131 things happened on 7 January, from 49 BC to 2025. UK stories come first, then the rest of the world.
1835 · 191 years ago
The Royal Navy survey ship HMS Beagle dropped anchor off the Chonos Archipelago, a group of islands. On board was the naturalist Charles Darwin. Darwin later became famous for his theory of evolution by natural selection. It explains how all species of living…
UK history first: stories from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
UK story
A Parliament began meeting at the Palace of Westminster that would help remove King Edward II from the throne. Edward had become very unpopular with England's nobles, partly because of the favourites he kept at court. His wife, Queen Isabella, and the nobleman Roger Mortimer had invaded England to depose him. The crown passed to his son, who became King Edward III.
UK story
French troops led by Francis, Duke of Guise, captured the port of Calais from England. The area around Calais, called the Pale of Calais, had been ruled by England since 1347, during the Hundred Years' War. It was England's last possession on the European mainland. At the time England was ruled by Queen Mary I and her husband, Philip II of Spain.
UK story
French inventor Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American doctor John Jeffries flew from Dover, in England, to Calais, in France, in a gas balloon. It was the first time anyone had crossed the English Channel through the air. Here, at the Strait of Dover, the Channel is only 34 kilometres wide. Blanchard was a pioneer of gas balloon flight.
UK story
The Royal Navy survey ship HMS Beagle dropped anchor off the Chonos Archipelago, a group of islands. On board was the naturalist Charles Darwin. Darwin later became famous for his theory of evolution by natural selection. It explains how all species of living things are descended from a common ancestor.
UK story
The Marconi International Marine Communication Company announced that ships in distress, or needing help, should send the radio call 'CQD'. It was one of the first distress signals used on radio. It was part of the business of Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor and pioneer of long-distance wireless communication. His British firm, the Marconi Company, became one of the UK's most successful manufacturers.
UK story
In one of the most famous shocks in FA Cup history, Sutton United beat Coventry City 2–1. Sutton played in the Conference, the fifth level of English football, while Coventry were in the top division. Coventry had gone into the third-round match as strong favourites. The FA Cup, first played in the 1871–72 season, is the oldest national football competition in the world.
UK story
Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64–57 vote.
Looking through his telescope, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei saw Jupiter's four largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. At first he could not tell Io and Europa apart, but he managed it the following night. They were the first objects ever found orbiting a planet other than Earth. They are now called the Galilean moons, after him.
Thomas Edison made a short kinetoscope film of someone sneezing. On the same day, his employee William Kennedy Dickson received a patent for motion picture film. Dickson, a British-American inventor, had designed an early film camera while working for Edison. Edison is also famous for his work on the light bulb and the phonograph, an early machine for recording sound.
The first commercial telephone service across the Atlantic Ocean began, linking New York City and London. For the first time, customers could pay to talk by phone between the United States and Britain. The first patent for a telephone had been granted to Alexander Graham Bell about 50 years earlier, in 1876.
French physicist Marguerite Perey identified a new chemical element, francium. It was the last element to be discovered in nature rather than made by scientists. Francium is extremely radioactive and very rare. Perey had been a student of Marie Curie, and in 1962 she became the first woman elected to the French Academy of Sciences.
The Senate of Rome says that Caesar will be declared a public enemy unless he disbands his army, prompting the tribunes who support him to flee to where Caesar is waiting in Ravenna.
Afonso IV becomes King of Portugal.
Fire destroys Jamestown, Virginia.
Battle of Zlatoust: Battle between Bashkir and Tatar rebels and the government troops of the Tsardom of Russia. It is one of the events of the Bashkir rebellion of 1704–1711.
Bashkir rebels besiege Yelabuga.
A peace treaty is signed between Peshwa Bajirao and Jai Singh II following Maratha victory in the Battle of Bhopal.
The Bank of North America (pictured) opened in Philadelphia as the de facto first central bank of the United States.
The Italian tricolour was first adopted as an official flag by the government of the Cispadane Republic.
Montenegrin guerrilla fighters rebel against the planned annexation of Montenegro by Serbia, but fail.
The New York State Assembly refuses to seat five duly elected Socialist assemblymen.
Australian aviator Guy Menzies (pictured) flew from Sydney to New Zealand's West Coast, making the first solo trans-Tasman flight.
Winter War: Battle of Raate Road: The Finnish 9th Division finally defeat the numerically superior Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road.
Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York at the head office of IBM.
Marian Anderson became the first African-American to perform with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
Surveyor program: Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36A.
An article entitled "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" was published in the newspaper Ettela'at attacking Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile in Iraq.
The People's Army of Vietnam captured Phnom Penh, marking the end of large-scale fighting in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation.
Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.
Representatives of Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini delivered a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, inviting him to consider Islam as an alternative to communism, and predicting the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc.
The Fourth Republic of Ghana was inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings, the country's former military ruler, as president.
Bosnian War: The Bosnian Army executes a surprise attack at the village of Kravica in Srebrenica.
The Senate trial in the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton begins.
After 253 days without an operational government, a second round of investiture votes produced Spain's first coalition government since the Second Republic.
The longest U.S. House of Representatives speaker election since the December 1859 – February 1860 U.S. speaker election concludes and Kevin McCarthy is elected 55th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Every answer is somewhere on this page. Have a go, then check!
In which year did this happen: “Non-league Sutton United knock Coventry City out of the FA Cup”?
B: 1989. 1989 — that’s 37 years ago. Find it on the page
In which year did this happen: “The Parliament that removes Edward II from the throne begins”?
B: 1327. 1327 — that’s 699 years ago. Find it on the page
Which of these happened first?
A: The Parliament that removes Edward II from the throne begins. 1327: The Parliament that removes Edward II from the throne begins · 1989: Non-league Sutton United knock Coventry City out of the FA Cup · 1904: Marconi's company chooses CQD as a radio distress call Find it on the page
“Marconi's company chooses CQD as a radio distress call” happened in 1904. How many years ago was that?
C: 122 years. 2026 − 1904 = 122. Find it on the page
Famous people whose birthday is 7 January.
UK story
Sir Lewis Hamilton is a British racing driver who competes in Formula One. He has won seven Formula One World Drivers' Championships, a joint record that he shares with Michael Schumacher. He also holds the records for the most race wins and podium finishes. And he has started from pole position, first place on the starting grid, more often than any other driver.
UK story
Gerald Durrell was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper and conservationist. He travelled the world on animal-collecting trips and wrote many books, including the bestseller My Family and Other Animals. Later he founded his own zoo on the island of Jersey. It was meant for studying animals and breeding them in captivity, rather than just putting them on show.
Well-known people who died on 7 January.
Festivals, holidays and saints’ days celebrated on 7 January somewhere in the world.
Content note: these entries mention things like war, violence, deaths, disasters or crime. They are part of history, but they can be upsetting. Grown-ups and teachers: you may want to read them first. They come straight from Wikipedia and have not been rewritten for children.
Stories with a heading have been written for young readers by A Day in the Past, using the linked articles as sources. Other entries show text from Wikipedia’s “January 7” page and its “On this day” feed, written by Wikipedia contributors and shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Each “Read more” link goes to the article an entry is based on. Photos are credited under each picture. Spotted a mistake? Please tell us.