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HISTORY & TIMELINE
7 January

A journey through
7 January in history

The seventh day of the year has seen Galileo spot the moons of Jupiter, two balloonists float across the English Channel, the first telephone call cross the Atlantic and Marian Anderson break the colour line at the Metropolitan Opera. This timeline follows 7 January from 1610 to the twentieth century.

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III
A CHANGING WORLD

Early Modern Era

Exploration, political change, scientific development and expanding global connections.

1610
Galileo Galilei, in a portrait held by Royal Museums Greenwich.Galileo Galilei, in a portrait held by Royal Museums Greenwich.Image: Justus Sustermans · Public domain
science · Europe

Galileo sees the moons of Jupiter

On the night of 7 January 1610, in Padua, Galileo Galilei turned his newly improved telescope on Jupiter and saw three small points of light beside it, lined up like tiny stars. Night after night they changed position; a few days later he found a fourth, and by mid-January he understood that they were moons circling Jupiter. It was the first proof that not everything in the heavens went round the Earth. Galileo rushed his discoveries into print that March in The Starry Messenger, and named the moons the Medicean Stars after his hoped-for patrons in Florence.

Source: NASA: 415 years ago, astronomer Galileo discovers Jupiter’s moons ↗
1785
A print of Blanchard and Jeffries's balloon crossing the English Channel in 1785.A print of Blanchard and Jeffries’s balloon crossing the English Channel in 1785.Image: Jmack361 · CC BY-SA 4.0
science · Europe

Two balloonists fly across the English Channel

On 7 January 1785 the French balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard and his American backer, the Boston doctor John Jeffries, rose from the cliffs of Dover in a hydrogen balloon and headed for France. The balloon kept sinking, and to stay in the air they threw out their ballast, their equipment and even much of their clothing. They came down safely in a forest near Calais, the first people to fly across the Channel, carrying what is often called the first international airmail.

Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: crossing the Channel in a balloon ↗
V
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1900s

War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.

1922
The signatures on the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921.The signatures on the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921.Image: Unknown · Public domain
politics · Europe

The Dáil approves the Anglo-Irish Treaty

The treaty signed in London in December 1921 ended the Irish War of Independence. It offered a self-governing Irish Free State inside the British Commonwealth, with an oath to the Crown, while Northern Ireland could stay in the United Kingdom. Dáil Éireann debated it bitterly for weeks. On 7 January 1922 it approved the treaty by 64 votes to 57. Éamon de Valera and his supporters walked out, calling it a betrayal of the Republic. The split led within months to civil war between former comrades.

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas: the Treaty in context ↗
1927
Masts of the Rugby Radio Station in England, which carried the radio link of the first transatlantic telephone service; photographed in 2005.Masts of the Rugby Radio Station in England, which carried the radio link of the first transatlantic telephone service; photographed in 2005.Image: David Reid · CC BY-SA 2.0
science · Global

The first telephone call across the Atlantic

Until 1927 the only way to send words across the Atlantic at once was by telegraph. On 7 January that year the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the British Post Office opened a public telephone service between New York and London, carried by long-wave radio between stations in the United States and Britain. The first official call linked the head of AT&T in New York with the head of the Post Office in London. Calls were very expensive, and telephone cables under the ocean took over only in 1956.

Source: Library of Congress, National Recording Registry: first official transatlantic telephone call (January 7, 1927) ↗
1955
Marian Anderson, photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1940.Marian Anderson, photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1940.Image: Carl Van Vechten · Public domain
culture · Americas

Marian Anderson sings at the Metropolitan Opera

The contralto Marian Anderson had sung in the concert halls of Europe for decades, and in 1939, barred from a Washington hall because she was Black, she sang to 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial. But no Black singer had ever taken a leading role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. On 7 January 1955 she did, singing the fortune-teller Ulrica in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. The audience rose to applaud her before she had sung a note. She was near the end of her career, but the Met’s doors were now open to the Black singers who followed.

Source: Metropolitan Opera: Black voices at the Met ↗
1959
Fidel Castro's entry into Havana in January 1959.Fidel Castro’s entry into Havana in January 1959.Image: Desconhecido · Public domain
politics · Americas

The United States recognises Castro’s Cuba

The dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba on New Year’s Day 1959, and Fidel Castro’s rebels took power. Washington, which had supported Batista for years, moved quickly to establish relations with the new government. On 7 January 1959, less than a week later, the United States formally recognised it. Friendship did not last: within two years Castro had seized American-owned property and turned to the Soviet Union, and in January 1961 the United States broke off relations, which were not restored until 2015.

Source: US Department of State, Office of the Historian: Foreign Relations of the United States 1958-1960, Cuba, document 217 ↗
1979
The memorial stupa at Choeung Ek, near Phnom Penh, which honours the victims of the Khmer Rouge.The memorial stupa at Choeung Ek, near Phnom Penh, which honours the victims of the Khmer Rouge.Image: The original uploader was Hotguy at Hebrew Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0
world · Asia

The Khmer Rouge are driven from Phnom Penh

Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot emptied Cambodia’s cities, abolished money and religion and drove the population into forced labour. Between 1.5 and 2 million people, perhaps a fifth of the population, died from execution, starvation and disease. After years of Khmer Rouge raids across its border, Vietnam invaded at Christmas 1978, and on 7 January 1979 its troops took Phnom Penh. The Khmer Rouge leaders fled to the Thai border and fought on for years. Vietnam installed a new government, and Cambodians still mark 7 January as the day the regime fell.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Phnom Penh ↗
1984
The Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei.The Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei.Image: Uhooep · CC BY-SA 4.0
politics · Asia

Brunei joins ASEAN

A week after winning full independence from Britain on 1 January 1984, the oil-rich sultanate of Brunei was admitted to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at a ministers’ meeting in Jakarta on 7 January 1984. It was the sixth member, joining Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. ASEAN has since grown to cover almost all of Southeast Asia.

Source: ASEAN: Brunei Darussalam, member state ↗
1993
Parliament House in Accra, the seat of the Parliament of Ghana.Parliament House in Accra, the seat of the Parliament of Ghana.Image: Wgsohne · CC BY-SA 3.0
politics · Africa

Ghana returns to constitutional rule

Ghana, the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence, had lived through a series of military coups by 1981, the last of them led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. In 1992 Ghanaians approved a new constitution in a referendum and voted in multiparty elections. On 7 January 1993 the Fourth Republic began, with Rawlings sworn in as its elected president and a new parliament in place. It has lasted longer than all Ghana’s earlier republics together, and power has since passed peacefully between parties several times.

Source: Parliament of Ghana: history of Ghana’s parliament ↗
RESEARCH

Sources & Further Reading

Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.

WHY THESE MOMENTS?

Significance before volume

This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 7 January, 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.

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