By Mark Aumann, NASCAR.COM
January 21, 2005
10:12 AM EST (15:12 GMT)
In the most spectacular finish in the race's history to that point, David Pearson and Richard Petty crashed coming out of the final turn. While Petty was unable to refire his beat-up Dodge 50 yards shy of the victory, Pearson was able to coax his heavily damaged Mercury across the finish line to win the 18th Daytona 500 on Feb. 15, 1976.  |  | NASCAR ACCELERATION | |
| ALSO IN 1976 ... |
| • | Patty Hearst is found guilty of armed robbery of a San Francisco bank (Mar.20) |
| • | Supreme Court of the United States rules on Gregg v. Georgia and decides that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment (July 3) |
| • | Earthquake flattens Tangshan, China, killing 242,769 people, and injuring 164,851 (July 28) |
| • | In New York City, the "Son of Sam" pulls a gun from a paper bag killing one and seriously wounding another in the first of a series of attacks that terrorized the city for the next year (July 29) |
| • | Racing Champion Niki Lauda suffers serious burns in the German Grand prix (Aug. 5) |
Courtesy: Wikipedia
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An undamaged 1976 Mercury Cougar XR7 two-door hardtop coupe with a 460 V8 engine would have had a showroom sticker price of $5,125. A brand-new, unblemished 1976 Dodge Charger Sport with a 400 V8 engine retailed for $4,263. Pearson's first-place check of $46,800 would have allowed him to buy nine Cougars, one more than the number of Chargers that Petty could have purchased with the runner-up purse of $35,750. Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky," the story about an unknown Philadelphia boxer who fights for the world's heavyweight championship, was the top draw at the box office, collecting $117 million and winning an Oscar for Best Picture. Muhammad Ali was the heavyweight champ in 1976. Sega's first "Heavyweight Champ" video game, in black and white, was released in 1976. The company re-released the color version in 1987. On July 4, President Gerald Ford rang the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia during the nation's bicentennial celebration. If Pearson had wanted to celebrate the bicentennial in Philadelphia, the 616-mile trip from Spartanburg, S.C., would have taken 11 hours at the federal speed limit of 55 mph -- or four hours and three minutes at Pearson's race-winning average of 152.181 mph. The rest of President Ford's year was rocky. In a debate with Jimmy Carter, Ford claimed Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland were not dominated by the Soviet Union. He then lost the November election to the Georgia governor. "All The President's Men," starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, was in movie theatres at the time. Influenced by the Altair personal computer, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built a new preassembled computer circuit board in a Sunnyvale, Calif. garage in the spring of 1976. They first offered it to Hewlett-Packard, which turned it down. On April 1, Jobs, Wozniak and Ron Wayne founded the Apple Computer Company and debuted the Apple I in May at the Home Brew Computer Club in Palo Alto. Byte Shop ordered 50 of the new computers at $666.66 each. In order to finance production costs of $1,350, Jobs sold his VW van and Wozniak his H-P calculator. The No. 1 song in the country on Feb. 15, according to Cash Box, was Paul Simon's "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover." Pearson could have bought all 50 Apple I computers and still had enough left over to make a $13,500 down payment on a new home, which cost an average of $48,000 in 1976. Unfortunately, the rate on that house would have been close to 9 percent on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. On Jan. 21, the first Concorde commercial flight took off from Paris to Rio. Space Shuttle Enterprise rolled out on Sept. 17. Inflation continued to hover at 8.7 percent. In 1976, Fleetwood Mac was recording "Rumours," while The Eagles were about to release "Hotel California." Current drivers born in 1976:
•Travis Kvapil (March 1)
•Jamie McMurray (June 3)
•Scott Wimmer (Jan. 26)
•J.J. Yeley (Oct. 5) → Click here for more Daytona Countdown. | 
