November 2 - Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian film director (b. 1922)
November 5 - Annette Kellerman, Australian swimmer (b. 1887)
November 5 - Lionel Trilling, American critic and writer (b. 1905)
November 10 - Ernest M. McSorley, American ship captain (b. 1912)
November 13 - Olga Berggolts, Russian poet (b. 1910)
November 20 - Francisco Franco, Head of State of Spain (1936-1975) (b. 1892)
November 29 - Graham Hill, English race car driver (b. 1929)
December 1 - Nellie Fox, American baseball player (b. 1927)
December 1 - Anna E. Roosevelt, American radio personality (b. 1906)
December 4 - Hannah Arendt, German political theorist (b. 1906)
December 7 - Thornton Wilder, American playwright (b. 1897)
December 8 - Gary Thain, New Zealand bassist (Uriah Heep) (b. 1948)
December 9 - William A. Wellman, American movie director (b. 1896)
December 11 - Lee Wiley, American jazz singer (b. 1908)
December 14 - Arthur Treacher, English actor (b. 1894)
December 24 - Bernard Herrmann, American film composer (b. 1911)
December 25 - Gaston Gallimard, French publisher (b. 1881)
Events
January 4 - Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes the first American-born saint.
January 5 - The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, is struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people.
January 8 - Ella Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States who did not succeed her husband.
January 14 - Teenage heiress Lesley Whittle is kidnapped by Donald Neilson, aka "the Black Panther".
January 19 - Triple J begins broadcasting in Sydney, Australia.
February 4 - Haicheng earthquake, M 7.3, occurred in Haicheng, Liaoning, China.
February 9 - The Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraft returns to Earth.
February 13 - A fire erupts in the World Trade Center in New York City, New York.
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 prison.
February 23 - In response to the energy crisis, daylight saving time commences nearly two months early in the United States.
February 28 - A major tube train crash at Moorgate station, London kills 43 people.
March 1 - Colour television transmissions begin in Australia.
March 6 - Algiers Accord: Iran and Iraq announce a settlement of their border dispute.
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 - Sanyo Shinkansen open between Osaka and Fukuoka.
March 17 - The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad enter third and final bankruptcy, and William M. Gibbons selected as receiver and trustee for the railroad.
March 22 - A fire at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Decatur, Alabama causes dangerous lowering of cooling water levels.
March 25 - Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.
March 26 - The Biological Weapons Convention enters into force.
April 2 - Vietnam War: Thousands of civilian refugees flee from the Quang Ngai Province in front of advancing North Vietnamese troops.
April 2 - Construction of the CN Tower is completed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It reaches 553.33 metres (1,815.4 ft) in height, becoming the world's tallest free-standing structure.
April 3 - Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.
April 4 - Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
April 8 - Frank Robinson manages the Cleveland Indians in his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.
April 9 - The first game of the Philippine Basketball Association, the second oldest professional basketball league in the world.
April 13 - Bus Massacre in Lebanon : Attack by Phalangist militia gunmen kill 27 Palestinian civilians and marks the start of the 15-year Lebanese civil war.
April 17 - The Cambodian Civil War ends. The Khmer Rouge captures the capital Phnom Penh and Cambodian government forces surrender.
April 19 - India's first satellite Aryabhata is launched.
April 21 - Vietnam War: President of South Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu flees Saigon, as Xuan Loc, the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls.
April 24 - The Baader-Meinhof Gang takes 13 hostages at theWest German embassy in Stockholm.
April 25 - As North Vietnamese forces close in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy is closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam.
April 29 - Vietnam War: Operation Frequent Wind: The U.S. begins to evacuate US citizens from Saigon prior to an expected North Vietnamese takeover. U.S. involvement in the war comes to an end.
April 30 - Fall of Saigon: Communist forces gain control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh.
May 12 - Mayagüez incident: the Cambodian navy seizes the American merchant ship SS Mayaguez in international waters.
May 16 - India annexes Sikkim after the mountain state holds a referendum in which the popular vote was in favour of merging with India.
May 16 - Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
May 27 - The Dibble's Bridge coach crash near Grassington, North Yorkshire, England kills 32 (the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom).
May 28 - Fifteen West African countries sign the Treaty of Lagos, creating the Economic Community of West African States.
June 2 - French sex workers occupied a Lyon church in protest against excessive fines and taxes, as well as a lack of police action against violence, thereby sparking the birth of the modern sex worker rights movement.
June 5 - The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War.
