August 7 birthdays & history

Famous people born on August 7

• 1975Charlize Theron, South African actress
• 1933Elinor Ostrom, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1876Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy
• 1984Yun Hyon-seok, South Korean poet and author
• 1947Sofia Rotaru, Ukrainian singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
• 1960David Duchovny, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1958Bruce Dickinson, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 1904Ralph Bunche, American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1932Abebe Bikila, Ethiopian runner
• 1928James Randi, Canadian-American stage magician and author

What happened on August 7

• 1850The first section of the Great Northern Railway, now the southern section of the East Coast Main Line, opened between London and Peterborough.
• 1858The first Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.
• 1909Fifty-nine days after leaving New York City with three passengers, Alice Huyler Ramsey arrived in San Francisco to become the first woman to drive an automobile across the contiguous United States.
• 1926The first British Grand Prix was held at Brooklands.
• 1944IBM presented the first program-controlled calculator to Harvard University, after which it became known as the Mark I.
• 1947Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft, the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
• 1960Ivory Coast becomes independent from France.
• 1969Richard Nixon appoints Luis R. Bruce, a Mohawk-Oglala Sioux and co-founder of the National Congress of American Indians, as the new commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
• 1974Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.
• 1976Viking program: Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars.
• 1981The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
• 1987Lynne Cox became the first person to swim between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, crossing from Little Diomede to Big Diomede in the Bering Strait in 2 hours and 5 minutes.

Also observed on August 7

• Emancipation Day (Saint Kitts and Nevis)
• Republic Day (Ivory Coast)
• Youth Day (Kiribati)
• National Purple Heart Day (United States)