A hijacker deliberately drove a truck into crowds along Drottninggatan in Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people.
7 April 136
A Saturday in history
Weekday
Saturday
Season
Spring (N. Hemisphere)
Century
2nd century
Records
479
2017
2001NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey (artist's conception pictured), the longest-surviving continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth, launched from Cape Canaveral.
1995First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops began a massacre of hundreds of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.
1994Rwandan Civil War: The Rwandan genocide began a few hours after the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, with hundreds of thousands killed in the following 100 days.
1994A FedEx employee tried to hijack Federal Express Flight 705 in a failed suicide attempt.
1979Uganda–Tanzania War: Tanzanian forces defeated Ugandan troops and their Libyan allies at the Battle of Entebbe, opening the way for an advance on the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
1972Communist forces overran the South Vietnamese town of Lộc Ninh.
1964American Presbyterian minister Bruce W. Klunder was killed by a bulldozer while protesting the construction of a segregated school in Cleveland, Ohio.
1949The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, based on Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener, opened on Broadway.
1948The United Nations established the World Health Organization to act as a coordinating authority on international public health.
1945World War II: U.S. forces sank the Japanese battleship Yamato during Operation Kikusui I in the East China Sea.
1926Italian dictator Benito Mussolini survived an assassination attempt by Irishwoman Violet Gibson.
1896An Arctic expedition led by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (pictured) reached 86°13.6′N, almost three degrees beyond the previous Farthest North latitude.
1862American Civil War: Union forces defeated Confederate troops at the Battle of Shiloh, at the time the bloodiest battle in U.S. history, in Hardin County, Tennessee.
1831Pedro II became emperor of the Empire of Brazil.
1655After a conclave lasting eighty days, the College of Cardinals elected Fabio Chigi as Pope Alexander VII.
Photo archive
24 historic images from this day — tap to open the gallery.
What was life like?
Prices, jobs, food, music and everyday routine — the world as it felt to live in.
Sources & fact check
Every claim is traced to primary sources, archives, universities and the press — with an explicit confidence rating. Dossiers are generated once and cached permanently.