Today in History

February 7

1863 - HMS Orpheus is wrecked near New Zealand, killing 190 people.

1915 - The first wireless telegraph message is sent from a moving train to a railway station.

1947 - Arabs and Jews reject British proposal on dividing Palestine.

1962 - Coal mine explosion in Saarbruecken, Germany, kills 298 miners.

1964 - Rock ‘n’ roll’s British invasion begins when the Beatles arrive in New York for their first American tour.

1967 - Sixty-two people die when bushfires ravage Hobart area of Tasmania, Australia.

1969 - Nigerian planes bomb and strafe crowded market in village in rebellious Biafra, killing more than 200 people.

1971 - Apollo 14 astronauts speed towards splashdown in Pacific Ocean after their visit to the moon.

1974 - Britain grants independence to small Caribbean island of Grenada.

1984 - Space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart go on first untethered spacewalk.

1986 - Haiti’s president for life JeanClaude Duvalier goes into exile.

1991 - Jean-Bertrand Aristide is sworn in as Haiti’s first democratically elected President.

1992 - Treaty on European Union is signed.

1999 - King Hussain dies of cancer after nearly half a century on the throne of Jordan.

2001 - Former president JeanBertrand Aristide returns to power in Haiti.

2002 - The Mexican government releases General Jose Francisco Gallardo.

2005 - British yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur breaks the solo roundthe-world sailing record in a time of 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds.

2006 - Shaikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Sabah is appointed Crown Prince of Kuwait.

2012 - Mohammad Nasheed, the first democratically elected president of the Maldives, resigns after a mutiny by the police.

2015 - Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey’s intelligence service, resigns to run in a parliamentary election.

2017 - The Museum of the Future opens in Dubai.