[CaptainCrunch]

April 7th


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




529 – First draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis (a fundamental work in jurisprudence) is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.




611 – Maya king Uneh Chan of Calakmul sacks rival city-state Palenque in southern Mexico.

1141 – Empress Matilda became the first female ruler of England, adopting the title 'Lady of the English'.

1348 – Charles University is founded in Prague.

1521 – Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Cebu.

1541 – Francis Xavier leaves Lisbon on a mission to the Portuguese East Indies.

1724 – Premiere performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St John Passion BWV 245 at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig.

1767 – End of Burmese–Siamese War (1765–67).

1776 – Captain John Barry and the USS Lexington captures the Edward.

1788 – American pioneers to the Northwest Territory establish Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory.

1789 – Selim III became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam.
1798 – The Mississippi Territory is organized from disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain. It is expanded in 1804 and again in 1812.

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.

1829 – Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, commences translation of the Book of Mormon, with Oliver Cowdery as his scribe.

1831 – Emperor Pedro I of Brazil resigns. He goes to his native Portugal to become King Pedro IV.

1862 – American Civil War: The Union's Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio defeat the Confederate Army of Mississippi near Shiloh, Tennessee.

1868 – Thomas D'Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation, is assassinated by a Fenian activist.




1890 – Completion of the first Lake Biwa Canal.

1906 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.




1906 – The Algeciras Conference gives France and Spain control over Morocco.

1908 – H. H. Asquith of the Liberal Party takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

1922 – The United States Secretary of the Interior leases federal petroleum reserves to private oil companies on excessively generous terms.

1927 – The first long-distance public television broadcast (from Washington, D.C., to New York City, displaying the image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).

1933 – Prohibition in the United States is repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the XXI amendment. (Now celebrated as National Beer Day in the United States)

1939 – World War II: Italy invades Albania.

1940 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.




1943 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: In Terebovlia, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress and march through the city to the nearby village of Plebanivka, where they are shot and buried in ditches.

1943 – Ioannis Rallis becomes collaborationist Prime Minister of Greece during the Axis Occupation.

1945 – World War II: The Yamato, one of the two largest battleships ever constructed, is sunk by American aircraft during Operation Ten-Go.




1945 – World War II: Visoko is liberated by the 7th, 9th, and 17th Krajina brigades from the Tenth division of Yugoslav Partisan forces.

1946 – Syria's independence from France is officially recognised.

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.




1964 – A bulldozer kills Rev. Bruce W. Klunder, a civil rights activist, during a school segregation protest in Cleveland, Ohio, sparking a riot.

1968 – Motor racing world champion Jim Clark is killed in an accident during a Formula Two race at Hockenheim.

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

1971 – President Richard Nixon announces his decision to quicken the pace of Vietnamization.

1976 – Member of Parliament and suspected spy John Stonehouse resigns from the Labour Party (UK) after being arrested for faking his own death.




1977 – German Federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his driver are shot by two Red Army Faction members while waiting at a red light.




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




1980 – During the Iran hostage crisis, the United States severs relations with Iran.

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




1989 – Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway killing 42 sailors.




1990 – Iran–Contra affair: John Poindexter is found guilty of five charges for his part in the scandal (the conviction is later reversed on appeal).




1990 – A fire breaks out on the passenger ferry Scandinavian Star, killing 159 people.

1994 – Rwandan genocide: Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda.




1994 – Auburn Calloway attempts to destroy Federal Express Flight 705 in order to allow his family to benefit from his life insurance policy.




1995 – First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.

1999 – The World Trade Organization rules in favor of the United States in its long-running trade dispute with the European Union over bananas.

2001 – Mars Odyssey is launched.

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




2009 – Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.

2009 – Mass protests begin across Moldova under the belief that results from the parliamentary election are fraudulent.

2017 – The 2017 Stockholm attack kills five and injures fifteen others.