April 7th
1199
King Richard I of England (also known as the Lion Heart) died in the Limousin region of France at age 41 after being mortally wounded by an arrow.
1860
Will Keith Kellogg, founder of cereal maker Kellogg Company was born in Battle Creek, Michigan.
1862
John W. Ward died on this date during the Civil War.
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 saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover in the first successful long distance demonstration of television.
1939
Italy invaded Albania.
1945
American planes intercepted a Japanese fleet that was headed for Okinawa on a suicide mission.
1947
Automobile 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 Hammerskjold of Sweden to be Secretary-General.
1964
IBM introduced its innovative System/360, the company's first line of mainframe computers that gave customers the option of upgrading from lower cost models to more powerful, expensive ones.
1966
The United States recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of Spain.
1969
The Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
1978
President Jimmy Carter announced he was deferring development of the nutron bomb, a high radiation weapon.
1983
Space Sfuttle Astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson took the first U.S. space walk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.
1990
A display of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs opened at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center, the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges. Both were later acquitted.
1990
An arson fire aboard a ferry enroute from Norway to Denmark killed 158 people.