Human rights groups estimated that some tens of thousands of highlanders were killed while the government said fewer than 900 deaths resulted.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A10)
1977 In northeast Ireland mining of a large deposit of zinc ore began at Navan. Mining employed about 1% of the Irish labor force.
(www.mbendi.co.za/indy/ming/ldzc/eu/ir/p0005.htm)
1977 In Israel Ariel Sharon was elected to parliament and was appointed minister of agriculture in the Begin government.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)
1977 More Israeli civilians were allowed to move into the army installations in Gaza, and new settlements were established.
(AP, 8/15/05)
1977 In Italy the Red Brigades abducted a leading businessman. He was freed with a ransom after 81 days. This year the Red Brigades also killed a lawyer, several prison officials and a journalist.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1977 In Japan the 4.7 km Sasago Tunnel opened 80 km (50 miles) outside Tokyo.
(AP, 12/2/12)
1977 In Japan Bandai began making capsule toys, the majority of them were cheap, sold mostly at 20 yen, and were of poor quality. A craze for such toys really took off in 2012 when Tokyo-based manufacturer Kitan Club launched its "Koppu no Fuchico" ("Fuchico at the edge of a glass") product.
(AP, 12/13/17)
1977 Ahmad Chalabi (b.1944), Iraqi-born and US educated banker, founded Petra Bank in Jordan. The bank collapsed in 1990 following a scandal that involved an Iraqi account in exile. Chalabi fled Jordan, was convicted in absentia of bank fraud. He denied any wrongdoing.
(WSJ, 11/7/05, p.A4)
1977 Kamoya Kimenu, asst. to Drs. Louis and Mary Leakey, and later to their son Richard Leakey, was appointed curator of prehistoric sites for the National Museums of Kenya. In Oct. 1985, the Nat’l. Geog. awarded him with the John Oliver La Gorce Medal for accomplishment in geographic exploration.
(NG, Nov. 1985, edit.)
1977 Kenya banned all hunting. Over the next 20 years a half to a third of the wildlife still disappeared.
(WSJ, 7/23/96, p.A22)
1977 Wangari Maathai established the Green Belt Movement in Kenya under the auspices of the Maendeleo Ya Wanawake (National Council of Women of Kenya). The movement organizes poor rural women in Kenya to plant trees, combating deforestation, restoring their main source of fuel for cooking, and stopping soil erosion.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Movement)(www.greenbeltmovement.org/)
1977 Kenya Airways began operating.
(SFC, 1/31/00, p.A5)
1977 Sinaloa, Mexico, became about this time the birthplace of Mexican drug smuggling.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.A14)
1977 Sister Antonia Brenner (50), an American nun born as Mary Clark in Los Angeles, moved into Mexico’s La Mesa State Penitentiary, just across the border from San Diego, to provide aid to prisoners.
(AP, 12/26/05)
1977 The Economist coined the term “Dutch disease" to describe how the exploitation of natural resources can cause a decline in other forms of economic activity, particularly manufacturing. This briefly happened in the Netherlands when natural gas was discovered (1959).
(Econ, 10/11/08, p.36)
1977 The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was established. In 2007 Pres. Umaru Yar’Adua planned to replace it with 5 new companies.
(Econ, 9/29/07, p.51)
1977 North Korea passed a land law whereby all land was made property of the state and co-operatives, with no rights for sale or purchase. By 2007 even the government was involved in apartment transactions to satisfy demand for up-market housing.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.48)
1977 Pakistan’s Gen. Zia-ul-Haq said: "The survival of this country lies in democracy and democracy alone."
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A22)
1977 Pakistan banned alcohol.
(Econ 7/22/17, SR p.6)
1977 In Panama Gabriel Lewis Galindo (1928-1996) was appointed ambassador to the US with the hope of negotiating the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama.
(SFC, 1/2/97, p.A20)
1977 Polish poet Stanislaw Baranczak co-founded the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR), following a brutal communist crackdown on protesting workers. For his activity he was fired from his job at the Adam Mickiewicz University in his native Poznan and his writings were barred from print in Poland. In 1981 he got a three-year contract as lecturer at Harvard but stayed on.
(AP, 12/27/14)
1977 In Romania Gen. Nicolae Plesita helped stifle striking coal miners in the Jiu Valley whose unrest posed a threat to Pres. Ceausescu.
(AP, 9/30/09)
1977 Yuri Nikulin (1921-1997) starred in the Russian film "Twenty Days Without War."
(SFC, 8/22/97, p.A24)
1977 Russian Georgii Sviridov composed his 12 part cycle "Russia Cast Adrift."
(SFEM, 6/9/96, p.9)
1977 The Soviet constitution adopted article 72, which granted each republic the right to secede from the USSR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_the_Soviet_Union)
1977 The Soviet Politburo approved adjustments to the 1943 national anthem, where Sergei Mikhalkov replaced references to Stalin with phrases glorifying Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, who "led us on to Communism's triumph."
(AP, 8/27/09)
1977 Soviet dissident Anatoly B. Sharansky was arrested [see Jul 14, 1978].
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1977 The Soviet Union introduced the Shkval torpedo and hailed it as an “aircraft carrier killer," but its design proved less threatening than hope for. Its speed depended on the supercavitation principle. In 2016 Russian plans emerged for a new supercavitating torpedo called Khishchnik (Predator).
(Econ, 1/21/17, p.68)
1977 Somalia and Ethiopia engaged in battle. The Soviet Union provided tanks to both sides. Somalia tried and failed to push into the Ogaden area of Ethiopia. The Somalis managed to reach the walled city of Harer, a center for Islam in Ethiopia. An Ethiopian counter-offensive backed by Cuban troops wrecked Somalia’s army and led to the 1991 of the Somali regime.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.19)(Econ, 10/14/06, p.49)(Econ, 1/7/12, p.42)
1977 In Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) Sister Janice McLaughlin (1942-2021), an American nun, was charged with being a terrorist sympathizer and locked in solitary confinement for 18 days. She faced a penalty of seven years in prison, but the United States interceded, and she was instead deported. She later returned to a liberated Zimbabwe to help build its school system.
(AP, 4/1/21)
1977 South Africa prepared to detonate a nuclear device in the Kalahari desert, but the plans were detected by a spy satellite and cancelled under int'l. pressure led by Pres. Jimmy Carter. The events were later described by Seymour M. Hersh in "The Samson Option."
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.A3)
1977 Spain began experiencing a banking crises.
(Econ, 9/18/10, p.94)
1977 Sri Lanka suspended the death penalty.
(Economist, 10/6/12, p.48)
1977 Henry Kyemba, a former Uganda minister in Idi Amin’s government, authored in exile “A State of Blood," a description of his years as a minister under Amin.
(SSFC, 2/18/07, p.A22)
1977 The United Nations imposed an arms embargo against South Africa to pressure it to end apartheid.
(WSJ, 12/19/03, p.A8)
1977 Rebel forces from Angola swept into Zaire and captured much of the copper-rich Shaba province. Zaire regained control after 3 months with American and other foreign support.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.A11)(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A14)
1977-1978 Pol Pot of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, fearing traitors, purged his own Khmer Rouge, especially in the eastern zone. Many of his former cadre flee to Vietnam.
(WSJ, 4/17/95, p.A-12)
1977-1978 The Ethiopian Red Terror, or Qey Shibir, was a violent political campaign in Ethiopia undertaken during the leadership of the Derg, a socialist military junta. Hirut Abebe-Jiri, imprisoned and tortured during a purge known as the “Red Terror," later set up an organization to archive, translate and index the Derg files. As many as 100,000 people were killed during the campaign as Mengistu sought to transform the country into a Soviet-style workers' state. (Econ, 9/29/07, p.50)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror_(Ethiopia))(AP, 3/7/10)
1977-1979 Laverne and Shirley was the top ranking network show on television for two seasons with rankings of 31.6 and 30.5%.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1977-1979 Genentech developed genetic engineering techniques to create micro-organisms that can produce insulin and growth hormone.
(SFC, 3/13/09, p.A10)
1977-1980 Jimmy Carter served as the 39th president of the US with Walter Mondale as Vice-President.
(TL,1988,p.119)
1977-1981 Adm. Stansfield Turner served as the director of the CIA under President Jimmy Carter.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/19/01, p.A21)
1977-1989 Frelimo ruled Mozambique with a firm Marxist orientation.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A10)
1977-1992 Civil war raged in Mozambique over this period.
(Econ, 7/16/16, p.38)
1977-1992 Rev. Rudolph Kos sexually abused a number of altar boys from 1977-1992, when he was suspended. In 1988 he became a pastor. In 1997 on Jul 24, a Dallas jury awarded $120 million in damages against the local Roman Catholic diocese on the grounds that the Church had ignored evidence of his abuses. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1998. In 1998 the Diocese agreed to pay $23.4 million to the nine former altar boys.
(SFC, 7/25/97, p.A1)(SFC, 4/2/98, p.A6)
1977-1993 In Missouri a serial killer committed at least 12 murders during this period. In 2004 Kansas City police used DNA technology to charge Lorenzo Gilyard with 12 murders.
(WSJ, 4/20/04, p.A1)
Return to home
1977 Jan 1, The California Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act became effective. The concept originated around 1974. The largest supporter of POBRA was the ACLU. Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law.
(www.porac.org/POBR_ptrfr.htm)(SFC, 2/9/06, p.A1)
1977 Jan 3, Apple Computers incorporated under Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak. In March Apple produced the Apple II, the first pre-assembled, mass-produced PC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1977 Jan 6, William Gropper (b.1897), painter and political cartoonist, died. He worked for the radical publications "The Masses" and "Art Front."
(SFC, 2/5/97, p.E1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gropper)
1977 Jan 8, In Florida Walter H. Scott (64), a former official with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was killed. In 1980 William Claybourne Taylor (b.1949) was indicted for the murder and the shooting of Eugene T. Bailey, a former mayor of Williston, Fla. Taylor posted bond and disappeared until 2016 when he was arrested by federal agents in Reidsville, NC.
(http://tinyurl.com/j86f8z9)(SFC, 7/29/16, p.A6)
1977 Jan 9, The Oakland Raiders beat the Minnesota Vikings in the Super Bowl 32-14 at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. Quarterback Ken Stabler (1945-2015) led the SF Bay Area team to victory.
(SFC, 12/21/01, WB p.G16)(SFC, 12/28/01, WB p.G7)(SFC, 7/10/15, p.A1)
1977 Jan 10, The crater walls of Congo’s Nyiragongo volcano fractured, and a lava lake drained in less than an hour. The lava flowed down the flanks of the volcano at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour on the upper slopes, overwhelming villages and killing at least 70 people.
(SSFC, 1/20/02, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Nyiragongo)
1977 Jan 11, France set off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a Palestinian suspected of involvement in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 1999 Mohammed Oudeh, aka Abu Daoud, published an autobiography in France in which he admitted to playing a mastermind role in the 1972 Munich hostage episode.
(AP, 1/11/98)(SFC, 6/14/99, p.A14)
1977 Jan 12, Anti-French demonstrations took place in Israel after Paris released Abu Daoud, responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9801/12/)
1977 Jan 12, Henri-Georges Clouzot (b.1907), French film director and producer, died. His films included “Les Diaboliques" (1955) and “La Verite" (1960).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Georges_Clouzot)
1977 Jan 17, The TV sitcom “Busting Loose" began with Adam Arkin and ran for 24 episodes.
(SFC, 2/13/08, p.B7)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0192884/)
1977 Jan 17, Gary Gilmore (b.1940), convicted for two murders he committed in Utah, was shot by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first US execution in a decade. In 1979 Norman Mailer authored his Pulitzer Prize winning book: “The Executioner’s Song," the story of Gary Gilmore.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gilmore)(AP, 1/17/98)(Econ, 11/17/07, p.103)
1977 Jan 17, In Argentina Abel Madariaga last saw his wife, a surgeon who treated the poor in a Buenos Aires suburb, being pushed into a Ford Falcon by army officers dressed as civilians as she walked to a train. He and Silvia Quintela (28) were members of the Montoneros, a leftist group targeted for elimination by government death squads. Quintela gave birth to a son the couple had planned to name Francisco in July 1977, while imprisoned in the Campo de Mayo, one of the notorious clandestine torture centers in suburban Buenos Aires. A military intelligence officer, Victor Alejandro Gallo, brought the baby, his umbilical cord still attached, home to his wife, Ines Susana Colombo. Silvia disappeared shortly thereafter. In 2010 Abel was reunited with his son and Gallo was arrested on suspicion of illegal adoption.
(AP, 2/24/10)
1977 Jan 19, In one of his last acts of office, President Ford pardoned Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American who had been suspected of being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose" [see Sep 25, 1948].
(AP, 1/19/00)(AH, 10/02, p.28)
1977 Jan 20, President Jimmy Carter was sworn in and then surprised everyone as he walked from the U.S. Capitol to the White House.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1977 Jan 20, George Bush left office as director of the CIA.
(SFEC, 1/16/00, Par p.2)
1977 Jan 21, US President Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders as long as they had not been involved in violent acts. Carter also urged 65 degrees as the maximum heat in homes to ease the energy crisis.
(AP, 1/21/98)(HN, 1/21/99)(HNQ, 11/13/99)
1977 Jan 23, The TV mini-series "Roots," based on the Alex Haley novel, began a record breaking eight night broadcast on ABC.
(AP, 1/23/98)(HN, 1/23/99)
1977 Jan 23, Ireland set its fishing zone at 200 miles.
(http://tinyurl.com/3atw5c)
1977 Jan 27, The Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests.
(AP, 1/27/98)
1977 Jan 28, A heavy blizzard began in Eastern Canada and the US. It claimed as many as 100 lives. This was the only blizzard declared a natural and national disaster by the American and Canadian governments. In 1978 Erno Rossi authored “White Death: Blizzard of ’77."
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gRb_MuUgg)(www.whitedeath.com/)
1977 Jan 29, Freddie Prinze (b.1954), American comedian and TV actor, shot himself and died. His work included the TV show “Chico & the Man" (1974-1977).
(http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0697905/)
1977 Feb 4, In Illinois 11 people were killed when two cars of a Chicago Transit Authority train fell off elevated tracks after a collision with another train.
(AP, 2/4/02)
1977 Feb 5, Julius Nyerere and Aboud Jumbe set up the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party following the merger of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), which were the sole operating parties in mainland Tanzania and the semi-autonomous islands of Zanzibar respectively.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chama_Cha_Mapinduzi)(Econ, 10/24/15, p.44)
1977 Feb 6, Queen Elizabeth (b.1926) marked her Silver Jubilee. It culminated in June with the official "Jubilee Days," held to coincide with the Queen's 1953 coronation.
(HN, 2/6/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II)
1977 Feb 9, The TV series “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams" premiered with Dan Haggerty (1942-2016) as Grizzly Adams. It was based on the 1974 movie, which was based on the book by Charles Sellier Jr.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0075525/)
1977 Feb 11, A 20.2-kg lobster was caught off Nova Scotia. This was the heaviest known crustacean to date.
(www.canadiangold.ns.ca/funfacts.asp)
1977 Feb 15, W. Sebok discovered asteroid #2491.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroids/2401%E2%80%932500)
1977 Feb 16, Janani Luwum, the Anglican archbishop of Uganda, and two other men were killed in what Ugandan authorities said was an automobile accident.
