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| Every Year |
July 7 is the 188th day of the year (189th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 177 days remaining until the end of the year. |
| 1456 | A retrial verdict acquitted Joan of Arc of heresy 25 years after her death. |
| 1846 | US troops occupied Monterey and Yerba Buena, thus beginning the US conquest of California. |
| 1860 | Born today: Gustav Mahler (July 7, 1860–May 18, 1911)
He was an Austro-Bohemian late-Romantic composer. |
| 1880 | Born today: Otto Frederick Rohwedder (July 7, 1880–November 8, 1960)
He was an American inventor and engineer who created the first automatic bread-slicing machine for commercial use. |
| 1895 | Born today: Virginia Rappe (July 7, 1895–September 9, 1921)
She was an American model and silent film actress. She worked mostly in small bit parts, and is best known for her death after attending a party with actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who was accused of complicity in her death, though ultimately exonerated. |
| 1906 | Born today: Satchel Paige (July 7, 1906 – June 8, 1982)
He was a baseball pitcher who is notable for his longevity in the game, and for attracting record crowds wherever he pitched. |
| 1907 | Born today: Robert A. Heinlein (July 7, 1907–May 8, 1988)
He was an American science fiction writer and screenwriter. |
| 1924 | Born today: Mary Ford (July 7, 1924–September 30, 1977)
Born Iris Colleen Summers, she was an American vocalist and guitarist, comprising half of the husband-and-wife musical team Les Paul and Mary Ford. Between 1950 and 1954, the couple had 16 top-ten hits, including “How High the Moon” and “Vaya con Dios”, which were number one hits on the Billboard charts. In 1951 alone they sold six million records. With Paul, Ford became one of the early practitioners of multi-tracking. |
| 1928 | Sliced bread was sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri. It was automatic bread-slicing machine inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder’s 48th birthday. |
| 1930 | Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser began construction of Boulder Dam (now known as Hoover Dam). |
| 1936 | Several U.S. patents were issued for the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver to its inventor, Henry F. Phillips (Nos. 2,046,343, 2,046,837–40). They describe a fastening system involving a shallow cruciform recess and a matching driver with a tapering tip that conveniently self-centers in the screw head. Phillips founded the Phillips Screw Company to license his patents. After three years of rejection, he finally persuaded the American Screw Company to spend $500,000 developing a manufacturing process and manufacture the screws. General Motors was convinced to use the screws on its 1936 Cadillac. By 1940 virtually every American automaker had switched to Phillips screws. |
| 1940 | Born today: Ringo Starr (July 7, 1940– , age )
Sir Richard Starkey, MBE, known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for the Beatles. He occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, usually for one song on each album, including “With a Little Help from My Friends”, “Yellow Submarine”, “Good Night”, and their cover of “Act Naturally”. He also wrote and sang the Beatles’ songs “Don’t Pass Me By” and “Octopus’s Garden”, and is credited as a co-writer of others, including “What Goes On” and “Flying”. |
| 1942 | World War II: German submarine U-701 was destroyed off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. |
| 1952 | The ocean liner SS United States passed Bishop Rock on her maiden voyage, breaking the transatlantic speed record to become the fastest passenger ship in the world.
Bishop Rock is the eastern end of the North Atlantic shipping route used by ocean liners in the first half of the 20th century; the western end being the entrance to Lower New York Bay. This was the route that ocean liners took when competing for the Transatlantic speed record, known as the Blue Riband. |
| 1954 | Elvis Presley made his radio debut when WHBQ Memphis played his first recording for Sun Records, “That’s All Right”. |
| 1958 | US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act into law. |
| 1959 | Venus occulted the star Regulus. This rare event was used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of the Venusian atmosphere. |
| 1966 | Born today: Jim Gaffigan (July 7, 1966– , age )
He is an American comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter. |
| 1978 | The Solomon Islands became independent from the United Kingdom. |
| 1992 | The New York Court of Appeals ruled that women have the same right as men to go topless in public in People v. Santorelli (1992). |
| 2003 | NASA Opportunity rover, MER-B or Mars Exploration Rover–B, was launched into space aboard a Delta II rocket. |
| 2006 | Died today: Syd Barrett (January 6, 1946–July 7, 2006)
Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett was an English singer, songwriter, and musician who co-founded the band Pink Floyd in 1965. |
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