January 7th:

1953- US President Harry Truman announces American development of the hydrogen bomb

1999- President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial begins in the US Senate after the House voted to impeach him for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky

1610- Galileo Galilei discovers the first three moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa & Ganymede

1611- Trial of Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory for killing and torturing hundreds of young women, later sentenced to house arrest for the rest of her life

1782- 1st US commercial bank, Bank of North America, opens in Philadelphia

1785- 1st balloon flight across English Channel by Jean Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries

1890- African American inventor William Purvis receives a patent for the fountain pen

1927- Commercial transatlantic telephone service inaugurated between New York & London

1929- “Tarzan”, one of the 1st adventure comic strips, 1st appears

1950- Mental health wing of Mercy Hospital burns, kills 41 in Davenport, Iowa

1954- Georgetown-IBM experiment, 1st public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held at IBM’s head office in New York

1955- Marian Anderson becomes the 1st African American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera

My source and more facts at On This Day