(AP, 2/16/98)
1977 Feb 18, The space shuttle Enterprise, sitting atop a Boeing 747, went on its maiden "flight" above the Mojave Desert.
(AP, 2/18/98)
1977 Feb 18, In Nigeria soldiers from the army of Gen'l. Obasanjo raided Kalakuta, the communal home of singer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Fela's mother (77) was thrown from a 2nd-story window and later died from her injuries. The compound was burned and a fire brigade was prevented from reaching the site. Fela wrote the song "Coffin for Head of State" to describe how he and his followers carried her coffin to present it to Gen'l. Obasanjo.
(WSJ, 2/24/99, p.A1,10)
1977 Feb 21, In NYC 74 Unification Church couples were wed.
(www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Topics/U-Stuff/BLSS-HST.htm)
1977 Feb 24, Pres. Carter announced the US was cutting off all military aid to Ethiopia because of its human rights violations. The unstated reason was the US desire to cooperate with Saudi Arabia to lure Somalia from the Soviet camp, an effort which was ultimately successful.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Politics/africa.html)
1977 Feb 28, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (b.1905), African-American comedian, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Anderson_(comedian))
1977 Mar 1, The US 200-mile fishery conservation zone went into effect. The US extended its territorial waters out to 200 miles to stop fishing by boats of foreign nations.
(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=6865)(NH, 5/96, p.61)
1977 Mar 2, Bette Davis (1908-1989) became the 1st woman to receive Life Achievement Award.
(www.worldofquotes.com/history/3_2/7/index.html)
1977 Mar 2, Future Tonight Show host Jay Leno debuted with host Johnny Carson.
(www.lvol.com/bios/e136.html)
1977 Mar 2, The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a strict code of ethics.
(AP, 3/2/00)
1977 Mar 2, Libya amended its constitution and changed its name from The Libyan Arab Republic to The Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahirya.
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dr_ibrahim_ighneiwa/libyans.htm)
1977 Mar 4, A 7.4 earthquake in Romania killed about 1,570 people and was felt across southern and eastern Europe.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Bucharest_Earthquake)(AP, 3/4/98)(SFC, 4/28/99, p.A15)
1977 Mar 5, President Carter took questions from 42 telephone callers in 26 states on a network radio call-in program moderated by Walter Cronkite.
(AP, 3/5/98)(www.presidentialtimeline.org/html/timeline.php?id=39)
1977 Mar 7, Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin met with Pres. Carter in Washington.
(www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/campdavid25/campdavid25_photos.phtml)
1977 Mar 7, Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party won elections.
(www.storyofpakistan.com/articletext.asp?artid=A142)
1977 Mar 8, The U.S. Army announced that they had conducted 239 open-air tests of germ warfare.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1977 Mar 9, Pres. Carter proposed an end to travel restrictions to Cuba, Vietnam, N. Korea and Cambodia effective as of March 18.
(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=7139)
1977 Mar 9, Admiral Stansfield Turner took office as head of the CIA under Pres. Carter.
(www.espionageinfo.com/Cou-De/DCI-Director-of-the-Central-Intelligence-Agency.html)
1977 Mar 9, About a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims invaded three buildings in Washington D.C., killing one person and taking more than 130 hostages. The siege ended two days later.
(AP, 3/9/98)
1977 Mar 9, Activist Elisabeth Kaesemann (30), a German sociologist, was abducted in Argentina. Her bullet-riddled body was later found dumped on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
(www.hrw.org/reports/2001/argentina/argen1201-08.htm)
1977 Mar 10, The rings of Uranus were discovered.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1977 Mar 10, E. Power Biggs (b.1906), English organist and composer (CBS), died in, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Power_Biggs)
1977 Mar 11, More than 130 hostages held in Washington, D.C., by Hanafi Muslims were freed after ambassadors from three Islamic nations joined the negotiations.
(AP, 3/11/98)
1977 Mar 12, The Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed Rose Elizabeth Bird (40) as California’s 25th chief justice and the 1st woman to sit on the state’s Supreme Court. She was sworn in on March 26.
(SFC, 3/8/02, p.G8)
1977 Mar 12, Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, outspoken in his defence of the poor, was shot more than dozen times along with an elderly man and a teenager by a right-wing death squad in rural El Salvador while they were riding in a jeep. In 2020 the Vatican said the pope had approved a decree recognizing that Rutilio Grande and two lay Salvadorans were killed "in hatred of the faith".
(Reuters, 2/22/20)
1977 Mar 12, Egypt's Anwar Sadat pledged to regain Arab territory from Israel.
(http://tinyurl.com/37jrq9)
1977 Mar 13, Jan Patocka (b.1907), Czech philosophy professor and one of the three founding spokesmen of “Charter 77," died following a grueling 11-hour interrogation.
(Econ, 12/31/11, p.32)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Pato%C4%8Dka)
1977 Mar 14, Fannie Lou Hamer (b.1917), Mississippi civil rights champion, died. She had helped register black voters when doing so put her own life in danger. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
(SFC, 10/6/12, p.A5)( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer)
1977 Mar 15, The U.S. House of Representatives began a 90-day test to determine the feasibility of showing its sessions on television.
(AP, 3/15/97)
1977 Mar 16, US president Carter pleaded for a Palestinian homeland.
(http://tinyurl.com/39b9fc)
1977 Mar 16, In Lebanon Kamal Jumblatt (60) was killed. He was the leader of Lebanon’s Druze community, a member of the Lebanese Parliament and a Socialist-nationalist supporter of Palestinians. Jumblatt was assassinated by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which he had legalized as interior minister some years earlier.
(Econ, 11/28/09, p.49)(http://tinyurl.com/yzgycku)
1977 Mar 17, Marin County pharmacist Fred Mayer started the first Condom Day at UC Berkeley.
(SFC, 3/18/98, p.A16)
1977 Mar 18, In SF Paul Gaer transformed Al’s Transbay Tavern on Fourth St. into the Hotel Utah Saloon. The structure dated back to 1908 and in 2007 marked its 30th anniversary.
(SFC, 3/15/07, 96H p.4)
1977 Mar 18, Marien Ngouabi, the military president of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), was assassinated.
(AP, 3/18/07)
1977 Mar 18, The Vietnamese "discovered" and returned to the US the remains of Bruce C. Ducat. For eleven years, Ducat, alive or dead, was a prisoner of war.
(www.pownetwork.org/bios/b/b107.htm)
1977 Mar 20, Voters in Paris chose former French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac to be the French capital's first mayor in more than a century.
(AP, 3/20/97)
1977 Mar 20, Premier Indira Gandhi lost her election in India.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1977-3/1977-03-20-CBS-2.html)
1977 Mar 22, President Carter proposed the abolition of the Electoral College.
(HN, 3/22/97)
1977 Mar 22, Indira Gandhi revoked emergency rule and resigned as PM of India.
(http://tinyurl.com/32tg72)
1977 Mar 24, Morarji Desai, head of the Janata Party, became prime minister of India.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_India)
1977 Mar 25, In Argentina political writer Rodolfo Walsh was murdered one day after writing the “Open Letter to the Military Junta" on the first anniversary of the military coup. He had reported on tortures, mass killings, and thousands of disappearances. In 2011 Alfredo Astiz (59), a former navy spy known as "the Angel of Death," was convicted in the kidnapping and disappearing of Rodolfo Walsh.
(http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3170)(AP, 10/26/11)
1977 Mar 25, Philippines’ President Marcos, on March 25, 1977, signed Presidential Proclamation No. 1628 forming an autonomous region in Southern Philippines.
(http://www.armm.gov.ph/armm-history/)
1977 Mar 26, Elvis Costello released his 1st record "Less Than Zero."
(www.pugetsoundradio.com/forum/b-radiohistory/m-1174918300/)
1977 Mar 27, A KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashed into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife. 583 people were killed with 54 survivors.
(SSFC, 10/17/04, p.B7)(AP, 3/27/07)
1977 Mar 28, In the 49th Academy Awards "Rocky," Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway won.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/49th_Academy_Awards)
1977 Apr 1, The U.S. Senate followed the example of the House by adopting a stringent code of ethics requiring full financial disclosure and limits on outside income.
(AP, 4/1/02)
1977 Apr 1, Richard Booth proclaimed Hay-on-Wye, Wales, an independent kingdom with himself as king and his horse as prime minister. The Oxford graduate had opened a 2nd hand bookstore in the town in 1961.
(SSFC, 5/25/03, p.C8)(Econ, 12/24/05, p.84)
1977 Apr 4, Egyptian Pres Anwar Sadat held his 1st meeting with President Jimmy Carter.
(www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/diary/1977/d040477t.pdf)
1977 Apr 5, In San Francisco a group of 100 people, many with disabilities, began a 26-day sit-in protest at San Francisco’s Federal Offices. Grip bars in toilets were among their demands.
(https://tinyurl.com/y2kclvjr)(Econ., 12/12/20, p.31)
1977 Apr 5, A group of Chilean military men in London announced the formation of a "Front of Democratic Forces of Chile in Exile." Another similar group was formed in Brussels and shortly later in East Berlin.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)
1977 Apr 6, Jaime Estevez spoke from a Moscow broadcast that the purposes of 3 newly formed Soviet-backed entities was to lead the fight for the overthrow of the fascist junta in Chile.
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)
1977 Apr 6, The Seattle Kingdome opened and the Mariners lost to the Angels 7-0. The Seattle Mariners baseball team were created following the 1970 departure of the 1-year-old Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee.
(SFC, 2/18/02, p.B6)(WSJ, 4/7/99, p.B1)
1977 Apr 7, Pres. Carter stopped the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel rods in order to discourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
(SSFC, 4/8/07, p.A18)
1977 Apr 7, The RAF gunned down Siegfried Bubeck, a West German federal prosecutor, his driver, Wolfgang Goebel, and the guard Georg Wurster. In 2009 police, using new DNA evidence, arrested Verena Becker (57), a former German leftist terrorist on suspicion of involvement in the slayings. Becker had been arrested a month after the ambush, following a shootout with police. Prosecutors at the time did not have enough evidence to try her on charges of involvement in the Buback slaying, but convicted her of armed robbery and attempted murder stemming from the shootout. She was sentenced to life in prison. In 1989 she was pardoned of those charges by German Pres. Richard von Weizsaecker and released from prison. In 2010 Becker was charged with 3 counts of murder for her alleged role in the fatal 1977 ambush.
(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A8)(AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 4/21/10)
1977 Apr 8, Israel premier Rabin resigned as prime minister due to a bank account scandal after it was revealed that his wife, Leah, had illegally maintained a foreign currency account containing about $3,000 in the United States.
(SFEC, 4/21/97, p.D4)(http://i-cias.com/e.o/rabin_yz.htm)
1977 Apr 11, Jacques Prevert (b.1900), French poet (La puil et le beau), died.
(http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Pr%C3%A9vert)
1977 Apr 14, Computer enthusiasts gathered for the 1st West Coast Computer Faire at the SF Civic Auditorium. An estimated 20-30 thousand American homes had computers.
(SFC, 4/12/02, p.G6)
1977 Apr 15, In Argentina some 20 armed men broke into the home of journalist Jacobo Timerman. He was seized and held for over a year with beatings, electrical shocks and solitary confinement.
(SFC, 11/12/99, p.D6)
1977 Apr 16, Jim Warren (1936-2021) and Bob Reiling staged the first West Coast Computer Faire. The 2-day event, where the Commodore Pet and Apple II were introduce, drew nearly 13,000 people to the San Francisco Civic Auditiorium.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Computer_Faire)(SSFC, 12/5/21, p.F1)
1977 Apr 19, Alex Haley received a special Pulitzer Prize for his book "Roots."
(HN, 4/19/99)
1977 Apr 20, The film "Annie Hall" premiered. Diane Keaton starred in the Woody Allen film Annie Hall. It was rated #31 by the Amer. Film Inst. in 1998.
(www.variety.com/profiles/Film/main/24544/Annie%20Hall.html?dataSet=1)(SFC, 1/9/97, p.E1)
1977 Apr 20, The US Supreme Court, in Wooley v. Maynard, said car owners could refuse to display state mottoes on license plates. The Court ruled that "Live Free or Die" may be covered on NH license plates.
(AP, 4/20/07)
1977 Apr 21, The musical play "Annie" opened on Broadway, the 1st of 2,377 performances. Laurie Beechman (d.1998) made her debut in the show based on the “Little Orphan Annie" comic strip. Beechman later played Grizabella for 5 years in “Cats."
(SFC, 3/10/98, p.A17)(AP, 4/21/08)
1977 Apr 22, Simon Peres became premier of Israel under Pres. Ephraim Katzir. Peres served until June 21. He served again as premier from 1984-1986, and 1985-1996.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimon_Peres)
1977 Apr 23, Dr. Allen Bussey completed 20,302 yo-yo loops in Waco, Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco,_Texas)
1977 Apr 26, NY's famed disco Studio 54 opened. It closed in March, 1986.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_54)
1977 Apr 27, Bloody riots took place in Soweto, South Africa.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1977 Apr 28, US regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act were signed. Americans with physical disabilities had begun staging protests at federal buildings in San Francisco, LA and Washington DC. The SF protest grew to 150 people and lasted 25 days.
(SFC, 5/1/97, p.A20)(http://tinyurl.com/3xje8f)
1977 Apr 28, Andreas Baader and members of Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the "Red Army Faction," were jailed for life after a trial lasting nearly 2 years in Stuttgart, Germany.
(http://www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1977.html)
1977 Apr 28, In Italy the Red Brigades assassinated Fulvio Croce, the president of the Turin Bar Association.
(http://tinyurl.com/ywxupv)
1977 Apr 29, Donald Evans (b.1945), American artist, died in a fire in the Netherlands. His work included the creation of postage stamp series for imaginary countries.
(WSJ, 2/5/03, p.D10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Evans_(artist))
1977 Apr 30, In Argentina 14 women whose children had disappeared went to the Plaza de Mayo to demonstrate their cause. Police said they could not stay there so they began to walk around the pyramid in the center of the plaza. In 2006 they completed their 1,500th and last demonstration [see Dec 1977].
(SSFC, 2/26/06, p.E3)
1977 Apr, Pres. Carter named Montana Senator Mike Mansfield (1903-2001) ambassador to Japan. Mansfield had planned to retire but held the post for 10 years.
(SFC, 10/6/01, p.E1)
1977 May 4, A large tornado swept through Pleasant Hill, Mo., hitting the city’s high school and grade school. Only minor injuries occurred due to superb tornado warnings and drills.
(SFC, 5/4/09, p.D8)
1977 May 5, In San Francisco the Steinhart Aquarium’s fish roundabout opened at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.
(SFC, 7/16/16, p.C1)
1977 May 5, In Texas Joe Campos Torres (23), a Mexican-American Vietnam War veteran arrested on a disorderly conduct charge, was beaten to death by Houston police officers. Two of the six officers were later convicted of misdemeanor negligent homicide and fined $1 and sentenced to probation.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Joe_Campos_Torres)(AP, 6/28/21)
1977 May 5, Ludwig Erhard (b.1897)), German minister of Economic Affairs (CDU), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Erhard)
1977 May 7, Seattle Slew (d.2002) won the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.
(AP, 5/7/04)
1977 May 8, The trial of Pieter Menten (b.1899), a former Dutch SS officer and art collector, began in Amsterdam. He was convicted and sentenced to 15 years, but the sentence was reduced to 10 years in 1980.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9805/08/)(http://tinyurl.com/2n79xl)
1977 May 9, Pink Floyd opened a 2-night stand at the Oakland Coliseum.
(http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/dt/pink-floyd-concert/2923-5541.html)
1977 May 9, James Jones (b.1921), US writer (From Here to Eternity), died. His work included the pre-WW II novel "From Here to Eternity." His daughter later wrote the novel "A Soldier’s Daughter never Cries," which was made into a film with Kris Kristofferson as James Jones.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jjones.htm)(SFEC, 7/12/98, Par p.17)
1977 May 10, Patti Hearst was sentenced to 5 years’ probation for her role in the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) crime spree May 16-17, 1974. She still faced a 7-year sentence for armed robbery.
