TODAY IN HISTORY ― JANUARY 7

January 7 is the seventh day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 358 days remaining until the end of the year (359 in leap years). This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Thursday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Tuesday or Wednesday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Friday or Sunday (56).

NATIONAL BOBBLEHEAD DAY  

1558 – Calais, the last English possession in France, is retaken by the French as part of the Italian War (1551-1559). The Pale of Calais had been ruled by England since 1347, during the Hundred Years War.

1608 – Fire destroys the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia.

1610 – Galileo Galilei discovers the first three satellites of Jupiter naming them Io, Europa and Ganymede.

1782 – The first U.S. commercial bank, Bank of North America, opens in Philadelphia.

1785 – Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.

1787 – On this day in 1789, America's first presidential election is held. Voters cast ballots to choose state electors; only white men who owned property were allowed to vote. As expected, George Washington won the election and was sworn into office on April 30, 1789.

1822 – The West African country of Liberia is colonized by Americans.

1892 – A massive mine explosion leaves nearly 100 dead in Krebs, Oklahoma, on this day in 1892. The disaster, the worst mining catastrophe in Oklahoma's history, was mainly due to the mine owner's emphasis on profits over safety.

1915 – As Bolshevik groups work to foment revolution among Russia's peasants, Alexander Helphand, a wealthy Bolshevik businessman working as a German agent, approaches the German ambassador to Turkey in Constantinople to let him know how closely German and Bolshevik interests are aligned.

1927 – On January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team travels 48 miles west from Chicago to play their first game in Hinckley, Illinois. 

1927 – Commercial transatlantic telephone service is inaugurated between NY and London.

1929 – Walter Chrysler, the founder of the Chrysler Corporation, one of America's Big Three automakers, is featured on the cover of Time magazine as its Man of the Year. 

1945 – On this day, British Gen. Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he all but claims complete credit for saving the Allied cause in the Battle of the Bulge. He was almost removed from his command because of the resulting American outcry

1953 – In his final State of the Union address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb.

1959 – Just six days after the fall of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, U.S. officials recognize the new provisional government of the island nation.

1963 – First class U.S. postage is raised from 4 cents to 5 cents. Those were the days!

1965 – Gen. Nguyen Khanh and the newly formed Armed Forces Council--the generals who had participated in a coup on December 19, 1964--restore civilian control of the South Vietnamese government. Tran Van Huong was made the new premier.

1979 – On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the brutal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge.

1989 – Showa Tenno Hirohito, the 124th Japanese monarch in an imperial line dating back to 660 B.C., dies after serving six decades as the emperor of Japan. He was the longest serving monarch in Japanese history.

1991 - Saddam Hussein prepares his troops for what he says will be a long violent war against the U.S.

1999 – On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, begins in the Senate.

2015 – Terrorist attack on the offices of satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris kills 12 (including Jean Cabut and Stéphane Charbonnier), injures 11.


TODAY'S BIRTHS

1837 – Thomas Henry Ismay, English businessman, founded the White Star Line Shipping Company (d. 1899)

1873 – Adolph Zukor, Hungarian-American film producer, co-founded Paramount Pictures (d. 1976)

1941 – John E. Walker, English chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

Wikipedia and Google, ex as noted.