August 7 in History

Majorian (Latin: Iulius Valerius Maiorianus; c. 420 – 7 August 461) was Western Roman emperor from 457 to 461. A prominent commander in the Western military, Majorian deposed Avitus in 457 with the aid of his ally Ricimer at the Battle of Placentia. Possessing little more than Italy and Dalmatia, as well as some territory in Hispania and northern Gaul, Majorian campaigned vigorously for three years against the Empire's enemies. In 461, he was murdered at Dertona in a conspiracy, and his successors until the fall of the Empire in 476 were puppets either of barbarian generals or the Eastern Roman court. After defeating a Vandal attack on Italy in 457, Majorian intercepted the Visigoths in the Battle of Arelate, defeating them and saving the city. Securing Septimania, he reduced the Goths to federate status, returning Hispania to the empire. Meanwhile, Marcellinus was convinced to recognise Majorian, reconquering Sicily in the emperor's name. Majorian then attacked the Burgundians, reconquering Lugdunum and expelling them from the Rhône valley. Marching into Gaul, he reintegrated the Gallo-Romans and appointed Aegidius commander of the region, while Nepotianus invaded the Kingdom of the Suebi and reconquered Scalabis. In 460, Majorian entered Hispania and readied a fleet for an invasion of Africa. However, the Vandals bribed traitors into defection and destroyed the fleet in the Battle of Cartagena, forcing Majorian to return to Italy. During his reign, Majorian instituted reforms to reduce corruption, rebuild the state's institutions and preserve ancient monuments. This led to an antagonistic relationship with the Roman Senate, which was exploited by Ricimer to behead Majorian upon his arrival in Italy in 461. The 6th-century writer Procopius asserted that Majorian "surpassed in every virtue all who have ever been emperors of the Romans", while Sidonius Apollinaris, a contemporary of the emperor, stated, "That he was gentle to his subjects; that he was terrible to his enemies; and that he excelled in every virtue, all his predecessors who had reigned over the Romans."

The Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, also called the Last Great War of Antiquity, was fought between the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Empire. It was the final and most devastating conflict of the Roman–Persian wars. The previous war between the two powers had ended in 591 after the emperor Maurice helped the Sasanian king Khosrow II regain his throne. In 602, Maurice was murdered by his political rival Phocas. Khosrow declared war, ostensibly to avenge the death of the deposed emperor Maurice. This became a decades-long conflict, the longest war in the series, and was fought throughout the Middle East, the Aegean Sea, and before the walls of Constantinople itself.

The Pannonian Avars or Carpathian Avars were a confederation of Eurasian nomads. They were also known as the Obri in the chronicles of the Rus, the Abaroi or Varchonitai, or Pseudo-Avars in Byzantine sources, and the Apar to the Göktürks. They established the Avar Khaganate, centred in the Carpathian Basin, from the late-6th to the early-9th centuries. They exerted influence and control over surrounding areas in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

Pope Stephen III (Latin: Stephanus III; 720 – 24 January 772) was the bishop of Rome and leader of the Papal States from 7 August 768 to his death on 24 January 772. Stephen was a Benedictine monk who worked in the Lateran Palace during the reign of Pope Zachary. In the midst of a tumultuous contest by rival factions to name a successor to Pope Paul I, Stephen was elected with the support of the Roman officials. He summoned the Lateran Council of 769, which sought to limit the influence of the nobles in papal elections. The council also opposed iconoclasm.

