Events on February 7 38
Year 1074
Pandulf IV of Benevento is killed battling the invading Normans at the Battle of Montesarchio.
Year 1301
Edward of Caernarvon (later King Edward II of England) becomes the first English Prince of Wales.
Year 1497
The Bonfire of the Vanities occurs, during which supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burn cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy.
Year 1783
American Revolutionary War: French and Spanish forces lift the Great Siege of Gibraltar.
Year 1807
Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon finds Bennigsen's Russian forces taking a stand at Eylau. After bitter fighting, the French take the town, but the Russians resume the battle the next day.
Year 1813
In the action of 7 February 1813 near the Îles de Los, the frigates Aréthuse and Amelia batter each other, but neither can gain the upper hand.
Year 1819
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles leaves Singapore after just taking it over, leaving it in the hands of William Farquhar.
Year 1842
Battle of Debre Tabor: Ras Ali Alula, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia defeats warlord Wube Haile Maryam of Semien.
Year 1854
A law is approved to found the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Lectures started October 16, 1855.
Year 1894
The Cripple Creek miner's strike, led by the Western Federation of Miners, begins in Cripple Creek, Colorado.
Year 1898
Dreyfus affair: Émile Zola is brought to trial for libel for publishing J'accuse.
Year 1900
Second Boer War: British troops fail in their third attempt to lift the Siege of Ladysmith.
Year 1907
The Mud March is the first large procession organized by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).
Year 1943
World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy forces complete the evacuation of Imperial Japanese Army troops from Guadalcanal during Operation Ke, ending Japanese attempts to retake the island from Allied forces in the Guadalcanal Campaign.
Year 1944
World War II: In Anzio, Italy, German forces launch a counteroffensive during the Allied Operation Shingle.
Year 1951
Korean War: More than 700 suspected communist sympathizers are butchered by South Korean forces.
Year 1979
Pluto moves inside Neptune's orbit for the first time since either was discovered.
Year 1984
Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B Mission: Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).
Year 1986
Twenty-eight years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation.
Year 1990
Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power.
Year 1991
Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is sworn in.
Year 1991
The Troubles: The Provisional IRA launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street in London, the headquarters of the British government.
Year 1995
Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Year 1999
Crown Prince Abdullah becomes the King of Jordan on the death of his father, King Hussein.
Year 2009
Bushfires in Victoria leave 173 dead in the worst natural disaster in Australia's history.
Year 2012
President Mohamed Nasheed of the Republic of Maldives resigns, after 23 days of anti-governmental protests calling for the release of Chief Judge unlawfully arrested by the military.
Year 2013
The U.S. state of Mississippi officially certifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was formally ratified by Mississippi in 1995.