Seattle
- Bill Gates and Paul Allen (both Seattle-area natives) founded Micro-Soft on April 4 in Albuquerque after a Popular Electronics cover sent them scrambling to write a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800.
- The Kingdome was nearing completion ahead of its 1976 opening.
- Seattle's "Mystic" painters tradition (Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan) drew renewed national attention.
- The Seattle Sounders began play in the North American Soccer League.
The United States
- Saigon fell on April 30; the last Americans were evacuated by helicopter from the embassy roof, ending the Vietnam War.
- Saturday Night Live premiered on NBC (October 11).
- Steven Spielberg's Jaws invented the modern summer blockbuster.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest swept the major Oscars.
- Bruce Springsteen released Born to Run.
- The Apollo–Soyuz Test Project was the first joint US–Soviet crewed spaceflight.
The World
- The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh and began emptying the cities — the start of a genocide that would kill roughly a quarter of Cambodia's population.
- Francisco Franco died (November 20), ending 36 years of dictatorship and beginning Spain's transition to democracy.
- The Helsinki Accords committed 35 nations to a set of human-rights principles dissidents in the East would invoke for years.
- Microsoft's founding marked the start of the personal-computer era.
