On this day in History - Aug 7

• 0461 - Majorian dies assassinated (b. 0420). Roman Emperor.
• 1300 - D. Beatriz dies. Queen of Portugal.
• 1400 - Guillaume Dufay was born (d. 1474). French composer.
• 1485 - Morte do rei Richard III da Inglaterra
• 1533 - Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga was born (d. 1594). Spanish poet.
• 1560 - Elizabeth Báthory was born (d. 1614). Serial killer.
• 1598 - Georg Stiernhielm was born (d. 1672). Poet.
• 1616 - Vincenzo Scamozzi dies (b. 1548). Italian architect.
• 1661 - Jin Shengtan dies (b. 1608). Chinese editor, writer and critic .
• 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.
• 1742 - Nathanael Greene was born (d. 1786). American Revolutionary War general.
• 1767 - Alvará que concede privilégios aos directores da Real Fábrica de Chapéus de Pombal para aquisição de matérias-primas. Alvará proíbe a exportação de peles de lebre e coelho.
• 1779 - Louis de Freycinet was born (d. 1842). French explorer.
• 1779 - Carl Ritter was born (d. 1859). Geographer.
• 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.
• 1782 - Andreas Sigismund Marggraf dies. German chemist.
• 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.
• 1813 - Paulina Wright Davis (d. 1876). Suffragist.
• 1817 - Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours dies (b. 1739). French industrialist.
• 1819 - Simón Bolívar triumphs over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.
• 1830 - Dom Antônio de Macedo Costa was born. Brazilian bishop
• 1834 - Joseph Marie Jacquard dies. Inventor of the Jacquard loom
• 1836 - Evander Law was born (d. 1920). American Confederate general.
• 1848 - Jöns Jakob Berzelius dies (b. 1779). Swedish chemist.
• 1855 - Mariano Arista dies (b. 1802). President of Mexico .
• 1858 - Ottawa es elegida como la capital de Canadá por la Reina Victoria.
• 1860 - Alan Leo was born (d. 1917). Brititsh astrologer.
• 1867 - Emil Nolde was born (d. 1956). Painter.
• 1876 - Mata Hari (Margret Gertrude Zelle) was born in Leewarden, Netherland (d. 1917). Spy and dancer.
• 1877 - Ulrich Salchow was born (d. 1949). Swedish figure skater.
• 1883 - Joachim Ringelnatz was born (d. 1934). Writer.
• 1885 - Billie Burke was born (d. 1970). Actress.
• 1890 - Gurley Flynn was born. Politician.
• 1890 - Carlos E. Pellegrini accede a la Presidencia de Argentina, tras la renuncia de Miguel Juárez Celman
• 1895 - Ed Gil was born (d. 1995). Former baseball player.
• 1898 - Manuel Antonio Sanclemente assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1903 - Louis Leakey was born (d. 1972). Anthropologist.
• 1904 - Ralph Bunche was born in Detroit (d. 1971). U.S. government official and UN diplomat, b. Detroit. He was awarded the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the 1948 Arab-Israeli truce
• 1904 - Hanna Melzer was born (d. 1960). Anti-Nazi.
• 1912 - François-Alphonse Forel dies (b. 1841). Swiss hydrologist.
• 1914 - José Vicente Concha Ferreira assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1916 - O Parlamento português aceita a participação de Portugal na Primeira Guerra Mundial de acordo com o convite formal do governo britânico de 15 de Junho
• 1916 - Óscar Acúrsio was born. Portuguese actor.
• 1926 - Stan Freberg was born. American voice comedian.
• 1926 - Miguel Abadía Méndez assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1927 - Carl Alfalfa Switzer was born (d. 1959). Actor.
• 1927 - Peace Bridge opens, between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
• 1928 - James Randi was born. Magician.
• 1929 - Don Larsen was born. Baseball player.
• 1931 - Bix Beiderbecke dies (b. 1903). Musician.
• 1932 - Abebe Bikila was born (1973). Ethyop marathon runner. Gold medal in Olympic games 1960 and 1964
• 1932 - Juan Carlos Zabala gana la maratón en los Juegos Olímpicos de Los Angeles. Es la primera medalla de oro del deporte argentino.
• 1934 - Alfonso López Pumarejo assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1936 - Se inaugura el Teatro Opera de Buenos Aires.