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.G7)
1977 May 10, Actress Joan Crawford (69) died in New York of liver cancer.
(AP, 5/10/97)(SFC,12/17/97, p.D6)
1977 May 12, Pink Floyd performed the first quadrophonic concert in London.
(SC, Internet, 10/12/97)
1977 May 14, Capt. Robert Nairac (29), an underground British soldier, was abducted from a border pub by an IRA gang, taken across the border into a Republic of Ireland forest, and shot through the head. In 2008 the Police Service of Northern Ireland press office confirmed the arrest of Kevin Crilly (57), an IRA veteran, on suspicion of involvement in Nairac's killing. On April 1, 2011, Crilly was acquitted of all charges against him.
(AP, 5/20/08)(AP, 4/1/11)
1977 May 16 Five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling atop the Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.
(AP, 5/16/97)
1977 May 16, In Mali former Pres. Modibo Keita (1915-1977) died in prison. His reputation was rehabilitated in 1992 following the overthrow of Moussa Traore and subsequent the election of president Alpha Oumar Konare. A monument for Modibo Keita, was dedicated in Bamako on June 6, 1999.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modibo_Ke%C3%AFta)
1977 May 17, The state Assembly voted 54-23 to restore the death penalty. Gov. Jerry Brown pledged to veto the bill. It had passed the Senate 29-10.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.G8)(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A16)
1977 May 17, Menachem Begin's Likud-party won election in Israel.
(http://begincenterdiary.blogspot.com/2007/05/another-avner-article-great-emancipator.html)
1977 May 19, David Frost, British talk-show host, extracted an on-air apology from former Pres. Richard Nixon regarding his role in Watergate.
(www.landmarkcases.org/nixon/nixonview.html)
1977 May 23, Pres. Jimmy Carter presented an environmental message to Congress: "I am directing to make a one-year study of the probable changes in the world’s population, natural resources and environment through the end of the century. This study will serve as the foundation of our longer-term planning. The Global 2000 Report sold 1.5 million copies and pronounced a world that would be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically and more vulnerable to disruption than the world of 1980.
(SFC, 12/31/00, WB p.1)
1977 May 23, The US Supreme Court refused to hear appeals of former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman & John Mitchell in connection with their Watergate convictions.
(AP, 5/23/04)
1977 May 23, The US Supreme Court in Abood v Detroit Board of Education ruled that states could allow unions to collect compulsory fees to support negotiations over workplace matters like wages and benefits.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abood_v._Detroit_Board_of_Education)(Econ, 1/16/16, p.34)
1977 May 23, Moluccan extremists held 105 schoolchildren and 50 others hostage on a hijacked train in Netherlands. The children were released May 27. The siege ended June 11.
(www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=4024)
1977 May 24, In a surprise move, the Kremlin ousted Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny from the Communist Party's ruling Politburo.
(AP, 5/24/97)
1977 May 25, "Brady Bunch Hour" last aired on ABC-TV.
(www.tv.com/the-brady-bunch-hour/show/549/summary.html)
1977 May 25, US performed a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_8.htm)
1977 May 25, Dutch social democratic party won parliamentary election.
(http://electionresources.org/nl/house.php?election=1977)
1977 May 26, George H. Willig scaled the outside of the South Tower of New York City's World Trade Center. He was arrested at the top of the 110-story building.
(AP, 5/26/97)
1977 May 27, The film "Smokey and the Bandit" opened in movie theaters and was the #2 hit of the year behind "Star Wars." It starred Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, Par p.10)(SFC, 10/10/02, p.D9)(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076729/)
1977 May 27, New York City fined "human fly" George H. Willig $1.10 -- one penny for each of the 110 stories of the World Trade Center he scaled the day before.
(AP, 5/27/97)
1977 May 27, Angolan authorities accused what they described as the "fractionistas" or "splitters" of staging an attempted coup. Members of the group said they did no such thing; rather they had organized a mass demonstration and a takeover of the radio station to call people on to the streets of Luanda, in order to pressurize President António Agostinho Neto to clean up his government. Mr Neto called in loyal sections of the army, supported by Cuban troops, and a massacre began. Thousands, including many of the country's young intellectuals and party activists, were imprisoned, tortured and killed. In January 2018, 24 of the now adult children of some of the disappeared set up an association of orphans, named M27.
(AP, 9/6/20)
1977 May 28, 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Ky.
(AP, 5/28/97)
1977 May 29, Danny Gerard, TV and film actor, was born in Mount Vernon, NY.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0313944/)
1977 May 29, Janet Guthrie (b.1938) became the 1st woman to drive in the Indianapolis 500. Her autobiography, "Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle," was published in 2005.
(www.janetguthrie.com/biofr.htm)(www.nascar.com/2002/kyn/women/02/02/Guthrie/)
1977 May 29, The NBC 24 hour News & Information Service ended on radio.
(http://pdxradio.net/feedback/messages/995/2265.html?1096520101)
1977 May 29, USSR performed a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakhstan, Semipalitinsk, USSR.
(www.iss.niiit.ru/ksenia/catal_nt/3_8.htm)
1977 May 29, Goddard Lieberson (b.1911), composer and president of Columbia Records (1956-1971), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddard_Lieberson)
1977 May 30, Paul Desmond (b.1924), jazz alto saxophonist, died in NYC.
(http://musicbase.h1.ru/PPB/ppb2/Bio_224.htm)
1977 May 31, The trans-Alaska oil pipeline, formally proposed in 1969, was completed after three years of work. Alaska's Senator Mike Gravel (1930-2021) had seized the issue in 1973 by proposing legislation that would exempt the project from any further court intervention under the National Environmental Policy Act.
(AP, 5/31/97)(NY Times, 6/27/21)
1977 May, Larry Ellison and Robert Miner founded Oracle Corp. in Belmont, Ca., after they persuaded the CIA to let them pick up a lapsed contract for a special database program.
(SFC, 5/20/02, p.A13)
1977 May, Gary Nardino (1935-1998) became the president of Paramount Television and inherited the hits "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley."
(SFC, 2/3/98, p.A15)
1977 May, In Singapore Lee Kuan Yew (b.1923) won a barely contested bi-election as his People’s Action Party won every seat in the legislature. Lee then moved against journalists and human rights activists who had irritated him during the campaign.
(SFC, 9/21/02, p.A18)(http://rulers.org/indexl2.html)
1977 Jun 1, The Soviet Union formally charged Jewish human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky with treason. In 1978 he was convicted and imprisoned. In 1986 he was released to the West.
(AP, 6/1/97)
1977 Jun 2, New Jersey Gov. Brendan T. Byrne signed a law allowing casino gambling in Atlantic City.
(http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3864697)
1977 Jun 2, Forrest Lewis (b.1899), American TV and film actor, died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0507189/)
1977 Jun 3, Roberto Rossellini (b.1906), Italian director, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Rossellini)
1977 Jun 5, The first Apple II personal computers went on sale.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II)
1977 Jun 5, In the Seychelles France Albert Rene (b.1935) seized power in a coup. He continued as president to 2004. This day became marked as Liberation Day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France-Albert_Ren%C3%A9)(SFC, 9/4/01, p.B1)(SSFC, 6/1/14, p.P3)
1977 Jun 6, The Washington Post reported that the US had developed a neutron bomb.
(http://piurl.com/5B)
1977 Jun 6, The US Supreme Court tossed out automatic death penalty laws.
(http://supreme.justia.com/us/431/633/case.html)
1977 Jun 7, Anita Bryant led a successful crusade against Miami gay rights law.
(http://thecastro.net/parade/parade/parade.html)
1977 Jun 8, Some 5,000 marched through downtown to protests an anti-gay rights vote in Miami. Voters in Dade County had repealed a gay-rights ordnance.
(SFC, 6/8/02, p.G8)
1977 Jun 8, The final run of the Paris to Istanbul Orient Express, begun in 1883, took place.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient_Express)
1977 Jun 8, Protocols I and II were added to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. They prohibited environmental damage during int’l. and internal armed conflict. Protocol I prohibited "widespread, long-term and severe damage to the environment." Guerrilla warfare was affirmed as a legitimate means of conflict by the Geneva Conventions in 1977, when prisoner of war status was extended to guerrilla fighters.
(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)(www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/93.htm)
1977 Jun 10, James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee with six others; he was recaptured Jun 13.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1977 Jun 11, ELO’s "Telephone Line" reached #7 in the US, giving the band its first gold single.
(http://private.peterlink.ru/vlad/dates70.htm)
1977 Jun 11, Seattle Slew (d.2002 at 28) won the Belmont Stakes, capturing the Triple Crown.
(AP, 6/11/97)(WSJ, 5/8/02, p.A1)
1977 Jun 11, A 20-day hostage drama in the Netherlands ended as Dutch marines stormed a train and a school held by South Moluccan extremists. Six gunmen and two hostages on the train were killed.
(AP, 6/11/97)
1977 Jun 12, "Pippin" closed at Imperial Theater in NYC after 1944 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippin_(musical))
1977 Jun 13, James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, was recaptured following his escape three days earlier from a Tennessee prison.
(AP, 6/13/00)
1977 Jun 15, The first general election in Spain since 1936 resulted in victory for the UCD (Union of Democratic Centre).
(HN, 6/15/99)
1977 Jun 16, Werner von Braun (65), German-born Nazi and American rocket scientist (V1/V2), died of smoking. In 2005 Bob Ward authored “Dr. Space," a biography of von Braun.
(www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputnik/braun.html)(WSJ, 6/16/05, p.D8)
1977 Jun 16, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was named president of the USSR, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.
(AP, 6/16/98)(HN, 6/16/98)
1977 Jun 19, Pope Paul VI proclaimed a 19th-century Philadelphia bishop, John Neumann, the first male US saint.
(AP, 6/19/07)
1977 Jun 20, The 1st oil of the Alaska pipeline began to flow south 799 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez. It reached Valdez on Jul 28.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/pipelinefacts.html)
1977 Jun 21, HR Haldeman, former White House chief of staff, entered prison.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1977-6/)
1977 Jun 21, Menachem Begin became Israel's sixth prime minister at the head of a Likud coalition. He became Likud’s first prime minister and continued to 1983.
(AP, 6/21/97)(WSJ, 4/29/98, p.A22)(Econ, 7/28/12, SR p.8)
1977 Jun 22, Walt Disney’s film “The Rescuers" was released.
(www.bcdb.com/bcdb/cartoon.cgi?film=40&cartoon=The%20Rescuers)
1977 Jun 22, John N. Mitchell became the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up. He was released 19 months later. Maurice Stans (d.1998 at 90), Nixon’s commerce secretary and fund-raiser, was indicted with Mr. Mitchell for perjury and conspiracy involving a $200,000 contribution by Robert Vesco, but were acquitted by a jury.
(AP, 6/22/97)(SFC, 4/15/98, p.C3)
1977 Jun 23, The Brazil congress legalized divorce with a constitutional amendment, despite opposition from Roman Catholic Church. The amendment would be signed into law by President Ernesto Geisel.
(www.wiwomensnetwork.org/chrontwo1.html)
1977 Jun 24, The IRS revealed that Pres. Jimmy Carter paid no taxes in 1976.
(www.kipnotes.com/James%20E.%20Carter.htm)
1977 Jun 26, In Columbia, Tenn., 42 people were killed when a fire sent toxic smoke pouring through the Maury County Jail.
(AP, 6/26/97)
1977 Jun 27, The US Supreme Court struck, in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, down state laws and bar association rules that had prohibited lawyers from advertising their fees for routine services.
(AP, 6/27/08)
1977 Jun 27, Illinois reinstated capital punishment.
(http://tinyurl.com/y5tlmltz)
1977 Jun 27, The Republic of Djibouti gained independence from France with Hassan Gouled as the first president.
(SFC, 12/28/02, p.A6)(AP, 6/27/07)(Econ, 3/22/08, p.55)
1977 Jun 27, H.E. Lee Kuan Yew, the PM of Singapore, formally opened the Fourth Meeting of the ASEAN Economic Ministers which was held in Singapore on 27-29 June 1977.
(www.aseansec.org/1287.htm)
1977 Jun 28, The US Supreme Court allowed Federal control of Nixon tapes and papers.
(www.kipnotes.com/James%20E.%20Carter.htm)
1977 Jun 28, In Albania Koco Plaku, an engineer, was executed following a closed-door trial two years after he was arrested in 1975. He had been convicted of "sabotage" and "espionage" over fishing hooks given to him by a Russian friend. He was among more than 5,000 executed during the communist era in Albania.
(AFP, 5/07/19)
1977 Jun 30, President Jimmy Carter announced his opposition to the B-1 bomber.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1977 Jun 30, SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), the regional defense organization created to protect members from communist expansionism, formally ended. The organization had been created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty on Sep. 8, 1954, in response to events in Korea and Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos). It members were Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Pakistan withdrew in 1968 and France withdrew financial support. SEATO had one final exercise on Feb. 20, 1976, formally ending a little over a year later.
(HNQ, 4/2/01)
1977 Jun, In Florida the Elderhostel site at Eckerd College was founded. It was an education program for vacationing seniors.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.T12)
1977 Jul 2, Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born author, died in Switzerland. In 1996 a 3-volume collection of his prose work was issued by the Library of America. In 1999 Kurt Johnson and Steven Coates authored "Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius."
(WSJ, 4/22/99, A20)(SFEC, 10/17/99, BR p.4)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nabokov.htm)
1977 Jul 3, Raymond Damadian produced the 1st image of a human chest using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In 1970 he found that cancer cells could be distinguished from healthy tissues using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).
(Econ, 12/6/03, TQp.15)
1977 Jul 5, Pakistan's army under Gen Mohammad Zia ul-Haq seized power. The civilian government was ousted by the military and martial law was imposed.
(SFC, 1/30/97, p.B3)(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)(www.ppp.org.pk/history.html)
1977 Jul 7, Sir Michael Tippett (1905-1998), British composer, premiered his 4th opera "The Ice Break," which featured a race riot and a psychedelic sequence.
(www.michael-tippett.com/operaintroibreng.htm)
1977 Jul 11, The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a White House ceremony.
(AP, 7/11/97)
1977 Jul 11, The CRAY 1-A was delivered to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). This was Cray Research's first official customer, paying US$8.86 million ($7.9 million plus $1 million for the disks).
(www.cisl.ucar.edu/computers/gallery/cray/cray1.jsp)
1977 Jul 11, In Argentina Bishop Carlos Horacio Ponce de Leon (b.1914) died in a car accident while driving with Victor Oscar Martinez to deliver evidence of junta crimes to the Vatican’s representative. The evidence disappeared.
(SFC, 4/21/11, p.A2)(http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Horacio_Ponce_de_Le%C3%B3n)
1977 Jul 12, President Carter defended Supreme Court decisions limiting government payments for poor women's abortions, saying, "There are many things in life that are not fair."
