April 7

Events

Pre-1600

• 451 - Attila the Hun captures Metz in France, killing most of its inhabitants and burning the town.
• 529 - First Corpus Juris Civilis, a fundamental work in jurisprudence, is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.
• 1141 - Empress Matilda becomes the first female ruler of England, adopting the title "Lady of the English".
• 1348 - Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV charters Prague University.
• 1449 - Felix V abdicates his claim to the papacy, ending the reign of the final Antipope.
• 1521 - Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Cebu.
• 1541 - Francis Xavier leaves Lisbon on a mission to the Portuguese East Indies.

  1601–1900

• 1724 - Premiere performance of Bach's St John Passion, BWV 245, at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig.
• 1767 - End of Burmese–Siamese War.
• 1788 - Settlers establish Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement created by U.S. citizens in the recently organized Northwest Territory.
• 1790 - Russo-Turkish war : Greek privateer Lambros Katsonis loses three of his ships in the Battle of Andros.
• 1795 - The French First Republic adopts the kilogram and gram as its primary unit of mass.
• 1798 - The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and the Spanish Empire. It is expanded in 1804 and again in 1812.
• 1805 - Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.
• 1805 - German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premieres his Third Symphony, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.
• 1824 - The Mechanics' Institution is established in Manchester, England at the Bridgewater Arms hotel, as part of a national movement for the education of working men. The institute is the precursor to three Universities in the city: the University of Manchester, UMIST and the Metropolitan University of Manchester.
• 1831 - Pedro II becomes Emperor of Empire of Brazil.
• 1862 - American Civil War: The Union's Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio defeat the Confederate Army of Mississippi near Shiloh, Tennessee.
• 1868 - Thomas D'Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation, is assassinated by a Fenian activist.

  1901–present

• 1906 - Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.
• 1906 - The Algeciras Conference gives France and Spain control over Morocco.
• 1922 - Teapot Dome scandal: United States Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall leases federal petroleum reserves to private oil companies on excessively generous terms.
• 1926 - Violet Gibson attempts to assassinate Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini.
• 1927 - AT&T engineer Herbert Ives transmits the first long-distance public television broadcast.
• 1933 - Prohibition in the United States is repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution.
• 1933 - Nazi Germany issues the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banning Jews and political dissidents from civil service posts.
• 1939 - Benito Mussolini declares an Italian protectorate over Albania and forces King Zog I into exile.
• 1939 - Benito Mussolini invades Albania.
• 1940 - Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
• 1943 - The Holocaust in Ukraine: In Terebovlia, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress and march through the city to the nearby village of Plebanivka, where they are shot and buried in ditches.
• 1943 - Ioannis Rallis becomes collaborationist Prime Minister of Greece during the Axis Occupation.
• 1943 - The National Football League makes helmets mandatory.
• 1944 - In the Fragheto massacre, soldiers belonging to the German 356th Infantry Division kill 30 Italian civilians and 15 partisans near Casteldelci in central-northern Italy.
• 1945 - World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato, one of the two largest ever constructed, is sunk by United States Navy aircraft during Operation Ten-Go.
• 1946 - The Soviet Union annexes East Prussia as the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
• 1948 - The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
• 1954 - United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech during a news conference.
• 1955 - Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom amid indications of failing health.
• 1956 - Francoist Spain agrees to surrender its protectorate in Morocco.
• 1964 - IBM announces the System/360.
• 1965 - Representatives of the National Congress of American Indians testify before members of the US Senate in Washington, D.C., against the termination of the Colville tribe.
• 1968 - Two-time Formula One British World Champion Jim Clark dies in an accident during a Formula Two race in Hockenheim.
• 1969 - The Internet's symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1.
• 1971 - Vietnam War: President Richard Nixon announces his decision to quicken the pace of Vietnamization.
• 1972 - Vietnam War: Communist forces overrun the South Vietnamese town of Loc Ninh.
• 1976 - Member of Parliament and suspected spy John Stonehouse resigns from the Labour Party after being arrested for faking his own death.
• 1977 - German Federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by two Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light.
• 1978 - Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter.
• 1980 - During the Iran hostage crisis, the United States severs relations with Iran.
• 1982 - Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh is arrested.
• 1983 - During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.
• 1988 - Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov orders the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• 1989 - Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway, killing 42 sailors.
• 1990 - A fire breaks out on the passenger ferry Scandinavian Star, killing 159 people.
• 1990 - John Poindexter is convicted for his role in the Iran–Contra affair. In 1991 the convictions are reversed on appeal.
• 1994 - Rwandan genocide: Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda, and soldiers kill the civilian Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.
• 1994 - Auburn Calloway attempts to destroy Federal Express Flight 705 in order to allow his family to benefit from his life insurance policy.
• 1995 - First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.
• 1999 - Turkish Airlines Flight 5904 crashes near Ceyhan in southern Turkey, killing six people.
• 2001 - NASA launches the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter.
• 2003 - Iraq War: U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime falls two days later.
• 2003 - Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide demands reparations of $21 billion from France for the Haiti Independence Debt.
• 2005 - First release of Git distributed version control system.
• 2009 - Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.
• 2009 - Mass protests begin across Moldova under the belief that results from the parliamentary election are fraudulent.
• 2011 - The Israel Defense Forces use their Iron Dome missile system to successfully intercept a BM-21 Grad launched from Gaza, marking the first short-range missile intercept ever.
• 2011 - A gunman opens fire at an elementary school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing twelve children and injuring 22 others before committing suicide.
• 2017 - A man deliberately drives a hijacked truck into a crowd of people in Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people and injuring fifteen others.
• 2017 - U.S. President Donald Trump orders the 2017 Shayrat missile strike against Syria in retaliation for the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack.
• 2018 - Former Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is arrested for corruption by determination of Judge Sérgio Moro, from the "Car-Wash Operation". Lula stayed imprisoned for 580 days, after being released by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
• 2018 - Syria launches the Douma chemical attack during the Eastern Ghouta offensive of the Syrian Civil War.
• 2020 - COVID-19 pandemic: China ends its lockdown in Wuhan.
• 2020 - COVID-19 pandemic: Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly resigns for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on USS Theodore Roosevelt and the dismissal of Brett Crozier.
• 2021 - COVID-19 pandemic: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announces that the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States.
• 2022 - Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed for the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first black female justice.