June 5 - The United Kingdom holds its first and only country-wide referendum, on remaining in the European Economic Community (EEC).
June 7 - Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder for sale to the public.
June 24 - An Eastern Air Lines Boeing 727 crashes at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York. 113 people die.
June 25 - Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declares Emergency in India, suspending civil liberties and elections.
June 26 - Indira Gandhi establishes emergency rule in India.
June 26 - Two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian Movement are killed in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; Leonard Peltier is later convicted of the murders in a controversial trial.
July 5 - Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.
July 5 - Cape Verde gains its independence from Portugal.
July 6 - The Comoros declare independence from France.
July 9 - The National Assembly of Senegal passes a law that paves way for a (albeit highly restricted) multi-party system.
July 12 - São Tomé and Príncipe declare independence from Portugal.
July 17 - Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.
July 20 - India expels three reporters from The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and Newsweek because they refused to sign a pledge to abide by government censorship.
July 26 - Formation of a military triumvirate in Portugal.
July 30 - Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again.
July 31 - In Detroit, Michigan, Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing.
August 1 - CSCE Final Act creates the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
August 3 - A privately chartered Boeing 707 impacts the mountainside near Agadir, Morocco killing 188.
August 4 - The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the U.S. consul and the Swedish charge d'affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya.
August 11 - East Timor: Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.
August 15 - Military coup in Bangladesh. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman is killed along with all the memebrs of his family except Haseena Wajid.
August 15 - Miki Takeo makes the first official pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine by an incumbent prime minister on the anniversary of the end of World War II.
August 19 - The cricket test match between England and Australia is called off after the pitch is vandalised by supporters of George Davis.
August 20 - Viking Program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
August 27 - The Governor of Portuguese Timor abandons its capital, Dili, and flees to Atauro Island, leaving control to a rebel group.
September 4 - The Sinai Interim Agreement relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict is signed.
September 5 - Sacramento, California: a follower of incarcerated cult leader Charles Manson, Lynette Fromme attempts to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford.
September 8 - Gays in the military: US Air Force Tech Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, appears in his Air Force uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "I Am A Homosexual". He is later given a general discharge.
September 14 - The first American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, is canonized by Pope Paul VI.
September 15 - The French département of Corse (the entire island of Corsica) is divided into two: Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud.
September 16 - Papua New Guinea gains its independence from Australia.
September 16 - The first prototype of the MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.
September 18 - Patty Hearst is arrested after a year on the FBI Most Wanted List.
September 22 - Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by Oliver Sipple.
September 28 - The Spaghetti House siege, in which nine people were taken as hostages, takes place in London.
September 29 - WGPR in Detroit, Michigan, becomes the world's first black-owned-and-operated television station.
September 30 - The Hughes (later McDonnell-Douglas, now Boeing) AH-64 Apache makes its first flight.
October 1 - The Seychelles gain internal self-government. The Ellice Islands split from Gilbert Islands and take the name Tuvalu.
October 1 - Thrilla in Manila: Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier in a boxing match in Manila, Philippines.
October 4 - A Cessna 310Q airplane crashes near Wilmington, North Carolina, killing the pilot and severely injuring several pro wrestlers affiliated with the NWA's Mid-Atlantic promotion. One of the survivors is the legendary Ric Flair.
October 11 - The NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live debuts with George Carlin as the host and Andy Kaufman, Janis Ian and Billy Preston as guests.
October 16 - The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists based in the town of Balibo in the then Portuguese Timor (now East Timor), are killed by Indonesian troops.
October 22 - The Soviet unmanned space mission Venera 9 lands on Venus.
November 6 - Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara.
November 10 - The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board.
November 10 - United Nations Resolution 3379: United Nations General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism (the resolution was repealed in December 1991 with Resolution 4686).
November 11 - Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismisses the government of Gough Whitlam and commissions Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister, and announces a general election to be held in early December.
November 20 - Francisco Franco, Caudillo of Spain dies after 36 years in power.
November 22 - Juan Carlos is declared King of Spain following the death of Francisco Franco.
November 25 - Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands.
November 27 - The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiple bombings and shootings across England.
November 28 - East Timor declares its independence from Portugal.
November 28 - As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the final two American soap operas that had resisted going to pre-taped broadcasts, air their last live episodes.
December 2 - Pathet Lao seizes power in Laos, and establishes the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
December 6 - Balcombe Street Siege: An IRA Active Service Unit takes a couple hostage in Balcombe Street, London.
