07 August History
- 1782 - General George Washington authorizes the award of the Purple Heart for soldiers wounded in combat.
- 1864 - Union troops capture part of Confederate General Jubal Early's army at Moorefield, West Virginia.
- 1888 - Theophilus Van Kannel of Philadelphia receives a patent for the revolving door.
- 1906 - In North Carolina, a mob defies a court order and lynches three African Americans which becomes known as "The Lyerly Murders."
- 1916 - Persia forms an alliance with Britain and Russia.
- 1922 - The Irish Republican Army cuts the cable link between the United States and Europe at Waterville landing station.
- 1934 - In Washington, the U.S. Court of Appeals rules that the govenment can neither confiscate nor ban James Joyce's novel Ulysses.
- 1936 - The United States declares non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War.
- 1942 - The U.S. 1st Marine Division under General A. A. Vandegrift lands on the islands of Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon islands. This is the first American amphibious landing of the war.
- 1944 - German forces launch a major counter attack against U.S. forces near Mortain, France.
- 1964 - Congress overwhelmingly passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, allowing the president to use unlimited military force to prevent attacks on U.S. forces.
- 1966 - The United States loses seven planes over North Vietnam, the most in the war up to this point.
- 1973 - A U.S. plane accidentally bombs a Cambodian village, killing 400 civilians.
07 August Birthdays
- 1876 - Mata Hari, [Margaretha G. Macleod] who passed secrets to the Germans in World War I.
- 1903 - Louis Leakey, anthropologist, archeologist and paleontologist, believed Africa was the cradle of mankind.
- 1904 - Ralph Bunche, U.S. diplomat and the first African-American Nobel Prize winner.
- 1927 - Edwin Edwards, governor of Louisiana.
- 1932 - Abebe Bikila, barefoot runner from Ethiopia, winner of the 1960 Olympic marathon.
- 1942 - Garrison Keillor, American humorist and writer.