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Top Song(s)
• Abba - Dancing Queen
• Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
• Chicago - If You Leave Me Now
• Wings - Silly Love Songs
• Bellamy Brothers - Let Your Love Flow
Top Film(s)
• Taxi Driver
• Rocky
• Network
• All the President's Men
• The Outlaw Josey Wales
Best Selling Book(s)
• Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
• Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie
• The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
• Roots: The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley
• A River Runs Through It and Other Stories - Norman Maclean
Famous Deaths
• January 5 - John A. Costello, former Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland
• February 1 - Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• February 20 - Rene Cassin, French judge, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• April 5 – Howard Hughes, American aviation pioneer, film director and millionaire recluse
• April 14 – Mariano Ospina Perez, Colombian politician, 17th President of Colombia
• July 7 - Gustav Heinemann, 6th President of the Federal Republic of Germany
• August 22 – Juscelino Kubitschek, 21st President of Brazil
• September 13 – Camilo Ponce Enríquez, Ecuadorian political figure, 30th President of Ecuador
• October 5 - Lars Onsager, Norwegian-born American physical theoretical physicist, 1968 Nobel Prize laureate
• December 15 – Gregoire Kayibanda, Rwandan politician, 2nd President of Rwanda
Medical/Science/Technology
• Gravity Probe A, a satellite-based experiment to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, is launched.
• Space Shuttle Enterprise rolled out.
• Concorde begins commercial flights.
• Marion M. Bradford publishes the Bradford protein assay method.
• The Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is released by Seymour Cray's Cray Research.
• Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in California.
• Keuffel and Esser manufacture the last slide rule in the United States.
• The Ebola virus first emerges in outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fever in Yambuku, Zaire.
• Program of mass vaccination in the United States against the 1976 swine flu outbreak.
• The first laser printer is introduced by IBM (the IBM 3800).
Political
• January 15 – Would-be Gerald Ford presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison.
• January 19 – Jimmy Carter wins the Iowa Democratic Caucus.
• March 31 – The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that vegetative state patient Karen Ann Quinlan can be disconnected from her ventilator.
• April 13 – The United States Treasury Department reintroduces the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note.
• May 11 - President Gerald Ford signs the Federal Election Campaign Act.
• May 25 – President Gerald Ford defeats challenger Ronald Reagan in three Republican presidential primaries.
• July 3 – The Supreme Court of the United States rules that the death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual.
• July 15 - Jimmy Carter is nominated for U.S. President at the Democratic National Convention in New York City.
• July 26 – Ronald Reagan announces his choice of Senator Richard Schweiker as his vice presidential running mate.
• September 23 – The first presidential debate of the 1976 presidential election takes place.
National
• January 27 – The United States vetoes a United Nations resolution that calls for an independent Palestinian state.
• March 9–11 – Two coal mine explosions claim 26 lives at the Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scotia Mine in Letcher County, Kentucky.
• March 20 – Patty Hearst is found guilty of the armed robbery of a San Francisco bank in 1974.
• May 21 - The Yuba City bus disaster, the second-worst bus crash in U.S. history, leaves 28 students and one teacher dead.
• June 5 – The Teton Dam collapses in southeast Idaho, killing 11 people.
• July 6 – The first class of women at the United States Naval Academy is inducted in Annapolis, Maryland.
• July 29 – In New York City, the "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag, killing one and seriously wounding another.
• August 4 – The first recognized outbreak of Legionnaires' disease kills 29 at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
• September 17 – The space shuttle Enterprise is rolled out of a Palmdale, California hangar.
• October 18 – Ford officially launches volume production of Fiesta car at its Valencia plant.
Worldwide
• January 2 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force.
• February 24 – Cuba's constitution of 1976 is enacted.
• March 9 – A cable car disaster occurs when a supporting cable breaks in Cavalese, Italy, resulting in 43 deaths.
• April 13 - The Lapua Cartridge Factory explosion in Lapua, Finland kills 40.
• May 1 – Neville Wran becomes Premier of New South Wales.
• June 26 – The CN Tower is opened in Toronto, the tallest free-standing land structure opens to the public.
• July 19 – Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal is created.
• August 6 – Former United Kingdom Postmaster General John Stonehouse is sentenced to 7 years' jail for fraud, theft and forgery.
• October 4 – The InterCity 125 high-speed train is introduced in the United Kingdom.
• November 15 – The first megamouth shark is discovered off Oahu in Hawaii.