August 7
Today marks the approximate midpoint of Summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and of Winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
936 Coronation of
King Otto I of Germany.
1679 The brigantine
Le Griffon, commissioned by
Renι-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the south-eastern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.
1782 George Washington orders the creation of the
Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic
Purple Heart.
1794 U.S. President George Washington invokes the
Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the
Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
1858 The first
Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.
1909
Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking
59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.
1930 The last confirmed
lynching of blacks in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana. Two men,
Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are killed.
1942 World War II: The
Battle of Guadalcanal begins as the United States Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.
1947
Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the
Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the
Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
1955
Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to
Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.
1959 The
Lincoln Memorial design on the
U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "
sheaves of wheat" design, and was minted until 2008.
1962 Canadian-born American pharmacologist
Frances Oldham Kelsey is awarded the U.S. President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service for her refusal to authorize
thalidomide.
1970 California judge
Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free
George Jackson from police custody.
The Goose Lake International Music Festival was held in Leoni, Michigan. Over 200,000 fans attended the three day festival.
1978 U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at
Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently.
1979
Several tornadoes strike the city of Woodstock, Ontario, Canada and the surrounding communities.
1987
Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing from
Little Diomede Island in Alaska to
Big Diomede in the Soviet Union, a distance of ~2.5 miles.
1989 U.S. Congressman
Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
1997 -
Garth Brooks played to the largest crowd ever in New York's Central Park. An estimated 1 million people attended the live concert with an additional 14.6 million viewing live on HBO.
1998 The
United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya kill approximately 212 people.
2008,
Elvis Presley's peacock jumpsuit, was sold at auction for $300,000, making it the most expensive piece of Elvis memorabilia ever sold at an auction. The white outfit with a plunging V-neck and high collar featured a blue-and-gold peacock design, hand-embroidered on the front and back and along the pant legs.
Births
1560 Elizabeth Bαthory; 1876 Mata Hari; 1884 Billie Burke; 1903 Louis Leakey; 1926 Stan Freberg; 1927 Carl Switzer ('Alfalfa' in
Our Gang); 1928 James Randi (magician); 1935 Rahsaan Roland Kirk

; 1942 Tobin Bell ('Jigsaw' in the
Saw movies), Garrison Keillor, B. J. Thomas♪ ♫; 1944 John Glover, Robert Mueller (former director FBI); 1950 Rodney Crowell♪ ♫; 1954 Jonathan Pollard (spy); Wayne Knight ('Newman' on
Seinfeld); 1958 Bruce Dickinson

(Iron Maiden); 1960 David Duchovny; 1966 Jimmy Wales

(co-founded Wikipedia); 1975 Charlize Theron
Deaths
1817 Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours; 1957 Oliver Hardy (
Laurel & Hardy); 1970 Jonathan P. Jackson (involved in the above-noted 1970 courtroom hostage situation); 1989 U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland; 1999
Brion James (
Bladerunner);
2004 Red Adair; 2005 Peter Jennings; 2013 Margaret Pellegrini (one of the last three
Munchkins)