December 1977

Month in 1977

The following events occurred in December 1977:

A jet crash killed 59 of the 159 people aboard a Libyan Arab Airlines flight that was bringing Muslim pilgrims back home from Saudi Arabia. The Tupolev Tu 154 ran out of fuel after having to alter its route to avoid Egyptian airspace, and the crew was attempting to find an alternate airport after its destination at Benghazi was hindered by a heavy fog. "World Series Cricket" (WSC), created by Australian TV network owner Kerry Packer after he was unable to secure rights to broadcast international network on his Nine Network, played its first match. Denied the right to use the trademark term "Test match" by the Marylebone Cricket Club, or to identify a national team as "Australia", Packer promoted the five day international series as a "Supertest" and dubbed the team "WSC Australian XI". In that normal cricket venues in Australia were denied by Marylebone to rival competitors, WSC leased four alternate sites and hired John Maley to develop the "drop in pitch". In the inaugural match, WSC Australian XI faced off against WSC West Indies XI at the Australian rules football stadium at Adelaide, in South Australia, playing before only 2,847 spectators. On the same day, a regular Test series began at Brisbane between Australia and India in front of 9,000 fans. Convicted murderers Erskine "Buck" Burrows and Larry Tacklyn were hanged at Casemates Prison in Bermuda, becoming the last people to be executed under British rule anywhere in the world. Burrows had been convicted of the 1973 assassination of Bermuda Governor Richard Sharples and four other murders, while Tacklyn was convicted of assisting Burrows on two murders. Rioting broke out the day before the execution of the two men, and at the request of Governor Peter Ramsbotham, the British Defence Ministry sent 150 troops to restore order.

All 100 passengers and crew on board Malaysian Airline System Flight 653 were killed in a crash after the plane was hijacked. MAS 653 had departed Penang toward Kuala Lumpur at 7:54 p. m. local time. Ten minutes later, the crew reported that a terrorist from the Japanese Red Army had entered the cockpit and demanded to be flown to Singapore. The gunman then killed the pilot, the co pilot and himself, and the autopilot was apparently disconnected, perhaps by another person attempting to fly the aircraft. The Boeing 737 crashed into a swamp near Tanjung Kupang on Johor. The coronation of Emperor Bokassa I took place in the Bangui, capital of the Central African Empire. According to reporters, the lavish ceremony at Bangui's indoor sports stadium was inspired by the 1804 coronation of Bokassa's idol, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Bokassa, formerly President Jean Bédel Bokassa, received "a 6 foot diamond encrusted scepter of office and was then draped by aides in an ermine trimmed red velvet cloak" that included a 24 feet (7 m) train. Emulating Napoleon, Bokassa placed a "diamond encrusted imperial crown" upon his own head and then crowned his wife as the Empress Catherine, before sitting down on a specially designed "two ton gold plated throne, shaped like a 15 foot high eagle with an 18 foot wingspan", designed by French sculptor Olivier Brice, who also designed the crown, the scepter and a ceremonial sword. The event, held in a nation where the average per capita income was only $155, cost US$30,000,000.

Kim Il Sung was unanimously re elected President of North Korea by the Supreme People's Assembly of the Asian nation. Kim, leader of the nation's Communist Party since 1945, and chaired the provisional government in 1945 and had been the first, and only, president since the 1948 proclamation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Less than six months after becoming an independent nation, the northeast African nation of Djibouti began its transition to a dictatorship, with 17 opponents of President Hassan Gouled Aptidon being arrested for being members of the Mouvement populaire de libération, and charged with killing five people in a grenade attack on a restaurant.

A 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck Iran at 4:34 in the morning Iran Standard Time (23:34 on 19 December UTC) and killed 584 people while injuring more than 1,000 others. In Argentina, the bodies of five women washed ashore on the coastline of Santa Teresita in the Province of Buenos Aires. Almost 30 years later, the bodies would be identified as those of five people suspected of having become "desaparecidos", last seen on December 10 after the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo group had published an advertisement listening the names of their adult children who had been kidnapped and never seen again. Based on the condition of the bodies, which had indicated "impact on hard objects from a great height", investigators would conclude that the victims had their corpses dropped into the sea as part of a "death flight" ("vuelo de la muerte"). DNA evidence showed that the five dead were all organizers of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino, María Ponce de Bianco, Ángela Auad, and Léonie Duquet. After decades of the denial of United Nations membership to both North Vietnam and South Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam — the union of both countries following South Vietnam's conquest by the north in 1975— was admitted to the UN. The newly independent Republic of Djibouti was admitted on the same day. Jesse Walter Bishop of Nevada, who in 1979 would become the first person to be executed in the gas chamber since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U. S. (and the second American legally executed overall) committed the killing that would lead to his death sentence. Bishop had walked into a casino in Las Vegas and shot David Ballard, a customer at the El Morocco Casino who had gotten married earlier in the day. Thompson died of his injuries 10 days later.