This Day in History

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April 7

451 – Attila the Hun sacks the town of Metz and attacks other cities in Gaul.

1805 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.

1805 – German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his Third Symphony, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

1827 – John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.

1906 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.

1948 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.

1949 – The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific opened on Broadway; it would run for 1,925 performances and win ten Tony Awards.

1954 – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech during a news conference.

1955 – Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom amid indications of failing health.

1964 – IBM announces the System/360.

1969 – The Internet's symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1.

1978 – Development of the neutron bomb is canceled by President Jimmy Carter.

1983 – During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.

2001 – Mars Odyssey is launched.

2003 – U.S. troops capture Baghdad; Saddam Hussein's regime falls two days later.

Births

1506 – Francis Xavier, 1860 – Will Keith Kellogg, 1891 – Ole Kirk Christiansen, 1893 – Allen Dulles, 1897 – Walter Winchell, 1908 – Percy Faith, 1915 – Billie Holiday, 1916 – Anthony Caruso, 1917 – R. G. Armstrong, 1920 – Ravi Shankar, 1928 – James Garner, 1928 – Alan J. Pakula, 1933 – Wayne Rogers, 1935 – Bobby Bare, 1935 – Hodding Carter III, 1938 – Jerry Brown, 1939 – Francis Ford Coppola, 1939 – David Frost, 1943 – Mick Abrahams, 1949 – John Oates, 1954 – Jackie Chan, 1954 – Tony Dorsett, 1960 – Buster Douglas, 1964 – Russell Crowe

Deaths

1614 – El Greco, 1739 – Dick Turpin, 1891 – P. T. Barnum, 1947 – Henry Ford, 1950 – Walter Huston, 1955 – Theda Bara, 2002 – John Agar, 2007 – Johnny Hart, 2012 – Mike Wallace, 2015 – Stan Freberg, 2015 – Geoffrey Lewis, 2016 – Blackjack Mulligan