(AP, 7/12/97)
1977 Jul 13, A 25-hour power blackout hit the New York City area and looters rampaged in the city after lightning struck upstate power lines. Some 9 million people were affected.
(TMC, 1994, p.1977)(AP, 7/13/97)(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A7)
1977 Jul 14, US House Resolution 658 established a permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
(http://intelligence.house.gov/Faqs.aspx)
1977 Jul 20, A flash flood hit Johnstown, Pa., killing more than 80 people and causing $350 million worth of damage.
(AP, 7/20/08)
1977 Jul 20, The UN Security Council voted to admit Vietnam to the world body.
(AP, 7/20/07)
1977 Jul 22, In Iowa John Schweer, a retired white police officer, was murdered. In 1978 Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, both black men, were wrongfully convicted and served 25 years in prison before they were freed in 2003. Both men filed suits in 2005 against prosecutors and police officers of Council Bluffs. In 2012 a jury failed to reach a verdict and a judge declared a mistrial.
(http://tinyurl.com/9xeb75v)(SFC, 10/29/12, p.A6)(SFC, 12/15/12, p.A7)
1977 Jul 22, In China Deng Xiaoping was named vice-premier.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1977 Jul 22, The Chinese painter, Pan Yu-liang (b.1895), died in Paris. The 1997 biographical film "The Painter" (La Peintre) was based on her biography by Shi Nan.
(SFC, 8/20/97, p.A1)(www.chinadaily.com.cn/photo/2006-11/14/content_732470.htm)
1977 Jul 23, A jury in Washington, D.C., convicted 12 Hanafi Muslims of charges stemming from the hostage siege at three buildings the previous March.
(AP, 7/23/98)
1977 Jul 23, In Sri Lanka Junius Richard Jayewardene (1906-1996) was elected prime minister. Immediately thereafter, he drew up a national constitution which created an Executive Presidency with drastic and unchecked powers, and, on its adoption into law, became, in 1978, the first Sri Lankan Executive President.
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junius_Richard_Jayewardene)
1977 Jul 27, Lee Miller (b.1907), American photographer, died of cancer in Sussex, England. As a young woman in Paris she moved in with Man Ray, American-born surrealist painter and photographer. In 2005 Carolyn Burke authored “Lee Miller: A Life."
(Econ, 12/3/05, p.81)(http://tinyurl.com/9zcyr)
1977 Jul 28, Roy Wilkins turned over leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to Benjamin L. Hooks (d.2010 at 85). Hoods continued as executive director to 1992. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor in 2007.
(AP, 7/28/00)(SFC, 4/16/10, p.C8)
1977 Jun 28, The 1st Prudhoe Bay oil of the Alaska pipeline reached the port of Valdez as construction of the Trans-Alaskan pipeline was completed.
(www.alyeska-pipe.com/pipelinefacts.html)
1977 Aug 1, Francis Gary Powers (b.1929), US U-2 pilot, died in fiery helicopter crash. In 2012 he was awarded a Silver Star for his 2-year imprisonment by the Soviets following the downing of his U-2 spy plane in 1960.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gary_Powers)(SFC, 6/16/12, p.A4)
1977 Aug 1, In Uruguay teacher Julio Castro disappeared. His remains were identified in 2011 using DNA tests.
(AP, 12/1/11)
1977 Aug 3, Radio Shack issued a press release introducing the TRS-80 computer. 25 existed and within weeks thousands were ordered.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80)
1977 Aug 3, Archbishop Makarios (b.1913), president of Cyprus, died.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A26)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makarios)
1977 Aug 4, President Carter signed a measure establishing the Department of Energy.
(AP, 8/4/97)
1977 Aug 4, In San Francisco some 50 elderly tenants of the International Hotel in Chinatown were forcefully evicted by police as thousands of protestors filled the streets. The structure was demolished in 1979 and a hole occupied the site. In 2004 city officials declared a 2-block corridor on Kearny as “Manilatown" as construction rose on 14-story Int’l. Hotel Senior Residences. In 2007 Estella Habal authored “San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement."
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.A30)(SFC, 8/1/97, p.A25)(eyewitness)(SFC, 6/8/01, WBa p.6)(SFC, 7/24/02, p.A17)(SFC, 7/28/04, p.B1)(SSFC, 8/19/07, p.M1)
1977 Aug 7, "Shenandoah" closed at Alvin Theater in NYC after 1,050 performances.
(www.angelfire.com/stars/scottbakula/Theatrecredits.html)
1977 Aug 10, US and Panama negotiations for a Panama Canal Zone treaty, begun on February 15, were completed [see Sep 7].
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrijos-Carter_Treaties)
1977 Aug 10, Postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested in Yonkers, NY, accused of being the "Son of Sam" gunman responsible for six slayings and seven woundings. Berkowitz was sentenced to six consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences.
(AP, 8/10/07)
1977 Aug 11, The California legislature restored the death penalty.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.G8)(www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=48)
1977 Aug 12, The space shuttle Enterprise passed its first solo flight test by taking off atop a Boeing 747, separating and then touching down in California's Mojave Desert.
(AP, 8/12/97)
1977 Aug 12, NASA launched the High Energy Astronomy Observatory 1 into Earth orbit. It continued operating until January 9, 1979.
(http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/heao1/heao1.html)
1977 Aug 15, Police in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, found Mary Parsh (58) and her daughter, Brenda (27), lying nude side by side on a bed at home, their hands tied behind their backs. Each had been shot in the head. In 2007 Timothy Krajcir (63), a graduate from Southern Illinois with a degree in law enforcement, confessed to their rape and murder and at least 4 more. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 1982 killing of a Southern Illinois University Carbondale student, Deborah Sheppard. and, in addition, was charged with five counts of murder and three counts of rape against women in the Cape Girardeau, Missouri, area from 1977 to 1982. In 2008, Krajcir pleaded guilty and was sentenced to another 40 years in prison for the 1978 killing of Marion resident Virginia Lee Witte.
(AP, 12/12/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Krajcir)
1977 Aug 16, In San Francisco some 16 thousand kids paid $6.50 apiece to watch the Kiss concert at the Cow Palace.
(SFC, 7/22/17, p.C1)
1977 Aug 16, Elvis Presley (b.1935), The "King" of rock-n-roll, died in the upstairs bedroom suite at Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tenn. of a drug overdose at 42. Elvis died of heart failure after years of substance abuse. In 1994 Peter Guralnick published "Last Train to Memphis," the first of a 2-part biography on Elvis. In 1998 Guralnick published "Careless Love." More than 150 books were in print on Elvis in 1997. In 1998 Ernest Jorgensen published "Elvis Presley: A Life in Music. The Complete Recording sessions."
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Par p.7)(SFEC, 8/3/97, DB p.33)(AP, 8/16/97)(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.D7)(WSJ, 1/7/98, p.W1)
1977 Aug 18, In South Africa Steve Biko and Peter Jones were picked up by police at Grahamstown. They were arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967. Biko suffered a major head injury while in police custody, was chained to a window grille for a day and died on Sep 12.
(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko)
1977 Aug 19, Comedian Groucho Marx died in Los Angeles at age 86. In 1996 Steven Stolier authored "Raised Eyebrows." In 2000 Stefan Kanfer authored "Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx." Simon Louvish authored "Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers."
(SFC, 6/5/97, p.A26)(AP, 8/19/97)(WSJ, 5/12/00, p.W8)(SFEC, 6/25/00, Par p.16)
1977 Aug 20, The song "Best of My Love", by the Emotions, topped the US pop charts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_My_Love_(The_Emotions_song))
1977 Aug 20, The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. It was scheduled to pass Jupiter and Saturn.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(MofE, 1978, p.41)(AP, 8/20/97)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)
1977 Aug 23, The Gossamer Condor 2 flew the first figure-of-eight, a distance of 2,172 meters winning the first Kremer prize at Minter Field in Shafter, California. It was built by Dr Paul B. MacCready and piloted by amateur cyclist and hang-glider pilot Bryan Allen.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Condor)
1977 Aug 23, Marxist philosopher Rudolf Bahro was imprisoned in German DR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bahro)
1977 Aug 27, "Chicago" closed at 46th St Theater in NYC after 947 performances.
(www.curtainup.com/chicago.html)
1977 Aug 28, Ralph Samuelson (b.1904), the acknowledged father of water skiing, died on Pine Island, Minnesota.
(ON, 8/12, p.12)( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Samuelson)
1977 Aug 30, Terrorists bombed a PG&E substation in Sausalito, Ca. Power was cut off for 6,000 customers and storm drains were flooded with some 3,200 gallons of coolant oil.
(SFC, 8/30/02, p.E2)
1977 Aug 31, Ian Smith, espousing racial segregation, won the Rhodesian general election with 80% of overwhelmingly white electorate's vote.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia_general_election%2C_1977)
1977 Aug, The Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party constituted itself as "The General Staff of Revolution."
(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)
1977 Aug, Japan’s PM Fukuda visited 5 ASEAN nations and in Manila promised SE Asia that Japan forever renounced aggression against its neighbors. This became known as the Fukuda doctrine.
(Econ, 12/15/07, p.52)(www.jimin.jp/jimin/english/history/chap8.html)
1977 Sep 1, Ethel Waters (b.1896), African-American blues and jazz vocalist, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Waters)
1977 Sep 2, Italian journalist Indro Montanelli (1909-2001) was shot in the legs by the Red Brigades. In 1969 he acknowledged having had a 12-year-old Eritrean bride during Italy’s colonial occupation in the 1930s. Montanelli was one of Italy’s most revered journalists, honored by the Vienna-based International Press Institute in 2000 as among the 50 World Press Freedom Heroes.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indro_Montanelli)(AP, 6/14/20)
1977 Sep 3, The "Mary Tyler Moore Show" was last broadcast on NBC-TV.
(www.sitcomsonline.com/themarytylermooreshow.html)
1977 Sep 3, In Cyprus Spyros Kyprianou (1932-2002) was elected president with no opposition in order to serve the remaining term of Archbishop Makarios.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyros_Kyprianou)
1977 Sep 3, Japan's Sadaharu Oh hit his 756th HR to surpass Hank Aaron's total.
(www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Sadaharu_Oh)
1977 Sep 4, The Golden Dragon Massacre occurred in San Francisco’s Chinatown. 5 people were killed and 11 wounded, none of them gang members, during a shootout between the rival Wah Ching and Joe Boys. Four men were convicted. In 1999 Bill Lee, a former gang member, published "Chinese Playground," a memoir of his experiences in the 60s and 70s. Assailant Curtis Tam was released in 1991 after he testified against two others. In 2015 assailant Melvin Yu was paroled. Peter Ng remained in prison in Vacaville. Tom Yu, the chief plotter and not at the scene, was up for parole in 2017.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A18)(SFEC, 5/2/99, BR p.6)(SSFC, 9/3/17, p.A14,15)
1977 Sep 5, The United States launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft two weeks after launching its twin, Voyager 2.
(AP, 9/5/97)
1977 Sep 5, West German industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer was kidnapped in Cologne by members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Schleyer was later killed by his captors. Schleyer was the president of the German Employers Federation.
(AP, 9/5/97)(WSJ, 1/11/00, p.A1)
1977 Sep 7, Pres. Carter and Gen'l. Torrijos signed the Panama Canal treaties (the Torrijos-Carter Treaties) in Washington, DC. The 2 treaties abrogated the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty of 1903 and called for the US to eventually turn over control of the waterway to Panama. The US Southern Command was scheduled to withdraw to new Miami headquarters by the end of 1999. The US agreed to clean up its bases before turning them over. The deal was negotiated by Sol Linowitz (d.2005).
(AP, 9/7/97)(WSJ, 3/21/05, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrijos-Carter_Treaties)
1977 Sep 7, Convicted Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy was released from prison after more than four years.
(AP, 9/7/97)
1977 Sep 8, Zero Mostel (b.1915), Brooklyn-born stage and film comedian, died of a heart attack.
(SFC, 12/30/99, p.E3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Mostel)
1977 Sep 9, Mary Ann Quigley (17) was killed near War Memorial Park in Santa Clara, Ca. In 2006 Richard Armand Archibeque (47) was arrested for her rape and murder based on DNA evidence. They had been classmates at Santa Clara High School.
(SFC, 12/30/06, p.B2)
1977 Sep 10, Convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, became the last person to date to be executed by the guillotine in France.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, Z1 p.6)(AP, 9/10/97)
1977 Sep 11, Lou Ellen Burleigh (21) of Walnut Creek, Ca., went missing. Roger Kibbe was later identified as a suspect confessed to her rape and murder. In 2009 Kibbe, who had become known as the I-5 strangler, was convicted of her murder and that of 5 others. In 2011 remains of Burleigh were found in a dry riverbed near Lake Berryessa.
(SFC, 6/28/11, p.C6)
1977 Sep 11, In South Africa Steve Biko was found by a guard to be semiconscious and foaming at the mouth. A doctor ordered him transported to a prison hospital in Pretoria.
(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.A9)
1977 Sep 12, Robert Lowell (b.1917), US poet (Near the Ocean), died of a heart attack in NYC. In 2003 Frank Bidart and David Gewanter edited "Robert Lowell: Collected Poems." In 2005 Saskia Hamilton edited “The Letters of Robert Lowell."
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rlowell.htm)(SSFC, 7/13/03, p.M6)(Econ, 7/25/05, p.73)
1977 Sep 12, In South Africa Steven Biko died while under police custody. He headed the Black Consciousness Movement and was the country’s best known political dissident. He was detained and held in Port Elizabeth and later driven naked in a truck 700 miles to Pretoria where he died in a prison cell. In 1997 the five police officers involved in his detention filed for amnesty. They were retired Col. Harold Snyman, retired Lt. Col. Gideon Nieuwoudt, Ruben Marx, Johan Beneke, and then Capt. Daantjie Siebert. In 1999 former Detective Sgt. Gideon Nieuwoudt was denied amnesty because he denied any crime. This killing was the breaking point and led to international protests and a UN imposed arms embargo.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A7)(WSJ, 2/6/97, p.A9)(AP, 9/12/97)(SFEC, 1/10/99, p.A23)(MC, 9/12/01)
1977 Sep 13, General Motors introduced 1st US diesel auto, the Oldsmobile 88.
(http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/09/today-in-hist-2.html)
1977 Sep 13, Kilauea volcano began erupting in Hawaii.
(http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/gallery/kilauea/erz/kiai.html)
1977 Sep 13, Leopold Stokowski (b.1882)), conductor, died in Hampshire, England. He was the founder of the New York City Symphony and The American Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the music for and appeared in Disney’s Fantasia.
(WSJ, 8/6/97, p.A12)(AP, 9/13/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Stokowski)
1977 Sep 16, Maria Callas, "our century’s greatest singer," the American-born prima donna famed for her lyric soprano and fiery temperament, died in Paris at age 53. In 1998 EMI packaged her entire catalog on 70 compact disks.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.D1)(AP, 9/16/97)(WSJ, 1/29/98, p.A16)
1977 Sep 18, Cosmos, a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite, was launched. It fell onto Northern Canada on Jan. 24, 1978.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.A1)
1977 Sep 20, The first wave of Southeast Asian "boat people" arrived in San Francisco under a new U.S. resettlement program.
(AP, 9/20/97)
1977 Sep 21, After weeks of controversy over past business and banking practices, President Carter's embattled budget director, Bert Lance, resigned.
