Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies at Reims

Pontiac’s Rebellion begins when a confederacy of Native warriors under Ottawa chief Pontiac attacks the British force at Detroit. After failing to take the fort in their initial assault, Pontiac’s forces, made up of Ottawas and reinforced by Wyandots, Ojibwas and Potawatamis, initiated a siege that would stretch into months. As the French and Indian […]

Called the U.S.’s first ambassador to Japan, a 14-year-old fisherman by the name of Manjiro is considered America’s first Japanese immigrant, arriving in the country on May 7, 1843, by way of a whaling ship. According to the National Endowment of the Humanities, the boy and his crew were caught in a violent storm, with […]

On the afternoon of May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the vessel sank into the Celtic Sea. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people drowned, including 128 Americans. The attack aroused considerable indignation in the United […]

Leonid Brezhnev, one of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s most trusted proteges, is selected as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet—the Soviet equivalent to the presidency. This was another important step in Brezhnev’s rise to power in Russia, a rise that he later capped by taking control of the Soviet Union in 1964. Brezhnev […]

Norway’s most famous painting, “The Scream” by Edvard Munch, is recovered almost three months after it was stolen from a museum in Oslo.

On May 7, 2004, marine biologist Richard Thompson publishes an article in the journal Science detailing the troubling amount of microscopic plastic fragments and fibers that he and his team have discovered in the world’s oceans and marine habitats. Thompson dubs the debris “microplastics” and questions whether these particles could release harmful chemicals and pose […]