89161 | August 7 | Event | 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. |
89162 | August 7 | Event | 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 |
89163 | August 7 | Event | 1947 – The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST). |
89164 | August 7 | Event | 1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan. |
89165 | August 7 | Event | 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. |
89166 | August 7 | Event | 1959 – Explorer program: Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida. |
89167 | August 7 | Event | 1960 – Ivory Coast becomes independent from France. |
89168 | August 7 | Event | 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. |
89169 | August 7 | Event | 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. |
89170 | August 7 | Event | 1966 – Race riots occur in Lansing, Michigan. |
89171 | August 7 | Event | 1970 – California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody. |
89172 | August 7 | Event | 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. |
89173 | August 7 | Event | 1976 – Viking program: Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars. |
89174 | August 7 | Event | 1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently. |
89175 | August 7 | Event | 1979 – Several tornadoes strike the city of Woodstock, Ontario, Canada and the surrounding communities. |
89176 | August 7 | Event | 1981 – The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication. |
89177 | August 7 | Event | 1985 – Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts. |
89178 | August 7 | Event | 1985 – The White House Farm murders took place near the English village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England. |
89179 | August 7 | Event | 1987 – Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union |
89180 | August 7 | Event | 1989 – U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia. |
89181 | August 7 | Event | 1998 – The United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya kill approximately 212 people. |
89182 | August 7 | Event | 1999 – The Chechnya-based Islamic International Brigade invades neighboring Dagestan. |
89183 | August 7 | Event | 2008 – The start of the Russo-Georgian War over the territory of South Ossetia. |
89184 | August 7 | Event | 2012 – Three gunmen kill 19 people in a church near Okene, Nigeria. |
89185 | August 7 | Event | 2013 – A bombing in a market in Karachi, Pakistan, kills eleven people. |
89186 | August 7 | Birth | 317 – Constantius II, Roman emperor (d. 361) |
89187 | August 7 | Birth | 1282 – Elizabeth of Rhuddlan (d. 1316) |
89188 | August 7 | Birth | 1533 – Alonso de Ercilla, Spanish soldier and poet (d. 1595) |
89189 | August 7 | Birth | 1560 – Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian serial killer (d. 1614) |
89190 | August 7 | Birth | 1571 – Thomas Lupo, English viol player and composer (d. 1627) |