Otto I (23 November 912 – 7 May 973), known as Otto the Great (German: Otto der Große; Italian: Ottone il Grande) or Otto of Saxony (German: Otto von Sachsen; Italian: Ottone di Sassonia), was an East Frankish (German) king from 936 and Holy Roman Emperor from 962 until his death in 973. He was the eldest son of Henry the Fowler and Matilda of Ringelheim. Otto inherited the Duchy of Saxony and the kingship of the Germans upon his father's death in 936. He continued his father's work of unifying all German tribes into a single kingdom and greatly expanded the king's powers at the expense of the aristocracy. Through strategic marriages and personal appointments, Otto installed members of his family in the kingdom's most important duchies. This reduced the various dukes, who had previously been co-equals with the king, to royal subjects under his authority. Otto transformed the church in Germany to strengthen royal authority and subjected its clergy to his personal control. After putting down a brief civil war among the rebellious duchies, Otto defeated the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, thus ending the Hungarian invasions of Western Europe. The victory against the pagan Magyars earned Otto a reputation as a savior of Christendom and secured his hold over the kingdom. By 961, Otto had conquered the Kingdom of Italy. Following the example of Charlemagne's coronation as "Emperor of the Romans" in 800, Otto was crowned emperor in 962 by Pope John XII in Rome. Otto's later years were marked by conflicts with the papacy and struggles to stabilize his rule over Italy. Reigning from Rome, Otto sought to improve relations with the Byzantine Empire, which opposed his claim to emperorship and his realm's further expansion to the south. To resolve this conflict, the Byzantine princess Theophanu married his son Otto II in April 972. Otto finally returned to Germany in August 972 and died at Memleben in May 973. Otto II succeeded him. Otto has been consistently depicted in historiography through different eras as a successful ruler. He is also reputed to be a great military commander, especially on the strategic level – this also means that the empire this talent recreated was too vast for contemporary administrative structures and could only be governed as a confederacy. Modern historians, while not denying his strong character and his many fruitful initiatives, explore the emperor's capability as a consensus builder – a process that goes in parallel with greater recognition of the nature of consensus politics in medieval Europe (especially Western and Central parts) as well as different roles played by other actors in his time. Historian David Bachrach notes the role of the bureaucracy and administration apparatus which the Ottonians inherited from the Carolingians and ultimately from the Ancient Romans, and which they developed greatly themselves: "It was the success of the Ottonians in molding the raw materials bequeathed to them into a formidable military machine that made possible the establishment of Germany as the preeminent kingdom in Europe from the tenth through the mid-thirteenth century." Bachrach highlights in particular the achievements of the first two Ottonian rulers, Henry I and Otto the Great in creating this situation. Their rules also marked the start of new, vigorous literary traditions. The patronage of Otto and his immediate successors facilitated a so-called "Ottonian Renaissance" of arts and architecture. As one of the most notable Holy Roman emperors, Otto's footprint in artistic depictions is also considerable.

The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, numerous rump regimes ruled by remnants of the Ming imperial family, collectively called the Southern Ming, survived until 1662.

The First Battle of Guinegate took place on 7 August 1479. King Louis XI's French troops, led by Philippe de Crèvecœur d'Esquerdes (who had been a commander under Charles the Bold but defected to the French side after the latter's death in 1477), were defeated by the Burgundians, led by Duke (later Emperor) Maximilian I of Habsburg. The battle was the first in which the innovative Swiss pike square formation was used by a power that was not natively Swiss.

A brigantine is a two-masted sailing vessel with a fully square-rigged foremast and at least two sails on the main mast: a square topsail and a gaff sail mainsail. The main mast is the second and taller of the two masts.

The Battle of Gangut took place on 27 JulyJul./ 7 August 1714Greg. during the Great Northern War (1700–1721), in the waters of Riilahti Bay, north of the Hanko Peninsula, near the site of the modern-day city of Hanko (Hangö), Finland, between the Swedish Navy and Imperial Russian Navy. It was the first important victory of the Russian fleet in its history. It is commemorated in Russia as one of the Days of Military Honour.

George Washington was a Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War against the British Empire. He is commonly known as the Father of His Country for his role in bringing about American independence.