• 1936 - Rahsaan Roland Kirk was born
• 1940 - Jean-Luc Dehaene was born. Prime Minister of Belgium
• 1941 - Rabindranath Tagore dies (b. 1861). Indian author. Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.
• 1942 - Garrison Keillor was born. American writer and radio host
• 1942 - B.J. Thomas was born. Singer
• 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.
• 1942 - Caetano Veloso was born. Brazilian musician, singer and composer.
• 1942 - Alfonso López Pumarejo assume (pela 2º vez) a presidência da Colômbia
• 1943 - Dino Valente was born (d. 1994). American musician, Quicksilver Messenger Service
• 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 successful bombing of Hiroshima with a atomic bomb while returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1945 - Alan Page was born. American football player.
• 1945 - Alberto Lleras Camargo assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 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.
• 1949 - Walid Jumblatt was born. Leader of the Lebanese Druze
• 1953 - Ohio admitted to the union, retroactive to 1803 (this is disputed by some).
• 1955 - Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, begins selling its first transistor radios in Japan.
• 1955 - Mariano Arista dies. President of México (1851 - 1853)
• 1955 - Vladimir Sorokin was born. Russian writer
• 1957 - Oliver Hardy dies (b. 1892). Comedian, actor.
• 1958 - Bruce Dickinson was born. Singer.
• 1958 - Alberto Lleras Camargo assume (pela 2º vez) a presidência da Colômbia
• 1959 - Explorer program: The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
• 1960 - Côte d'Ivoire becomes independent.
• 1960 - David Duchovny was born. Actor.
• 1962 - Guillermo León Valencia assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 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.
• 1966 - Carlos Lleras Restrepo assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1966 - Jimmy Wales was born. American founder of Wikipedia
• 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.
• 1969 - Kevin Cash was born. American baseball player
• 1970 - Harold Haley, Marin County Superior Court Judge taken hostage and murdered in an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
• 1970 - Misael Pastrana Borrero assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1970 - Harold Haley dies assassinated. Judge .
• 1973 - Danny Graves was born. American baseball player.
• 1974 - Alfonso López Michelsen assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1975 - Charlize Theron was born. South African actress
• 1975 - Portugal - O documento Melo Antunes, apoiado pelo Grupo dos Nove, é divulgado.
• 1976 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
• 1978 - Julio César Turbay Ayala assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1978 - United States President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal.
• 1978 - Golpe de Estado en Honduras: un triunvirato militar depone al jefe de Estado, Gral. Melgar.
• 1980 - Aurélie Claudel was born. French supermodel
• 1981 -The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
• 1982 - Belisario Betancur Cuartas assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1985 - Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts.
• 1985 - Gábor Szegö dies. Hungarian mathematician
• 1985 - Jader Moreira de Carvalho dies (b. 29 Dec 1901). Brazilian writer, poet and journalist
• 1986 - Virgilio Barco Vargas assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1987 - Sidney Crosby was born. Ice Hockey Player.
• 1988 - Rioting 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 i.e. 1234567890.
• 1990 - César Gaviria Trujillo assume a presidência da Colômbia.
• 1992 - Morte do político espanhol Francisco Fernández Ordóñez.
• 1994 - Ernesto Samper Pizano assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1995 - Operation Storm is officialy declared over in Croatia, resulting in total Croat victory over rebel Serb forces.
• 1995 - Brigid Brophy dies (b. 1929). British author.
• 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.
• 1997 - O economista Celso Furtado é eleito para a Academia Brasileira de Letras
• 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.
• 1998 - Andrés Pastrana Arango assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 1999 - Brion James dies (b. 1945). American actor.
• 2002 - Álvaro Uribe Vélez assume a presidência da Colômbia
• 2004 - Red Adair dies (b. 1915). American oil well firefighter.
• 2004 - Colin Bibby dies (b. 1948). English ornithologist
• 2005 - Peter Jennings dies (b. 1938). Canadian-born news anchor.
• 2005 - Russian Priz class mini-submarine AS-28 and its seven crewmembers are rescued off the Pacific coast
• 2005 - Portuguese Susana Feitor won the bronze medal in World Championship in Helsinky 20 km race. Olimpiada Ivanova (Rus) won the gold and Rita Turava, Bulgarian, won the silver.
• Colombia - Battle of Boyacá
• Côte d'Ivoire - Republic Day (Independence in 1960 from France)
• Kiribati - Youth Day
• Samoa - Labour Day
• Emancipation Day - Turks and Caicos Islands