TODAY IN HISTORY: APRIL 7

 

April 7

 

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.

1724 – Premiere performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St John Passion, BWV 245, at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig.

1767 – End of Burmese–Siamese War (1765–67).

1788 – Settlers establish Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement created by U.S. citizens in the recently organized Northwest Territory.

1795 – The French First Republic adopts the kilogram and gram as its primary unit of mass.

1790 – Greek War of Independence: Greek revolutionary Lambros Katsonis loses three of his ships in the Battle of Andros. 

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.

1831 – Pedro II becomes Emperor 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.

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 transmits the first long-distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).

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. (Now celebrated as National Beer Day in the United States.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.