August 7

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August 7 is the 219th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (220th in leap years), with 146 days remaining.

Events

1679 - The brigantine Le Griffon, which was commissioned by [[Ren� Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle]], is towed to the southern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes.
1789 - The United States War Department is established.
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 - Whiskey Rebellion begins: Farmers in the Monoghaela Valley of Pennsylvania rebel against the federal tax on liquor and distilled drinks.
1927 - Peace Bridge opens, between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
1942 - World War II: Battle of Guadalcanal begins - US Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with a landing on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
1944 - IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
1947 - Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101 day 4,300 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
1953 - Ohio admitted to the union, retroactive to 1803.
1959 - Explorer program: The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1960 - [[C�te d'Ivoire]] becomes independent.
1964 - Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving US President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
1967 - Vietnam War: The People's Republic of China agrees to give North Vietnam and undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.
1976 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
1978 - United States President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal.
1981 -The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
1989 - US Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX), and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
1998 - 1998 U.S. embassy bombings: Bombing of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya kills 224 people and injures over 4,500.