(AP, 9/21/97)
1977 Sep 24, ABC launched the TV series “The Love Boat." The series continued to 1986 with Gavin MacLeod as the commander of the Pacific Princess.
(www.tvland.com/shows/loveboat/main.jhtml)(SSFC, 3/9/08, p.D3)
1977 Sep 26, Sir Freddie Laker began his cut-rate "Skytrain" service from London to NY. Laker airways collapsed into bankruptcy in 1982.
(SSFC, 2/12/06, p.B8)(www.cnn.com/almanac/9709/26/)
1977 Sep 26, Israel announced a cease-fire on Lebanese border.
(HN, 9/26/99)
1977 Sep 27, Japan Airlines Flight 715, a DC-8, crashed into a hill in bad weather while attempting to land at the Kuala Lumpur Subang Airport. 34 people, including 8 of the 10 crew members and 26 of the 69 passengers, were killed when the aircraft broke on impact.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines)
1977 Sep 28, The Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines plane over India. The Douglas DC-8, en route from Paris to Haneda Airport in Tokyo with 156 people on board, stopped in Mumbai, India. After taking off from Mumbai, five armed JRA members hijacked the aircraft and ordered it flown to Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Japanese government freed 6 imprisoned members of the group and paid $6 million in ransom. On October 2 the hijackers released 118 passengers and crewmembers. The remaining hostages were freed later.
(SFC, 11/9/00, p.C2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines)
1977 Sep, In Philadelphia Helen "Holly" Maddux, a Bryn Mawr College graduate from Tyler, Texas, was murdered and stuffed into a steamer trunk for 18 months until her body was discovered. Ira Einhorn, "hippie guru" was arrested for the murder in 1979 but released on bail. He fled to hide in France. Fred Maddux, Holly's father, committed suicide in 1988. Einhorn was convicted in absentia in 1993. In June,1997, he was arrested in France. A French court ruled against extradition and released Einhorn. Einhorn was arrested in 1998 under a new extradition warrant. The events were broadcast as a TV crime story in 1999 titled "The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer." In 1999 The French Supreme Court ruled that Einhorn should be returned to the US. In 1999 a civil suit ordered Einhorn to pay $907 million to the Maddux family. Einhorn was extradited to the US in 2001. he was convicted of murder Oct 17, 2002.
(SFC, 6/17/97, p.A2)(SFC,12/5/97, p.A17)(SFC, 9/22/98, p.A3)(WSJ, 5/3/99, p.A20)(WSJ, 5/12/99, p.A23)(SFC, 5/28/99, p.D3)(SFC, 7/29/99, p.A8)(SFC, 7/20/01, p.A14)(SFC, 10/18/02, p.A7)
1977 Oct 3, In India Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was arrested for political corruption. She was released the next day.
(http://tinyurl.com/2xq3bt)
1977 Oct 5, Seamus Costello (b.1939), founder of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), was shot to death by an Irish Republican Army member in Dublin.
(AP, 10/11/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Costello)
1977 Oct 8, In Missouri Joseph Paul Franklin (1950-2013), a white supremacist who targeted blacks and Jews, killed Gerald Gordon in a sniper shooting at the Richmond Heights Brith Shalom synagogue.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Paul_Franklin)(SFC, 11/21/13, p.A10)
1977 Oct 12, The US government passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which required banks to serve their entire community. The intent was to ensure that adequate loans were made to low and moderate income neighborhoods and that those areas had access to bank branches and other banking services.
(www.newrules.org/finance/cra.html)
1977 Oct 12, The US Supreme Court ruled that communities have a right to prevent commuters from parking in residential neighborhoods.
(SFC, 10/11/02, p.E7)
1977 Oct 12, US Supreme Court heard arguments in the "reverse discrimination" case of Allan Bakke (35), a white student denied admission to U of California Med School.
(www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1977/1977_76_811/)
1977 Oct 13, A Lufthansa Boeing 737, bound for Frankfurt, was hijacked by Palestinians shortly after take-off. The plane is diverted to Rome's Fiumicino Airport. Almost all of the passengers are German vacationers. "This is Captain Martyr Mohammed speaking," announces one of the hijackers to the Rome air-traffic controllers. "The group I represent demands the release of our comrades in German prisons [see Oct 18].
(www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1977.html)
1977 Oct 14, Bing Crosby (b.1903), singer and actor, died on a golf course outside Madrid at age 74. In 2001 Gary Giddins authored "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: The Early Years: 1903-1940."
(SFC, 11/2/96, p.E4)(AP, 10/14/97)(SSFC, 1/21/01, DB p.33)
1977 Oct 18, The New York Yankees won Game 6 and the World Series as Reggie Jackson hit 3 homeruns for the 8-4 win.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_World_Series)
1977 Oct 18, In West Germany 3 Baader-Meinhof gang members killed themselves in prison. Gudrun Ensslin (b.1940), a founding leader of the Red Army Faction (RAF), died in prison. Ensslin's life story was later fictionalized in the film “Marianne and Juliane" (1981). This date was later used as a title by artist Gerhard Richter in a 1988 suite of 15 pictures. He created the series of paintings titled "October 18, 1977" regarded by many as a "eulogy or requiem" for the Baader-Meinhof group. In 1985 Stefan Aust authored “The Baader-Meinhof Complex." In 2009 Aust published an updated version titled Baader-Meinhof: the Inside Story of the R.A.F."
(WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A19)(WSJ, 3/1/02, p.A11)(WSJ, 4/3/09, p.A15)(Econ, 5/30/09, p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudrun_Ensslin)
1977 Oct 18, West German commandos stormed a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner that was on the ground in Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages and killing three of the four hijackers, Palestinians of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In 1996 Suhaila al-Sayeh was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a German court.
(SFC, 11/20/96, p.A17)(AP, 10/17/07)
1977 Oct 19, The body of West German industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, who had been kidnapped by left-wing extremists, was found in the trunk of a car in Mulhouse, France.
(AP, 10/19/97)
1977 Oct 19, The supersonic Concorde made its first landing in New York City.
(AP, 10/19/97)
1977 Oct 20, David Mamet's play, "Life in the Theater," opened in NYC. It was first produced in Chicago at the Goodman Theater's Stage Two, opening February 3, 1977.
(www.theatrewesternsprings.com/Actives/archives/LifeTheatre/LifeInTheTheatre.htm)
1977 Oct 20, Three members of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd were killed in the crash of a chartered plane near McComb, Miss.
(AP, 10/20/97)
1977 Oct 20, A bloodless military coup was staged in Thailand. Kriangsak Chomanan was appointed prime minister, Thailand's 15th since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.
(AP, 12/23/03)(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A12)
1977 Oct 22, In West Virginia the New River Gorge Bridge was opened to traffic.
(www.officialbridgeday.com/facts.html)
1977 Oct 26, The experimental space shuttle Enterprise glided to a bumpy but successful landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
(AP, 10/26/97)
1977 Oct 26, James Castle (b.1899), Idaho-born self-taught deaf artist, died in Boise.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Charles_Castle)(SFC, 2/27/10, p.E3)
1977 Oct 27, James M. Cain (b.1892), member of the "hard-boiled" school of crime fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, died in Maryland. Three of his novels, “The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1934), “Double Indemnity" (1936), and Mildred Pierce" (1941), were made into classics of the American screen.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cain)
1977 Oct 28, The US Congress passed Int'l. Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). This authorized the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the US. Pres. Carter signed the legislation on Dec. 28.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Economic_Powers_Act)
1977 Oct, Pakistan’s Gen. Zia ul-Haq (1924-1988) announced the postponement of the electoral plan and decided to start an accountability process of the politicians.
(www.storyofpakistan.com/person.asp?perid=P020&Pg=2)
1977 Oct, Spain's government and the oppositon signed agreements on economic measures known as the Moncloa Pacts, named for Adolfo Suarez Gonzalez's official residence where leaders the major political parties met and agreed to share the costs of, and the responsibility for economic reforms.
(http://countrystudies.us/spain/25.htm)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.37)
1977 Nov 4, Former CIA director Richard Helms was sentenced for withholding information on CIA operations in Chile.
(SFC, 9/17/97, p.A3)
1977 Nov 5, Guy Lombardo (b.1902), Canada-born orchestra leader, died in Houston, Texas.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0518456/)
1977 Nov 6, San Francisco marijuana smokers held "A Day on the Grass" smoke-in at the Civic Center as the 59th Veterans Day Parade took place.
(SFC, 11/1/02, p.E7)
1977 Nov 6, In Georgia, USA, 39 people were killed when an earthen dam burst, sending a wall of water through Toccoa Falls Bible College.
(AP, 11/6/97)
1977 Nov 8, In San Francisco 154 candidates ran for 11 district seats for the Board of Supervisors. Voters elected all 6 incumbent Board of Supervisors: Robert Gonzales, Gordon Lau, Dianne Feinstein, John Molinari, Quentin Kopp and Ronald Pelosi; newcomers on the city’s first district-elected board included Harvey Milk, Carol Ruth Silver, Dan White, Lee Dolson and Ella Hill Hutch. Dan White, former police officer, was forced to resign from his job as a firefighter the next month.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.A25)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W23)(SFC, 11/7/02, p.E2)(SSFC, 2/28/10, p.E2)
1977 Nov 12, New Orleans elected its first black mayor, Ernest "Dutch" Morial, the winner of a runoff.
(AP, 11/12/07)
1977 Nov 13, The comic strip "Li'l Abner" appeared in newspapers for the last time as creator Al Capp (1909-1979) retired. He had started the strip 1934.
(AP, 11/13/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li'l_Abner)
1977 Nov 14, Swami Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna Hindu sect, died. He passed succession to 11 separate disciples.
(SFC, 2/13/01, p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._C._Bhaktivedanta_Swami_Prabhupada)
1977 Nov 15, Pres. Jimmy Carter welcomed the Shah of Iran to Washington, DC.
(http://tinyurl.com/2rhmfk)(www.kipnotes.com/James%20E.%20Carter.htm)
1977 Nov 15, Megumi Yokota (13) disappeared after school in Niigata, Japan. It was later suspected that she, and possibly 9 others, had been kidnapped by North Korea. Shigeru Yokota (d.2020) found out 20 years later that his daughter had been abducted to North Korea. In 2002 N. Korea admitted the kidnapping. In 2014 Yokota's parents spent several days with their 26-year old granddaughter, Kim Eun Gyong, in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megumi_Yokota)(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.A25)(SFC, 9/18/02, p.A10)(Reuters, 3/16/14)(AP, 6/6/20)
1977 Nov 16, Oksana Baiul, Ukraine figure skater (Olympic-gold-1994), was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oksana_Baiul)
1977 Nov 17, The "Elephant Man," by Bernard Pomerance (b.1940), premiered in London.
(www.answers.com/topic/1977)
1977 Nov 19, The Libyan flag was adopted, after Libya left the Federation of Arabs Republic, which consisted of Libya, Egypt and Syria.
(www.worldflags101.com/l/libya-flag.aspx)
1977 Nov 19, Egyptian Pres. Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel. Peace talks began in the Middle East with Sadat going to Israel.
(TMC, 1994, p.1977)(AP, 11/19/97)
1977 Nov 19, A cyclone and tidal wave hit Andhra Pradesh, India. Entire villages were submerged by tidal waves with an estimated 10-20 thousand people killed.
(www.emergency-management.net/cyclone.htm)(SFC, 11/1/99, p.A11)(AP, 11/21/02)
1977 Nov 20, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to address Israel's parliament.
(AP, 11/20/97)
1977 Nov 21, The 1st commercial flight of the Anglo-French Concorde jet was from London to Bahrain.
(www.britishairways.com/concorde/faq.html#4)
1977 Nov 22, Regular passenger service between New York and Europe on the supersonic Concorde began on a trial basis.
(AP, 11/22/97)
1977 Nov 24, Greeks announced the discovery of the tomb of King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1977 Nov 28, "Elvis", the stage musical, starring P.J. Proby, Shakin' Stevens, and Timothy Whitnall playing The King at three different stages of his life, opened in London.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/forevershakin/concerts/1977-79ElvisMusical/)
1977 Nov 28, "The Honeymooners Christmas," directed by Jackie Gleason, aired on TV.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0445437/)
1977 Nov 28, Trevor Bardette (b. 1902), American film and TV actor, died. His over 172 movies and seventy-two TV appearances included Old Man Clanton in Wyatt Earp.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Bardette)
1977 Nov 30, Terence Rattigan (b.1911), English playwright, died. In 1997 Geoffrey Wansell wrote his biography.
(SFC, 6/23/97, p.E3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Rattigan)
1977 Nov, The Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded with headquarters in Los Angeles as an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust.
(www.moreorless.au.com/heroes/wiesenthal.html)
1977 Nov, In Argentina Hilda Palacios, Humberto Brandalisi, Carlos Laja and Ruben Cardozo were kidnapped. Prosecutors later said they were taken to the clandestine prison and torture center known as La Perla on the outskirts of Cordoba and killed the following month. Their bodies were then dumped in the street to make it look like they died in a shootout with officials. In 2008 former army chief Luciano Benjamin Menendez (81) was convicted of kidnapping, torturing and killing the left-wing militants. He was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 5/27/08)(AP, 7/24/08)
1977 Dec 4, Neil Simon's "Chapter Two," premiered in NYC.
(http://web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/simon.html)(http://tinyurl.com/yvtv65)
1977 Dec 4, Jean-Bedel Bokassa (1921-1996), ruler of the Central African Empire, crowned himself emperor in a ceremony duplicating the coronation of Napoleon. It was believed to have cost more than $100 ($25) million. Bokassa was deposed in 1979.
(AP, 12/4/97)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-B%C3%A9del_Bokassa)
1977 Dec 6, SF FBI agents arrested James "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno (64), a reportedly leading West Coast Mafia figure.
(SFC, 12/6/02, p.E16)
1977 Dec 7, Peter Carl Goldmark (b.1906), Hungarian-born engineer, died in the US. He developed the first commercial color television and the long-playing phonograph record. Goldmark's LP records were introduced by Goddard Lieberson (1911-977), who later became president of Columbia Records (1956-1971 and 1973-1975).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carl_Goldmark)
1977 Dec 8, In Argentina Leonie Duquet, a French nun, was abducted in a commando-style operation by state security agents. Alice Domon, another French nun, was abducted later this month, but her remains were never recovered. They were killed after befriending mothers of detained dissidents, who were among the first victims of a crackdown on dissent against the 1976-83 dictatorship. In 2011 an Argentine court charged three former police officers with killing five women, including Duquet and Domon, during the country's 1976-1983 "dirty war" by throwing them out of an airplane while still alive. In 2011 Alfredo Astiz (59), a former navy spy known as "the Angel of Death," was convicted in the disappearances of French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet.
(AP, 12/9/07)(AFP, 6/3/11)(AP, 10/26/11)
1977 Dec 9, In LA Laker forward Kermit Washington punched Houston Rocket forward Rudy Tomjanovich during a basketball game. In 2002 John Feinstein authored "The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever."
