#TodayInHistory – May 7

May 7 – Some important events on this day

558 👉🏼 In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses. Emperor Justinian I immediately orders the dome rebuilt.
1429 👉🏼 English siege of Orleans broken by Joan of Arc and the French army
1664 👉🏼 Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, inaugurates The Palace of Versailles.
1697 👉🏼 Stockholm’s medieval royal castle is destroyed by fire, the Codex Gigas (world’s largest extant medieval illuminated manuscript) survives by being thrown out a window.
1718 👉🏼 The city of New Orleans founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville
1832 👉🏼 Greece becomes independent, Otto of Bavaria is chosen as king 👑
1840 👉🏼 Tornado strikes Natchez, Mississippi, kills 317 🌪
1846 👉🏼 First printed copies of “Poems” by Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë received, published under pseudonym of Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell (2 copies sold) 📖
1902 👉🏼 Martinique’s Mount Pelée begins the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, burying Caribbean city of Saint Pierre. 🌋
1912 👉🏼 Columbia University approves plans for awarding the Pulitzer Prize in several categories, after established by Joseph Pulitzer
1915 👉🏼 RMS Lusitania sunk by German submarine off the southern coast of Ireland. 1198 lives lost
1934 👉🏼 Princess Juliana of the Netherlands opens Juliana Canal between Maastricht and Maasbracht
1939 👉🏼 Germany and Italy announce an alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis
1943 👉🏼 Dutch men 18-35 obliged to report to labor camps 🇳🇱
1945 👉🏼 World War II: Unconditional German surrender to the Allies signed by General Alfred Jodl at Rheims 🇩🇪
1952 👉🏼 The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey Dummer
1953 👉🏼 Record 537-kg swordfish is caught by LE Marron, in Chile 🐟

1984 👉🏼 $180m out-of-court settlement reached in Agent Orange suit.
During the Vietnam War the US Air Force engaged in a program of herbicidal warfare known as ‘Operation Ranch Hand’. For ten years the Air Force sprayed forests in South Vietnam, affecting some 5 million acres of forest, or some 20% of all the forests in South Vietnam.
There were several chemicals used, but the most famous was Agent Orange (There were also Agents Green, Pink, Purple, Blue and White). The idea behind using the chemicals was to destroy foliage acting as a potential cover for the Viet Cong insurgents, who used trails through the forest for supply lines and camps.
The impacts on the Vietnamese people and ecosystem were devastating. It is estimated by the Vietnamese Red Cross (although these figures are disputed) that as many as 3 million Vietnamese suffered illness due to the chemicals, and around 1 million people are disabled as a result of it. Many children were born with deformities as a result of prenatal exposure to Agent Orange.

1994 👉🏼 Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” recovered after theft.
On this day Norway’s most famous painting is recovered almost three months after it was stolen from a museum in Oslo. The painting was recovered undamaged at a hotel in Asgardstrand, about 40 miles south of Oslo.
It was stolen in only 50 seconds during a break-in on February 12, the opening day of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Two thieves broke through a window of the National Gallery, cut a wire holding the painting to the wall and left a note reading “Thousand thanks for the bad security!”

1999 👉🏼 Pope John Paul II travels to Romania becoming the first pope to visit a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054.
2012 👉🏼 Paeleoclimatological research claims dinosaur flatulence may have warmed the earth 🦕💨
2017 👉🏼 Emmanuel Macron wins France’s presidential election defeating Marine Le Pen 🇫🇷