7th of April

It is the 97th day of the year, with only 268 days remaining until the end of the year.

529 - First draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis, a fundamental work in jurisprudence, is issued by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.

1788 - Settlers arrives at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, establishing Marietta, Ohio, as the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory.

1805 - The Corps of Discovery breaks camp among the Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.

1827 - John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.

1906 - Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples, Italy.

1922 - United States Secretary of the Interior leases Teapot Dome petroleum reserves in Wyoming.

1933 - Prohibition is repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment.

1940 - Booker T. Washington becomes the first African-American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.

1943 - In Terebovlia, Ukraine, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress to their underwear and march through the city to the nearby village of Plebanivka where they are shot dead and buried in ditches.

1945 - The Japanese battleship, Yamato, the largest battleship ever constructed, is sunk by American planes 200 miles north of Okinawa while en-route tp a suicide mission in Operation Ten-Go.

1946 - Syria declares its independence from France.

1948 - The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.

1954 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his "domino theory" speech during a news conference.

1969 - The internet's symbolic birth date because of the publication of RFC 1.

1971 - President Richard Nixon announces his decision to increase the rate of American troop withdrawals from Vietnam.

1990 - John Poindexter is found guilty of five charges for his part in the Iran Contra Affair.  However, the conviction is later reversed upon appeal.

2003 - United States troops captured Baghdad, Iraq.