Portal:United States/On this day/May 7

On this day for the United States

May 7:

Events

• 1763 - Indian Wars: Pontiac's Rebellion begins - Chief Pontiac begins the "Conspiracy of Pontiac" by attacking British forces at Fort Detroit.
• 1840 - The Great Natchez Tornado strikes Natchez, Mississippi, killing 317 people. It is the second deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
• 1847 - In Philadelphia, the American Medical Association (AMA) is founded.
• 1864 - American Civil War: The Army of the Potomac, under General Ulysses S. Grant, breaks off from the Battle of the Wilderness and moves southwards.
• 1915 - World War I: a German submarine U-20 sinks the RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. Public reaction to the sinking turned many formerly pro-Germans in the United States of America against the German Empire.
• 1947 - Kraft Television Theater debuts, running for the next 11 years.
• 1960 - Cold War: U-2 Crisis - Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.
• 1964 - Pacific Air Lines Flight 773, a Fairchild F-27 airliner, crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger.
• 1992 - Michigan ratifies a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution making the 27th Amendment law. This amendment bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise.
• 1992 - Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its maiden voyage (STS-49).
• 1998 - Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for US$40 billion and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history.
• 1999 - A jury finds The Jenny Jones Show and Warner Bros. liable in the shooting death of Scott Amedure, after the show purposely deceived Jonathan Schmitz to appear on a secret same-sex crush episode. Schmitz later killed Amedure and the jury awarded Amedure's family US$25 million.