The Coalition of Free Men is founded in Baltimore, Maryland, in order to create a unified voice in addressing issues concerning men and boys. The organisation would later become the National Coalition for Men, America's oldest men's rights organization.[2]
January 17 – In the first execution after the reintroduction of the death penalty in the United States, Gary Gilmore is executed by firing squad in Utah.[4]
January 19
Snow falls in Miami, Florida (despite its ordinarily tropical climate) for the only time in its history. Snowfall has occurred further south in the United States only on the high mountains of the state of Hawaii.
The contiguous US average monthly minimum temperature of 12.54 °F or −10.81 °C[6] is the coldest for any month since nationwide records were first compiled in 1895.[a]
In contrast to the contiguous US, Alaska had to that point[b] its warmest January on record with a mean of 17.4 °F or −8.1 °C being 16.2 °F or 9.0 °C warmer than the 1925 to 1974 average of 1.2 °F or −17.1 °C and 1.8 °F or 1.0 °C warmer than Alaska's previous record warmest January 1937.[7]
Grundy, Virginia, experiences a major flood that causes around $15 million in damages to 228 residential and commercial structures.
Southern Airways Flight 242 during a flight leg en route to Atlanta, Georgia from Huntsville, Alabama, is forced to make an emergency landing on a highway after complete failure of the aircraft's two engines following the aircraft flying through a hailstorm.[8] 63 of the 85 people on board and 9 people on the ground are killed in the accident.[9]
April 5 – Beginning of demonstrations in 10 cities across the U.S., the longest being the 3.5 week sit-in the San Francisco Federal Building to persuade President Jimmy Carter to implement the first Federal civil rights law for people with disabilities, Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, without reinstituting the "separate but equal" doctrine.
May 16 – A 20-passenger S-61L helicopter topples sideways at takeoff from the roof of the Pan Am Building in Midtown Manhattan. Four passengers are killed by the turning rotors and a woman at street level is fatally struck by a fallen blade.
May 17 – Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre first opens in San Jose, California.
May 25 – The movie Star Wars, directed by George Lucas is released as the first film in the Star Wars Saga and the first in the Original Trilogy. It is premiered in 32 movie theaters across the United States [12] before reaching other cinemas nationwide. Critics who had previewed the film gave it good reviews, with Time magazine dubbing it "the year's best movie".[13]Charles Champlin called it "the year's most razzle-dazzling family movie, an exuberant and technically astonishing space adventure".[14]Gene Siskel commented that "'Star Wars' is not a great movie in the sense that it describes the human condition. It simply is a fun picture," with "spectacular visual effects, the best since Stanley Kubrick's 2001.[15] Some disliked the film, with one calling it "frequently boring with its fairy-tale plot", "relentlessly childish", and "no more sophisticated or believable than an old Spider Man comic book."[16]Star Wars would go on to break the record for highest-grossing film (surpassing Jaws, The Godfather and The Sound of Music) [17]
June 7 – After campaigning by Anita Bryant and her anti-gay "Save Our Children" crusade, Miami-Dade County, Florida voters overwhelmingly vote to repeal the county's gay rights ordinance.
Elvis Presley performs his final concert, in the Market Square Arena at Indianapolis, Indiana. Two previous performances were filmed in Omaha, Nebraska (June 19th), and Rapid City, South Dakota (June 21st), for the TV Special "Elvis In Concert." This special was not televised until October 3 of that year on CBS.
June 30 – Women Marines disbanded; women are integrated into regular Marine Corps.
July 19–20 – Flooding in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, caused by massive rainfall, kills over 75 people and causes billions of dollars in damage.
July 24 – Led Zeppelin plays their last U.S. concert in Oakland, California at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. A brawl erupts between Led Zeppelin's crew and promoter Bill Graham's staff, resulting in criminal assault charges for several of Led Zeppelin's entourage including drummer John Bonham.
August 16 – Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll, dies in his home in Graceland at age 42. 75,000 fans lined the streets of Memphis for his funeral, which occurred on August 18, but wasn't televised until August 20.[19]
Radio Shack’s new TRS-80 Micro Computer System uses a computer keyboard to plug into an included 64 column video monitor, programmed by cassette tapes played on a home cassette player, shown at the Boston Computer Show on August 25, 1977. From left, visitors Robert Lundgren of Des Plaines, Illinois, Malcolm MacLeod of Montreal, and Radio Shack salesman Steven Carlozzi of Brockton, Massachusetts
September 7 – Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The U.S. agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.
September 21 – A nuclear non-proliferation pact is signed by 15 countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union.
September 23 – Jazz-rock group Steely Dan releases their sixth studio album Aja; it becomes their highest charting album at No. 3 and goes on to win a Grammy Award.
October 14 – Anita Bryant is famously pied by four gay rights activists during a press conference in Des Moines, Iowa. This event resulted in her political fallout from anti-gay activism.
November 28 – Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp records "On Green Dolphin Street", the first digitally recorded album to be released commercially in the USA.
December 13 – Crash of Air Indiana Flight 216: A DC-3 charter plane carrying the University of Evansville basketball team crashes in rain and dense fog about 90 seconds after takeoff from Evansville Dress Regional Airport. Twenty-nine people die in the crash, including 14 members of the team and head coach Bob Watson.
December 16 – Mikhail Baryshnikov's 1976 production of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker comes to CBS a year after premiering onstage at the Kennedy Center. This adaptation will become the most popular television production of the work.
Atari 2600, released in October, popularized the use of microprocessor based hardware and cartridges containing game code.
The coldest winter for fifty-nine years in the Ohio Valley region[3] and a record dry year throughout the West,[22] especially the Pacific Northwest,[23] creates heating fuel and water shortages plus extended freezing of the Great Lakes[24] and freezing of the Mississippi River as far as Cairo, Illinois.
^The mean temperature for January 1977 of 23.09 °F or −4.95 °C was the coldest since before 1895, but was broken in January 1979.
^Januaries 1981, 1985 and 2014 have since surpassed this figure, almost certainly largely due to man-made global warming.
References
^CalmX, some as; Artist, Was an Experimental; Director, Film; producer; Creator, Video Game Content; inventors, freelance writer for some 18 years She specialized in writing about; inventions; March 2015, in particular Bellis died in. "The Inventors of the First Hobby and Home Computers". ThoughtCo.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^Fryd, Vivien Green (Spring 2007). "Suzanne Lacy's Three Weeks in May: Feminist Activist Performance Art as "Expanded Public Pedagogy"". NWSA Journal. 19 (1). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 23–38. JSTOR4317229. S2CID201751753.
^"Star Wars' B.O. Hits Wow $2.5 Mil", Variety, June 1, 1977, p. 1
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Media related to 1977 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons