August 7
is the 219th day of the year in the
Gregorian Calendar (220th in
leap years), with 146 days remaining. There are 94 days in North Hemisphere summer, South Hemisphere winter. The Northern Hemisphere is considered to be halfway through the
summer on this day.
*
1679 - The
brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by
René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the south-eastern end of the
Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper
Great Lakes of
North America.
*
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.
*
1789 - The
United States War Department is established.
*
1794 -
Whiskey Rebellion begins:
Farmers in the
Monongahela Valley of
Pennsylvania rebel against the federal tax on
liquor and distilled drinks.
*
1807 - The
Clermont, designed by
American engineer Robert Fulton â€" embarked on its maiden voyage.
*
1819 -
Simón BolÃvar triumphs over
Spain in the
Battle of Boyacá.
*
1879 - The opening of the
Poor Man's Palace in
Manchester.
*
1888 -
Jack the Ripper commits the first of his murders around
London's East End.
*
1927 - The
Peace Bridge opens, between
Fort Erie, Ontario and
Buffalo, New York.
*
1933 - The
Iraqi Government slaughtered over 7,000 Christian
Assyrians in the village of
Sumail.
*
1942 -
World War II:
Battle of Guadalcanal begins -
U.S. 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).
*
1945 -
President Harry Truman announces the bombing of
Hiroshima with an
atomic bomb while returning from the
Potsdam Conference aboard the heavy cruiser
USS Augusta (CA-31) in the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean.
*
1947 -
Thor Heyerdahl's
balsa wood raft the
Kon-Tiki, smashes into the
reef at
Raroia in the
Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7000-km (4375-mile) journey across the
Pacific Ocean proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from
South America.
*1947 - The
Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the
Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (
BEST).
*
1955 -
Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to
Sony, begins selling its first
Transistor radios in
Japan.
*
1959 -
Explorer program:
Explorer 6 launched from the Atlantic Missile Range in
Cape Canaveral, Florida.
*
1960 -
Côte d'Ivoire becomes independent.
*
1964 -
Vietnam War: The
U.S. 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.
*
1966 -
Race riots occur in
Lansing, Michigan.
*
1967 -
Vietnam War: The
People's Republic of China agrees to give
North Vietnam an undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.
*
1970 - California judge
Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during in an effort to free
George Jackson from police custody.
*
1973 -
NBC airs the final day of the
Watergate hearings on
U.S. daytime television.
*
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.
*
1985 -
Takao Doi,
Mamoru Mohri and
Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be
Japan's first
astronauts.
*
1988 - Rioting in
New York City's
Tompkins Square Park.
*
1989 -
U.S. 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 i.e. 1234567890.
*
1991 -
World Wide Web debuts as a publicly available service on the
internet.
*
1995 -
Operation Storm is officially declared over in
Croatia, resulting in total
Croat victory over rebel
Serb forces.
*
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, kill 224 people and injure over 4,500.
*
1999 - A group of
Indian army veterans launch the
political party Rashtriya Raksha Dal.
*
2005 -
Russian
Priz class mini-submarine
AS-28 and its seven crewmembers are rescued off the
Pacific coast
*
2006 - The
Bath Spa opens, after six years of delays and escalating costs.
*
2006 -
Apple Computer released its
Mac Pro after a year of anticipation, finally eliminating the PowerPC Processor from their product line.
*
317 -
Constantius II, Roman emperor (d.
361)
*
1400 -
Guillaume Dufay, French composer (d.
1474)
*
1533 -
Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, Basque soldier and poet (d.
1595)
*
1560 -
Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian serial killer (d.
1614)
*
1574 -
Robert Dudley, styled Earl of Warwick, English writer (d.
1649)
*
1598 -
Georg Stiernhielm, Swedish poet (d.
1672)
*
1726 -
James Bowdoin, American Revolutionary leader and politician (d.
1790)
*
1742 -
Nathanael Greene, American Revolutionary general (d.
1786)
*
1779 -
Louis de Freycinet, French explorer (d.
1842)
*1779 -
Carl Ritter, German geographer (d.
1859)
*
1844 -
Auguste Michel-Lévy, French geologist (d.
1911)
*
1860 -
Alan Leo, British astrologer (d.
1917)
*
1867 -
Emil Nolde, German painter (d.
1956)
*
1876 -
Mata Hari, Dutch spy (d.
1917)
*
1877 -
Ulrich Salchow, Swedish figure skater (d.
1949)
*
1885 -
Billie Burke, American actress (d.
1970)
*
1901 -
Ann Harding, American actress (d.
1981)
*
1903 -
Louis Leakey, British archaeologist (d.
1972)
*
1904 -
Ralph Bunche, American diplomat,
Nobel Prize Laureate (d.
1971)
*
1911 -
Nicholas Ray, American actor, director and scenarist (d.
1979)
*
1913 -
George Van Eps, noted American guitarist (d.
1998)
*
1921 -
Manitas de Plata, gypsy guitarist
*
1925 -
M. S. Swaminathan, Indian scientist
* 1925 -
Felice Bryant, American country songwriter and singer (d.
2003)
*
1926 -
Stan Freberg, American voice comedian
*
1927 -
Art Houtteman, Baseball player (d.
2003)
*
1928 -
James Randi, Canadian magician
*
1929 -
Don Larsen, baseball player
*
1932 -
Abebe Bikila, Ethiopan athlete
* 1932 -
Dr. Maurice Rabb, Jr., African American ophthalmologist
* 1932 -
Edward Hardwicke, British actor
*
1936 -
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, American saxophonist
*
1939 -
Anjanette Comer, American actress
*
1940 -
Jean-Luc Dehaene,
Prime Minister of Belgium*
1942 -
Garrison Keillor, American writer and radio host
* 1942 -
B.J. Thomas, American singer
* 1942 -
Caetano Veloso, Brazilian musician
*
1943 -
Dino Valente, American musician
Quicksilver Messenger Service (d.
1994)
* 1943 -
Alain Corneau, French film director
*
1944 -
David Rasche, American actor
*
1945 -
Alan Page, American football player
*
1948 -
Greg Chappell, Australian test cricket player, captain and coach
*
1949 -
Walid Jumblatt, Leader of the Lebanese Druze
*
1952 -
Alexei Sayle, British 'alternative' comedian
*
1953 -
Greg Carmichael, British guitarist
*
1954 -
Jonathan Pollard, Israeli spy
*
1955 -
Vladimir Sorokin, Russian writer
* 1955 -
Wayne Knight, American actor
*
1957 -
Alexander Dityatin, Soviet gymnast
*
1958 -
Bruce Dickinson, English singer (
Iron Maiden)
*
1960 -
David Duchovny, American actor
*
1961 -
Yelena Davydova, Soviet gymnast
*
1962 -
Bruno Pelletier,
Québécois singer
*
1963 -
Harold Perrineau Jr., American actor
*
1964 -
Michael Weishan, American TV host, author
*
1966 -
Jimmy Wales, American founder of Wikipedia
*
1967 -
Jason Grimsley, American baseball player
*
1973 -
Danny Graves, American baseball player
*
1975 -
Edgar Renteria, Colombian baseball player
* 1975 -
David Hicks, Australian alleged terrorist
* 1975 -
Charlize Theron, South African actress
*
1978 -
Jamey Jasta, American singer (
Hatebreed)
* 1978 -
Alexandre Aja, French Director
* 1978 -
Vanness Wu, Taiwanese singer
* 1978 -
Linsey Dawn McKenzie, English model and porn star
* 1978 -
Cirroc Lofton, American actor
*
1980 -
Aurélie Claudel, French supermodel
*
1982 -
Yana Klochkova, Ukrainian swimmer
*
1983 -
Tina O'Brien, British actress
*
1987 -
Sidney Crosby, Canadian hockey player
*
461 -
Majorian,
Roman Emperor (assassinated) (b.
420)
*
479 -
Emperor YÅ«ryaku of Japan
*
1106 -
Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (b.
1050)
*
1485 -
Alexander Stewart, 1st Duke of Albany, Scottish prince
*
1613 -
Thomas Fleming, English judge (b.
1544)
*
1616 -
Vincenzo Scamozzi, Italian architect (b.
1548)
*
1635 -
Friedrich von Spee, German writer (b.
1591)
*
1661 -
Jin Shengtan, Chinese editor, writer and critic (b.
1608)
*
1817 -
Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, French industrialist (b.
1739)
*
1834 -
Joseph Marie Jacquard, French weaver and inventor (b.
1752)
*
1848 -
Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (b.
1779)
*
1855 -
Mariano Arista,
President of Mexico (b.
1802)
*
1912 -
François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist (b.
1841)
*
1917 -
Squadron Commander E.H. Dunning, first pilot to land his aircraft on a moving ship. ( b.
1891)
*
1938 -
Konstantin Stanislavski, Russian/Soviet actor, producer, dramatist (b.
1863)
*
1941 -
Rabindranath Tagore, Indian author,
Nobel Prize Laureate (b.
1861)
*
1957 -
Oliver Hardy, American comedian and actor (b.
1892)
*
1969 -
Joseph Kosma, French composer (
Autumn Leaves) (b.
1905)
*
1974 -
Rosario Castellanos, Mexican poet (b.
1925)
* 1974 -
Sylvio Mantha, professional ice hockey player (b.
1902)
*
1984 -
Esther Phillips, American singer (b.
1935)
*
1985 -
Grayson Hall, American actress (b.
1923)
*
1989 -
Mickey Leland, American politician,
United States Congressman from Texas (b.
1944)
*
1992 -
John Anderson, American actor (b.
1922)
*
1995 -
Brigid Brophy, British author (b.
1929)
*
1999 -
Brion James, American actor (b.
1945)
*
2003 -
Mickey McDermott, baseball player (b.
1929)
*
2004 -
Red Adair, American firefighter (b.
1915)
* 2004 -
Colin Bibby, English ornithologist (b.
1948)
*
2005 -
Peter Jennings, Canadian-born news anchor (b.
1938)
*
Roman Catholicism - the feasts of at least 15 saints:
**St.
Cajetan of Thienna**St.
Donatus**St.
Claudia**St.
Agathangelo Noury**St.
Albert of Trapani**St.
Victricius**St.
Carpophorus**St.
Donat**St.
Donatian**St.
Donatus &
Hilarinus**St.
Donatus of Besancon**St.
Faustus**St.
Hyperechios**St.
Peter,
Julian, and Companions
*
BC Day - Province of
Canada.
*
Civic Holiday -
Canada.
*
Emancipation Day -
Turks and Caicos Islands.
*
BBC: On This Day*
The New York Times: On This DayAugust 6 -
August 8 -
July 7 -
September 7 --
listing of all days