(SSFC, 12/8/02, p.M3)
1977 Dec 9, Clarice Lispector (b.1920), Ukraine-born Brazilian-Jewish writer, died in Brazil. From 1952-1959 she lived in the US. Her books included “The Passion According to G.H" (1964). In 2009 Benjamin Moser authored “Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector)
1977 Dec 10, In Argentina Azucena Villaflor, along with mothers Esther Ballestrino de Careaga and Maria Eugenia Ponce de Bianco, were kidnapped by state security agents. In 2005 Investigators recovered the remains of Villaflor and 2 colleagues at a rural cemetery. Villaflor had founded the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the legendary protest group against Argentina's Dirty War. In 2011 Alfredo Astiz (59), a former navy spy known as "the Angel of Death," was convicted in the disappearance of Azucena Villaflor.
(AP, 7/8/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azucena_Villaflor)(AP, 10/26/11)
1977 Dec 10, On UN Human Rights Day, the Soviet Union placed 20 prominent dissidents under house arrest, cutting off telephones and threatening to break up a planned silent demonstration in Moscow’s Pushkin Square.
(HN, 12/10/98)
1977 Dec 12, Dr. Grethe Rask (b.1930) from Denmark died of Pneumocystis carinii. She had done research in Africa. Her symptoms had been manifesting in Dec 1976 and she was hospitalized in Africa. In November 1977 after a brief recovery, she decided it was time to go home to die. A colleague saw the wasting, and did an autopsy, where P. carinii was found. She is believed to be one of the first documented cases of probable AIDS infection.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grethe_Rask)
1977 Dec 14, The film "Saturday Night Fever," starring John Travolta, premiered in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Fever)
1977 Dec 14, The South African government eased job restrictions on blacks.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1977 Dec 15, Charles Finley sold his Oakland A’s baseball team to Marvin Davis for a reported $12.5 million. A lease with the Oakland Coliseum was still a problem.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.E8)
1977 Dec 16, The movie "Saturday Night Fever," starring John Travolta as a Brooklyn disco dancer, opened in wide release.
(AP, 12/16/07)
1977 Dec 18, Cyril Ritchard (b.1897), Australia-born actor, died. He was awarded a Tony in 1955 for Supporting Actor in the musical “Peter Pan."
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0728509/bio)
1977 Dec 19, Pres. Jimmy Carter signed into law the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The act made it a crime for a US citizen to pay bribes to win contracts abroad. The Lockheed Corp. had bribed Japanese officials for business contracts and caused a furor that brought down the Tokyo government and inspired the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the US.
(SFC, 4/8/96, p.A-8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act)
1977 Dec 20, Bodies of women began to wash up on a beach in southern Argentina. They were among the leaders of the "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo" representing relatives of thousands of disappeared. The US soon learned that the ruling junta was responsible. The Carter administration went on to authorize $120 million in military sales and approved over 30 training slots for Argentine officers at US military installations.
(SFC, 12/17/02, p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Domon)
1977 Dec 22, Steve Cauthen (b.1960), Kentucky-born jockey, won his 355th race at age 16 setting a new earnings record.
(www.liketelevision.com/liketelevision/tuner.php?channel=357&format=tv&theme=history)
1977 Dec 22, Thomas Helms (26) climbed to the edge of the observation deck on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building, and jumped intending to kill himself on the streets 1000s of feet below. He only fell twenty feet before landing on a narrow ledge on the 85th floor. Helms suffered no major injuries but was knocked unconscious for half-an-hour--adequate time for an emergency crew to bring him safely inside.
(www.funtrivia.com/en/Humanities/Architecture-1944.html)
1977 Dec 22, Three dozen people were killed when a 250-foot-high grain elevator at the Continental Grain Co. plant in Westwego, La., exploded.
(AP, 12/22/97)
1977 Dec 25, Israeli PM Menachem Begin met Egyptian Pres. Sadat (1918-1981) in Egypt.
(www.washington-report.org/backissues/1098/9810083.html)
1977 Dec 25, Comedian Sir Charles Chaplin died in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland at age 88. In 2006 Richard Schickel edited “The Essential Chaplin."
(AP, 4/16/00)(WSJ, 6/23/06, p.W6)
1977 Dec 30, Ted Bundy (1946-1989), serial killer, escaped from jail in Colorado. His absence was not noticed until the next day. He was re-captured in Florida on February 15, 1978, after 3 more murders.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy)
1977 Dec 26, In Brazil law #6,515 established the Divorce Act.
(www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Brazil.htm)
1977 Dec 31, "Bubbling Brown Sugar" closed at ANTA Theater NYC after 766 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbling_Brown_Sugar)
1977 Dec 31, Cambodia broke relations with Vietnam.
(HN, 12/31/98)
1977 Dec, In California Richard Phillips of Orange County murdered contractor Bruce Bartulis in Madera County. Phillips had enlisted Bartulis and another contractor in a plot to smuggle cocaine and provide stolen insulation and was convicted of murder in 1980. In 2013 the US Supreme Court refused to reinstate a death sentence against Phillips (63).
(SFC, 4/30/13, p.C2)
1977 Dec, In Chicago a gang of burglars decided to break into the home of Tony Accardo (d.1992), one of the most powerful men in organized crime history, and rob his basement vault. 6 men Accardo blamed for the heist were swiftly hunted down and murdered.
(AP, 6/18/07)
1977 Dec, In South Africa journalist Donald Woods received a package containing children’s t-shirts laced with acid. His young daughter was badly burned and he blamed South African authorities.
(Econ, 11/6/10, p.74)
1977 Artist Walter De Maria (1935-2013) created “The Lightning Field," a land-art piece in New Mexico consisting of 400 polished stainless steel poles arranged in a rectangular array 1 km long and 1 mile wide. It was later considered a key creation in the Earthworks movement.
(SFC, 7/29/13, p.C3)
1977 Christopher Alexander and co-authors laid out practical guidelines to urban design in their book “A Pattern Language."
(SFCM, 8/1/04, p.25)
1977 Harvard Prof. Walter J. Bate (1918-1999) authored a biography of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). In 1978 he won a Pulitzer Prize for the book.
(SFC, 7/27/99, p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jackson_Bate)
1977 Wendell Berry (b.1934) authored "The Unsettling of America," a treatise against the industrialization of agriculture.
(SSFC, 6/23/02, p.M6)(SSFC, 3/21/10, p.F5)
1977 Philip Caputo, a former US Marine, wrote "A Rumor of War," one of the best nonfiction books on Vietnam.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.3)
1977 Alfred Chandler, the doyen of business historians, authored “The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business." Here he argues that Adam Smith's famous invisible hand of the market has been supplanted by the "visible hand" of middle management.
(http://tinyurl.com/orew47e)(Econ., 4/18/15, SR p.4)
1977 John Cheever (1912-1982), American writer, authored his novel “Falconer," which soon became a best seller.
(WSJ, 3/7/09, p.W8)
1977 "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" by Eleanor Coerr was published. It was illustrated by Ronald Himler.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.12)
1977 Patricia Crone (1945-2015) and Michael Cook authored “Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World." She argued that Islam started as an Arab-Jewish tribal rebellion against Byzantine and Persian empires.
(Econ, 8/1/15, p.78)
1977 John Gregory Dunne (1932-2003) authored his novel "True Confessions." It was about the Black Dahlia case, a 1947 murder in Los Angeles.
(SFC, 1/1/04, p.A23)(SFC, 1/2/04, p.D3)
1977 Gloria Emerson (1929-2004), Vietnam war correspondent, authored “Winners & Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses, and Ruins From a Long War," based on interviews with people involved in the Vietnam War.
(SFC, 8/6/04, p.B7)
1977 Timothy Findley (d.2002), Canadian writer, authored his novel "The Wars," which contrasted social struggles in Toronto with trench horrors in WW I.
(SFC, 6/22/02, p.A18)
1977 David Hackett Fischer authored “Growing Old in America."
(WSJ, 9/14/04, p.B1)
1977 Honey Bruce Friedman (1927-2005), former wife of Lenny Bruce, authored “The Life and Loves of Lenny’s Shady Lady."
(SFC, 9/19/05, p.B3)
1977 Stephen Jay Gould wrote his first technical book: "Ontogeny and Phylogeny."
(NH, 2/97, p.69)
1977 German writer Gunter Grass (1927-2015) authored his novel “The Flounder."
(Econ., 4/18/15, p.86)
1977 Fred Hirsch authored “The Social Limits to Growth."
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.35)
1977 Howard Lamar edited "The Reader’s Encyclopedia of the American West." In 1998 his updated “New Encyclopedia of the American West" was published.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, BR p.11)
1977 Lawrence Levine (1933-2006), professor of history at UC Berkeley, authored “Black Culture and Black Consciousness: African American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom."
(SFC, 10/28/06, p.B6)
1977 Hal Lindsey wrote "The Late, Great Planet Earth."
(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A4)
1977 Dr. Stephen J. Mathes (d.2007), reconstructive surgeon, authored “Clinical Atlas of Muscle and Musculocutaneous Flaps. In 2007 he produced an 8-volume text on plastic surgery.
(SFC, 12/20/07, p.B5)
1977 Albert Morse (1939-2006), SF intellectual property lawyer and representative of cartoonist R. Crumb, published “The Tattooists."
(SSFC, 1/29/06, p.B7)
1977 Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), Irish born writer and philosopher, authored "The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists." In 1994 Murdoch was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. In 1998 her husband, John Bayley, published "Elegy for Iris."
(WSJ, 2/17/98, p.A20)
1977 US Navy Rear Adm. Richard O’Kane (1911-1994) authored “Clear the Bridge: The War Patrols of the U.S.S. Tang."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_O%27Kane)
1977 Roger and Nancy Olmstead and Allen Pastron authored “San Francisco Waterfront."
(SFC, 1/25/14, p.C2)
1977 Arvid Pardo of Malta published "The New International Order and the Law of the Sea with Elisabeth Mann Borgese.
(SFC, 7/19/99, p.A22)
1977 V.S. Naipaul, Trinidad born writer, authored “India: A Wounded Civilization," recounting his travels there in 1975.
(WSJ, 4/4/09, p.W8)
1977 Arthur J. Quinn (d.1997 at 54) wrote "Hell With the Fire Out," a re-creation of the Modoc War fought in Siskiyou County, Ca., in 1872-1873.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A20)
1977 Carl Sagan (1934-1996) authored "Dragons of Eden." In 1978 he won a Pulitzer Prize for the book.
(SFC, 12/21/96, p.A1)
1977 Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016), American constitutional lawyer and conservative activist, authored “The Power of the Positive Women."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly)(Econ, 9/17/16, p.86)
1977 Daniel Schorr (53), CBS journalist, authored "Clearing the Air," a memoir that included a secret report on covert US government operations in other nations. In 2001 an updated edition was published titled: "Staying Tuned."
(SSFC, 8/5/01, DB p.63)
1977 George Shultz and Kenneth Dam, economic officials in the Nixon administration, authored “Economic Policy Beyond the Headlines."
(Econ, 3/27/10, p.86)(http://tinyurl.com/yzvuumj)
1977 Prof. Gordon Willey (1913-2002) authored "The Origins of Maya Civilization."
(SFC, 5/2/02, p.A27)
1977 John Guare wrote his play: "Landscape of the Body." "It saw life as prey to grotesque violence, of incident and of language."
(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-11)
1977 The musical "I Love My Wife," a tale of wife-swapping, opened on Broadway. Cy Coleman composed the music.
(SFC, 11/20/04, p.B6)
1977 Len Frank (1936-1996) and co-partner John Retsek began to co-host "The Road Show," the first call-in car radio program that grew from a local 60 minute program to a 2-hour show syndicated nationally.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.B2)
1977 The first SF Lesbian & Gay International Film Fest was held.
(SFC, 5/29/96, p.E1)
1977 The ABC series “Eight Is Enough" began and continued to 1981. It featured Dick Van Patten as widowed father Tom Bradford and Betty Buckley as his new wife Abby.
(SFC, 6/24/15, p.D7)
1977 The TV series "Shogun" was first shown.
(SFEM, 6/29/97, p.4)
1977 Jimmy Buffett (b.1946) recorded "Margaritaville."
(SSFC, 4/28/02, Par p.22)
1977 Kenny Rogers made a hit with his song "Lucille."
(SSFC, 5/20/01, Par p.22)
1977 The British punk group Clash released its 1st single "White Riot."
(SFC, 12/24/02, p.A2)
1977 The British group Sex Pistols ushered in an era of punk rock. The band was originally composed of Johnny Rotten, Glen Matlock, Steve Jones and Paul Cook. Sid Vicious replaced Matlock by the time of the Winterland concert in SF.
(SFC, 6/9/96, DB p.34)
1977 The rock band Kiss went on their Love Gun tour and were named by a Gallup poll as the most popular band in the US. Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss and bass guitar thunder god Gene Simmons were the other founding members. They became an int’l phenomenon.
(SFC, 7/5/96, DB, p.40)(SFC, 8/29/96, p.B1)
1977 The rock band INXS was formed in Perth, Australia. Lead singer Michael Hutchence committed suicide in 1997 at a Sydney hotel.
(SFC,11/24/97, p.A21)
1977 The Village People recorded the song "YMCA."
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.E4)
1977 Marcia Tucker (1940-2006) established the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC on 5th Ave. at 14th Street.
(SFC, 10/20/06, p.B8)
1977 The Alfred P. Murrah Building was put up in Federal Plaza in Oklahoma City. It was bombed on April 19, 1995 and 169 people were killed including 19 children and 600 injured.
(WSJ, 1/4/96, p.A-8)
1977 Calvin Klein (b.1942) elevated blue jeans to a fashion sensation by stitching his name on the back pockets.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Klein_%28fashion_designer%29)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
1977 Chinese cooking, tennis, aerobics, CB radio and Evangelicals rose in popularity.
(TMC, 1994, p.1977)
1977 The first Spoleto Festival USA was held in Charleston, South Carolina. It was founded by Gian Carlos Menotti, who directed it till 1993.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A12)
1977 Bertram Carnow (1922-1996) founded the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health.
(SFC, 11/12/96, p.B2)
1977 Pablo Heising (1945-2006) helped found the Haight Street Fair in San Francisco in an effort to recall the 1967 Summer of Love. He then ran the fair for 29 years and came to be called the mayor of Haight Street.
(SFC, 1/16/07, p.B5)
1977 The Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation was founded in San Francisco.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, zone 1 p.3)
1977 Jan Mitchell established the Jan Mitchell Prize for the History of Art. It funded a $15,000 annual prize for an outstanding book in English or translation that contributes to the "study and understanding of the visual arts."
(WSJ, 2/24/98, p.A20)
1977 Charles Sporck, CEO of Nat’l. Semiconductor, helped found the Semiconductor Industry Assoc.
(WSJ, 11/7/96, p.B1)
1977 The TransAfrica lobby group was founded to press the US political establishment on matters concerning Africa and the Caribbean. Randall Robinson in 1998 published "Defending the Spirit" a memoir of his efforts in the organization.
(WSJ, 2/9/98, p.A16)
1977 Julian Levi (1909-1996), professor of law, was awarded the Rockefeller Public Service award for his work stabilizing racially changing neighborhoods.
(SFC, 10/18/96, A23)
1977 James Michener (1907-1997), American writer, was awarded the Presidential medal of Freedom.
(SFEC, 10/27/96, Par p.6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Michener)
1977 Patsy Paugh was crowned Miss West Virginia. In 2006 Patsy Ramsey (b.1956), former Miss West Virginia (1977) and mother of JonBenet Ramsey (1990-1996), died in Roswell, Ga., following a long battle with ovarian cancer.
