7 April 2025 (MIA)

– World Health Day

1712 – A slave revolt broke out in New York City.

1798 – The territory of Mississippi was organized.

1862 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant defeated Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh, TN.

1864 – The first camel race in America was held in Sacramento, California.

1888 – P.F. Collier published a weekly periodical for the first time under the name “Collier’s.”

1922 – U.S. Secretary of Interior leased Teapot Dome naval oil reserves in Wyoming.

1927 – The first long-distance TV transmission was sent from Washington, DC, to New York City. The audience saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover.

1930 – The first steel columns were set for the Empire State Building.

1933 – Prohibition ended in the United States.

1940 – Booker T. Washington became the first black to be pictured on a U.S. postage stamp.

1943 – British and American armies linked up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa to form a solid line against the German army.

1945 – The Japanese battleship Yamato, the world’s largest battleship, was sunk during the battle for Okinawa. The fleet was headed for a suicide mission.

1948 – The musical “South Pacific” by Rogers and Hammerstein debuted on Broadway.

1948 – The United Nations’ World Health Organization began operations.

1953 – The Big Four met for the first time in 2 years to seek an end to their air conflicts.

1953 – IBM unveiled the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine. It was IBM’s first commercially available scientific computer.

1957 – The last of New York City’s electric trolleys completed its final run from Queens to Manhattan.

1963 – At the age of 23, Jack Nicklaus became the youngest golfer to win the Green Jacket at the Masters Tournament.

1963 – Yugoslavia proclaimed itself a Socialist republic.

1963 – Josip Broz Tito was proclaimed to be the leader of Yugoslavia for life.

1966 – The U.S. recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of Spain.

1967 – Israel reported that they had shot down six Syrian MIGs.

1969 – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.

1970 – John Wayne won his first and only Oscar for his role in “True Grit.” He had been in over 200 films.

1971 – U.S. President Nixon pledged to withdraw 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.

1980 – The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Iran and imposed economic sanctions in response to the taking of hostages on November 4, 1979.

1983 – Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson made the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.

1983 – The Chinese government canceled all remaining sports and cultural exchanges with the U.S. for 1983.

1985 – In Goteborg, Sweden, China swept all of the world table tennis titles except for men’s doubles.

1985 – In Sudan, Gen. Swar el-Dahab took over the Presidency while President Gaafar el-Nimeiry was visiting the U.S. and Egypt.

1985 – The Soviet Union announced a unilateral freeze on medium-range nuclear missiles.

1987 – In Oklahoma a 16-month-old baby was killed by a pit bull. On the same day a 67-year-old man was killed by another pit bull in Dayton, OH.

1988 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to final terms of a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Soviet troops began leaving on May 16, 1988.

1988 – In Fort Smith, AR, 13 white supremacists were acquitted on charges for plotting to overthrow the U.S. federal government.

1989 – A Soviet submarine carrying nuclear weapons sank in the Norwegian Sea.

1990 – In the U.S., John Poindexter was found guilty of five counts at his Iran-Contra trial. The convictions were later reversed on appeal.

1990 – At Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center a display of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs went on display. On the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges. The charges resulted in acquittal.

1994 – Civil war erupted in Rwanda between the Patriotic Front rebel group and government soldiers. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in the months that followed.

1998 – Mary Bono, the widow of Sonny Bono, won a special election to serve out the remainder of her husband’s congressional term.

1999 – Yugoslav authorities sealed off Kosovo’s main border crossings to prevent ethnic Albanians from leaving.

2000 – U.S. President Clinton signed the Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act of 2000. The bill reversed a Depression-era law and allows senior citizens to earn money without losing Social Security retirement benefits.

2002 – The Roman Catholic archdiocese announced that six priests from the Archdiocese of New York were suspended over allegations of sexual misconduct.

2006 – The Boeing X-37 conducted its first flight as a test drop at Edwards Air Force Base, CA.

2009 – Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.

2020 – China ends its lockdown of Wuhan, the city at the center of the Covid-19 pandemic after 76 days as the country reports no new deaths for the first time.