Historical Events on January 7

  • 1610: Three of Jupiter’s moons are discovered by Galileo on this day. These three moons are Io, Europa and Ganymede.
  • 1714: Henry Mill receives a patent for the typewriter.
  • 1782: The Bank of North America becomes the first commercial bank to open in the U.S.
  • 1785: American John Jeffries and Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard travel to Calais, France from Dover, England in a gas balloon.
  • 1894: The patent for motion picture film is given to William Kennedy Dickson.
  • 1904: “CQD” is established as the distress signal. Two years later, it would be replaced by “SOS”.
  • 1954: The Georgetown IBM experiment takes place on this day.
  • 1959: Fidel Castro’s Cuban government is officially recognized by the U.S.
  • 1968: The Surveyor 7 lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
  • 1980: One and a half billion dollars in loans are given to the Chrysler Corporation as a bailout.
  • 1999: For the impeachment of United States’ President Bill Clinton, the Senate trial begins on this day.
  • 2012: Eleven people are killed near Carterton, New Zealand when a hot air balloon crashes.
  • 2015: Twelve people are killed and eleven others are wounded, when two gunmen begin murdering people at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, France.

Famous Birthdays on January 7

  • American lawyer and 13th President of the U.S., Millard Fillmore is born in 1800.
  • French nun and saint, Bernadette Soubirous is born in 1844.
  • Hungarian-American producer and co-founder of Paramount Pictures, Adolph Zukor is born in 1873.
  • American novelist, writer and folklorist, Zora Neale Hurston is born in 1891.
  • American author and screenwriter William Peter Blatty is born in 1928.
  • Australian painter and sculptor Robert Juniper is born in 1929.
  • American producer Elliott Kastner is born in 1933.
  • English chemist and Nobel Prize laureate, John E. Walker is born in 1941.
  • American director and screenwriter Danny Steinmann is born in 1942.
  • American publisher and co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine, Jann Wenner is born in 1946.
  • American singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins is born in 1948.
  • American actor Jeremy Renner is born in 1971.
  • Australian cyclist Shane Kelly is born in 1972.