History of the Day for:
May 7
- 1789: The first inaugural ball was held in New York in honor of President and Mrs. George Washington.
- 1833: German composer and pianist Johannes Brahms was born.
- 1840: Russian composer Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky was born.
- 1915: The British liner Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine, contributing to the entry of the U.S. into World War I. The death toll was 1,198.
- 1919: Eva Peron, first lady of Argentina during the populist government of Juan Peron, was born.
- 1939: Germany and Italy announced an alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.
- 1941: Glenn Miller and his orchestra recorded one of the great American music standards, "Chattanooga Choo Choo."
- 1945: Baseball owner Branch Rickey announced the formation of the U.S. Negro Baseball League.
- 1945: The instruments of the surrender of German forces in World War II were signed by German chief of staff Gen. Jodl at Gen. Eisenhower's headquarters in Rheims.
- 1954: In North Vietnam, the Vietminh siege of French forces at Dien Bien Phu ended with the French surrender.
- 1975: President Gerald Ford declared the Vietnam era was over.
- 1980: Paul Geidel, convicted of second-degree murder in 1911, was released from prison in Beacon, N.Y., after serving 68 years and 245 days - the longest sentence ever served.
- 1984: A $180 million out-of-court settlement was announced in the "Agent Orange" class-action suit brought by Vietnam veterans.
- 1987: Shelley Long made her last appearance as a regular on the TV show "Cheers."
- 1992: The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off on its maiden voyage.
- 1994: The stolen masterpiece "The Scream," by Edvard Munch, was found undamaged in a hotel in south Norway.
- 1998: Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for $40 billion USD and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history.
- 1999: Pope John Paul II travels to Romania becoming the first pope to visit a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054.
- 1999: A jury finds The Jenny Jones Show and Warner Bros. liable in the shooting death of Scott Amedure, after the show purposely deceived Jonathan Schmitz to appear on a secret same-sex crush episode. Schmitz later killed Amedure and the jury awarded Amedure's family $25 million USD.
- 1999: Kosovo War: In Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, three Chinese citizens are killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
- 1999: In Guinea-Bissau, President Joćo Bernardo Vieira is ousted in a military coup.
- 2002: A China Northern Airlines MD-82 plunges into the Yellow Sea, killing 112 people.
- 2007: The tomb of Herod the Great is discovered.