An Indian reservation in the United States is an area of land held and governed by a Native American tribal nation officially recognized by the U.S. federal government. The reservation's government is autonomous but subject to regulations passed by the United States Congress, and is administered by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. It is not subject however, to a state or local government of the U.S. state in which it is located. Some of the country's 574 federally recognized tribes govern more than one of the 326 Indian reservations in the United States, while some share reservations, and others have no reservation at all. Historical piecemeal land allocations under the Dawes Act facilitated sales to non–Native Americans, resulting in some reservations becoming severely fragmented, with pieces of tribal and privately held land being treated as separate enclaves. This intersection of private and public real estate creates significant administrative, political, and legal difficulties. The total area of all reservations is 56,200,000 acres (22,700,000 ha; 87,800 sq mi; 227,000 km2), approximately 2.3% of the total area of the United States and about the size of the state of Idaho. While most reservations are small compared to the average U.S. state, twelve Indian reservations are larger than the state of Rhode Island. The largest reservation, the Navajo Nation Reservation, is similar in size to the state of West Virginia. Reservations are unevenly distributed throughout the country, the majority being situated west of the Mississippi River and occupying lands that were first reserved by treaty (Indian Land Grants) from the public domain. Because recognized Native American nations are subject to federal law, they possess limited tribal sovereignty. Thus, laws within tribal lands may vary from those of the surrounding and adjacent states. For example, these laws can permit casinos on reservations located within states which do not allow gambling. The tribal council generally has jurisdiction over the reservation. Court jurisdiction in Indian country is shared between tribes and the federal government, depending on the tribal affiliation of the parties involved and the specific crime or civil matter, and in some areas Public Law 280 is applicable. Different reservations have different systems of government, which may or may not replicate the forms of government found outside the reservation. Most Native American reservations were established by the federal government but a small number, mainly in the East, owe their origin to state recognition. The term "reservation" is a legal designation. It comes from the conception of the Native American nations as independent sovereigns at the time the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Thus, early peace treaties (often signed under conditions of duress or fraud), in which Native American nations surrendered large portions of their land to the United States, designated parcels which the nations, as sovereigns, "reserved" to themselves, and those parcels came to be called "reservations". The term remained in use after the federal government began to forcibly relocate nations to parcels of land to which they often had no historical or cultural connection. Compared to other population centers in the U.S., reservations are disproportionately located on or near toxic sites hazardous to the health of those living or working in close proximity, including nuclear testing grounds and contaminated mines. The majority of American Indians (excluding Alaska Natives, who, with one exception, no longer have reservations) live outside the reservations, mainly in the larger western cities such as Phoenix and Los Angeles. In 2012, there were more than 2.5 million Native Americans, with 1 million living on reservations.

The United States Department of War, also called the War Department, was the United States Cabinet department responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army. It also had responsibility for naval affairs from 1794 until the establishment of the Department of the Navy in 1798, and for most non-naval air forces until the creation of the Department of the Air Force on September 18, 1947.

The Miami (Miami–Illinois: Myaamiaki) are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, whose Miami–Illinois language is one of the Algonquian languages. They are a Great Lakes tribe, who historically occupied territory in present-day north-central Indiana, southwest Michigan, and western Ohio. The Miami historically included several subgroups, such as the Piankeshaw, Wea, Pepikokia, Kilatika, Mengakonkia, and Atchakangouen. In last few centuries, Miami refers to the Atchakangouen. By 1846, most of the Miami had been forcefully displaced to Indian Territory (initially to what is now Kansas, and later to what is now part of Oklahoma). The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma is the federally recognized tribe of Miami Indians in the United States. The Miami Nation of Indiana is an unrecognized tribe that unsuccessfully sought separate recognition.

The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.

Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios Ponte y Blanco was a Venezuelan military officer and statesman who led what are currently the countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela to independence from the Spanish Empire. He is known colloquially as El Libertador, "the Liberator," of America.

