History of the Day for:
April 7
- 529: First draft of Corpus Juris Civilis (a fundamental work in jurisprudence) is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.
- 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.
- 1776: Captain John Barry and the USS Lexington captures the Edward.
- 1788: American Pioneers to the Northwest Territory arrive at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, establishing Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent American settlement of the new United States in the Northwest Territory, and opening the westward expansion of the new country.
- 1795: France adopts the metre as the basic measure of length.
- 1798: The Mississippi Territory is organized from territory ceded by Georgia and South Carolina and is later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the U.S. and Spain.
- 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: First public performance of Beethoven's Third Symphony (Eroica).
- 1827: John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.
- 1829: Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commences translation of the Book of Mormon, with Oliver Cowdery as his scribe.
- 1862: Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.
- 1927: An audience in New York City saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover in the first successful long distance demonstration of television.
- 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: Holocaust: In Terebovlia, Ukraine, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress to their underwear and march through the city of Terebovlia to the nearby village of Plebanivka where they are shot dead and buried in ditches.
- 1945: World War II: The Japanese battleship Yamato, the largest battleship ever constructed, is sunk 200 miles north of Okinawa while en-route to a suicide mission in 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.
- 1945: During World War II, American planes intercepted a Japanese fleet headed to Okinawa on a suicide mission.
- 1946: Syria's independence from France is officially recognized.
- 1947: Auto pioneer Henry Ford died in Dearborn, Michigan at age 83.
- 1948: The World Health Organization was founded.
- 1949: The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific" opened on Broadway.
- 1953: The U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden to be secretary-general.
- 1954: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech during a news conference.
- 1957: The last of New York City's electric trolley completed its final run from Queens to Manhattan.
- 1966: The United States recovered a hydrogen bomb lost off the coast of Spain.
- 1969: The Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
- 1976: China's leadership deposed Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and appointed Hua Kou-feng prime minister and first deputy chairman of the Communist Party.
- 1978: Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Afghan leader Najibullah met in the Soviet Central Asian city of Tashkent. They later issued a joint statement, announcing an end to the civil war in Afghanistan and withdraw Soviet troops.
- 1989: Soviet submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway killing 42 sailors.
- 1993: European warplanes began arriving in Italy, prepared to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
- 1994: Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda.
- 1999: The World Trade Organisation 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.