Historical Events on 7 Aug

Historical Events on 7 Aug

1461 - the Ming Dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
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.
1714 - The Battle of Gangut: the first important victory of the Russian Navy.
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 - The Whiskey Rebellion begins: farmers in the Monongahela Valley of Pennsylvania rebel against the federal tax on liquor and distilled drinks.
1819 - Simón Bolívar triumphs over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.
1879 - The opening of the Poor Man's Palace in Manchester.
1927 - The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
1933 - The Iraqi Government slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Sumail. The day becomes known as Assyrian Martyrs Day.
1940 - Alsace Lorraine is annexed by the Third Reich (Germany) during World War II
1942 - World War II: the Battle of Guadalcanal begins - U.S. Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi 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 - The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST).
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.
1955 - Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, begins selling its first transistor radios in Japan.
1959 - The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design and is still in use.
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.
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.
1974 - Philippe Petit performed a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 ft (417.0 m) in the air.
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.
2007 - Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks baseball great Hank Aaron's record by hitting his 756th home run.
322 BC - Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great.