1976
Tangshan Earthquake
At 3:42 in the morning, a magnitude-7.5 earthquake leveled the industrial city of Tangshan in northern China. Official figures said 242,000 dead; the real toll may have exceeded 650,000. Mao Zedong, dying himself, refused foreign aid. The earthquake was the deadliest of the twentieth century and exposed the fragility behind China's revolutionary facade.
Soweto uprising
Black schoolchildren in Soweto marched against a law forcing them to study in Afrikaans, the language of their oppressors. Police opened fire. Thirteen-year-old Hector Pieterson's body, carried by another boy, became the iconic photograph. Hundreds died in the weeks that followed. Apartheid would never regain legitimacy, even among its supporters.
Argentine junta takes power
A military coup in Buenos Aires overthrew Isabel Peron and began Argentina's Dirty War against left-wing opposition. Perhaps thirty thousand Argentines were disappeared, tortured, and dropped from planes into the Atlantic. Mothers of the disappeared marched every Thursday at the Plaza de Mayo in white headscarves. They outlasted the generals.
Mao dies
After a long decline, the eighty-two-year-old Chairman who had ruled China for twenty-seven years died in Beijing. Within a month his wife Jiang Qing and her Gang of Four had been arrested. Within two years the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping had quietly taken power and begun the reforms that would remake China. The Cultural Revolution was over.
Soweto schoolchildren shot
South African police opened fire on Black schoolchildren protesting being forced to learn in Afrikaans, the language they associated with their oppressors. Thirteen-year-old Hector Pieterson's body, carried by another boy with Hector's sister running alongside, became the iconic photograph of apartheid's cruelty. Hundreds more died in the following weeks of unrest. Apartheid was losing its last international defenders.
Entebbe raid
After hijackers forced an Air France jet to Idi Amin's Uganda and separated the Jewish passengers, Israeli commandos flew four planes twenty-five hundred miles, stormed the terminal, killed the hijackers, and flew the hostages home. One Israeli commander, Yonatan Netanyahu, died. Entebbe became the textbook hostage rescue of the twentieth century.