This Day in History July 7th

 

• 2014 Died: Eduard Shevardnadze, Georgian general and politician. He served as the 2nd President of Georgia from 1992 to 2003. He was forced to retire as a consequence of the bloodless Rose Revolution.
• 2006 Died: Syd Barrett, English singer-songwriter and guitarist, best remembered as the founding member of rock band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist and credited with naming of the band, but he left the band in 1968 after hospitalization.
• 2005 56 people were killed and over 700 injured in a series of four explosions on London’s transport system.
• 2003 NASA launched its Opportunity rover, Mars Exploration Rover – B, into space abroad a Delta II rocket. The rover landed on Mars in January 2004 and it remains active (as of 2015).
• 1991 The end of the ten-day independence war between Slovenia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The end of the conflict was regulated by the Brioni Agreement.
• 1967 Died: Vivien Leigh, English actress and singer, winner of two Academy Awards for Best Actress for role as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Her other great roles was Blanche DuBois in the film A Streetcar Named Desire.
• 1959 Venus occulted the star Regulus. This extremely rare event was used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of its atmosphere.
• 1947 Witnesses saw a spaceship crash near Roswell in New Mexico. The accident turned out to be a crash of military Air Force surveillance balloon. This accident continues to be of interest in popular media and number of conspiracy theories surround the event.
• 1943 Born: Toto Cutugno, Italian pop singer-songwriter and musician. His hit song L’Italiano (I Grandi Successi) is known worldwide.
• 1940 Born: Ringo Starr, English singer-songwriter, drummer, and actor, one of the founding members of the Beatles. After the breakup of the Beatles Starr pursued his solo career.
• 1937 The beginning of Second Sino-Japanese War: Japanese forces invaded Beijing, China.
• 1930 Died: Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish physician and author, best known for creation of stories about fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The other character he created, Professor Challenger, didn’t become as famous as Holmes.
• 1917 Born: Fidel Sánchez Hernández, Salvadoran general and politician, President of El Salvador from 1967 to 1972. His presidency was smeared by war and economic turmoil.
• 1911 Great Britain, the USA, Japan and Russia singed the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention, banning open-water seal hunting. This convention became the first international treaty to address wildlife preservation issues.
• 1907 Born: Robert A. Heinlein, American author and screenwriter, the most influential and controversial author of the science fiction genre on his time. He’s often called the dean of science fiction writers. His best known novel is Starship Troopers.
• 1901 Born: Vittorio De Sica, Italian actor and director, a leading figure in the neorealist movement. Four of his films he directed won Academy Awards, were honored with Oscars. He starred in A Farewell to Arms, adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel, and this role won him another Oscar.
• 1898 President of the USA William McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution, annexing Hawaii as a territory of the United States.
• 1890 Died: Henri Nestlé, Swiss confectioner, one of the creators of the condensed milk. He is known for creation of Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company.
• 1884 Born: Lion Feuchtwanger, German author and playwright, a prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany. He is often praised for his efforts to expose the brutality of the Nazis and criticized for his failure to acknowledge the brutality of the rule of Joseph Stalin.
• 1880 Born: Otto Frederick Rohwedder, American engineer, best known for invention of the automatic bread-slicing machine.
• 1843 Born: Camillo Golgi, Italian physician and pathologist, Nobel Prize laureate for studies on the structure of the nervous system. Several structures and phenomena in anatomy and physiology are named after him.
• 1816 Died: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Irish playwright and poet, best known for the plays The Rivals, A Trip to Scarborough, The School for Scandal.
• 1807 The War of the Fourth Coalition (1806-1807) ended, when Napoleon I of France I and Tsar Alexander I of Russia signed one of the Treaties of Tilsit.
• 1752 Born: Joseph Marie Jacquard, French merchant and weaver. He played an important role in development of the earliest programmable loom, that is now known as the Jacquard loom. His invention played an important role in invention of other programmable machines, such as computer.
• 1730 Died: Olivier Levasseur, French pirate, known to be the richest pirate in the history. One of the legends says, that his treasure is estimated at over £1 billion. The cryptogram of 17 lines, engraved on his necklace, can reveal the place where the treasure has been hidden.
• 1573 Died: Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Italian architect, one of the most influential figures in the Mannerism. He was one of the three Italian architects, who spread the Italian Renaissance style throughout Western Europe. His two greatest masterpieces are the Villa Farnese and the Jesuits’ Church of the Gesù in Rome.
• 1572 Died: Sigismund II Augustus, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. His major achievement was introduction of an elective monarchy.
• 1456 25 years after death, a retrial verdict acquitted Joan of Arc of heresy.
• 1307 Died: Edward I, King of of England from 1272 to 1307. During the reign Edward I made reformation of royal administration and common law.
• 848 Born: Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves, Brazilian politician, served as the 5th President of Brazil from 1902 to 1906. During his presidency the then-Brazilian capital Rio de Janeiro was remodeled. He was elected for the second term in 1918, but he had died before he could assume the power.