1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday.
[edit] Events
[edit] January
- January 1 - Watergate scandal: John N. Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are found guilty of the Watergate cover-up.
- January 1 - Work is abandoned on the British end of the Channel Tunnel.
- January 2 - The Federal Rules of Evidence are approved by the United States Congress.
- January 5 - The bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra strikes the Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, killing 12.
- January 7 - OPEC agrees to raise crude oil prices by 10%.
- January 8 - Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman U.S. governor who did not succeed her husband.
- January 8 - U.S. President Gerald Ford appoints Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to head a special commission looking into alleged domestic abuses by the CIA.
- January 10 - Japanese soldier Teruo Nakamura surrenders on the Indonesian island of Morota.
- January 14 - Heiress Lesley Whittle, 17, is kidnapped from her home in Shropshire, England by Donald Neilson.
- January 20 - In Hanoi, the Politburo approves the final North Vietnamese military offensive against South Vietnam.
- January 20 - Michael Ovitz founds the Creative Artists Agency.
- January 29 - The Weather Underground bombs the U.S. State Department main office in Washington, D.C..
- January - Altair 8800 is released, sparking the era of the microcomputer.
[edit] February
- February 1 - The Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation was launched, became the first TV station in the Philippines
- February 4 - The first successfully predicted earthquake occurs in Haicheng, Liaoning, China.
- February 9 - The Soyuz 17 crew (Georgi Grechko, Aleksei Gubarev) returns to Earth after 1 month aboard the Salyut 4 space station.
- February 11 - Margaret Thatcher defeats Edward Heath for the leadership of the UK Conservative Party in the United Kingdom.
- February 11 - Colonel Richard Ratsimandrava, President of Madagascar, is assassinated.
- February 13 - A "Turkish Federated State of North Cyprus" is declared as an unsuccessful first step to international recognition of a Turkish Cypriot separatist state in Cyprus.
- February 13 - Fire breaks out in the World Trade Center.
- February 21 - Watergate scandal: Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell, and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, are sentenced to between 30 months and 8 years in prison.
- February 23 - In response to the energy crisis, daylight saving time commences nearly 2 months early in the United States.
- February 26 - A fleeing Irish Republican Army terrorist shoots and kills off-duty London police officer Stephen Tibble, 22, as he gives chase.
- February 27 - The Movement 2 June kidnaps West German politician Peter Lorenz. He is released on March 4 after most of the kidnappers' demands are met.
- February 28 - A major tube train crash at Moorgate station, London kills 43 people.
- February 28 - In Lomé, Togo, the European Economic Community and 46 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries sign a financial and economic treaty, known as the first Lomé Convention.
- March 1 - Color television transmissions begin in Australia.
- March 4 - Charlie Chaplin is knighted by Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
- March 6 - Algiers Accord: Iran and Iraq announce a settlement in their border dispute.
- March 6 - A bomb explodes in the Paris offices of the Springer Press. The 6 March Group (connected to the Red Army Faction) demands amnesty for the Baader-Meinhof Group.
- March 7 - The body of teenage heiress Lesley Whittle, kidnapped 7 weeks earlier by the Black Panther, is discovered in Staffordshire, England.
- March 8 - The United Nations proclaims International Women's Day.
- March 9 - Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins.
- March 10 - Vietnam War: North Vietnamese troops attack Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam, on their way to capturing Saigon.
- March 10 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens in New York City with 4 performances.
- March 11 - The leftist military government in Portugal defeats a rightist coup attempt.
- March 13 - Vietnam War: South Vietnam President Nguyen van Thieu orders the Central Highlands evacuated. This turns into a mass exodus involving troops and civilians, (the Convoy of Tears).
- March 15 - In Brazil, the Estado da Guanabara (State of Guanabara) merges with the state of Rio de Janeiro, under the name of Rio de Janeiro. The state's capital moves from the city of Niterói to the city of Rio de Janeiro.
- March 22 - Ding-a-dong by Teach-In (music by Dick Bakker, text by Will Luikinga and Eddy Ouwens) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1975 for the Netherlands.
- March 25 - King Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a nephew with a history of mental illness; the killer is beheaded on June 18. (King Khalid succeeds Faisal.)
- March 28 - A fire in the maternity wing at Kucic Hospital in Rijeka, Yugoslavia, kills 25 babies.
- April 3 - Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title.
- April 4 - Vietnam War: The first military Operation Babylift flight, C5A 80218, crashes 27 minutes after takeoff, killing 138 on board; 176 survive the crash.
- April 9 - Asia's first professional basketball league, the Philippine Basketball Association, plays its first game at the Araneta Coliseum.
- April 13 - An attack by Palestinians on a church in Ain El Remmeneh, Lebanon, sparks over 15 years of civil war.
- April 13 - A coup d'état in Chad led by the military overthrows and kills the President François Tombalbaye.
- April 17 - Following the Khmer Rouge capture of Phnom Penh, Pol Pot proclaims the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea in Cambodia and becomes its Prime Minister (1975-1979).
- April 24 - Six Red Army Faction terrorists take over West German embassy in Stockholm, take 11 hostages and demand the release of the group's jailed members; shortly after, they are captured by Swedish police. (See 1975 Occupation of the West German embassy)
- April 25 - Vietnam War: As North Vietnamese Army forces close in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy is closed and evacuated, almost 10 years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam.
- April 30 - Vietnam War: The Vietnam War ends as Communist forces take Saigon and South Vietnam surrenders unconditionally.
[edit] August
- August 1 - The Helsinki Accords, which officially recognize Europe's national borders and respect for human rights, are signed in Finland.
- August 8 - The Banqiao Dam, in China's Henan Province, fails after a freak typhoon; over 200,000 people perish.
- August 8 - Samuel Bronfman, son of the president of Seagram's, is kidnapped in Purchase, New York.
- August 11 - British Leyland Motor Corporation comes under British government control.
- August 11 - Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a UDT coup and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.
- August 15 - The Birmingham Six are wrongfully sentenced to life imprisonment in Great Britain.
- August 15 - President Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh is killed during a coup.
- August 20 - Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
- August 24 - Officers responsible for the military coup in Greece in 1967 are sentenced to death in Athens. The sentences are later commuted to life imprisonment.
- August 25 - Rock musician Bruce Springsteen releases his third album, Born To Run.
[edit] September