  Births

Pre-1600

• 1206 - Otto II Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria
• 1330 - John, 3rd Earl of Kent, English nobleman
• 1470 - Edward Stafford, 2nd Earl of Wiltshire
• 1506 - Francis Xavier, Spanish missionary and saint, co-founded the Society of Jesus
• 1539 - Tobias Stimmer, Swiss painter and illustrator

  1601–1900

• 1613 - Gerrit Dou, Dutch painter
• 1644 - François de Neufville, duc de Villeroy, French general
• 1648 - John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, English poet and politician, Lord President of the Council
• 1652 - Pope Clement XII
• 1713 - Nicola Sala, Italian composer and theorist
• 1718 - Hugh Blair, Scottish minister and author
• 1727 - Michel Adanson, French botanist, entomologist, and mycologist
• 1763 - Domenico Dragonetti, Italian bassist and composer
• 1770 - William Wordsworth, English poet
• 1772 - Charles Fourier, French philosopher
• 1780 - William Ellery Channing, American preacher and theologian
• 1803 - James Curtiss, American journalist and politician, 11th Mayor of Chicago
• 1803 - Flora Tristan, French author and activist
• 1811 - Hasan Tahsini, Albanian astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher
• 1817 - Francesco Selmi, Italian chemist and patriot
• 1848 - Randall Davidson, Scottish archbishop
• 1859 - Walter Camp, American football player and coach
• 1860 - Will Keith Kellogg, American businessman, founded the Kellogg Company
• 1867 - Holger Pedersen, Danish linguist and academic
• 1870 - Gustav Landauer, German theorist and activist
• 1871 - Epifanio de los Santos, Filipino jurist, historian, and scholar
• 1873 - John McGraw, American baseball player and manager
• 1874 - Frederick Carl Frieseke, German-American painter
• 1876 - Fay Moulton, American sprinter, football player, coach, and lawyer
• 1882 - Bert Ironmonger, Australian cricketer
• 1882 - Kurt von Schleicher, German general and politician, 23rd Chancellor of Germany
• 1883 - Gino Severini, Italian-French painter and author
• 1884 - Clement Smoot, American golfer
• 1886 - Ed Lafitte, American baseball player and soldier
• 1889 - Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poet and educator, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1890 - Paul Berth, Danish footballer
• 1890 - Victoria Ocampo, Argentine writer
• 1890 - Marjory Stoneman Douglas, American journalist and activist
• 1891 - Ole Kirk Christiansen, Danish businessman, founded the Lego Group
• 1892 - Julius Hirsch, German footballer
• 1893 - José Sobral de Almada Negreiros, Portuguese artist
• 1893 - Allen Dulles, American lawyer and diplomat, 5th Director of Central Intelligence
• 1895 - John Bernard Flannagan, American soldier and sculptor
• 1895 - Margarete Schön, German actress
• 1896 - Frits Peutz, Dutch architect, designed the Glaspaleis
• 1897 - Erich Löwenhardt, Polish-German lieutenant and pilot
• 1897 - Walter Winchell, American journalist and radio host
• 1899 - Robert Casadesus, French pianist and composer
• 1900 - Adolf Dymsza, Polish actor
• 1900 - Tebbs Lloyd Johnson, English race walker