7 January 2025 (MIA)

1558 – France takes Calais, the last continental possession of England.

1598 – Boris Godunov becomes Tsar of Russia.

1610 – Galileo Galilei observes three of the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time. He named them, and in turn the four are called the Galilean moons. Ganymede not discovered by him until January 13.

1797 – The modern Italian flag is first used.

1919 – Montenegrin guerrilla fighters rebel against the planned annexation of Montenegro by Serbia, but fail.

1922 – Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64-57 vote.

1927 – The first transatlantic telephone service is established – from New York City to London.

1931 – Guy Menzies flies the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing on New Zealand’s west coast.

1935 – Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval sign the Franco–Italian Agreement.

1942 – World War II: The siege of the Bataan Peninsula begins.

1945 – World War II: British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge.

1948 – Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of a supposed UFO.

1950 – A fire at the Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa, kills 41 people.

1952 – President Harry Truman announces that the United States has developed the hydrogen bomb.

1954 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held in New York at the head office of IBM.

1959 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.

1960 – The Polaris missile is test launched.

1968 – Surveyor Program: Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral.

1972 – Iberia Airlines Caravelle 6-R crashes into Mont San Jose on approach to Ibiza Airport killing all 104 on board.

1979 – Third Indochina War – Cambodian-Vietnamese War: Phnom Penh falls to the advancing Vietnamese troops, driving out Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

1980 – President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation.

1984 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

1985 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan’s first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.

1987 – Poet and playwright Venko Markovski dies in Sofia. He is credited with being one of the founders of contemporary Macedonian literature.

1990 – The interior of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to the public because of safety concerns.

1991 – Roger Lafontant, former leader of the Tonton Macoutes in Haiti under François Duvalier, attempts a coup d’état, which ends in his arrest.

1993 – The Fourth Republic of Ghana is inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as President.

1999 – The Senate trial in the impeachment of US President Bill Clinton begins. He had been impeached by the House of Representatives on Dec. 19.