List of 1975 Major News Events in History, Most Important Historical Events in 1975
Date | Event |
---|---|
January 2, 1975 | At the opening of a new railway line, a bomb blast at Samastipur, Bihar, India, fatally wounds Lalit Narayan Mishra, Minister of Railways. |
January 2, 1975 | The Federal Rules of Evidence are approved by the United States Congress. |
January 4, 1975 | This date overflowed the 12-bit field that had been used in TOPS-10. There were numerous problems and crashes related to this bug while an alternative format was developed. |
January 5, 1975 | The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, is struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people. |
January 8, 1975 | Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States other than by succeeding her husband. |
January 15, 1975 | The Alvor Agreement is signed, ending the Angolan War of Independence and giving Angola independence from Portugal. |
January 30, 1975 | The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary is established as the first United States National Marine Sanctuary. |
February 4, 1975 | Haicheng earthquake (magnitude 7.3 on the Richter scale) occurs in Haicheng, Liaoning, China. |
February 5, 1975 | Riots break out in Lima, Peru after the police forces go on strike the day before. The uprising (locally known as the Limazo) is bloodily suppressed by the military dictatorship. |
February 9, 1975 | The Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraft returns to Earth. |
February 13, 1975 | Fire at One World Trade Center (North Tower) of the World Trade Center in New York. |
February 21, 1975 | Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison. |
February 28, 1975 | In London, an underground train fails to stop at Moorgate terminus station and crashes into the end of the tunnel, killing 43 people. |
March 6, 1975 | For the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory. |
March 6, 1975 | Algiers Accord: Iran and Iraq announce a settlement of their border dispute. |
March 10, 1975 | Vietnam War: Ho Chi Minh Campaign: North Vietnamese troops attack Ban Mê Thuột in the South on their way to capturing Saigon in the final push for victory over South Vietnam. |
March 22, 1975 | A fire at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Decatur, Alabama causes a dangerous reduction in cooling water levels. |
March 25, 1975 | Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by his nephew. |
March 26, 1975 | The Biological Weapons Convention comes into force. |
March 27, 1975 | Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins. |
April 2, 1975 | Vietnam War: Thousands of civilian refugees flee from Quảng Ngãi Province in front of advancing North Vietnamese troops. |
April 3, 1975 | Vietnam War: Operation Babylift, a mass evacuation of children in the closing stages of the war begins. |
April 3, 1975 | Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default. |
April 4, 1975 | Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. |
April 4, 1975 | Vietnam War: A United States Air Force Lockheed C-5A Galaxy transporting orphans, crashes near Saigon, South Vietnam shortly after takeoff, killing 172 people. |
April 8, 1975 | Frank Robinson manages the Cleveland Indians in his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager. |
April 13, 1975 | An attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War. |
April 17, 1975 | The Cambodian Civil War ends. The Khmer Rouge captures the capital Phnom Penh and Cambodian government forces surrender. |
April 19, 1975 | India's first satellite Aryabhata launched in orbit from Kapustin Yar, Russia. |
April 19, 1975 | South Vietnamese forces withdrew from the town of Xuan Loc in the last major battle of the Vietnam War. |
April 21, 1975 | Vietnam War: President of South Vietnam Nguyễn Văn Thiệu flees Saigon, as Xuân Lộc, the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls. |
April 28, 1975 | General Cao Văn Viên, chief of the South Vietnamese military, departs for the US as the North Vietnamese Army closes in on victory. |
April 29, 1975 | Vietnam War: Operation Frequent Wind: The U.S. begins to evacuate U.S. citizens from Saigon before an expected North Vietnamese takeover. U.S. involvement in the war comes to an end. |
April 29, 1975 | Vietnam War: The North Vietnamese army completes its capture of all parts of South Vietnamese-held Trường Sa Islands. |
April 30, 1975 | Fall of Saigon: Communist forces gain control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Dương Văn Minh. |
May 1, 1975 | The Särkänniemi Amusement Park opens in Tampere, Finland. |
May 6, 1975 | During a lull in fighting, 100,000 Armenians gather in Beirut for the 60th anniversary commemorations of the Armenian genocide. |
May 10, 1975 | Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder. |
May 12, 1975 | Indochina Wars: Democratic Kampuchea naval forces capture the SS Mayaguez. |
May 16, 1975 | Junko Tabei from Japan becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.[18] |
May 27, 1975 | Dibbles Bridge coach crash near Grassington, in North Yorkshire, England, kills 33 – the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom. |
May 28, 1975 | Fifteen West African countries sign the Treaty of Lagos, creating the Economic Community of West African States. |
