January 7Birthdays & History

On this day: January 7 in history

Oldest first. Tap a year to see it on the World Chronicle timeline.

1. 49 BCThe Senate of Rome says that Caesar will be declared a public enemy unless he disbands his army, prompting the tribunes who support him to flee to where Caesar is waiting in Ravenna.Europe
2. 1078The people of Constantinople revolt, lynch the unpopular official Nikephoritzes and proclaim Nikephoros Botaneiates as emperor.Middle East
3. 1325Afonso IV becomes King of Portugal.Europe
4. 1558French troops, led by Francis, Duke of Guise, take Calais, the last continental possession of England.Europe
5. 1608Fire destroys Jamestown, Virginia.North America
6. 1610Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although he is not able to distinguish the last two until the following night.Europe
7. 1708Bashkir rebels besiege Yelabuga.Europe
8. 1708Battle of Zlatoust: Battle between Bashkir and Tatar rebels and the government troops of the Tsardom of Russia. It is one of the events of the Bashkir rebellion of 1704–1711.Europe
9. 1738A peace treaty is signed between Peshwa Bajirao and Jai Singh II following Maratha victory in the Battle of Bhopal.Asia
10. 1782The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens.North America
11. 1785Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon.North AmericaEurope
12. 1835HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, drops anchor off the Chonos Archipelago.Latin America
13. 1867The Kingstree jail fire kills 22 freedmen in Reconstruction-era South Carolina.North America
14. 1894Thomas Edison makes a kinetoscopic film of someone sneezing. On the same day, his employee, William Kennedy Dickson, receives a patent for motion picture film.North America
15. 1904The distress signal "CQD" is established only to be replaced two years later by "SOS".Europe
16. 1919Montenegrin guerrilla fighters rebel against the planned annexation of Montenegro by Serbia, but fail.Europe
17. 1920The New York State Assembly refuses to seat five duly elected Socialist assemblymen.North America
18. 1922Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64–57 vote.Europe
19. 1927The first transatlantic commercial telephone service is established from New York City to London.North AmericaEurope
20. 1928A disastrous flood of the River Thames kills 14 people and causes extensive damage to much of riverside London.Europe
21. 1931Guy Menzies flies the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing on New Zealand's west coast.Oceania
22. 1935Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval sign the Franco-Italian Agreement.Europe
23. 1940Winter War: Battle of Raate Road: The Finnish 9th Division finally defeat the numerically superior Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road.Europe
24. 1948Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of a supposed UFO.North America
25. 1950In the Sverdlovsk air disaster, all 19 of those on board are killed, including almost the entire national ice hockey team (VVS Moscow) of the Soviet Air Force – 11 players, as well as a team doctor and a masseur.Europe
26. 1954Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York at the head office of IBM.North America
27. 1955Contralto Marian Anderson becomes the first person of color to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera.North America
28. 1959The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.North AmericaLatin America
29. 1968Surveyor program: Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36A.North America
30. 1972Iberia Flight 602 crashes near Ibiza Airport, killing all 104 people on board.Europe
31. 1973In his second shooting spree of the week, Mark Essex fatally shoots seven people and wounds five others at Howard Johnson's Hotel in New Orleans, before being shot to death by police officers.North America
32. 1979Third Indochina War: Cambodian–Vietnamese War: Phnom Penh falls to the advancing Vietnamese troops, driving out Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.Asia
33. 1980U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation.North America
34. 1984Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).Asia
35. 1985Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.AsiaNorth AmericaEurope
36. 1989Sutton United, a team in the fifth tier of English league football, defeated top-tier Coventry City in one of the biggest upsets in FA Cup history.Europe
37. 1991Roger Lafontant, former leader of the Tonton Macoute in Haiti under François Duvalier, attempts a coup d'état, which ends in his arrest.Latin America
38. 1993Bosnian War: The Bosnian Army executes a surprise attack at the village of Kravica in Srebrenica.Europe
39. 1993The Fourth Republic of Ghana is inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as president.Africa
40. 1994A British Aerospace Jetstream 41 operating as United Express Flight 6291 crashes in Gahanna, Ohio, killing five of the eight people on board.EuropeNorth America
41. 1999The Senate trial in the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton begins.North America
42. 2012A hot air balloon crashes near Carterton, New Zealand, killing all 11 people on board.Oceania
43. 2015A car bomb explodes outside a police college in the Yemeni capital Sanaa with at least 38 people reported dead and more than 63 injured.Middle East
44. 2015Two gunmen commit mass murder at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, executing twelve people and wounding eleven others.Europe
45. 2020The 6.4Mw 2019–20 Puerto Rico earthquakes kill four and injure nine in southern Puerto Rico.Latin America
46. 2023The longest U.S. House of Representatives speaker election since the December 1859 – February 1860 U.S. speaker election concludes and Kevin McCarthy is elected 55th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.North America
47. 2025A series of wildfires ravage the Greater Los Angeles area, resulting in at least 16 deaths and 13,401 structures destroyed.North America

Source: Wikipedia "January 7" / CC BY-SA 4.0