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Top Song(s)
• Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting
• Terry Jacks - Seasons in the Sun
• George McCrae - Rock Your Baby
• Abba - Waterloo
• Wings - Band On the Run
Top Film(s)
• The Godfather Part I
• Chinatown
• The Conversation
• Young Frankenstein
• Blazing Saddles
Best Selling Book(s)
• Carrie - Stephen King
• Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein
• Jaws - Peter Benchley
• The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara
• Centennial - James A. Michener
Famous Deaths
• January 21 – Lewis Strauss, American businessman, philanthropist, and naval officer
• February 18 – Manuel A. Odria, 79th President of Peru
• February 21 – Tim Horton, Canadian ice hockey player and co-founder of the Tim Hortons restaurant chain
• March 9 – Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
• April 2 - Georges Pompidou, 100th Prime Minister of France and 19th President of France
• May 13 – Jaime Torres Bodet, Mexican public servant, 2nd Director-General of the UNESCO
• June 4 – Mamerto Urriolagoitía, 43rd President of Bolivia
• July 1 – Juan Peron, Argentine army general and politician, 2-time President of Argentina
• August 24 – Alexander P. de Seversky, Russian-American aviation pioneer and inventor
• October 5 – Zalman Shazar, 3rd President of Israel
Medical/Science/Technology
• Arecibo message transmitted from Arecibo Observatory (Puerto Rico) to Messier 13.
• Hawking radiation is predicted by Stephen Hawking.
• The Mark-8 microcomputer based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor is designed by Jonathan Titus.
• The first "Tommy John surgery" for replacement of ulnar collateral ligament of elbow joint is performed by Frank Jobe.
• Identification of controlled trials in perinatal medicine, as advocated by Archie Cochrane, begins in Cardiff, Wales.
• Henry Heimlich describes the "Heimlich Maneuver" as a treatment for choking.
• Sagittarius A*, thought to be the location of a supermassive black hole, is identified by Bruce Balick and Robert Brown.
• After 84 days in space, the last crew of the temporary American space station Skylab return to Earth.
• Yves Hellegouarch proposes a connection between Fermat's Last Theorem and the Frey curve.
• British neuroscientists John Hughes and Hans Kosterlitz announce their isolation of the peptides met- and leu-enkephalin.
Political
• January 4 - Citing executive privilege, President Richard Nixon refuses to surrender 500 tapes and documents.
• January 30 – In his State of the Union Address, President Nixon declares, "One year of Watergate is enough."
• February 28 – Egypt and the United States re-establish normal diplomatic relations.
• April 20 – Voters in Louisiana approve a new state constitution, replacing a 225,000-word document adopted in 1921.
• May 9 – The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opens formal hearings in the impeachment process against Richard Nixon.
• July 24 – The Supreme Court rules 8–0 with one abstention that President Richard Nixon cannot withhold subpoenaed White House tapes.
• August 8 – President Nixon announces his resignation (effective August 9).
• September 8 - President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office.
• October 17 - President Gerald Ford voluntarily appears before Congress to give sworn testimony about the pardon of Richard Nixon.
• November 20 – The United States Department of Justice files its final antitrust suit against AT&T.
National
• January 15 – Happy Days, a sitcom about life in the 1950s, debuts on ABC.
• February 8 – After a record 84 days in orbit, the crew of Skylab 4 returns to Earth.
• March 4 – People magazine's first issue is published in the U.S., with Mia Farrow on the cover.
• April 4 – Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth for the all-time home run record with his 714th at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati.
• May 17 – Los Angeles police raid Symbionese Liberation Army headquarters, killing six members.
• June 30 – Alberta Williams King, mother of the late Martin Luther King Jr., is killed during a church service in Atlanta, Georgia.
• July 1 – Six Flags Great Adventure opens for the first time.
• September 8 - Stuntman Evel Knievel fails in his attempt to rocket across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho.
• October 8 – Franklin National Bank collapses due to fraud and mismanagement.
• December 4 – The Pioneer 11 probe passes Jupiter and captures famous images of the Great Red Spot.
Worldwide
• January 25 – Bulent Ecevit of CHP forms the new government of Turkey.
• February 1 - Fire breaks out in the Joelma Building in Sao Paulo, Brazil; 177 die, 293 are injured.
• March 29 - The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang is discovered at Xi'an, China.
• April 11 – The Kiryat Shmona massacre takes place in Israel.
• May 4 - An all-female Japanese team summits Manaslu in Nepal, becoming the first women to climb an 26,000 ft peak.
• June 17 – A bomb explodes in Westminster Hall, the oldest part of the British Houses of Parliament.
• August 14 - Turkey invades Cyprus for the second time, occupying 37% of the island's territory.
• September 10 – The Portuguese military junta grants independence to Guinea-Bissau.
• November 20 – Lufthansa Flight 540 crashes in Nairobi, Kenya due to a mechanical failure, killing 59 of its 157 passengers.
• December 24–25 – Darwin, Australia is almost completely destroyed by Cyclone Tracy.