From Delaware’s vote as the first state of the United States in 1787 to Japan’s first probe to orbit another planet in 2015, 7 December has seen war, reconciliation and the far reaches of the solar system. This timeline follows the date across more than two centuries.
Exploration, political change, scientific development and expanding global connections.
On 7 December 1787 thirty delegates meeting at Battell’s Tavern in Dover voted unanimously to ratify the new Constitution of the United States, making Delaware the first state to do so. Pennsylvania followed five days later. Delaware still calls itself ‘the First State’ and keeps 7 December as Delaware Day.
Source: State of Delaware: About Delaware Day ↗War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.
Ships moored around Ford Island, photographed from a Japanese plane shortly after the attack began.Image: Imperial Japanese Navy · Public domainEarly on Sunday 7 December 1941 aircraft from six Japanese carriers struck the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, without a declaration of war. In under two hours they sank or damaged eight battleships and destroyed or damaged 188 aircraft. The attack killed 2,404 Americans, 68 of them civilians; 1,177 died on the battleship USS Arizona alone. Japan lost fewer than 100 men. The next day the United States declared war on Japan, and within days it was fighting Germany and Italy too.
Source: Naval History and Heritage Command: Pearl Harbor attack ↗
Patriarch Athenagoras I with Pope Paul VI at a service in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, in 1967.Image: Unknown photographer · Public domainOn 7 December 1965, the day before the Second Vatican Council closed, a joint declaration by Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I was read out at the same time in St Peter’s in Rome and at the patriarchal church in Istanbul. In it they regretted the offensive words and acts of 1054, when legates of the pope and the patriarch of Constantinople had excommunicated each other, and removed those sentences ‘from the memory and from the midst of the Church’. The churches remain separate, but the declaration opened a new era of dialogue.
Source: Holy See: Joint Catholic-Orthodox declaration of Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I, 7 December 1965 ↗
The monument on Willy Brandt Square in Warsaw, which recalls his gesture of 1970.Image: Robert Wielgórski a.k.a. Barry Kent · CC BY 2.5On 7 December 1970 the West German chancellor Willy Brandt, in Warsaw to sign a treaty with Poland, laid a wreath at the Monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto. Then, unexpectedly, he dropped to his knees and stayed there in silence. He later wrote that, faced with the abyss of history and the burden of the murdered millions, he did what people do when words fail them. The treaty signed that day accepted Poland’s western border on the Oder and Neisse rivers, and the image of the kneeling chancellor became a symbol of Germany facing up to its past.
Source: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews: Willy Brandt’s tribute at the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes ↗
Apollo 17 lifts off from Kennedy Space Center at 12.33 am on 7 December 1972, the first night launch of a Saturn V.Image: NASA · Public domainAt 12.33 am on 7 December 1972 a Saturn V rocket lit up the Florida night as Apollo 17 lifted off, the first Apollo mission launched in darkness. On board were Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt, a geologist and the only scientist to walk on the Moon. Cernan and Schmitt spent three days exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley. On the way out the crew took the ‘Blue Marble’ photograph of the whole Earth, one of the most reproduced pictures ever made. No one has been back to the Moon since.
Source: NASA: Apollo 17 ↗
A memorial in Armenia to the victims of the 1988 earthquake, photographed in 2013.Image: Armenak Margarian · CC BY-SA 4.0Just before noon on 7 December 1988 an earthquake of magnitude 6.8 struck northern Armenia, then a Soviet republic, devastating the towns of Spitak, Gyumri (then Leninakan) and Vanadzor. More than 25,000 people were killed, and many of the region’s concrete apartment blocks collapsed. Mikhail Gorbachev cut short a visit to the United States, and for the first time the Soviet Union accepted large-scale help from abroad. Armenia remembers the victims every 7 December.
Source: ReliefWeb (UN OCHA): Three decades since Spitak, disaster resilience remains a priority for Armenia ↗
An artist’s impression by Don Davis for NASA of the Galileo probe descending through Jupiter’s atmosphere.Image: NASA/Don Davis · Public domainOn 7 December 1995 NASA’s Galileo spacecraft reached Jupiter, six years after launch. Its small probe plunged into the planet’s atmosphere at about 170,000 km/h and sent back data for almost an hour before the heat and pressure overwhelmed it. The same day the main spacecraft fired its engine and became the first ever to orbit Jupiter. Over eight years it studied the planet and its moons, finding strong evidence of a salty ocean beneath the ice of Europa.
Source: NASA Science: Galileo ↗The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.
Japan’s Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki failed to enter orbit around Venus in December 2010, when its main engine broke down, and drifted around the Sun for five years. On 7 December 2015 JAXA fired its small attitude-control thrusters instead, and the craft slipped into orbit. It became the first Japanese probe to orbit another planet, and went on to study the planet’s clouds and fierce winds.
Source: JAXA: Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki inserted into Venus’ orbit ↗Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.
This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 7 December, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.
Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.
Discover the lighter side of the date with famous birthdays, culture, firsts and lives remembered.
A model of the Venus orbiter Akatsuki, photographed in 2010.Image: