On January 6th the first ever professional football matches are played on a Sunday, this is due to a power shortage.
Britain's first McDonalds fast food restaurant opens in South London on October 1st.
Muhammad Ali proves he's the greatest of all time by beating reigning champion George Foreman and re-claiming back his heavyweight title in Zaire during the legendary boxing match dubbed Rumble In The Jungle. In 1996 the unseen footage from this infamous fight was made into a documentary film entitled When We Were Kings, the Fugees recorded the theme soundtrack.
Beverly Johnson became the first African American to grace the front cover of Vogue in the US.
Former gang leader Afrika Bambaata creates the Zulu Nation - a collective of DJs, breakdancers and graffiti artists - as a positive alternative to street violence.
Pam Grier grabs the spotlight with her sassy role as Foxy Brown in the blaxploitation classic. She later stars alongside Samuel L Jackson in the 1997 flick Jackie Brown in homage to this genre of movie.
In the Caribbean, Grenada celebrates as it finally gains independence from Great Britain.
Legendary jazz musician Duke Ellington dies aged 74. Regarded as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, we wrote over 1,000 pieces of work during his career and won 11 Grammies.
In Trinidad Lord Shorty, widely known as the Father Of Soca, experiments with altering the rhythm of calypso. His Endless Vibrations is the first soca LP and the first major soca hit worldwide.
The industry-standard turntable, the Technics SL-1200 was first released.
The first original 7-inch single to include extended mixes began to appear in the US.
Barry White releases Can't Get Enough Of Your Love Babe taken from his third album Can't Get Enough and it's an instant smash hitting No 1 in the US RnB and Pop Charts.
In Jamaica, after hearing some of King Tubby's early dub experiments, Lee 'Scratch' Perry rapidly puts out a number of dub releases and opens his own studio, Black Ark. It's here that he records and produces some of the early, seminal Bob Marley tracks.
