• All 98 people aboard
Aeroflot Flight 5003 were killed in the Soviet Union when the
Ilyushin Il-18 turboprop crashed during an attempted a landing at
Mineralnye Vody in the
Russian SFSR. The flight had departed earlier from
Tashkent, capital of the
Uzbek SSR, and stopped at the Uzbek city of
Nukus before crashing into an embankment near the Mineralnye Vody airport. • Edwin John Eastwood, who had escaped from
Geelong Prison on December 16, 1976, after being incarcerated for the 1972
Faraday School kidnapping in
Australia, repeated the crime by taking 16 adults and nine children hostage after invading the Wooreen State School near
Leongatha, Victoria. One hostage escaped and alerted police in
Woodside, and the hostages were rescued, unharmed. •
Voting was held in Denmark for all 179 seats of the
Folketingnet, the European kingdom's unicameral parliament. The
Socialdemokratiet party of Prime Minister
Anker Jørgensen gained 12 seats to reach 65, but the Social Democrats partner in a coalition government, the liberal
Venstre Party, lost 21 seats, reducing the coalition from 95 seats to 86, short of the 90 needed for a majority. The opposition
Fremskridtspartiet (Progress Party) finished second on a platform of abolishing all taxes, despite the admission by party leader
Mogens Glistrup, who admitted that he paid no income tax at all. • Italy's most wanted fugitive,
Renato Vallanzasca, was captured alive almost seven months after escaping prison, after being tracked down at his hideout in
Rome. Vallanzasca, who had committed 70 robberies, kidnapped four people and murdered six others since his escape, had most recently killed two highway patrolmen near
Dalmine after they had stopped his car on February 6. • The
Canadian Citizenship Act of 1976 (
Loi sur la citoyenneté) came into force in
Canada, repealing the
Canadian Citizenship Act, 1946 removing restrictions against having citizenship in more than one country. •
Died: •
H. J. Lam, 85, Dutch botanist for whom the
lamiodendron species of flowering plants is named •
Matthews Mabelane, 23, black South African protester, plunged to his death from the 10th floor of the police station in
Johannesburg. The circumstances were similar to the death of
Ahmed Timol who had fallen 10 floors to his death on October 27, 1971 in what would be ruled in 2017 as a murder. As with Timol, police claimed that Mabelane had committed suicide after being arrested; unbeknownst to police, Mabelane had written a note to his family on the inside of his clothes while in his cell, saying "Brother Lasch, inform mom and other brothers that the police are going to push me from the 10th floor and I am bidding you goodbye forever." ==February 16, 1977 (Wednesday)==