Australian rules football or Aussie rules, also known simply as Australian football, football or footy in Australia, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the oval ball between the central goal posts (worth six points), or between a central and outer post (worth one point, otherwise known as a "behind"). During general play, players may position themselves anywhere on the field and use any part of their bodies to move the ball. The primary methods are kicking, handballing, and running with the ball. There are rules on how the ball can be handled; for example, players running with the ball must intermittently bounce or touch it on the ground. Throwing the ball is not allowed, and players must not get caught holding the ball. A distinctive feature of the game is the mark, where players anywhere on the field who catch the ball from a kick (with specific conditions) are awarded unimpeded possession. Possession of the ball is in dispute at all times except when a free kick or mark is paid. Players can tackle using their hands or use their whole body to obstruct opponents. Dangerous physical contact (such as pushing an opponent in the back), interference when marking, and deliberately slowing the play are discouraged with free kicks, distance penalties, or suspension for a certain number of matches depending on the severity of the infringement. The game features frequent physical contests, spectacular marking, fast movement of both players and the ball, and high scoring. The sport's origins can be traced to football matches played in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1858, inspired by English public school football games. Seeking to develop a game more suited to adults and Australian conditions, the Melbourne Football Club published the first laws of Australian rules football in May 1859. Australian rules football has the highest spectator attendance of all sports in Australia while the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's only fully professional competition, is the nation's wealthiest sporting body. The AFL Grand Final, held annually at the 100,000-capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground, is the highest-attended club championship event of any football code. The sport is also played at amateur level in many countries and in several variations. Its rules are governed by the AFL Commission with the advice of the AFL's Laws of the Game Committee.

Alice Huyler Ramsey (November 11, 1886 – September 10, 1983) was an American who was the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States from coast to coast, a feat she completed on August 7, 1909.

The British Grand Prix is a Grand Prix motor racing event organised in the United Kingdom by Motorsport UK. First held by the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) in 1926, the British Grand Prix has been held annually since 1948 and has been a round of the FIA Formula One World Championship every year since 1950. In 1952, following the transfer of the lease of the Silverstone Circuit to the British Racing Drivers' Club, the RAC delegated the organisation of races held at Silverstone to the BRDC, and those held at Aintree to the British Automobile Racing Club. This arrangement lasted until the RAC created the Motor Sports Association in the late 1970s and it reclaimed organising control of the event. The RAC MSA was renamed Motorsport UK in 2018–19 when it formally split from the RAC. The British Grand Prix is currently held at the Silverstone Circuit near the village of Silverstone in Northamptonshire in England. The 2019 event was the 70th time that the race had been run as a World Championship event since the inaugural season in 1950, and the 53rd time that a World Championship round had been held at Silverstone. The British race is the oldest in the Formula One World Championship calendar as the 1950 race at Silverstone was round one of the first championship season in 1950. It and the Italian Grand Prix are the only two Formula One World Championship Grands Prix that have been staged during every season that the championship has been held. The British Grand Prix was a round of the World Manufacturers' Championship in both 1926 and 1927, but was never held during the existence of the European Championship. It was designated the European Grand Prix five times between 1950 and 1977, when this title was an honorary designation given each year to one Grand Prix race in Europe. All British Grands Prix dating back to 1926 have been held in England, where the British motor racing industry is primarily located. The event is due to take place at Silverstone Circuit until at least 2034.

The Peace Bridge is an international bridge over the Niagara River between Canada and the United States, located just north of the river's source at the east end of Lake Erie about 20 kilometres (12.4 mi) upriver of Niagara Falls. It connects Buffalo, New York, in the United States to Fort Erie, Ontario, in Canada. It is operated and maintained by the bi-national Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority, incorporated as both a Class D public benefit corporation in the State of New York and a Crown corporation federally in Canada, governed under the terms of an agreement between New York and the Canadian federal government. The Peace Bridge consists of five arched spans over the Niagara River and a Parker deck-type truss span over the Black Rock Canal on the American side of the river. The length is 5,800 feet (1.77 km). Material used in the construction included 3,500 feet (1.07 km) of steelwork, 9,000 tons of structural steel and 800 tons of reinforcing steel in the concrete abutments. The Peace Bridge was named to commemorate 100 years of peace between the United States and Canada. It was constructed as a highway bridge to address pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic which could not be accommodated on the International Railway Bridge, built in 1873.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq was the Iraqi state located in the Middle East from 1932 to 1958. It was founded on 23 August 1921 as the Kingdom of Iraq, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Mesopotamian campaign of the World War I. Although a League of Nations mandate was awarded to the United Kingdom in 1920, the 1920 Iraqi revolt resulted in the scrapping of the original mandate plan in favour of a formally sovereign Iraqi kingdom, but one that was under effective British administration. The plan was formally established by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. The population of the Kingdom was 2.8 million at the founding in 1928, and by the end of the Kingdom in 1958 it was 6.5 million.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

