January 7 in History
1897 — Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil, hosts its first performance with the Italian opera “La Gioconda” by Amilcare Ponchielli.
1904 —The British Marconi International Marine Communication Company establishes the distress signal “CQD” (Morse: –.–.|– –.–|– ..), understood by wireless operators to mean “All stations: Distress”. On November 3 1906, Germany’s Notzeichen distress signal (…|– – –|...) is adopted as the international Morse code distress signal. It soon becomes known as “SOS”. 1931 — Guy Menzies, 21, flies the first solo nonstop trans-Tasman flight in 11h45m. Flying from Sydney, Australia , he is forced off course in poor weather and crash-lands in New Zealand’s La Fontaine Swamp near Hari Hari. Menzies serves as a Royal Air Force squadron leader during World War 2. He (at age 31) and his crew are killed on November 1 1940 when his flying boat is shot down over the Mediterranean Sea while en route from Malta to Sicily. No remains are ever found. 1936 — American tennis champions Helen Moody, 30, (winner of 31 Grand Slam titles, 19 in singles) and Howard Kinsley, 36, (two-time Grand Slam doubles champion), volley a tennis ball back and forth 2,001 times in 1h18m without missing. They only stop the exchange so that Kinsey can go and teach a lesson that he had scheduled.
1939 — French physicist Marguerite Perey discovers francium (Fr), named after her home country, the last naturally occurring element (the missing element at atomic number 87 on Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table) to be found.
1954 — A machine translation system, developed jointly by Georgetown University and IBM, is first publicly demonstration at the IBM head office. It involves the completely automatic translation of more than 60 Russian sentences into English. 1959 — American gangster Meyer Lansky flees Cuba for the Bahamas as the Cuban Revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro change the climate for mob investment in Cuba.
1959 — The US recognises the new Cuban government.
1985 — Japan launches Sakigake, its first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deepspace probe to be launched by any country other than the US or the USSR.
1991 — Caster Semenya, South African middledistance athlete, is born in Pietersburg. She is the winner of 14 gold medals — 10 in the 800m, including at the Olympic Games in 2012 and 2016.