August 7
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
[change] Births
- 1400 - Guillaume Dufay, French composer (d. 1474)
- 1560 - Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian serial killer (d. 1614)
- 1876 - Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy (d. 1917)
- 1942 - B.J. Thomas, American singer
- 1958 - Bruce Dickinson, British singer (Iron Maiden)
- 1960 - David Duchovny, American actor
- 1966 - Jimmy Wales, American founder of Wikipedia
- 1973 - Zane Lowe, New Zealand disc jockey and television presenter
- 1975 - Charlize Theron, South African actress
[change] Deaths
- 461 - Majorian, Roman Emperor (assassinated)
- 1817 - Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, French industrialist (b. 1739)
- 1834 - Joseph Marie Jacquard, inventor of the Jacquard loom
- 1848 - Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist
- 1855 - Mariano Arista, president of Mexico
- 1912 - François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist (born 1841)
- 1931 - Bix Beiderbecke, musician
- 1941 - Rabindranath Tagore, author
- 1957 - Oliver Hardy, comedian, actor (born 1892)
- 1995 - Brigid Brophy, British author
- 1999 - Brion James, American actor
- 2004 - Red Adair, American oil well firefighter
[change] Events
- 1679 - The brigantine Le Griffon, which was commissioned by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the southern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.
- 1789 - The United States War Department is established.
- 1782 - George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.
- 1794 - Whiskey Rebellion begins: Farmers in the Monoghaela Valley of Pennsylvania rebel against the federal tax on liquor and distilled drinks.
- 1819 - Simón Bolívar triumphed over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.
- 1927 - Peace Bridge opens, between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
- 1942 - World War II: Battle of Guadalcanal begins - US Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with a landing on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
- 1944 - IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
- 1947 - Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101 day 7 000 km (4,300 mile) journey across the Pacific Ocean proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
- 1953 - Ohio admitted to the union, retroactive to 1803 (this is disputed by some).
- 1959 - Explorer program: The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- 1960 - Côte d'Ivoire becomes independent.
- 1964 - Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving US President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
- 1965 - Singapore is expelled and separated from the Federation of Malaysia.
- 1967 - Vietnam War: The People's Republic of China agrees to give North Vietnam and undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.
- 1976 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
- 1978 - United States President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal.
- 1981 -The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
- 1988 - "Police riot" in New York City's Tompkins Square Park
- 1989 - US Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX), and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
- 1990 - At 12:34:56 (both AM and PM) the time and date by British reckoning was 12:34:56 7/8/90.
- 1997 - Fine Air Flight 101, a cargo flight from Miami to Santo Domingo crashes onto NW 72nd Ave near Miami International Airport, killing five people.
- 1998 - 1998 U.S. embassy bombings: Bombing of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya kills 224 people and injures over 4,500.
- 2001 - Australian census
