1978 in the United Kingdom

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Years in the United Kingdom:	1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981
Centuries:	19th century · 20th century · 21st century
Decades:	1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
Years:	1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981

Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg 1978 in the United Kingdom: Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
British and Irish current events
Sport and Music
1978 British Grand Prix
1978 English cricket season
Football Image:Flag of England.svg England \| Image:Flag of Scotland.svg Scotland
1978 in British music
United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 1978

Events from the year 1978 in the United Kingdom.

1 Incumbents
2 Events
3 Births
4 Deaths
5 References

[edit] Incumbents

Monarch - HM Queen Elizabeth II
Prime Minister - James Callaghan, Labour

[edit] Events

January 18 - The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.
February 13 - Anna Ford becomes the first female newsreader on ITN. ^[1]
February 18 - 20 suspects arrested in connection with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of the La Mon restaurant in County Down which had killed 12 people and injured 30. ^[2]
8 March - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy first broadcast by BBC Radio 4. ^[3]
March 30 - Conservative Party recruit Saatchi & Saatchi to revamp their image. ^[4]
April 8 - Regular broadcasts of proceedings in the Parliament of the United Kingdom start.
June 19 - Cricketer Ian Botham becomes the first man in the history of the game to score a century and take eight wickets in one innings of a Test match. ^[5]
June 21 - An outbreak of shooting between Provisional IRA members and the British Army leaves one civilian and three IRA men dead. ^[6]
July 6 - Taunton train fire: eleven people killed in worst rail accident since Hither Green rail crash in 1967. ^[7]
July 7 - The Solomon Islands become independent from the United Kingdom.
July 25 - Louise Brown becomes the world's first human born from in vitro fertilization. ^[8]
July 25 - Motability, a charity which provides cars to disabled people, founded. ^[9]
August 20 - Gunmen open fire on an Israeli El Al airline bus in London.
August 25 - U.S. Army Sergeant Walter Robinson "walks" across the English Channel in 11 hours 30 minutes, using homemade water shoes.
September 11 - Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov dies after having been stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella in London. ^[10]
September 15 - German terrorist Astrid Proll arrested in London. ^[11]
September 19 - British Police launch a massive murder hunt, when newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater is shot dead after disturbing a burglary at a farmhouse near Kingswinford in the West Midlands. ^[12]
October 17 - A cull of Grey seals in the Orkney and Western Islands reduced after a public outcry. ^[13]
November 3 - Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
November 5 - Rioters sack the British Embassy in Tehran.
November 23 - Pollyanna's nightclub in Birmingham is forced to lift its ban on black and Chinese revellers, after a one-year investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality concludes that the nightclub's entry policy was racist.

Peter D. Mitchell wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contribution to the understanding of biological energy transfer through the formulation of the chemiosmotic theory" ^[14]