What happened on December 7 ?
Events
1724 - Thorn Blood tribunal (de:Thorner Blutgericht), execution of protestant who attacked and demolished Jesuit Church by Poland in Toru?(Thorn)
1732 - The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London.
1776 - Marquis de Lafayette attempts to enter the American military as a major general.
1787 - Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.
1815 - Michel Ney, Marshal of France, is executed by firing squad after having been convicted of treason for his support of Napoleon Bonaparte.
1917 - World War I: The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary.
1941 - World War II: Canada declared war on Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Japan.
1941 - World War II: Attack On Pearl Harbor - The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the U.S. Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1946 - A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia kills 119 people.
1949 - Chinese Civil War : The government of Republic of China moves from Nanking to Taipei.
1962 - Prince Rainier III of Monaco revises the principality's constitution, devolving some of his power to advisory and legislative councils.
1965 - Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054.
1966 - A fire at an army barracks in Erzurum, Turkey kills 68 people.
1970 - The first ever general election on the basis of direct adult franchise are held in Pakistan for 313 National Assembly seats.
1971 - Pakistan President Yahya Khan announces formation of a Coalition Government at Centre with Nurul Amin as Prime Minister and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as Vice-Prime Minister.
1971 - The Montreux Casino in Switzerland is set ablaze by someone wielding a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert; the incident would be immortalized in the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water".
1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew take the photograph known as "The Blue Marble" as they leave the Earth.
1975 - Indonesia invades East Timor.
1982 - In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.
1983 - Two jetliners collide at Madrid Barajas International Airport, Madrid killing 93 people.
1987 - PSA Flight 1771 crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss on the flight, then shoots both pilots and himself.
1988 - Spitak Earthquake: In Armenia an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale kills nearly 25,000, injures 15,000 and leaves 400,000 homeless.
1988 - Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.
1989 - In their third and final fight, Sugar Ray Leonard retains the WBC Super-Middleweight Championship of the World, defeating Roberto Duran.
1993 - In South Africa, the Transitional Executive Council is established.
1993 - The Long Island Rail Road Massacre: Colin Ferguson murders six people and injures 19 others on the LIRR in Nassau County, New York.
1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
2003 - The Conservative Party of Canada is officially recognized after the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
2004 - Hamid Karzai is inaugurated as President of Afghanistan.
2004 - John Kufuor is re-elected as President of Ghana.
2005 - Rigoberto Alpizar, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 who allegedly claimed to have a bomb, is shot and killed by a team of U.S. federal air marshals at Miami International Airport.
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