International Business Machines Corporation, doing business as IBM, is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is a publicly traded company and one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries; for 29 consecutive years, from 1993 to 2021, it held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

Thor Heyerdahl KStJ (Norwegian pronunciation: [tuːr ˈhæ̀ɪəɖɑːɫ]; 6 October 1914 – 18 April 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography. Heyerdahl is notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he drifted 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a primitive hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. The expedition was supposed to demonstrate that the legendary sun-worshiping red-haired, bearded, and white-skinned "Tiki people" from South America drifted and colonized Polynesia first, before actual Polynesian peoples. His hyperdiffusionist ideas on ancient cultures had been widely rejected by the scientific community, even before the expedition. Heyerdahl made other voyages to demonstrate the possibility of contact between widely separated ancient peoples, notably the Ra II expedition of 1970, when he sailed from the west coast of Africa to Barbados in a papyrus reed boat. He was appointed a government scholar in 1984 by the Norwegian government. He died on 18 April 2002 in Colla Micheri, Italy, while visiting close family members. The Norwegian government gave him a state funeral in Oslo Cathedral on 26 April 2002. In May 2011, the Thor Heyerdahl Archives were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. At the time, this list included 238 collections from all over the world. The Heyerdahl Archives span the years 1937 to 2002 and include his photographic collection, diaries, private letters, expedition plans, articles, newspaper clippings, and original book and article manuscripts. The Heyerdahl Archives are administered by the Kon-Tiki Museum and the National Library of Norway in Oslo.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is the governing civic body of Mumbai, the capital city of Maharashtra.

The Explorers Program is a NASA exploration program that provides flight opportunities for physics, geophysics, heliophysics, and astrophysics investigations from space. Launched in 1958, Explorer 1 was the first spacecraft of the United States to achieve orbit. Over 90 space missions have been launched since. Starting with Explorer 6, it has been operated by NASA, with regular collaboration with a variety of other institutions, including many international partners.

Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially as the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is the port city of Abidjan. It borders Guinea to the northwest, Liberia to the west, Mali to the north, Burkina Faso to the northeast, Ghana to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean's Gulf of Guinea to the south. With 33.2 million inhabitants in 2026, Ivory Coast is the third-most populous country in West Africa after Nigeria and Ghana. Its official language is French, and indigenous languages are also widely used, including Bété, Baoulé, Dyula, Dan, Anyin, and Cebaara Senufo. In total, there are around 78 languages spoken in Ivory Coast. The country has a religiously diverse population, including numerous followers of Islam, Christianity and traditional faiths often entailing animism.

Frances Kathleen Oldham Kelsey (née Oldham; July 24, 1914 – August 7, 2015) was a Canadian-American pharmacologist and physician who had a 45-year career with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As a reviewer, she refused to authorize thalidomide for market because she had concerns about the lack of evidence regarding the drug's safety. Her concerns proved to be justified when it was shown that thalidomide caused serious birth defects. Kelsey's career intersected with the passage of laws strengthening FDA oversight of pharmaceuticals. Kelsey was the first woman to receive a PhD in pharmacology and the second woman to receive the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, awarded to her by John F. Kennedy in 1962.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he represented California in both houses of the United States Congress before serving as the 36th vice president under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961. His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Philippe Petit is a French highwire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized highwire walks between the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, as well as between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on 7 August 1974.