May 30, 1975 | European Space Agency is established. |
June 1, 1975 | The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was founded by Jalal Talabani, Nawshirwan Mustafa, Fuad Masum and others. |
June 4, 1975 | The Governor of California Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law, the first law in the United States giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights. |
June 5, 1975 | The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War. |
June 5, 1975 | The United Kingdom holds its first country-wide referendum on membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). |
June 6, 1975 | British referendum results in continued membership of the European Economic Community, with 67% of votes in favour. |
June 7, 1975 | Sony launches Betamax, the first videocassette recorder format. |
June 12, 1975 | India, Judge Jagmohanlal Sinha of the city of Allahabad ruled that India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had used corrupt practices to win her seat in the Indian Parliament, and that she should be banned from holding any public office. Mrs. Gandhi sent word that she refused to resign. |
June 20, 1975 | The film Jaws is released in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing film of that time and starting the trend of films known as "summer blockbusters". |
June 24, 1975 | Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 encounters severe wind shear and crashes on final approach to New York's JFK Airport killing 113 of the 124 passengers on board, making it the deadliest U.S. plane crash at the time. This accident led to decades of research into downburst and microburst phenomena and their effects on aircraft. |
June 25, 1975 | Mozambique achieves independence from Portugal. |
June 25, 1975 | Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declares a state of internal emergency in India. |
June 26, 1975 | Two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement are killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; Leonard Peltier is later convicted of the murders in a controversial trial. |
July 5, 1975 | Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title. |
July 5, 1975 | Cape Verde gains its independence from Portugal. |
July 6, 1975 | The Comoros declares independence from France. |
July 12, 1975 | São Tomé and Príncipe declare independence from Portugal. |
July 15, 1975 | Space Race: Apollo–Soyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was the last launch of both an Apollo spacecraft, and the Saturn family of rockets. |
July 17, 1975 | Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations. |
July 27, 1975 | Mayor of Jaffna and former MP Alfred Duraiappah is shot dead. |
July 30, 1975 | Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again. |
July 31, 1975 | The Troubles: Three members of a popular cabaret band and two gunmen are killed during a botched paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland. |
August 3, 1975 | A privately chartered Boeing 707 strikes a mountain peak and crashes near Agadir, Morocco, killing 188. |
August 4, 1975 | The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the U.S. consul and the Swedish Chargé d'affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya. |
August 11, 1975 | East Timor: Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin. |
August 15, 1975 | Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is killed along with most members of his family during a military coup. |
August 15, 1975 | Takeo Miki makes the first official pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine by an incumbent prime minister on the anniversary of the end of World War II. |
August 16, 1975 | Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically hands over land to the Gurindji people after the eight-year Wave Hill walk-off, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 song by Paul Kelly and an annual celebration. |
August 20, 1975 | Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars. |
August 20, 1975 | ČSA Flight 540 crashes on approach to Damascus International Airport in Damascus, Syria, killing 126 people. |
August 23, 1975 | The start of the Wave Hill walk-off by Gurindji people in Australia, lasting eight years, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 Paul Kelly song and an annual celebration. |
August 23, 1975 | The Pontiac Silverdome opens in Pontiac, Michigan, 30 miles (48 km) northwest of Detroit, Michigan |
August 27, 1975 | The Governor of Portuguese Timor abandons its capital, Dili, and flees to Atauro Island, leaving control to a rebel group. |
August 29, 1975 | El Tacnazo: Peruvian Prime Minister Francisco Morales Bermúdez carries out a coup d’état in the city of Tacna, forcing the sitting President of Peru, Juan Velasco Alvarado, to resign and assuming his place as the new President. |
September 4, 1975 | The Sinai Interim Agreement relating to the Arab–Israeli conflict is signed. |
September 5, 1975 | Sacramento, California: Lynette Fromme attempts to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford. |
