By Sam Nzima / Flickr / CC-BY-SA-3.0 / GFDL

1 – Soweto Uprising in South Africa

The Soweto uprising was a series of protests led by black schoolchildren in South Africa that began on the morning of June 16, 1976.

Students from numerous schools began to protest in the streets of Soweto in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the means of instruction in local schools.

It is estimated that 20,000 students took part in the protests, and were met with fierce police brutality.

The number of protesters killed by police is usually given as 176, but estimates of up to 700 have been made.

In remembrance of these events, the 16th of June is now a public holiday in South Africa, named Youth Day.

2 – Steve Jobs & Stephen Wozniak Founded Apple Computer

Apple was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple I personal computer kit.

The Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club.

The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips), which was less than what is now considered a complete personal computer.

The Apple I went on sale in July 1976, market-priced at $666.66 ($2,806 in 2017 dollars, adjusted for inflation).

3 – Viking I Lands on Mars

Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft, along with Viking 2, sent to Mars as part of NASA’s Viking program.

On July 20, 1976, it became the first spacecraft to land successfully on Mars and perform its mission.

Viking 1 held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of 2307 days until that record was broken by ‘Opportunity’ on May 19, 2010.

4 – Operation Entebbe – Israel Rescues 229 Air France Hostage Passengers in Uganda

Operation Entebbe was a successful hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 4, 1976.

On June 27, an Air France plane with 248 passengers had been hijacked by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations.

The hijackers wanted to have 40 Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel released, and 13 prisoners in four other countries in exchange for the hostages.

The flight, which had originated in Tel Aviv, was diverted after a stopover in Athens to Entebbe, the main airport of Uganda.

Over the following two days, 148 non-Israeli hostages were released and flown out to Paris. 94 mainly Israeli passengers along with the Air France crew, remained as hostages.

The operation took place at night. Israeli transport planes carried 100 commandos over 4,000 km to Uganda for the rescue operation.

Following a week of planning, it lasted 90 minutes. 102 hostages were rescued. 5 Israeli commandos were wounded.

The brother of current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was the unit commander, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu. He was the only commando killed.

All the hijackers, three hostages, and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed.

5 – Chilean Orlando Letelier is assassinated in Washington, D.C. 

Orlando Letelier was assassinated on September 21, 1976, by a car bombing, in Washington, D.C.

He was a leading opponent of Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

Letelier, who had been exiled in the United States, was killed along with Ronni Karpen Moffitt, and her husband Michael, who worked for Letelier.

The assassination was perpetrated by agents of the Chilean secret police, one of many carried out as part of Operation Condor.

Declassified U.S. intelligence documents confirm that Pinochet directly ordered the killing.