The Viking program consisted of a pair of identical American space probes, Viking 1 and Viking 2 both launched in 1975, and landed on Mars in 1976. The mission effort began in 1968 and was managed by the NASA Langley Research Center. Each spacecraft was composed of two main parts: an orbiter spacecraft which photographed the surface of Mars from orbit, and a lander which studied the planet from the surface. The orbiters also served as communication relays for the landers once they touched down.

James Earl Carter Jr. was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, Carter served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975 and in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967. He lived longer than any other president in U.S. history, reaching age 100.

Takao Doi is a Japanese astronaut, engineer and veteran of two NASA Space Shuttle missions.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

George Thomas "Mickey" Leland III was an American politician and anti-poverty activist. He served as a congressman from the Texas 18th District and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. He was a Democrat.

The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States in response to Saddam Hussein invading neighboring Kuwait on 2 August 1990. The coalition's efforts were in two phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, from the bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January until the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February.

Ada Elizabeth Deer was an American scholar and civil servant who was a member of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and a Native American advocate. As an activist she opposed the federal termination of tribes from the 1950s. During the Clinton administration, Deer served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. Due to all of her advocacy and organization on behalf of Native people, she was recognized as a social work pioneer by the National Association of Social Workers in 2010.

A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens. A government can declare such a state before, during, or after a natural disaster, civil unrest, armed conflict, medical pandemic or epidemic or other biosecurity risk.

The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its official program name was carried over from the 1969 plan for the Space Transportation System (STS) of reusable spacecraft. Only the shuttle and supporting rockets were funded for development; a proposed nuclear lunar shuttle in the plan was canceled in 1972. It flew 135 missions and carried 355 astronauts from 16 countries, many on multiple trips.

Fine Air Flight 101 was a scheduled cargo flight from Miami International Airport to Las Américas International Airport, operated by Douglas DC-8 N27UA, that crashed almost immediately after take-off on August 7, 1997, when it failed to gain altitude. All four people on board and one person on the ground died in the mid-day Thursday crash.

The 1998 United States embassy bombings were a series of terrorist attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998. More than 220 people were killed in two nearly simultaneous truck bomb explosions in two East African capital cities, one at the United States embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and the other at the United States embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

Chechnya, officially the Chechen Republic, is a republic of Russia. It is situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, between the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The republic forms a part of the North Caucasian Federal District, and shares land borders with Georgia to its south; with the Russian republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia–Alania to its east, north, and west; and with Stavropol Krai to its northwest.

Oracle Park is a ballpark in the South Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States. Since 2000, it has been the home of the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball (MLB). The stadium stands along San Francisco Bay; the section of the bay beyond Oracle Park's right field wall is unofficially known as McCovey Cove, in honor of former Giants player Willie McCovey. Previously named Pacific Bell Park, SBC Park, and AT&T Park, the stadium's existing name was purchased by Oracle Corporation in 2019.

The August 2008 Russo-Georgian War, also known as the Russian invasion of Georgia, was a war waged against Georgia by the Russian Federation and the Russian-backed separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The fighting took place in the strategically important South Caucasus region. It is regarded as the first European war of the 21st century.

Air India Express Flight 1344 was a scheduled international flight operated by a Boeing 737-800 on 7 August 2020 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Kozhikode, India, landing at Calicut International Airport. The flight was part of the Vande Bharat Mission to repatriate Indian nationals stranded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The flight crew aborted two landing attempts because of heavy rain and tailwind. On the third landing attempt, the aircraft touched down on runway 10, but skidded off the end of the tabletop runway and slid down a 9–10.5 m (30–35 ft) slope, killing 19 passengers and both pilots. The 4 cabin crew members and 165 passengers survived, and 110 people were injured. This was the second fatal accident involving Air India Express, after Flight 812 in 2010.

On 7 August 2026, a school shooting occurred at Debsirin Nonthaburi School in Bang Kruai, Nonthaburi, Thailand. Patchata Yimruang, a 14-year-old student, killed six people and injured at least twenty-three others before killing himself. Patchata had also shot and killed his two grandparents in Bang Bua Thong prior to the shooting.