#TodayInHistory – December 7
3 min read
December 7 – Some important events on this day.
43 BC 👉🏼 Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman orator and politician is assassinated in Formiae
1696 👉🏼 Connecticut Route 108, one of the oldest highways in the U.S. is completed to Trumbull.
1703 👉🏼 Great storm of 1703 hits Southern England – thousands killed, Royal Navy losses 13 ships and around 1,500 seamen
1703 👉🏼 The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703
1724 👉🏼 Tumult of Thorn – religious unrest was followed by the execution of nine Protestant citizens and the mayor of Thorn (Toruń) by Polish authorities.
1835 👉🏼 Bavarian Ludwig railway opens – first German steam railway
1842 👉🏼 New York Philharmonic’s 1st concert
1909 👉🏼 Inventor Leo Baekeland patents the first thermo-setting plastic, Bakelite, sparking the birth of the plastics industry
1912 👉🏼 Bust of Queen Nefertiti found in El-Amarna, Egypt
1917 👉🏼 US becomes 13th country to declare war on Austria during World War I
1941 👉🏼 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attack the US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people.
A date which will live in infamy,’ was how then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt described Japan’s sudden and undeclared attack on the US naval station at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on this day.
Japan sought to prevent the US Pacific Fleet from interfering with its military adventures in Asia. On the same day as the attack, Japan invaded Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and attack the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island.
The air assault killed 2,403 Americans and destroyed a number of battleships and other vessels, as well as important facilities on Pearl Harbor. It shocked the American public and directly led them to declare war on Japan the following day. Adolf Hitler responded by declaring war on the US on 11 December, firmly bringing America into both fronts of the war.
1965 👉🏼 Pope Paul VI & Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that led to split of 2 churches in 1054
1968 👉🏼 Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandfather took out in 1823 from the University of Cincinnati
1972 👉🏼 Apollo 17 launched, the final manned lunar landing mission where the crew takes the famous “blue marble” photo of the entire Earth.
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on this day by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers (18,000 miles).
1982 👉🏼 First execution by lethal injection.
The first execution by lethal injection takes place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. Charles Brooks, Jr., convicted of murdering an auto mechanic, received an intravenous injection of sodium pentathol, the barbiturate that is known as a “truth serum” when administered in lesser doses.
Texas, the national leader in executions, adopted the procedure as a more humane method of carrying out its death sentences, as opposed to the standard techniques of death by gas, electrocution, or hanging. During the next decade, 32 states, the federal government, and the U.S. military all took up the lethal injection method. After several years of practical development, execution authorities adopted a lethal injection procedure in which three separate drugs are injected successively into the convict’s bloodstream. The first drug, sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, renders the prisoner unconscious, the next, pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, paralyses the diaphragm and lungs, and the third, potassium chloride, causes cardiac arrest and ensures the prisoner’s death.
1988 👉🏼 PLO delegation lead by Yasser Arafat proclaims the State of Palestine, recognizing the existence of the State of Israel for the first time
1988 👉🏼 6.9 earthquake in Spitak, Armenia kills 25,000-50,000 people and leaves up to 500,000 homeless
2017 👉🏼 Ballon d’Or: Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo wins his 5th award to equal Lionel Messi’s record; 2nd consecutive win for Ronaldo