(SSFC, 6/25/06, p.A2)(www.marquette.edu/org/axd/history.htm)
1977 Amnesty International (b.1961), a human rights organization founded by Peter Benenson (1921-2005), won a Nobel Prize.
(HN, 5/28/98)(Econ, 3/5/05, p.85)
1977 Sir Neville Mott (1906-1996) shared the Nobel Prize with Philip Anderson and John van Vleck for research on the behavior of electricity in non-crystalline or so-called "disordered" materials.
(SFC, 8/11/96, p.D5)
1977 Ilya Prigogine (d.2003 at 86), Russian-born Belgian chemist, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
(SFC, 5/31/03, p.A20)
1977 Rosalyn Yalow (b.1921), American medical physicist, together with Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
(AP, 10/5/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalyn_Sussman_Yalow)
1977 Vicente Aleixandre (1898-1984), Spanish poet, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
(AP, 10/8/09)
1977 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) drafted rules regarding currency exchange rates following the collapse of the int’l. gold standard and the fixed-exchange-rate system (1971).
(WSJ, 6/19/07, p.A4)
1977 The Log Cabin Republicans, a California group of gay conservatives, formed to oppose the Briggs Initiative, an unsuccessful 1978 ballot initiative that attempted to ban gay teachers from schools.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_Cabin_Republicans)(SSFC, 6/20/21, p.E4)
1977 Pres. Jimmy Carter announced plans for a neutron bomb that would cancel out Soviet military superiority in tanks.
(WSJ, 1/9/95, A-10)
1977 The first LLC (limited liability company) statute was enacted by Wyoming. It was a legal entity hybrid between a corporation and a partnership that provided limited liability to all owners while passing income and losses to all owners.
(Hem, 6/96, p.38)
1977 The US Mail service began Express Mail in response to private competition.
(SFC, 6/7/97, p.A6)
1977 The US Federal Office of Management and Budget revised the race groups for the national census.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A1)
1977 In the US the traditional eagle-side quarter was again issued following the 2-year Bicentennial colonial drummer issue.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)
1977 The US Congress passed the surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act to help solve problems with abandoned mines.
(WSJ, 6/4/03, p.A1)
1977 The US Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was meant to bring financial services to the poor by requiring banks to meet their credit needs in the areas they serve.
(Econ, 5/6/06, p.76)
1977 The US Congress gave the Federal Reserve a dual mandate of stable prices and full employment.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.113)
1977 The US government set up a Nazi crimes unit. A single, centralized unit was created in the Justice Department with the mandate to investigate and prosecute individuals accused of concealing their Nazi past in order to obtain a visa allowing them to enter the United States. The investigative unit was first a part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and was later incorporated into the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.
(http://tinyurl.com/2de24b)(SSFC, 4/4/10, Par. p.4)
1977 The US federal government ordered General Electric to dismantle its nuclear reactor in Pleasanton, Ca. Nuclear fuel research continued.
(SFC, 12/25/03, p.A8)
1977 Christopher Boyce was convicted of espionage. He had gained access to CIA communications during his job at TRW and sold classified documents to the Russian Embassy in Mexico City. His story was told in the 1985 film "The Falcon and the Snowman." Boyce was paroled in 2003.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A2)
1977 Roman Polanski, film director, was accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old model at the home of Jack Nicholson. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and left the country on bail to film "Hurricane" in Tahiti, and then fled to Paris.
(SFC, 10/2/97, p.E3)
1977 The US Army restored the Medal of Honor to Dr. Mary Walker. She had been awarded the medal in 1865 for her work as a field doctor in the civil war. In 1917 a congressional select committee had revoked it.
(SFC, 7/17/96, p.E10)
1977 The US introduced lethal injections as a more humane alternative to other forms of capital punishment.
(Econ, 4/28/07, p.70)
1977 A controversial theory on the JFK assassination was published in the Baltimore Sun. Howard Donohue, a ballistics expert, claimed that an accidental shot by agent George W. Hickey hit JFK in the back of the head when Hickey stumbled trying to return fire on the initial attacker. The story was then put into the book "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK" (1992) by Bonar Menninger.
(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A9)
1977 The US Sec. of Transportation, William T. Coleman, under Pres. Carter mandated the installation of airbags in new cars.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A15)
1977 Donald Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.
(The Guardian, 1/29/21)
1977 The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) was founded in Berkeley, Ca. In 2008 it expanded and reinvented itself as a multimedia news producer.
(Econ, 7/9/11, SR p.14)
1977 California banned the pesticide DBCP after men working at a San Joaquin County chemical plant were found to be sterile. In 1979 the US EPA prohibited the use of DBCP nationwide, but export remained legal.
(SFC, 9/25/08, p.B3)
1977 Rose Ann Vuich became California’s 1st female state senator.
(SSFC, 10/10/04, p.E1)
1977 San Francisco Postmaster Lim Poon Lee (d.2002) established a post office at 867 Stockton St., in Chinatown. In 2009 US Congress voted to name the office in honor of Lee.
(SFC, 11/5/09, p.C2)
1977 The Teamsters Union under Frank Fitzsimmons gave up their efforts to sign up California farm field workers and accepted the UFW Union as the union for field workers.
(SFEM, 4/13/97, p.6)
1977 In Eureka Eric Hollenbeck acquired the old 1904 condemned power plant and started a logging and sawmill business with $300. He began gathering old logging and woodworking tools and developed what came to be the Blue Ox Museum. He later took on at-risk students and planned a campus for 100 students by fall, 2001.
(SFEC, 7/30/00, p.C10)
1977 Gene Benedetti (1919-2006) purchased the Petaluma Cooperative Creamery in northern California and turned it into Clover Stornetta Farms Inc. He and Lee Levinger hatched the idea for Clo the Cow, an advertising mascot.
(SFC, 1/14/06, p.B5)
1977 Bill Niman (32) and Orville Schell purchased 200 acres in Bolinas, Ca., to run cattle, starting their Niman-Schell ranch. They operated under the assumption that meat could be raised naturally, humanely and sustainably. The partners split in 1997 and the business became known as the Niman Ranch. In 2007 Hilco became the chief investor and in 2009 Niman withdrew from the operations, which never turned a profit.
(SSFC, 2/22/09, p.A1)
1977 SF toughened its fire code. State deadlines gave the city’s high-rises until July 1980 to comply.
(SFC, 11/18/05, p.F2)
1977 In San Francisco the residential treatment for young women atop Mount St. Joseph, run by the Catholic Sisters of Charity, closed. Land at the former orphanage had been used for years to board horses. The land was then sold to a developer.
(SFC, 7/24/13, p.D6)
1977 The open-air Larkspur Ferry Terminal, designed by Jacques de Brer (1936-2006), opened near San Quentin State Prison. He later designed the 280 Metro Center in Colma (1986).
(SFC, 9/14/06, p.B5)(http://tinyurl.com/mr868)
1977 Fred Cody (d.1983) and wife Patricia Cody (d.2010) sold their Berkeley-based Cody’s bookstore business to Andy Ross.
(SFC, 10/6/10, p.C5)
1977 The famous 400-year-old Jeffrey pine on Sentinel Dome in Yosemite, Ca., died due to a severe drought. In 2003 the tree collapsed.
(SFC, 8/19/03, p.A1)
1977 In California the Marble Cone fire burned 177,866 acres of trees and brush.
(SFC, 9/20/99, p.A22)
1977 California public health officials ramped up school vaccination enforcement following a measles outbreak in Los Angeles.
(SSFC, 9/26/21, p.A17)
1977 Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus resigned to become the Pres. Carter’s secretary of the Interior Department.
(SSFC, 3/27/17, p.C3)
1977 US Rev. Leon H. Sullivan (d.2001 at 78) drafted guidelines (the Sullivan Principles) to help persuade American companies to treat their workers in South Africa the same way as in the US.
(SFC, 4/26/01, p.A6)
1977 Emma Crapser (92) was killed in her Poughkeepsie, NY, apartment. In 1983 Dewey Bozella (b.1959) was convicted of her grisly murder on the testimony of two convicted criminals and served 26 years in prison before being finally in 2009 after the nonprofit Innocence Project intervened and turned over evidence that had been suppressed during his trial.
(AP, 10/12/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Bozella)
1977 AT&T installed the 1st fiber optic cable.
(WSJ, 10/26/00, p.A12)
1977 BankAmericard, Chargex, Barclaycard, Carte Bleue, and all other licensees united under the new name, "Visa", which retained the distinctive blue, white and gold flag. NBI became Visa U.S.A., and IBANCO became Visa International.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_(company))
1977 The S.S. Kresge Co. under CEO Robert Dewar (d.2000 at 77) was renamed Kmart after its flagship discount store operation.
(SFC, 9/11/00, p.A22)
1977 The Ford F-Series pickup truck became the best-selling vehicle in the US.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1977 Industry experts in 1996 picked the 1977 Lincoln Versailles as the number 8 worst American-made car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1977 Jeep, a division of American Motors, launched a 4-door Cherokee, a forerunner of the SUV boom.
(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
1977 The US stopped importation of the German Volkswagen Beetle because it did not meet safety and emissions standards.
(AP, 8/27/03)
1977 Microsoft was formed as a partnership.
(WSJ, 4/4/00, p.A16)
1977 PepsiCo acquired the Pizza Hut restaurant chain.
(WSJ, 1/24/97, p.B1)
1977 RCA sold a videocassette recorder (VCR) for $1,000.
(WSJ, 11/4/99, p.B6)
1977 Rolling Stone Magazine left San Francisco and moved to Manhattan.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.12)
1977 Yves St. Laurent launched the perfume Opium.
(Econ, 3/6/04, Survey p.11)
1977 Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv published a theory for the compression of information. The theory was extended by Ziv and Aaron Wyner (d.1997 at 58) in 1989. They used algorithms to find common sections in data, and used symbols to represent repetitive data.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A19)
1977 CP/M version 2.2 added expanded disk formatting tables which could allow access to up to 8 (eight) megabytes per drive in up to 8 (eight) total drives. It was version 2.2 that became the megahit that dominated microcomputing almost from its outset.
(http://museum.sysun.com/museum/cpmhist.html)
1977 Xerox PARC in Palo Alto held a "Futures Day" and demonstrated their Alto personal computer and mouse.
(WSJ, 3/16/99, p.A24)
1977 Xerox launched its laser printer.
(WSJ, 3/16/99, p.A24)
1977 The first infection from Cyclospora cayetanensis was reported in the US. It was first named a "cyanobacterium-like body," but in 1993 it was determined to be a protozoan parasite and was renamed.
(USAT, 6/28/96, p.5D)
1977 Ebola was reported to have been transmitted by an accidental needle stick.
(SFC, 4/13/98, p.A6)
1977 Leon Lederman (now director of Fermilab) came upon a fifth quark.
(NG, May 1985, J. Boslough, p. 650)
1977 Ann Moore patented the Snugli baby carrier based on slings she saw used by African women.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1977 Robert Ballard and John B. Corliss dived 9,000 feet into the Galapagos Rift Zone and found previously unknown creatures thriving on bacteria from that depended on sulfur from volcanic vents.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A3,13)
1977 Gunther von Hagens (b.1945), German anatomist, invented the process of plastination in which natural body fluids are replaced by plastic.
(WSJ, 8/5/04, p.D8)
1977 Sir Michael Rutter and Dr. Susan Folstein published the first autism twin study, revealing evidence for a genetic basis for autism.
(http://tinyurl.com/y8ft9klt)
1977 Dr. Frederick Sangar and his lab mapped the entire 5,000 letter genome of a virus called phiX174. Sangar had developed one of the first methods of DNA sequencing. This work led to his 2nd Nobel Prize in 1980.
(Econ, 11/23/13, p.78)
1977 Dr. Elizabeth Williams of Fort Collins, Colorado, classified the endemic chronic wasting disease of local deer as a spongiform disease. It was found to be infectious 2 years later and then spread across to 8 states and Canada. Research later suggested that it could infect people.
(WSJ, 5/24/02, p.A1)
1977 Carl R. Woese, microbiologist, argued that the Archaea branch of life was distinct from the Prokarya and Eukarya.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A21)
1977 The viral disease smallpox was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO). The last case of smallpox, spread by variola virus, was reported in Somalia. Int’l. immunization ceased by 1978 in most countries. In 1997 the related Monkey virus broke out in Zaire.
(SFC, 4/1/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 10/19/01, p.A9)
1977 The manufacture of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) became prohibited in the US, because of evidence they build up in the environment and can cause harmful health effects.
(www.epa.gov/glnpo/bnsdocs/stakeholder98/pcbinus.htm)
1977 The Endangered Species Act (1973) listed the California sea otter as threatened. Their numbers increased slowly until 1995 and then dropped again.
(PacDis, Fall/’96, p.23)(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.C1)
1977 Researchers aboard the deep-sea submersible, Alvin, found an array of unknown and unexpected creatures living beside active volcanic vents in the seafloor in the absence of sunlight and air. Some of the microbes belonged to the group known as Archaea.
(PacDis, Summer ’97, p.4)
1977 In Afghanistan a loya jirga (grand assembly) convened to establish a democratic state.
(SSFC, 12/16/01, p.A3)
1977 Albania’s economy was brought down by a number of pyramid schemes. Vehbi Alimucaj, a businessman known as “the Pharaoh", was arrested and found guilty of stealing $325 million from his fellow citizens.
(Econ, 10/1/16, p.57)
1977 In Argentina Carlos Perez Companac, head of Perez Companac SA, died. His adopted son Goyo manages to steer the company forward.
(WSJ, 12/12/95, p.A-15)
1977 In the Bahamas the People-to-People program was established about this time to help visitors experience a more personal side of the island and its inhabitants.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.T8,9)
1977 The Brazilian film "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands" starred Sonia Braga. It was based on a novel by Jorge Amado.
(SFEC, 8/8/99, p.T8)
1977 In Brazil Edir Macedo (b.1945) founded The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. In 1990 he bought Rede Record for $45 million. In 2004 Rede Record broadcast network began expanding into the TV market taking on the dominant TV Globo. In 2005 the church founded the PRB political party. By 2007 the Pentecostal congregation had 2 million members and had expanded to over 100 countries.
(SFEC, 9/6/98, p.A19)(Econ, 12/23/06, p.50)(WSJ, 1/5/07, p.A1)(Econ, 1/5/08, p.31)
1977 In England the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) was founded.
(Econ, 6/25/16, p.77)
1977 The BBC began showing "All Creatures Great and Small."
(WSJ, 1/13/00, p.A19)
1977 Sir John Traverner, composer, converted to the Greek Orthodox faith. This marked a turning toward simplicity and serenity in his music.
(WSJ, 3/28/02, p.A18)
1977 Tam Dalyell, British MP for the Scottish constituency of Linlithgow, posed the so-called West Lothian question during the debate on Scottish and Welsh devolution.
(Econ, 7/8/06, p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lothian_question)
1977 Britain designated MDMA, the main ingredient in ecstasy, a Class A drug.
(Econ, 8/5/06, p.50)
1977 The Assembly Rooms opened in Derby, England, as a venue for concerts and graduation ceremonies. It replaced an 18th century leisure hall that burned down in 1963. The new building closed after it was damaged by fire in 2014.
(Econ., 10/31/20, p.51)
1977 Bulgaria’s foreign minister Petar Mladenov became a member of the policy-making Politburo.
(SFC, 6/2/00, p.D5)
1977 The East African Community (EAC), founded in 1967, collapsed. In 2000 the regional club was resurrected with six members: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_Community)(Econ, 6/11/16, p.51)
1977 Hun Sen, a Khmer Rouge battalion commander in Cambodia, defected to Vietnam. He became prime minister of Cambodia in 1979.
