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Top Song(s)
• Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive
• The Village People - YMCA
• Bee Gees - Night Fever
• Boney M - Rivers of Babylon
• Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
Top Film(s)
• Days of Heaven
• The Deer Hunter
• Animal House
• Dawn of the Dead
• Halloween
Best Selling Book(s)
• The Stand - Stephen King
• Eye of the Needle - Ken Follett
• The World According to Garp - John Irving
• Night Shift - Stephen King
• A Swiftly Tilting Planet - Madeleine L'Engle
Famous Deaths
• January 2 – Cyril King, Governor of the United States Virgin Islands
• January 13 – Hubert Humphrey, 38th Vice President of the United States
• March 22 – Isidro Ayora, 22nd President of Ecuador
• April 16 - Philibert Tsiranana, Malagasy leader and politician, 1st President of Madagascar
• May 9 – Aldo Moro, Italian Christian Democratic politician and statesman, 38th Prime Minister of Italy
• June 24 – Ahmad al-Ghashmi, 4th President of the Yemen Arab Republic
• June 28 – Clifford Dupont, 1st President of Rhodesia
• July 7 – Francisco Mendes, Guinea-Bissau politician, 1st Prime Minister of Guinea-Bissau
• September 15 – Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft designer and manufacturer
• December 27 – Houari Boumediene, 2nd President of Algeria
Medical/Science/Technology
• James W. Christy at the United States Naval Observatory discovers Charon, the first moon of Pluto identified.
• It is first proposed that Janus and Epimetheus are two separate moons of Saturn sharing the same orbit.
• The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago, Illinois).
• The RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography, based on the factoring problem, is first publicly described.
• Fossils of Saint Bathans mammal first collected.
• Louise Brown becomes the world's first human born from in vitro fertilization, in England.
• Osteocalcin first identified in animal bone.
• Production of the first genetically engineered synthetic "human" insulin using E. coli by Arthur Riggs and Keiichi Itakura.
• The rare genetic disorder Pitt–Hopkins syndrome is first described.
• Imposter syndrome is first described as a phenomenon.
Political
• January 1 - The Copyright Act of 1976 takes effect, making sweeping changes to United States copyright law.
• January 14–15 – The body of former U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
• January 19 – Federal Appeals Court Judge William H. Webster is appointed Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• February 8 – United States Senate proceedings are broadcast on radio for the first time.
• March 28 – The Supreme Court hands down a decision involving involuntary sterilization and judicial immunity.
• April 18 – The U.S. Senate votes 68–32 to turn the Panama Canal over to Panamanian control on December 31, 1999.
• June 28 - The Supreme Court of the United States bars quota systems in college admissions.
• October 10 – President Jimmy Carter signs a bill that authorizes the minting of the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
• October 14 – President Jimmy Carter signs a bill into law which allows homebrewing of beer in the United States.
• October 27 – President Jimmy Carter signs the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Act.
National
• January 25–27 – The Great Blizzard of 1978 strikes the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes, causing 51 deaths in Ohio.
• February 6 – The first Home Depot opens in Marietta, Georgia.
• April 28 – WAC abolished; women integrated into regular Army.
• May 26 – In Atlantic City, New Jersey, Resorts International, the first legal casino in the eastern United States, opens.
• June 6 – California voters approve Proposition 13, which slashes property taxes nearly 60%.
• August 18 – The first F-16 Fighting Falcon was delivered to the United States Air Force USAF.
• September 17 – Camp David Accords: Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat begin the peace process at Camp David, Maryland.
• September 25 - PSA Flight 182, collides with a small private airplane and crashes in San Diego, California; 144 are killed.
• November 10 – Theodore Roosevelt and Badlands National Park is established.
• December 13 – The first Susan B. Anthony dollar enters circulation.
Worldwide
• January 6 – The Holy Crown of Hungary is returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held since World War II.
• February 13 – A bomb explodes outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing a policeman and two civilians.
• March 1 – Charlie Chaplin's remains are stolen from Cosier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland.
• April 20 – A Soviet air defense plane shoots down Korean Air Lines Flight 902.
• May 8 - Norway opens a natural gas field, in the Polar Sea.
• June 2 – Japan Air Lines 115 had its tail struck on the runway on the airport it landed in.
• July 7 – The Solomon Islands become independent from the United Kingdom.
• August 26 – Pope John Paul I succeeds Pope Paul VI as the 263rd Pope.
• October 13 – The Soviet Union launches a major Russification campaign throughout all union republics.
• December 25 – Vietnam launches a major offensive against the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia.