April 7
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Featured Event
U.S. Air Force/Department of Defense; photo, Bill Thompson
A lost nuclear bomb is found
On this day in 1966, Spanish authorities announced the recovery of a hydrogen bomb that had accidentally fallen into the Mediterranean several months earlier. The bomb, along with three others, had dropped from the sky after a U.S. B-52 collided with a refueling tanker over southern Spain, killing seven airmen. Two bombs exploded, a third landed intact, and the fourth simply disappeared, until officials pursued a tip from a fisherman about something hitting the water on the day of the accident. [Read today’s edition of Today in History > >]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
age fotostock/Alamy
Indian musician Ravi Shankar—a sitar virtuoso and composer who founded the National Orchestra of India and who was influential in stimulating Western appreciation of classical Hindustani music—was born this day in 1920.
Famous Birthdays
More on April 7
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
2012
Television journalist Mike Wallace, who was noted for his aggressive, bruising style during interviews on the long-running TV newsmagazine program 60 Minutes, died at age 93. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about famous Americans.]
JPL/NASA
2001
NASA launched the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which reached Mars in October and transmitted photos and other data back to scientists on Earth. [Test your knowledge of space exploration.]
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
1994
Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a moderate Hutu, was assassinated by Hutu soldiers, a day after the deaths of Juvénal Habyarimana, president of Rwanda, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, president of Burundi. These events mark the beginning of the Rwanda genocide of 1994, which continued to July.
David Cannon/Allsport USA
1963
Jack Nicklaus, a dominating figure in world golf from the 1960s to the ’80s and the winner of 73 PGA tour events during his career, won the Masters Tournament at age 23.
PAHO/World Health Organization
1948
The World Health Organization, a specialized agency of the UN, was formally established. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about world organizations.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1947
Henry Ford, who revolutionized factory production through assembly-line methods he pioneered at his Ford Motor Company, died at age 83. [Explore a timeline of Ford Motor Company’s history.]
© 1972 Paramount Pictures Corporation
1939
Francis Ford Coppola—whose films included the classics The Godfather (1972), The Godfather, Part II (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979)—was born in Detroit. [Test your knowledge of cinema.]
BBC Hulton Picture Library
1939
Albanian King Zog I went into exile after Benito Mussolini made Albania a protectorate of Italy. [How much do you know about European history?]
iStockphoto/Thinkstock
1933
Some eight months before Prohibition was repealed, low-alcoholic beer became legal in the United States; the day subsequently was celebrated as National Beer Day. [Take our beer and brewing quiz.]
Courtesy of AT&T Bell Laboratories/AT&T Archives
1927
The first public demonstration of a one-way videophone occurred between Herbert Hoover, then U.S. secretary of commerce, in Washington, D.C., and officials of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in New York City. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about gadgets and technology.]
© Universal History Archive—Universal Images Group/Getty Images
1922
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall secretly leased federal oil reserves to the Mammoth Oil Company in return for cash gifts. The oil field, at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, gave the Teapot Dome corruption scandal its name. [Test your knowledge of modern U.S. political scandals.]
Reprinted with permission of DownBeat magazine
1915
Billie Holiday, one of the greatest American jazz singers from the 1930s to the ’50s, was born in Philadelphia. [Take our quiz about female jazz singers.]
Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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