September 8, 1975 | Gays in the military: US Air Force Tech Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, appears in his Air Force uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "I Am A Homosexual". He is given a general discharge, later upgraded to honorable. |
September 14, 1975 | The first American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, is canonized by Pope Paul VI. |
September 15, 1975 | The French department of "Corse" (the entire island of Corsica) is divided into two: Haute-Corse (Upper Corsica) and Corse-du-Sud (Southern Corsica). |
September 16, 1975 | Papua New Guinea gains independence from Australia. |
September 16, 1975 | Cape Verde, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe join the United Nations. |
September 16, 1975 | The first prototype of the Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight. |
September 22, 1975 | Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by the Secret Service. |
September 24, 1975 | Southwest Face expedition members become the first persons to reach the summit of Mount Everest by any of its faces, instead of using a ridge route. |
September 27, 1975 | The last use of capital punishment in Spain sparks worldwide protests. |
September 28, 1975 | The Spaghetti House siege, in which nine people are taken hostage, takes place in London. |
September 29, 1975 | WGPR becomes the first black-owned-and-operated television station in the US. |
September 30, 1975 | Malév Flight 240 crashes into the Mediterranean Sea while on approach to Beirut International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 60. |
October 1, 1975 | Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier in a boxing match in Manila, Philippines. |
October 10, 1975 | Papua New Guinea joins the United Nations. |
October 14, 1975 | An RAF Avro Vulcan bomber explodes and crashes over Żabbar, Malta after an aborted landing, killing five crew members and one person on the ground. |
October 16, 1975 | Indonesian troops kill the Balibo Five, a group of Australian journalists, in Portuguese Timor. |
October 16, 1975 | Three-year-old Rahima Banu, from Bangladesh, is the last known case of naturally occurring smallpox. |
October 16, 1975 | The Australian Coalition sparks a constitutional crisis when they vote to defer funding for the government's annual budget. |
October 22, 1975 | The Soviet unmanned space mission Venera 9 lands on Venus. |
October 24, 1975 | In Iceland, 90% of women take part in a national strike, refusing to work in protest of gender inequality. |
October 30, 1975 | Prince Juan Carlos I of Spain becomes acting head of state, taking over for the country's ailing dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco. |
October 30, 1975 | Forty-five people are killed when Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 450 crashes into Suchdol, Prague, while on approach to Prague Ruzyně Airport (now Václav Havel Airport Prague) in Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic). |
November 3, 1975 | Syed Nazrul Islam, A. H. M. Qamaruzzaman, Tajuddin Ahmad, and Muhammad Mansur Ali, Bangladeshi politicians and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman loyalists, are murdered in the Dhaka Central Jail. |
November 7, 1975 | In Bangladesh, a joint force of people and soldiers takes part in an uprising led by Colonel Abu Taher that ousts and kills Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf, freeing the then house-arrested army chief and future president Maj-Gen. Ziaur Rahman. |
November 10, 1975 | The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board. |
November 10, 1975 | Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 3379, determining that Zionism is a form of racism. |
November 11, 1975 | Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismisses the government of Gough Whitlam, appoints Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister and announces a general election to be held in early December. |
November 11, 1975 | Independence of Angola. |
November 12, 1975 | The Comoros joins the United Nations. |
November 14, 1975 | With the signing of the Madrid Accords, Spain abandons Western Sahara. |
November 22, 1975 | Juan Carlos is declared King of Spain following the death of Francisco Franco. |
November 25, 1975 | Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands. |
November 27, 1975 | The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter had announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiple bombings and shootings across England. |
November 28, 1975 | East Timor declares its independence from Portugal. |
December 2, 1975 | Laotian Civil War: The Pathet Lao seizes the Laotian capital of Vientiane, forces the abdication of King Sisavang Vatthana, and proclaims the Lao People's Democratic Republic. |
December 6, 1975 | The Troubles: Fleeing from the police, a Provisional IRA unit takes a British couple hostage in their flat on Balcombe Street, London, beginning a six-day siege. |
December 22, 1975 | U.S. President Gerald Ford creates the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to the 1970s energy crisis. |
December 26, 1975 | Tu-144, the world's first commercial supersonic aircraft, surpassing Mach 2, goes into service. |
December 29, 1975 | A bomb explodes at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, killing 11 people and injuring more than 75. |