(Econ, 11/2/13, p.43)
1977 The Canada Human Rights Act was passed and required that men and women be paid the same amount for doing the same work.
(SFC, 7/30/98, p.A12)
1977 Canada declared an exclusive economic zone over fisheries within 200 miles of its coast.
(http://tinyurl.com/3ce6f5)
1977 In Canada English was banned in Quebec.
(SFEC,12/28/97, Z1 p.2)
1977 Innovations made on the NASDAQ stock exchange were incorporated into Canada's CATS, Computer Assisted Trading System. After Canada electronic trading moved to the Paris Bourse and other exchanges such as Brussels and Madrid.
(Hem, 8/95, p.78)
1977 Ernst Zundel (b.1939), German neo-Nazi, founded a small press publishing house in Canada called Samisdat Publishers, which issued such pamphlets as “The Hitler We Loved and Why" and “Did Six Million Really Die?," both prominent documents of the Holocaust denial movement. He wrote under the name of Christof Friedrich. In 2005 he was deported to Germany, where he was charged for inciting racial hatred. In 2007 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
(SFC, 12/9/00, p.A11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Z%C3%BCndel)
1977 Chile’s DINA secret police reporting to Gen. Pinochet was replaced by the National Information Center (Centro Nacional de Información--CNI).
(www.fas.org/irp/world/chile/dina.htm)
1977 China at this time had some 300-odd museums, most of them little more than displays of Communist Party propaganda. By year 2000 the number had grown to over 2,000.
(Econ, 6/16/07, p.49)
1977 Emile Rogier Heier (d.1997 at 55), Belgian-born foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, was released from a Colombian prison. He returned to the US and began his book "Down in Colombia" (2003). He later wrote "Lester Leaps In," a biography of the jazz saxophonist Lester Young.
(SFC, 9/18/97, p.C2)
1977 Joaquim Yhombi-Opango (d.2020) rose to power as Congo-Brazzaville's head of state following the assassination of Pres. Marien Ngouabi. He was ousted in 1979 by Denis Sassou Nguesso.
(ABC News, 4/1/20)
1977 Tassos Papadopoulos (1934-2008), former leader of the Greek Cypriot guerrilla group EOKA, submitted a proposal for a federated Cyprus tying together two distinct zones. The proposal became the basis for all subsequent settlement initiatives.
(AP, 12/12/08)
1977 In Czechoslovakia the 1976 trial of the Plastic People of the Universe band prompted Vaclav Havel and Czech dissidents to draft "Charter 77, a human rights manifesto.
(WSJ, 7/22/98, p.A12)(SFEC, 3/7/99, DB p.35)
1977 Food riots took place in Egypt following higher prices for everything from flour to rice. Kamal Addin Hussein, an independent member of the Egyptian People's Assembly, accused Pres. Sadat of punishing the people. Hussein was voted out of the Assembly for his statements. Sadat soon backed down and cancelled the price hikes.
(SFC, 6/22/99, p.A24)(Econ, 11/12/16, p.46)
1977 In Egypt agricultural engineer Shukri Mustafa became the leader of Takfir wal Hijra. The group began in the 1960s as a splinter group of Muslim Brotherhood, but did not gain international prominence until 1977. The group’s ideology was developed in Egypt, where theorists openly advocated using immigration as a Trojan horse to expand jihad (holy war).
(WSJ, 3/29/04, p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takfir_wal-Hijra)
1977 In El Salvador guerrilla activities by the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) intensified amid reports of increased human rights violations by government troops and right wing death squads.
(SSFC, 3/15/09, p.A7)
1977 In France the Georges Pompidou Center, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, opened in Paris.
(SFEC, 4/20/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 2/3/00, p.A24)
1977 The Georges Pompidou Center, designed by British architect Richard Rogers and Italian architect Renzo Piano, opened in Paris.
(SFEC, 4/20/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 2/3/00, p.A24)
1977 France’s 1st nuclear plant, built by Areva, began operations near Colmar. It was rated at 900 megawatts.
(www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1369259,00.html)(Econ, 9/8/07, TQ p.26)
1977 France banned frog fishing to protect the local green and red varieties. Poaching remained a problem.
(WSJ, 4/2/02, p.A1)
1977 Philippe de Villiers (b.1949), French student and later politician, created the Puy du Fou historical theme park in the Vendee region.
(Econ, 10/27/12, p.86)
1977 In East Germany Rudolf Bahro (d.1997 at 62), Marxist reformer, smuggled his book out to the West and was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in prison. He wrote: "The Alternative: A Criticism of the Real Socialism." He was released in 1979 and allowed to resettle in West Germany in 1980.
(SFC,12/12/97, p.B12)
1977 Guatemala’s Pres. Kjell Eugenio Laugerud announced he would not accept US military aid after the Carter administration criticized Guatemala's human rights situation because of forced disappearances, torture and arbitrary executions. It was largely a symbolic gesture, however, since the aid already was appropriated for that year.
(AP, 12/12/09)
1977 Guatemala passed legislation allowing notaries to facilitate adoptions.
(Econ, 8/6/16, p.46)
1977 India had a non-Congress government but it fell before the end of its 5-year term. Democracy was restored following a 2-year emergency and Congress was swept from power.
(WSJ, 4/26/96, p.A-10)(Econ, 6/23/07, p.93)
1977 The Communist Party of India came to power in the state of West Bengal.
(Econ, 8/30/08, p.63)
1977 Coca-Cola left India when the new government ordered it to dilute its stake in an Indian unit and turn over its secret formula. An alternative cola was formulated by bottler Ramesh Chauhan of the Parle Group under the name Thums Up.
(WSJ, 4/29/98, p.B1)
1977 Iran’s Empress Farah Pahlavi (b.1938) inaugurated the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.
(Econ, 1/1/11, p.74)(Econ, 12/24/16, p.116)
1977 The Iroquois Indians of North America, or Haudenosaunee as they call themselves, began issuing their own passports.
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.34)
1977 In Irian Jaya Indonesian forces put down an uprising. Human rights groups estimated that some tens of thousands of highlanders were killed while the government said fewer than 900 deaths resulted.
(SFC, 2/6/01, p.A10)
1977 In northeast Ireland mining of a large deposit of zinc ore began at Navan. Mining employed about 1% of the Irish labor force.
(www.mbendi.co.za/indy/ming/ldzc/eu/ir/p0005.htm)
1977 In Israel Ariel Sharon was elected to parliament and was appointed minister of agriculture in the Begin government.
(SFC, 10/10/98, p.A8)
1977 More Israeli civilians were allowed to move into the army installations in Gaza, and new settlements were established.
(AP, 8/15/05)
1977 In Italy the Red Brigades abducted a leading businessman. He was freed with a ransom after 81 days. This year the Red Brigades also killed a lawyer, several prison officials and a journalist.
(WSJ, 12/13/07, p.A18)
1977 In Japan the 4.7 km Sasago Tunnel opened 80 km (50 miles) outside Tokyo.
(AP, 12/2/12)
1977 In Japan Bandai began making capsule toys, the majority of them were cheap, sold mostly at 20 yen, and were of poor quality. A craze for such toys really took off in 2012 when Tokyo-based manufacturer Kitan Club launched its "Koppu no Fuchico" ("Fuchico at the edge of a glass") product.
(AP, 12/13/17)
1977 Ahmad Chalabi (b.1944), Iraqi-born and US educated banker, founded Petra Bank in Jordan. The bank collapsed in 1990 following a scandal that involved an Iraqi account in exile. Chalabi fled Jordan, was convicted in absentia of bank fraud. He denied any wrongdoing.
(WSJ, 11/7/05, p.A4)
1977 Kamoya Kimenu, asst. to Drs. Louis and Mary Leakey, and later to their son Richard Leakey, was appointed curator of prehistoric sites for the National Museums of Kenya. In Oct. 1985, the Nat’l. Geog. awarded him with the John Oliver La Gorce Medal for accomplishment in geographic exploration.
(NG, Nov. 1985, edit.)
1977 Kenya banned all hunting. Over the next 20 years a half to a third of the wildlife still disappeared.
(WSJ, 7/23/96, p.A22)
1977 Wangari Maathai established the Green Belt Movement in Kenya under the auspices of the Maendeleo Ya Wanawake (National Council of Women of Kenya). The movement organizes poor rural women in Kenya to plant trees, combating deforestation, restoring their main source of fuel for cooking, and stopping soil erosion.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Movement)(www.greenbeltmovement.org/)
1977 Kenya Airways began operating.
(SFC, 1/31/00, p.A5)
1977 Sinaloa, Mexico, became about this time the birthplace of Mexican drug smuggling.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.A14)
1977 Sister Antonia Brenner (50), an American nun born as Mary Clark in Los Angeles, moved into Mexico’s La Mesa State Penitentiary, just across the border from San Diego, to provide aid to prisoners.
(AP, 12/26/05)
1977 The Economist coined the term “Dutch disease" to describe how the exploitation of natural resources can cause a decline in other forms of economic activity, particularly manufacturing. This briefly happened in the Netherlands when natural gas was discovered (1959).
(Econ, 10/11/08, p.36)
1977 The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was established. In 2007 Pres. Umaru Yar’Adua planned to replace it with 5 new companies.
(Econ, 9/29/07, p.51)
1977 North Korea passed a land law whereby all land was made property of the state and co-operatives, with no rights for sale or purchase. By 2007 even the government was involved in apartment transactions to satisfy demand for up-market housing.
(Econ, 11/24/07, p.48)
1977 Pakistan’s Gen. Zia-ul-Haq said: "The survival of this country lies in democracy and democracy alone."
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A22)
1977 Pakistan banned alcohol.
(Econ 7/22/17, SR p.6)
1977 In Panama Gabriel Lewis Galindo (1928-1996) was appointed ambassador to the US with the hope of negotiating the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama.
(SFC, 1/2/97, p.A20)
1977 Polish poet Stanislaw Baranczak co-founded the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR), following a brutal communist crackdown on protesting workers. For his activity he was fired from his job at the Adam Mickiewicz University in his native Poznan and his writings were barred from print in Poland. In 1981 he got a three-year contract as lecturer at Harvard but stayed on.
(AP, 12/27/14)
1977 In Romania Gen. Nicolae Plesita helped stifle striking coal miners in the Jiu Valley whose unrest posed a threat to Pres. Ceausescu.
(AP, 9/30/09)
1977 Yuri Nikulin (1921-1997) starred in the Russian film "Twenty Days Without War."
(SFC, 8/22/97, p.A24)
1977 Russian Georgii Sviridov composed his 12 part cycle "Russia Cast Adrift."
(SFEM, 6/9/96, p.9)
1977 The Soviet constitution adopted article 72, which granted each republic the right to secede from the USSR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republics_of_the_Soviet_Union)
1977 The Soviet Politburo approved adjustments to the 1943 national anthem, where Sergei Mikhalkov replaced references to Stalin with phrases glorifying Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, who "led us on to Communism's triumph."
(AP, 8/27/09)
1977 Soviet dissident Anatoly B. Sharansky was arrested [see Jul 14, 1978].
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1977 The Soviet Union introduced the Shkval torpedo and hailed it as an “aircraft carrier killer," but its design proved less threatening than hope for. Its speed depended on the supercavitation principle. In 2016 Russian plans emerged for a new supercavitating torpedo called Khishchnik (Predator).
(Econ, 1/21/17, p.68)
1977 Somalia and Ethiopia engaged in battle. The Soviet Union provided tanks to both sides. Somalia tried and failed to push into the Ogaden area of Ethiopia. The Somalis managed to reach the walled city of Harer, a center for Islam in Ethiopia. An Ethiopian counter-offensive backed by Cuban troops wrecked Somalia’s army and led to the 1991 of the Somali regime.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.19)(Econ, 10/14/06, p.49)(Econ, 1/7/12, p.42)
1977 In Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) Sister Janice McLaughlin (1942-2021), an American nun, was charged with being a terrorist sympathizer and locked in solitary confinement for 18 days. She faced a penalty of seven years in prison, but the United States interceded, and she was instead deported. She later returned to a liberated Zimbabwe to help build its school system.
(AP, 4/1/21)
1977 South Africa prepared to detonate a nuclear device in the Kalahari desert, but the plans were detected by a spy satellite and cancelled under int'l. pressure led by Pres. Jimmy Carter. The events were later described by Seymour M. Hersh in "The Samson Option."
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.A3)
1977 Spain began experiencing a banking crises.
(Econ, 9/18/10, p.94)
1977 Sri Lanka suspended the death penalty.
(Economist, 10/6/12, p.48)
1977 Henry Kyemba, a former Uganda minister in Idi Amin’s government, authored in exile “A State of Blood," a description of his years as a minister under Amin.
(SSFC, 2/18/07, p.A22)
1977 The United Nations imposed an arms embargo against South Africa to pressure it to end apartheid.
(WSJ, 12/19/03, p.A8)
1977 Rebel forces from Angola swept into Zaire and captured much of the copper-rich Shaba province. Zaire regained control after 3 months with American and other foreign support.
(SFC, 11/11/96, p.A11)(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A14)
1977-1978 Pol Pot of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, fearing traitors, purged his own Khmer Rouge, especially in the eastern zone. Many of his former cadre flee to Vietnam.
(WSJ, 4/17/95, p.A-12)
1977-1978 The Ethiopian Red Terror, or Qey Shibir, was a violent political campaign in Ethiopia undertaken during the leadership of the Derg, a socialist military junta. Hirut Abebe-Jiri, imprisoned and tortured during a purge known as the “Red Terror," later set up an organization to archive, translate and index the Derg files. As many as 100,000 people were killed during the campaign as Mengistu sought to transform the country into a Soviet-style workers' state. (Econ, 9/29/07, p.50)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror_(Ethiopia))(AP, 3/7/10)
1977-1979 Laverne and Shirley was the top ranking network show on television for two seasons with rankings of 31.6 and 30.5%.
(WSJ, 4/24/95, p.R-5)
1977-1979 Genentech developed genetic engineering techniques to create micro-organisms that can produce insulin and growth hormone.
(SFC, 3/13/09, p.A10)
1977-1980 Jimmy Carter served as the 39th president of the US with Walter Mondale as Vice-President.
(TL,1988,p.119)
1977-1981 Adm. Stansfield Turner served as the director of the CIA under President Jimmy Carter.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/19/01, p.A21)
1977-1989 Frelimo ruled Mozambique with a firm Marxist orientation.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A10)
1977-1992 Civil war raged in Mozambique over this period.
(Econ, 7/16/16, p.38)
1977-1992 Rev. Rudolph Kos sexually abused a number of altar boys from 1977-1992, when he was suspended. In 1988 he became a pastor. In 1997 on Jul 24, a Dallas jury awarded $120 million in damages against the local Roman Catholic diocese on the grounds that the Church had ignored evidence of his abuses. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1998. In 1998 the Diocese agreed to pay $23.4 million to the nine former altar boys.
(SFC, 7/25/97, p.A1)(SFC, 4/2/98, p.A6)
1977-1993 In Missouri a serial killer committed at least 12 murders during this period. In 2004 Kansas City police used DNA technology to charge Lorenzo Gilyard with 12 murders.
(WSJ, 4/20/04, p.A1)
