Events on August 7 48
Year 461
Roman Emperor Majorian is beheaded near the river Iria in north-west Italy following his arrest and deposition by the magister militum Ricimer.
Year 768
Stephen III begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
Year 1461
The Ming dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
Year 1479
Battle of Guinegate, French troops of King Louis XI were defeated by the Burgundians led by Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 1791
American troops destroy the Miami town of Kenapacomaqua near the site of present-day Logansport, Indiana in the Northwest Indian War.
Year 1794
U.S. President George Washington invokes the Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
Year 1858
The first Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.
Year 1890
Anna Månsdotter becomes the last woman in Sweden to be executed, for the 1889 Yngsjö murder.
Year 1909
Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.
Year 1930
The last confirmed lynching of blacks in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana; two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are killed.
Year 1933
The Simele massacre: The Iraqi government slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Simele.
Year 1942
World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal begins as the United States Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.
Year 1944
IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
Year 1946
The government of the Soviet Union presented a note to its Turkish counterparts which refuted the latter's sovereignty over the Turkish Straits, thus beginning the Turkish Straits crisis.
Year 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 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
Year 1947
The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST).
Year 1955
Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.
Year 1959
The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design, and was minted until 2008.
Year 1959
Explorer program: Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Year 1962
Canadian-born American pharmacologist Frances Oldham Kelsey awarded the U.S. President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service for her refusal to authorize thalidomide.
Year 1964
Vietnam War: The U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
Year 1970
California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
Year 1974
Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.
Year 1978
U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently.
Year 1985
Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts.
Year 1987
Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing the Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union
Year 1989
U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
Year 1998
Bombings at United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya kill approximately 212 people.