Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 7

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 * 1679 – Le Griffon (depicted), a barque built by René-Robert de La Salle, began its journey to be the first sailing ship to navigate the upper Great Lakes.
 * 1782 – The Badge of Military Merit (pictured), the precursor to the U.S. Purple Heart, was established as a military decoration of the Continental Army.
 * 1794 – U.S. president George Washington invoked the Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
 * 1909 – Fifty-nine days after leaving New York City with three passengers, Alice Huyler Ramsey arrived in San Francisco to become the first woman to drive an automobile across the contiguous United States.
 * 1914 – The Battle of Mulhouse began with France's first attack of World War I in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recover the region of Alsace from Germany.
 * 1942 – World War II: U.S. Marines initiated the first American offensive of the Guadalcanal campaign, with landings on Tulagi (pictured), Gavutu–Tanambogo and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.


 * 1944 – IBM presented the first program-controlled calculator to Harvard University, after which it became known as the Mark I.
 * 1946 – The Soviet Union informed Turkey that the way in which the latter was handling the Turkish Straits no longer represented the security interests of its fellow Black Sea nations, escalating the Turkish Straits crisis.
 * 1970 – Jonathan Jackson kidnapped Harold Haley, a judge in Marin County, California, to coerce the release of the Soledad Brothers, including Jackson's brother George.
 * 1985 – Five members of the Bamber family were found murdered at a farmhouse in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, England.
 * 1987 – Lynne Cox became the first person to swim between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, crossing from Little Diomede to Big Diomede in the Bering Strait in 2 hours and 5 minutes.
 * 1998 – Car bombs exploded simultaneously at the American embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 4,000 others.
 * Born/died: | Hugh Foliot |d|1234| Jin Shengtan |d|1661| Joseph Marie Jacquard |d|1834|Jöns Jacob Berzelius |d|1848|Huntley Wright |b|1868| Art Houtteman |b|1927| Richard Sykes |b|1942 Rebecca Kleefisch |b|1975| Charlize Theron |b|1975|Billy T. James  |d|1991| Brigid Brophy |d|1995| Peter Jennings |d|2005 Frances Oldham Kelsey  |d|2015