January 7

49 BC – The Senate of Rome says that Caesar will be declared a public enemy unless he disbands his army which is encamped on the north side of the Rubicon river in northeastern Italy.

1608 – Fire destroys the colony of Jamestown, Virginia

1610 – In a message to  Johannes Kepler:
ALTISSIMUM PLANETAM TERGEMINUM OBSERVAVI
“I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form”
Galileo Galilei notes his telescopic observation of the first 2 of the 4 largest moons of Saturn: Ganymede and Callisto, distinguishing the last 2, Io and Europa (Attempt No Landing There) the following day.

1782 – The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens

1785 – Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries fly from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon

1894 – Thomas Edison makes a kinetoscopic film of someone sneezing, on the same day, his employee, William Kennedy Dickson, receives a patent for motion picture film.

1927 – The first transatlantic telephone service is established from New York City to London.

1948 – Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell, flying a P-51, Mustang, crashes and dies near Franklin, Kentucky, while in pursuit of a reported UFO.

1954 – The first public demonstration of an automatic machine language translation system is held in New York at the head office of IBM.

1968 – Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor moon lander probe series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral.

1973 – Black racist sniper Mark Essex is shot and killed by New Orleans police on the roof of the Howard Johnson’s Hotel after killing 9 people and wounding 13 more in different places over the period beginning on December 31st.

1980 – President Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation, which was repaid, with interest, in 1983.

1994 – United Express Flight 6291, a British Aerospace Jetstream 41, crashes in Gahanna, Ohio, killing 5 of the 8 passengers and crew on board

1999 – The Senate trial in the impeachment of President Clinton begins

2015 – Two moslem terrorists assault the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, killing 12 people and wounding 11.

2020 – The 6.4Mw  earthquake kill 4 people and injures 9 more in southern Puerto Rico.