TODAY IN HISTORY
October 7
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| Russian President Vladimir Putin sunbathes during his vacation in the remote Tuva region in southern Siberia. |
3761 BC – The epoch reference date epoch (origin) of the modern Hebrew calendar.
1691 – The charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay is issued.
1763 – King George III issues the Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing Indigenous lands in North America north and west of the Alleghenies to white settlements.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Léon Gambetta escapes the siege of Paris in a hot-air balloon.
1919 – KLM, the flag carrier of the Netherlands, is founded. It is the oldest airline still operating under its original name.
1933 – Air France is inaugurated, after being formed by a merger of five French airlines.
1940 – World War II: The McCollum memo proposes bringing the United States into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States.
1949 – The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is formed.
1985 – Four men from the Palestine Liberation Organization hijack the MS Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt.
1988 – A hunter discovers three gray whales trapped under the ice near Alaska; the situation becomes a multinational effort to free the whales.
1996 – Fox News Channel begins broadcasting.
2001 – The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground.
2008 – Asteroid 2008 TC3 impacts the Earth over Sudan, the first time an asteroid impact is detected prior to its entry into earth’s atmosphere.
Births
1409 – Elizabeth of Luxembourg (d. 1442)
1471 – Frederick I of Denmark (d. 1533)
1635 – Roger de Piles, French painter (d. 1709)
1879 – Joe Hill, Swedish-born American labor activist and poet (d. 1915)
1885 – Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1962)
1917 – June Allyson, American actress (d. 2006)
1931 – Desmond Tutu, South African archbishop and activist, Nobel Prize laureate
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1986: Oliver North, was a National Security aide to Ronald Reagan and the man at the heart of the Iran-contra affair. He was found guilty of shredding government documents, accepting a bribe in the shape of a security fence, and seeking to keep the truth from Congress.
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1943 – Oliver North, American colonel
1952 – Vladimir Putin, Russian leader
1955 – Yo-Yo Ma, French-American cellist and educator
Deaths
929 – Charles the Simple, French king (b. 879)
1772 – John Woolman, American preacher and abolitionist (b. 1720)
1849 – Edgar Allan Poe, short story writer, poet, and critic (b. 1809)
1894 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., American physician, author, and poet (b. 1809)
1950 – Willis Haviland Carrier, American engineer (b. 1876)
1951 – Anton Philips, Dutch businessman, co-founded Philips (b. 1874)
1956 – Clarence Birdseye, businessman, founded Birds Eye (b. 1886)
1991 – Leo Durocher, American baseball player and manager (b. 1905)
2009 – Irving Penn, American photographer (b. 1917)
credits include wikipedia and other internet sources