#TodayInHistory – August 7

August 7 – Some important events on this day.

322 BC 👉🏼 Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great
1428 👉🏼 Valais witch trial proceedings begin in Valais Canton, Switzerland, first organized witch trials
1461 👉🏼 Ming Dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor
1606 👉🏼 Possible first performance of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, performed in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace for King James I
1714 👉🏼 The Battle of Gangut: the first important victory of the Russian Navy during the Great Northern War against Sweden
1820 👉🏼 1st potatoes planted in Hawaii
1983 👉🏼 1st Athletics World Championships open in Helsinki, Finland
1933 👉🏼 The Iraqi Government slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Sumail. The day becomes known as Assyrian Martyrs Day.
1955 👉🏼 Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, begins selling its first transistor radios in Japan

1990 👉🏼 US deploys troops to Saudi Arabia beginning Operation Desert Shield.
On August 2, 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded and annexed Kuwait, the small oil-rich nation on Iraq’s southern border. In response, the largest alliance since World War II was formed and led by the United States, initially to defend Saudi Arabia, and then to prepare for the retake of Kuwait.
Operation Desert Shield was the name of this operation. More than 500,000 US troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia beginning on this day. As diplomacy wore on, and eventually failed, the UN passed a resolution authorizing all necessary means to remove Iraq from Kuwait, and Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm: the military to remove Saddam’s forces.
The war was quick, over in 100 hours, and Iraq was expelled from Kuwait. The conflict with the West simmered however, leading to a second, far more disastrous conflict in 2003.

2019 👉🏼 Bodies of two teenagers at center of huge manhunt and suspected of killing three people on remote British Columbia roads found after apparent suicides.